 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, every single one of you. Thanks to all of you and happy holidays! This is the Daily Tech News for the Daily Tech News Show for Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Marin. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. I said Daily Tech News Show because this is not a show about news. This is one of our special holiday episodes. It's our first attempt at a reminiscence episode. And we're not going to reminisce about our own holidays. We're going to talk about our shared experience working at Tech TV. We know a lot of you watched Tech TV back in the day. You may have followed one or more of us from those days right down to this very show here. So we thought it'd be fun to talk about like how we met each other there and how we work together and all that sort of thing. Who's going to start us off? I can. I think of all three of us. I am the one that probably started the earliest. And I started in the... You either did or you did. Well, no. I mean like it's quite... It's quite possible. History will never know. I don't want to say anything too crazy. Roger started at Tech TV before you two knew each other from college. Yes. But you were like... Roger and I were in the same broadcasting program in college and we knew each other. You graduated in 98, right, Raj? Yes, correct. So same. Maybe. I mean, so we... But I went to work somewhere else before that and Roger was at Tech TV when I got there and it was sort of like, oh, I know you. Hi. But yeah, what was it like when you got there? I started as an intern back in the summer of 98, actually the beginning of summer. So the beginning of June I started and it was the weirdest thing because I remember going in for my intern interview to get a position and I wanted to get a position with the web group. And I interviewed with the head of web at that time who was Lucia. And I don't know if either one of you remember her, but she was very intimidating. Her and Ali Hoseini, they were going through and they were kind of giving me the third degree of me and along with another individual about what they needed, what they planned to do, and what they expected out of us. And while they were talking, Lucia had to get up and figure something out for the website. While she was away, Ken Marcus at the time, all these desks were right next to each other. Ken Marcus, one of the producers at Screen Savers, was like, hey, do you want an internship? And I kind of looked at him and I said, he poached you? Yeah, he poached me from web to go to TV. These guys are being real hard on you. I'll take you. It's like, yeah, I was like, yeah, totally. It's like, yeah, just show up here next week at this time and we'll orient you and it'll be great because we need interns. We're launching in two weeks. They really emphasized we're launching in two weeks. We need as many people as we can because there's so much work to be done. It was the most hilarious thing. So after my internship, which was about two and a half months, wait, hold on, hold on. Did you end up getting offered the web thing at all? Or did they, you know, they poached me. They poached Ken Marcus, like, yeah, I'm taking him. Oh, so when she came back, he's like, sorry, he's gone. I took him. And lesson to all, don't leave your own intern meeting or that intern's gonna get poached. Don't have everyone sitting two feet away from each other because they can hear each other's conversation. Don't leave Roger unattended. Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the summer, they decided to hire me as a PA because at an open position, I knew 80% of everything and they needed someone right away. I was working at half price books. I was an assistant manager in charge of stocking. So I was handling ordering the remainders and things like that. And Austin, Texas, and my friend had moved out to San Francisco and said, jobs are falling from trees out here. You should come out here. So she went on the San Francisco Women on the Web mailing list. It was an email list and started forwarding me job descriptions. One of them was for working at a place called surf monkey, which made an internet explorer browser bar that would make your browsing kid friendly. Another one was at Future Media, working at one of the Mac publications. And the third one that I decided to respond to was ZDTV. And I got offered jobs at all three, but I took the one at ZDTV because I was the most interested in technology, radio, television, and it was all there. So I started as associate producer on the web for the screensavers. And the way I met Roger was my first day, I believe it was September 8th, 1999. They told me, well, one of the things you'll need to do is take the question from the screensavers and turn it into web content. Roger here will give you that information in Lotus Notes. So Roger was literally the first person I had to work with. There were others that followed, but that was the first person that I was like, okay, you spell your name with a D because it's spelled with a D here in Lotus Notes. And he was like, no, I don't know why that's like that, but that's not how you spell my name. It was a very interesting thing. They didn't change that until my final year. It was R-O-D-G-E-R. Well, so when I got to tech TV, while I was in college, when Roger and I were in