 It goes up some. Oh, I don't care. OK. I'm gonna get dizzy. Ha ha ha ha. So if you hear what better way to start off Vlog Thursday than Marvin got a new chair. Yeah. Pops made it for me. He loves to make these things. Does it recline? It sure does. Of course it does. So, Marvin got a new chair. I did. That's the first exciting thing. Tom fell out of it. Tom fell out of it. First time in it. Yep, yep, yep. It's a delicate piece of machinery. It's complicated, you know, but he did all right. Yeah, and it kind of leads to something I was thinking about the other day. So I did some speaking events and we talked about that. I did the speaking for the accountants. And the next day I actually did some lunch and learn thing with the Goldman Sachs folks where I kind of spoke to some of the other business owners there. And which is always fun. But there's always some of those questions of how did you get to where you are? How do you do things? And, you know, sometimes there's like that epic story of the business owner of, you know, or how someone reached your success and they write books about it and things like that. And then there's how I do things. Someone actually found it interesting. So we had a great discussion about this at the meeting with some other business development people. And they're like, so how did you get into doing all this stuff, Tom? And I'm like, sounded fun. They're like, what do you mean? Because they, okay, we're going to Microsoft for these just recent things. I've done all this stuff. I've been an IT director. I've been a in the tech business for 20 years, but I've also been a wedding photographer. I've also just kept all these little side things I've done. I got into doing these public speaking and doing all this. And then, you know, now I have YouTube channel. They decided it's always the same answer. I say, well, it sounded fun. That's very much. If you read Richard Branson's book, was it the Virgin Way? I think is the Virgin Way. Like he basically says, like, I'm not going to do anything if it isn't fun. And that's how he started his business. Yeah, I think that's more of a driving thing. It's not like, because I also monetization of things I do has always been one of my toughest problems is because I don't care. And it's like, I don't want to use words. I don't care about money, but there comes a point when once whatever your needs are are met, so your bills are paid and things like that. So I'm not struggling to go. Hey, how do I pay my electric bill this month or anything like that? Once you overcome some of those, money doesn't become the motivating factor. So once you've overcome generally bills, unless you're some of the people who money motivates them to have a Ferrari collection. And that's a different. And I mean, I think Ferraris are cool. I don't really want a Ferrari collection. It's not like something I have some drive or need to. You know, there's other entrepreneurs like my friend who has the plane. I mean, that takes a certain amount of dedication and some of that money to get a plane. Having a plane can be useful, though. I would argue that having a plane is more useful than having a Ferrari. Yeah. Because having a Ferrari, like you said, very cool, but you hopped down to Sandusky in 15 minutes for a burger. And I would probably say there may be more people with Ferraris and people with planes. Sure. Yeah, plenty of special license for the plane. And the Ferrari goes fast, but the plane goes faster. It sure does. Well, if you get a big enough plane. Well, the big thing is it's legal to go 200 miles an hour in the plane. That's true, too. You're going to get in trouble doing 200 miles an hour in your Ferrari down Fort Street. Yeah, that's not good. So it's just one of those things I was thinking about because it also led to another question. I was hanging out with my friends over at State Friday at Sagittarius and there's always a question people ask of how do you get into this field? And I have a lot of answers, but not anything precise because like the question comes up more specifically like, okay, I want to get into the tech field. Do I have to go to college to know what you know? And I didn't go to college and I don't, you know, poo poo on going to college. It's a whole different topic that I'm actually going to do a video on. But anyways, not today. But the question is, I'm like, if you are interested enough in this field, in what you do or what I do, you can really learn a lot from it. You can go on YouTube. I, you know, even my videos are presentations on firewalls. There's so many other people out there doing all these really cool videos. If you want to learn electronics side of this, you want to learn the robotics side of it, you can probably find a YouTube video or an article of these people, right? Because a lot of the people in my field, we are compelled to share the knowledge that we have. That's actually the number one reason hackers are caught. Dude, I hacked this thing. Check out what I did, man. It's the shut up factor because it's exciting. But going back to the topic of can you get into tech? Absolutely. And there's a lot of other fields are like this. And the thing is, if you just have an absolute determination, now the question really comes in, why are some people so focused and determined to create like this and other