college at the same time, I was interning at the NBC affiliate, which is no longer the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area, but at the time it was K-R-O-N-T-V. And I had an internship there and I was working sort of on like this documentary with this great producer. I loved it. It was awesome. And I kind of had a job lined up for when I graduated, and that is extra. I got really lucky, good timing. I ingratiated myself with the right people, so I kind of had a job. And it was doing sort of new media web documentary kind of, there was a local programming section, which I'm very sure Kron doesn't have anymore. But at the time it was, you know, you had the Bay Area Backroads and all those folks, anybody who doesn't live in the San Francisco area is going to be like, I don't know that show, but you know, pretty beloved group of sort of news magazine, 30 minute type package shows. So I was doing that for a while, and while I was doing that for, gosh, I guess it would have been, well, if I graduated in 98, no, no, no, no. So almost the better part of three years. And kind of people kept getting either fired or they would leave and I would get promoted, because they would just be like, well, maybe Sarah can do it. You know, like the really young kid who just graduated college. So I kind of got into a position where my resume actually looked pretty good considering that I didn't have all that much experience and I had just been interning So Tech TV, I actually, I applied for a job at Freshgear and I got the job. This is before I ever started at the screen savers and my current employer at the time, they were sort of like, ooh, if she leaves we're a little screwed. So they just like offered me a raise to stay. That's why I did it. I was like, well, that's easier, you know, like, because I don't even know if I would like the new job type thing. So I turned down the Freshgear job. I think Becky Worley actually interviewed me way back in the day. And so, and I think, I think some of the Tech TV folks who sort of, some of them had even sort of been through the rankings at this local news station that I was at. And so people sort of knew each other. And I got the impression that everyone was sort of like, I can't believe she turned on this job. Well, turns out Peter Hammersley was one of the people who was in the mix in my local news station before he worked at Tech TV. He was a producer on Bay Area Backroads, right? He was, yeah. And he knew one of the producers that I was an intern for really well. And she vouched for me. And he at the time was at Tech TV, you know, as a, you know, he was an executive producer, overseeing things. I mean, he could, he could basically get somebody hired if he wanted to type thing. So the screen savers were ramping up quite, I don't know, quite a few positions. It seemed like I was not just one person that they hired. It was expanding the staff. Yeah, me and 10 other people type thing. And I got hired for a role. And I think, I think a few people who worked at the station were like, yeah, let's, you know, she did turn down that Freshgear role last year. But let's bring her in. And that sort of, so he reached out to you for that. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't even, I don't know that I would have known this otherwise, but I was sort of, I was a little bit at least in the HR mix at that point. So yeah, I remember I got hired and I didn't really know what was going on. I knew what's weird is that my cousin, who's a little bit older than me, but she used to work at Tech TV. In fact, Roger, you probably knew her before you ever saw me again after college. She was a TD, technical director. So I was familiar. Can you not say her name or? Well, Kelly Creffield. That's my cousin. She and I did not work there at the same time she had left. She went to CNN, but she was, she was kind of like, you know, cutting her chops, you know, in the control room at Tech TV. So she, I knew from her that it was like kind of a pretty cool place. And you know, a lot of stuff was going on, a lot of things were changing. So yeah, I showed up and my first day I was like, I know a lot of people from college on this show, the screen savers specifically, like people running the cameras, people in the control room. I had a lot of them. I knew everybody. I was like, this is crazy. You guys have been here this whole time. Well, I thought after graduation, we all just said bye. The funny thing about both these stories is that it shows just how difficult it was to find people in San Francisco at that time. The reason that they were willing to hire some guy who worked at a bookstore out of Austin was was probably, you know, sure, I'm sure I was a decent candidate, but also there weren't a lot of other folks you could find. And I think it's telling that both of you were sort of, you know, not you ended up in a job that wasn't the one you originally went for, you know, it wasn't fresh gear. It wasn't in turn with the web group. And I had to come from halfway across the continent. I distinctly remember sort of the vibe of the place because you have to remember this is the time of the dot com bubble. And so everything was very every the company had it. The company staff had a unofficial Deadpool where they would basically rate who's the next person that's going to leave for a new startup or a web company or something like that because they were believing we were getting goodbye notes at least once a week at least once a week for for the better part of six months that never stopped because for a while it was everybody's finding jobs with like crazy stock options or wonderful salaries and this and that and tech TV was a small thing. It was owned by Ziff Davis who won, you know, they were owned by soft bank. So they were part of this big corporate conglomerate. They weren't throwing money at it. You know, they they were spending on it. They were willing to lose money on it in order to get it up and running, but they weren't like some of these dot com startups that were just tossing around money like like wild. And so you had people leaving for that until you didn't. And then you had people leaving involuntarily, right? It switched from people leaving to take sweet jobs to people getting laid off like in a heartbeat. It was also and part of this is I think because so many of us were, I mean, maybe not, you know, I mean, I was right out of college. Roger was right out of college. Tommy couple years, right? I mean, when you're when you're Yes, just a couple. No, I mean, you're not that much older than me. But I was eight years out of college, I guess. I mean, when I think of, you know, the the early days of tech TV was like, I'm like, yeah, you know, you have a salary, you're living in San Francisco, that's expensive. But I mean, I also had roommates and, oh yeah, you know, you're eating ramen a lot. And and like that was all fine because you're young. And I think that, you know, to kind of look back on how much work some of us put in. I'm not even talking about myself specifically, but just how much work was put into a lot of these projects. Probably pretty underpaid staff. That's that's that's that's that's just we were all we were all paid much less than most other people working in the Bay Area and in similar levels at similar ages. No doubt about that. However, I never felt that way because I had been living in Austin making 21,000 a year. And my starting salary that I negotiated, I was like, well, I can I can't take less than 30,000. I got 30,000 for the associate producer level because I pushed for it. And I felt like I was swimming in it. Right. Because even with the higher cost of living of San Francisco, you know, I had I had had no extra money in Austin. And so suddenly I had I was making $9000 more a year. Granted, some of that went to rent. But I ended up I got a promotion because my boss left after three months and I got promoted into her job. And so I took the extra money I got from that promotion and found a studio apartment. It was an attic apartment. It was really small, but it was it was I didn't have to have roommates. So I always felt like I was living the luxury life even though we still weren't paid that much. I would I'll have to say that when I started, I didn't find out till later that someone said like you actually qualify for income assistance. Prager did that. He got he got I remember he said this at the time publicly to anybody asked he qualified for assisted housing because the amount he was being paid. I said like, man, if I knew that I wouldn't have lived in the last place I got I had to leave because I was paying I didn't wasn't paying a lot, but I was living not far away, but in a very inconvenient location and my landlord would lock the door at like 9 p.m. So I had to get home before 9 p.m. It was the oddest. That is very odd. Yes. And so not a good rental agreement. I didn't have a key. Well, it was the chain on the door because I lived in the long unit. And so that was the only way to get in. I see. I see. So after that I found my own place. Not sure that's legal, but yeah, whatever. You know, listen, I was in my I was in my early 20s. I didn't know what I could get away with what I was all supposed to be able to do. I mean, when I was in my early 20s, I was definitely living with roommates, definitely living in like, you know, I lived in a I can't remember what they call that, but where you just have a room or a boarding house, boarding house, where you just have a room and there's other people who have rooms and then you share the kitchen, you share the bathrooms with everyone else in the house. Yeah, I mean, that's how my roommate experiences have been. I never had like my own en suite, like bedroom and bathroom just to myself. This is like a house of like eight people. Oh, wow. And you're not roommates. You're each paying directly to the landlord for your room in the house. I will say, bouncing off of what Tom just said about like living a large that was in Austin. That's the life, so to speak. I was awestruck when I got when I was an official employee because I thought this is my first career job. And I was so intimidated by everything. It's like, this is a broadcast, you know, company cable. But like, you know, they have a master control. They're like people with years of experience. Oh, yeah. Like money is writing on the stuff that I do that I don't screw up. And so I was very nervous for like a year and a half that I did. Oh my gosh, I was so badly because it was a live show. And I said, Roger, there's a we don't even have a 10 second delay. So watch your mouth. And the website was put on the air, which was a new thing. Not not