people? It's not interesting. And I don't understand it myself. It's hard to say what turns that switch on in people because we'll use this example. And I understand what people not being interested like sports, people become deeply interested in sports. Tried. I've even gone to baseball games. I've been to like a lot of things and I go, yep. You know, the famous clip from the IT crowd. Oh, they kicked the ball over there. The ball is over there. Now he's running that way. And I really don't, you know, and the same thing like people who intensely work out and go to the gym all time. It's great. I tried and I really, really, I get stir crazy. My anxiety levels go up. I can't sit down like this is not something I want to do. Clearly working out is something that I am obsessed with. Absolutely. So it's one of those things and it's an interesting thing like what drives someone to be so focused on that? And what makes other people when they see what I do and look at all the electronics and things like that around me, just kind of glaze over. Like I have no interest in learning coding. I have no interest in learning that. Like if there's, they glaze over at it and there's no drive to it. I think there's, there's this weird attraction. Like I think if you are into that, you will be very successful at it or you can be provided to do that. And I don't know, it's just one of those things. I get that question a lot and I'm always seeking for an answer. And it's what, it's just a reason I read so many books of other business owners because I'm trying to figure out their drive. Richard Branson does have some great books. He does, yeah. And he's, and he's another one where like is an argument for like certainly, yeah, like we don't want to, you know, say don't get an education, but like, I don't, he didn't go to college, right? I don't believe he did. Like it's just, he followed his passion and he learned what he needed to learn and hired the right people to do what he didn't know how to do. What's interesting, Richard Branson as well is what people don't know. And if you read his book Screw Business as usual, it's really interesting. Richard Branson had a lot to do with a lot of global initiative things to end poverty. And he had a lot of goals that were met at the same time he was building his business. It's really interesting the involvement he has in it. So those are things that fascinate me of a lot of people. Elon Musk is one. And Elon Musk is a guy who has a college education, but it's not his college education. It's that's not, you know, a lot of people went to college with Elon Musk and they're not building Tesla's. He's one of those people though. He had a plan. His plan is he's going to Mars. So anything else he does is a part of the bigger plan. If I was going to Mars, I'd do the same things Elon's doing, but I can't get fascinated with going to Mars. Like I think it's a great thing. I think we should do it. That's just, that's kind of where I stop. Should do it. I don't know how. I don't know how. I don't even want to sit and think about how. But if you read Elon Musk's book, not only is he thought about how and he's doing all the things that's in his plan. Like people write business plans. Elon Musk plans to retire on Mars. Like that's where he set his goal. I'm retiring on Mars. Here are all the steps that I'm going to need to retire on Mars. So I always laugh when they say like, you know, Elon's secret to plans. It's not secret, it's in the book. He's very clear about it. He's got a giant picture of Mars that I think they showed in one of his office. Like that I'm picking out the plot to where I will retire. Like he has thoroughly planned and in singularly focused on a goal. That's why he's landing rockets and reusable rockets on launch pads floating around in the water. It's a great goal to have though. Now I want to retire on Mars. Yeah. Well you may be able to because Elon's working on this. Yeah. Thanks Elon. Thanks so much. Yeah. But this is also where some of those people have fought because right now Elon Musk and did you see Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg arguing about AI? Yeah. Which is great. And it's watching two people who are highly focused and amazing at what they do and debating about things. And one of the things I realize after reading Elon Musk's book is Elon Musk has a lot of people problems and his focus on Mars, he certainly isn't focused on people at all. And he also makes a lot of assumptions that the people around him are as focused and as intense on things as he is. And he quickly learns that they are not. Yeah. His assumptions I think are based on well the way he sees AI and if all the people around him were as intense and focused on AI as he is on going to Mars then we would have a problem. The reality of the rest of us know AI is kind of dumb and it has trouble with a lot of things right now. Yeah. And your calculator is technically AI. AI is very good at very specific tasks but that's it. It doesn't have that full spectrum and we are far, far away. This is one of the things. It creates its own language though. It has. It creates its own language once. Yes. And I maybe I'll do a explainer video. There's a few people have done probably better ones than I can do. I got to learn the graphics thing. That's on my to-do list. But the explainer