everybody was doing that. And so I was like, the things I write on the web are going to show up on a national television. I also remember the realizing my first realization that it wasn't as big as you think was when I was able to justify slipping a link to my website, some brilliant.com into one of the articles. And then I waited for all the huge traffic, kind of like four clicks of it. I was like, oh, okay, this isn't necessarily as crazy. This is the great thing about that about at the time it was ZDTV before before Paul Allen bought it and changed the name. But there was so much to learn. But there were so many of my peers that were kind of not not in the same boat, but in a similar level of learning on the job. And it was great because we had a lot of people who in senior positions who were very understanding. And I remember when Josh Gingold talked to me, he was the old producer for screen savers said, Roger, I don't care if you mess up on my show, because at the time I had to take care of call for help and screen savers, I can lose something on my show. Just make sure that call for help is taken care of because we had a new producer and she needed some help trying to some runway to get up to speed. It's like, you know, do what you can to help her. I can manage it. So, you know, you know, if you need to split your time, you know, wait it toward that show instead of my mind. And it was so amazing because he was very, very mentor ish in a way like he's like, you know what, we screwed up on this, that's great. But I have a better producer because of it, because now that you've went through this, you know, I something blew up on one of the segments. So now that we've gone through this, we know what not to do next time or what to do better next time. And I thought that was so cool, right? I thought my head was going to be missing, you know, by the end of the, you know, by the end of the work day. And here I was was giving a pep talk learning experience. Yeah. And I thought like to me that was such an unusual thing. Because in all my jobs, I was used to if anything blew up, you get yelled at because that's what you did. You know, when I started at Tech TV, I had quite a bit of experience with live television because I had worked for this local station. And even though I was mostly working on more sort of packaged news magazine shows, you know, which is not live, it's, you know, you kind of just put everything together ahead of time and make it a 30 minute show type thing, which lots of shows still do. I did work in the newsroom quite a bit and I became very quickly disillusioned like, wait a second. So the 11 o'clock news is the best one, you know, those are like the best anchors. That's actually the one that you want to be on. But that means you have to work until midnight. And that's what you do. You know, I remember even like as like a 20 year old being like, well, hmm, okay, I mean, I could do that for like a little bit, but it doesn't really seem like something you will like want to like go for unless you were the anchor of the show, you know, making lots of money, which I was not even even thinking about that. But the disillusionment was mostly I liked the live aspect of everything, but I was just like, gosh, news is so bad, you know, if it bleeds, it leads type thing. And you know, so I would write these little blurbs, you know, right, right, right, right. You know, I was just a, I was basically producer writer behind the scenes, you know, just writing things about, oh, here's who got shot at this 7 11 last night. And you know, here's the update on, you know, the war that's going on at, you know, whatever was happening in the world at that time. I was like, well, this isn't fun at all. And then when the tech TV thing came around, it was like, well, you know, I remember people being like, well, how much are you really into like tech? And I'm like, a lot, actually. I mean, it just as a hobby, that's definitely my thing. I just never knew that I could just go to a network where I do that all day. I thought that it was either like news or it would be like some tech thing, but not both. So tech TV was, it was like, it was like someone handed me a gift and said, would you like to talk about the things that you're interested in all day and also get paid to produce segments on those topics? And I was like, yes, I'm good. And then, you know, and it like I'm still doing it today. There are times where I was taking products home to test and it's like, oh my god, I'm at a job that's letting me take home $1,500 worth of computer equipment to test and then write about and produce a segment and then take it, you know, back to the studio to go on air and talk about it. It's like, what a weird job. What a weird job it is to like literally take equipment people would kill for like, like unrevealed technology that you got to play with before anyone else and then write your thoughts on it and then, you know, do a little make it into something that is helpful for other people. And I was like, really? This is like the most bizarre thing. It's like so cool. But it's like, how did I get this job? I don't really know. Well, like any good VH1 special, we're going to turn to the dark things that happened shortly. But before we do, I want to remind you, if you want to know something about our time at Tech TV, you can send us an email. We'll answer it. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. And that's what it all fell apart. No, I oversold this. I'm laughing because that's not really what happened to any of us. But I do want to put out here that, and I don't know if y'all agree with me or not, but I felt like the entire time I worked at Tech TV, which was, you know, from when it was ZDTV in 99 until it got bought from Comcast and merged into G4 in 2004, everyone complained. Everybody liked working with each other, but everybody complained about, ah, this company, and why are they making these decisions? And it got, especially when it got into layoffs. I always felt the vibe was like, this place is so messed up until the day we were all gone. And then suddenly it was like, oh, Tech TV, the best years of our lives. We never really appreciated what we had back then. I think that's fairly normal, honestly, to always be complaining about the thing you're doing at the time, but then look back on it fondly. Do you feel the same way? Kind of. I mean, so I was part of the folks who did join G4 and moved to Los Angeles. And at the time, that was like a huge thing where I was like, wait, so I can keep my job, but I have to move to LA. And that was, you know, there was a little bit of, you know, sort of a personal life struggle going on there. But I went and, you know, so that next chapter for me kind of, it continued with some of the Tech TV people that I knew, you know, and I liked very much, but only like a, you know, a small fraction of the people that I had gotten used to working with. And I do get that question a lot of people being like, you know, what was so special about Tech TV? And it's like, I don't know, because you're right, Tom. We all did complain. And it wasn't run all that seamlessly most of the time. They took the instant oatmeal out of the kitchen. I can't believe these cheap people. Yeah, or just weird, you know, like, I don't know, format changes for shows, you know, wherever it would be like, what is happening? But it was also, I don't know. And I think the time and the fact that so many of us were young, not everybody was like 22 years old, but there were just a lot of young people who were like, they wanted to date each other. They wanted to hang out on Friday after work. You know, we were all kind of like a gang, you know, and I don't, I have never had something like that since. Well, you know, it's weird. Someone brought that up to me. I had a guest on and he was used to do it. He came from a network TV background, but he was talking to us like, your operation is very, very interesting. You said, like, everyone is on good terms with each other. You hang out with each other. You're like friends with each other. It's like, in cable TV, that never happens. As soon as you're out the door, your private life begins. And you know, it's like, I'll see you tomorrow. And it's like, the fact that you guys are now going to a bar having worked eight hours in the same day with each other. And you really just want to keep hanging out with these people. And that was very normal. I mean, I had friends that were outside of tech TV, but I would say the majority of my social life was my tech TV people. And I didn't realize how abnormal or unusual that was until I went into other production companies where I was like, you know, contract or short term. And that that wasn't the case. And it was just like, I guess it is kind of weird that because we all went to school with each other. We all went to work with each other. We just naturally had the same sort of groupings. Well, and I think as someone who didn't go to school with any of you, at least until I started hiring people from Austin to come into the company, I think there was just something about the age, right? Where it felt like a continuation of like, oh yeah, when you're done with class, you hang out with your classmates. And even though I was older and had been out of college for longer, it just the atmosphere permeated, right? And I'm not any different in the fact that I think everybody that I hung out with for the most part until I went to see that were the people from work, probably because I'd moved across the country. And I had my friend who had sent me the job descriptions and a couple of her friends that I would hang out with. I had one other friend I knew from Austin who had moved out there that I would hang out with. Everybody else were people I knew from work, including my eventual wife who I met because I was doing ZDTV radio and she was in charge of ZDTV radio. So yeah, it was in some ways it could probably sound like a bad idea to be so insular, but I think the complaining was part of the bonding, if that makes sense, right? It was all of us getting together after work and saying like, oh, can you believe Wang Berg is making that decision? Or why did Hammersley tell us to do that? It's like the typical complaining about the boss, not that either one of those guys were particularly awful, they weren't. But it's just that sort of like, the management, why are they doing that? The way you always do in any job you have. It reminds me when you leave class and you're with a bunch of other classmates, you're like, oh, do you remember Professor So-and-So or did you have that class today? Yeah, yeah. And you might love the professor, but