video on how AI works and what machine learning is and what it is not. And that's where there's so much confusion related around it. Just like the Bitcoin thing that keeps them into a video. Yeah, we really should do that. I found some people that did some really good Bitcoin videos though too. I want to do my own explanation of it but I think some of their videos are really handy because they have really cool graphics and animations. I'm not a graphics or animator. Maybe if a graphics animator contacted me. I don't mind doing the explaining part but then this is the hard part. And you get some of these YouTube channels like CGP gray. This is why it takes months and months and months of planning to do their videos is because even though you may have a really good understanding of a concept to explain it to someone with graphics becomes the challenge of having a graphics person who can really articulate everything that you're saying in a very meaningful way. So some of these other videos and we love, we have a poster for the Kurtzag. I love their animations and everything else. So their narration and animation and they spend months on every project. They got a team of people that just are all mostly the animation sites. You got all the research people who bring stuff to the animation people who spend a lot of time working on a video that's seven minutes. You know, in the end. They're awesome videos. Yeah, there's maybe 30, 40, 50 hours of these people's time into there. So back on topic to what vlog Thursday. Let's talk about us again. Yes. So we have a bid that I think I don't know which feels going to come first video, this video or the bid video, which is actually rendering right now. But one of the things that happened was we got a call from a company and we post a lot of our videos online with, you know, not just our YouTube channel, but these videos on our client showcase stuff go in bed in our website and they found us and they really love the work that we do. The part we were confused. We were getting schematics assuming this was going to be a build out and when we get there, it's been built. So now we're actually had to do the bid based on it being built and why you don't have low voltage cabling before you put the walls up. I don't know. Maybe they'll watch this video. We're not being insulting. We had these same questions for them. I don't know what internally goes on the company. You know, big deal. But because it changed the way we bid the job because actually when we did the walkthrough, there were no walls up. They put the walls up after you did the walkthrough, but before they did the approval. So now we got approval after the walls are up. That can be a problem. Yeah. You'll see when you watch the video. Yeah, because they walled over things that were supposed to be there. So instead of having some of the places cut, they actually ran the conduit in a wall for us to do the poles, but they didn't cut it out. So now we have to play find it in the drywall. Yeah. So I mean, there's certain ways we can do this, but obviously it increases the, anything that increases the labor on this, of course increases the bid. So we've had to already make adjustments and things like that. This is why having proper scopes of work is important. As Marvin who does some of the paperwork thing, because as a business owner, Tom hates paperwork. So I delegate out the things I don't want to do. So Marvin put together the two page scope of work detail that goes with this job. That was just our part. That was just our part. Based on this a six page scope of work. Yeah. That we then added two pages to. Yes. It started as a six page scope of work because they are very detail oriented much more than us and far more than Tom. So we needed some detail that said, that's great. Here's what we're really going to do. They haven't arrived yet, but we are excited that folks at FreeNAS loved our FreeNAS torture video that we did. And we did a really basic follow up on what I was talking about some of the processes in place. And so that is a another thing we're doing. They are sending us some t-shirts because FreeNAS was excited about it. So we're excited about it. And we actually have been trying to locate. So I found some bad memory chips because this has come up a couple of times that I should run FreeNAS on bad memory to see how it does. We definitely want to. They hang up with this process. And we have to test these ones because we've tested a couple of our bad memory chips. I can't get FreeNAS to boot on bad memory chips. Therefore, trying to prove someone to say, hey, if you use bad memory, you can corrupt FreeNAS. No problem. I will certainly try. The problem is we can't stop FreeNAS from crashing on this system to get it to load in order to try the bad memory. So we loaded a good memory, but when we put it in, it hangs on boot. So I haven't been able to corrupt it. And this has been a challenge. So I know people have offered to send me bad memory chips. Don't worry. The memory goes bad. We have a chore of them. It's finding ones that are bad only bad enough that they don't cause a system problem. So they boot, but actually we'll slowly do things. And that's a real challenge. And most of the time when we see bad memory, and this one that just came in, the computer that it came from, the server it