you got that thing that you're like, I can't believe she does that. There's a bonded experience. And what's interesting is, and I really mean we hung out, like Marcus Bewick, one of the audio guys, he would throw a monthly iron chef party and he would have a theme and everyone would bring food and it would just be like a huge excuse to have a party at his place. Or they would do regular camping trips every quarter. They would do a lift to Tahoe, they would go up to the Russian river. It was a thing where people still stayed connected after work. It wasn't like, well, I have my work life, I have my... And even though we weren't a startup, it was a very startup-y feel. And I think startups have similar vibes to them. I definitely had it. I mean, there were definitely people that I bonded with more than others. It wasn't just like, oh, I now have 30 best friends. That never really works like that, even in real life, outside of work. Some of my still absolute best friends, I met at Tech TV. And we spent a lot of time kind of like you're talking about, Roger, working together, certainly, and helping each other out and seeing how the other person is good on the job or maybe needs some help and then hanging out afterwards. And it was something new. I think that was the other thing. Television wasn't new, but this kind of television was new. And the internet wasn't new, but putting the internet into television wasn't new. And I'm constantly surprised when I think back like, oh, we were the first ones rolling chat live on something that's totally normal. We solicited emails that Roger would then write the answers to that I would edit and publish and put on the web that Leo and Kate would answer. And just the content in general, kind of going back to the whole like, are you into tech or not? It's like, I remember when I worked at the news station beforehand, it was like, oh, these are veterans. And I can learn a lot from these people, but they're tired. And it's not about like, there's no, like tech slant on the local news. Imagine going into one of those producers. Yeah, imagine going into one of those producers and saying, I got an idea. I want to send people cameras, get them to install software and connect the camera to their laptop to their computer to their desktop to their computer. And then we'll have them call us with video, and then we'll have them on our show. No way, there's no way they would they would be like, first of all, that sounds way too complicated. And then who are these people? Why are we putting them on air? Like, or even just me being like, hey, producer of local news, I'd like to, you know, give me three minutes and put me on the set. And I'm just going to walk through how to defrag your computer. Right, right. And it's going to be so helpful, like everyone's going to love me. Like they say, what are you talking about? What is defrag? B, why is anyone in our audience going to care? And like, and who are you? And no. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so fascinating. You say that because one of the things, one of the proudest things I am that I am about the work I did over there was that like, when people talk about like, oh, our show touched people's lives, we got feedback directly from viewers that said that much. I still remember getting emails from the Middle East, from the Caribbean, from the Southeast of the United States, where people are saying, thank you so much. You know, you have helped me solve a problem that has been like, because computers are still a very mysterious, you know, a contraption for most people at the time that you didn't even have. You think things are buggy now, people? My gosh. Yeah. They were so fiddly. I mean, when I did the house cause, I literally went to someone's house and fixed their problem. And it was just like, hey, this is, it's simple for me, but like a lot of people was life changing. I didn't really appreciate that until I started. I mean, one of the best studs the screen savers ever did was to install an operating system live. And it took the whole show. In fact, I'm not even sure it was done installing. They did a live install of Linux on the show. And I think it took more than an hour. Oh, definitely. No, it definitely took more than an hour. Yeah. And just the community that we were able to build, because we built it from scratch. Like we had people who were fans who wrote in, but they were the first people we gave those Netcam, part of the Netcam network to, and people had to be tech savvy enough to install, open up their PC, install a card, close it up, install the software, make sure it worked, plug in the camera, make a call, call us. And it was just like, it was just chat with Dan Mitchell to get it all set up. Everything that we see right now on CNN, MSNBC, Fox or whatever, where they have someone calling through Skype or Cisco's, whatever that program us. This is mostly Skype these days. Or Zoom. It might even be Zoom. Or Zoom. I mean, I was just like, yeah, we started that. Like we did, the picture was really small and we had to put a graphic over it. So people didn't realize it was a small square. I had to maintain that page. The one that told people like, if you use it, if you use, I think the effect, I'm pretty sure the way it was is like, download this, unless you use an Apple computer, then you have to download this one. Yeah, I never, I was not a Mac user until I left tech TV. Even for a couple of years after that, I was like, I'm just not a Mac person, which is funny because I'm so a Mac person now. But yeah, I was like, I was very like, oh, God, who uses Mac? That just makes me think of overhearing. Jerry Day, because I sat in the screensaver section, even though I worked on both shows through large parts of my time there. Before I moved into the office, I was sitting in a cube. I heard Jerry Day raving about like, because he used a Mac. He was one of the few people who used a Mac. Like you have to install Sherlock. Sherlock is the grow. I have you nodded like he was convincing people to install Sherlock, which, and that's how I discovered Sherlock. In fact, that's how I discovered a lot of things was just overhearing people talking about them. And of course, now Sherlock is not even a thing, but it's used as the term for when Apple steals a function because Apple eventually put the search that Sherlock did into the operating system and killed Sherlock, right? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I remember Google was the same way. I think I just heard Leo telling someone about it and saying, we should probably look who these people are and get them on the show. The search engine is amazing. It's way better than Alta Vista. And it's just incredible to think how many of the things that are just perfectly normal background information to technology were new then. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I remember specifically sometimes because before I was ever on the screensavers as somebody that you would see, I was a producer behind the scenes for a couple of years, really, or the better part of a couple of years. And I would be assigned to like, okay, you're going to do this segment with Leo or Patrick or whoever. And every once in a while, let's say Leo would be like, I have a good tip, like a Mac tip. And like, yeah, like two to three minutes type thing. And so it'd be like, okay, Sarah, you make that segment look as good as possible. And I'd be like, but I don't have a Mac. And I don't know what he's talking about. I can't do it. And, you know, life is very different now. It is, even if someone were to be like, hey, Sarah, you want to do like a Windows 11 tip? I'd be like, well, all right, I'll figure it out. I can make it work. But it all seemed very daunting back in the day. You kind of stayed in your lane, I guess, what you were good at. I know, haha. Literally in your case. I remember being excited about little things like that. I remember, in fact, I remember the first time I got wireless networking going in my house. And I was able to actually surf the internet from my couch on my laptop. And I felt, as Allison Sheridan always says, like I made fire. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not, I'm not plugged in to anything. I'm, but I'm surfing the internet. I'm on the, I'm on my DSL connection without any, without any connection to it. And I remember talking about that, you know, I was like, oh, I did it. I got, I put in the card and I got the wireless router up. And Chris Perillo was just like, oh, welcome to the internet. It was like, okay, fine. Yeah, it took me a little, you know, an extra minute or two to get there. But it was, it was super exciting. But that was the, that was the, the world we were living in is like, we were doing things like I was doing something that maybe one to 2% of people had done at that point in the United States. And it was still, I was still behind other people who worked there because we were just all doing all the things all the time. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I mean, I, I certainly learned a lot. I, there were definitely things where I was like, I'm teaching the world about this on the show today, live in five minutes. And I learned it 10 minutes ago. You know, and like, I know what I'm doing, but I really did just learn this. I mean, it was, it was free education, well, not free education to be paid for in pennies, I guess. But I don't know. I think of that time very fondly. There's one question that I know people will have who visited techTV.com, because as the person who ended up running techTV.com content, it was always at the top of my list of most trafficked pages, the Sarah Cam. Yeah. The Sarah Cam. And this was not even a live webcam. No. I think it refreshed every 10 seconds. Something like that. Something like that. It just took a still picture, uploaded it to a server, and then showed up on our website. And yeah, it was just like a link that, I don't know, got popular. Here's the thing, I was not the only person who had a webcam at her desk. And in fact, I had a webcam at my desk before you ever saw me on the screensavers. I didn't, I had not, I had not been sort of some front-facing personality, but I was enthusiastic about it because I was like, this has got to be fun. Well, like, you know, we'll decorate my cube. And Megan Maroney sat right behind me. And so like, you know, she'd come and say hi. And it was sort of a silly thing. And then I got a taste. And then I was like, you better put me on television, people. And so, yeah, and that was sort of the beginning of that. I don't know why it was, I really just mostly just sat there looking at my computer. It was not that compelling. But I think, I think it was the novelty of it, of like, oh, I'm seeing one of the people on the team working, like, you know, now that feels like that it's the opposite. Now, now people will be like, that's creepy, that's workplace surveillance. You, you shouldn't do that. What are the privacy implications? But the fact that you could do it at all was the point then. And that you were, you were excited about it, that you were like, yeah, let's do this. Like, I'm cool with that. And we weren't showing your screen or anything. Like you said, it wasn't a live stream. It was just stills. I think, you know, for a lot of people who are like, wait, so it was like, it was like a Twitch stream, but not even really live. It's like, yeah, there was no, the live thing, we weren't ready for that yet. I don't remember how the page would refresh. The page auto refresh, which is one of the secrets for why it was so highly trafficked because it kept getting page views, you know, as people stayed on it, but people would stay on it. Yeah, you write a little something to like, hi, I'm eating salad today for a while, like so stupid, like, but it was, it was like, I don't remember how we ended up with that. It was the early days of blocks. How we ended up with those cameras. Yeah, do you? Yeah, so the idea was we wanted to get more traffic to the websites. Well, yeah, always. Oh, no, but, but I remember the meeting and one of the ideas, I think Henry Kaiser and someone else pitched this is like, why don't we show them what goes on behind the scenes? Oh, okay. Because people want to see that stuff. And so, whoops. Originally they, they did a test cam on call for help where we had a pair of, we had a pair of fish in a fishbowl that. Oh, right. I forgot about the fish. For a segment. And then we said, like, why don't we just put the camera on them and see if people enjoy it? And it did. And they said, well, why don't we just expand this out to other stuff? Why don't we expand it to the screen savers? Expand it out to fresh gear? Why don't we expand it out to fish? And Sarah? Yeah, yeah. I think it was, I think the original idea was like, oh, some of the employees, if they want to participate, it was not mandatory. But if you want to like, you kind of get like, oh, I get the webcam for the week. You know? So it would be like, oh, it's Sarah week or it's Morgan week or it's Craig or week or whatever. I think that's how it all started. That's how it started. Yeah. I was the one who was like, no, I'm not giving up this camera. Because Morgan had one and then she didn't, she didn't want to do it anymore. She was like, yeah, it's just, I don't think it was creeping her out. She was just like, it's too much pressure. Yeah. Made her think. So she ended up getting rid of hers. Kevin had one, I feel like. Probably. But I don't remember if or when he stopped having it. I think most people were just sort of like, oh, you know, Sarah, just keep it on Sarah's desk. Yeah. I think we don't need to like, overthink this very much anymore. Well, and I think the reason, because we had multiples. I remember there were multiples in there, but I remember yours was often at the top of the traffic charts. And the reason was that you did things that were fun. And so people were like, oh, I want to see what Sarah's doing. Like, you know, she's got decorations or eating salad or. There's it's a it's a particular type of voyeurism that you find with people who follow celebrities on social media. It's like, oh, what if I mean, not even celebrities anymore. Like the we again, we were doing all the things that are common now before they were before they were new. And now people are like streaming themselves sleeping on Twitch. You know, they're not even celebrities. And it's the same principle, you know, just like to see other people. Sometimes it sticks. Yeah. I think I think the Sarah cam for whatever reason was like, it just, I don't know, people were they were into it. And and I didn't feel creeped out about it at all. I don't think I would do the same thing today all day. But who knows? Well, we are trying to drive traffic to dailytechnewshow.com. Well, Tom, I'll take one for the team then. The Otis cam is born. And we'll just do it like really old school where it's like, no, it only refreshes every 10 seconds. And it's just a still image of Otis sleeping. Just gives you a taste. That's all you need. It's just a taste. Well, that is a taste of our memories of Tech TV. We could probably talk all day about this, but I hope you folks enjoyed that. Really, really appreciate you supporting us all year long. Indeed. Thanks to everybody who supports DTNS this year and hopefully many years to come. Thank you to all of you. Speaking of patrons, you know, you can catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's 2100 UTC. Starting in, you know, CES January 3rd. We'll be back live January 3rd. We'll be. This particular show is not live. Spoiler, you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. However, we do have a fun show coming to you tomorrow. We'll be back with our tech predictions for 2022 results show with Shannon Morse and Nika Monford. We're all going to see what we got right and what we got wrong. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Primeman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.