came from, was bad, but not in a way that it booted. So that's how we knew the server was long. It was really easy. The server was blue-screening constantly, so it was really easy to figure out that it was bad memory pop and memory test. Oh, yeah, memory is definitely bad in just one stick. But anytime we put that stick in, the computer does not want to boot, including with Windows or FreeNAS. So there lies the challenge of this. I really want to do that test. I really have a hard time doing that test. So that's certainly a challenge. Why won't you break properly? That's the question. Why won't you break the way we want in a very specific way that someone says a scenario exists where this happened? And I hit some messages that said that's how they think they lost their FreeNAS system. I'm great. Not great that you lost, but great that we have some scenario for testing, but it becomes very difficult to recreate a scenario like that. And that's always what's super hard to do. Other than that, things have been going really well here. So we are installing more and more of these firewalls and in our firewall review video, the shop has gotten really busy and July is generally our slow month and it's just been, it picked up really, really fast really quickly. So that's been really good. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you to all the people that broke things and brought them here. Yeah. And who have wanted to update their various systems, be it cameras or servers or whatever. And they're calling us to do all that. So that's awesome. Yep. We are going to do some more project videos related to that as well. I thought about the way we coordinate the project. Someone's like, hey, that's a clever way to do it. I always just assumed other people did it this way. And one of the examples is while my guys are up on Ladder's onsite, we're remoted into the NVRs and that's how we do all the pointing. So we have the installers at the client job location. Someone said that's an easier way to do it than the way they were doing it. I'm like, how else would you do it? And so I may do a video like how our install process goes and some of the way we do it. Basically what I have is one guy sitting in here checking that each camera's live. So I have another guy climbing up on Ladders or Manlifts or whatever is required to mount the camera. As he mounts it, he messages in. It's like, hey, can you see the camera? And they're like, yep, point it down a little, over a little. All right. So the whole job's being done. So my guys internally in the office which are working remotely, can remotely see and view the cameras as they come live. They confirm they're working before the guys off the Ladders are pointed. And this is part of the reason. Efficiency in jobs is what gets your price lower. So many people in business go, I'm just going to charge less money. If you don't have a more efficient methodology by which you're doing things, charging less money and doing the same work is what your competition is doing. It just means you're going to make less money. Yeah. What are the other guys doing? Are they climbing a ladder, pointing, coming down, looking or carrying something up with them? More of the other one. A couple people mentioned that. And I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. Well, part of the problem I guess they have though is we have a larger team and I think they're doing some of these solo jobs. So these jobs as solo jobs, they actually will cost you more money because they take so much more time to do. Having a couple guys, especially like when you're running wire and one guy's pushing one into the fish sticks and the other guy's doing the other end and they're pulling wire, one guy's feeding and one guy's pulling, just at least two people on a job helps a lot. So yeah, that methodology is... And having guys back here to remote. And having people back here to remote make all that work. Yeah. All right. That's about the end of it. I see the bleaky thing, which means you've been on here for a while. Hey, anything else you should cover? I don't think so. I think you always leave them wanting more, Tom. Always leave them wanting. So, but we're out in the community a lot more. Oh, yeah. You know, there's a lot going on in the different chambers that we're members of. And so it's actually good to see it. I mean, you got a lot of... We have a lot of businesses opening in the area, which, you know, that's good for everybody. Good for everybody, you know? You know what? And I thought about having... So Steve likes coming out of Vlog Thursday, but he's busy this morning, so that's why he's on the last one. Kyle does not want to. Cory is fine just being in videos on there. The other Kyle, he swears too much. Says the guy who got bleeped about 10 minutes ago. Yeah, says the guy who got bleeped. But we thought about having some more of the team on here and talk about stuff. Melissa said she'd come in. I mentioned her a while ago, so we'll have her. She mostly works remotely. And so do some of the other people. There's not a need for them. They actually live in the area, but there's not really a need to sit here in our building. Some people just focus better at home. My thing is always about, I care about what work it's done. That's why Marvin's not even here every day. It's like he's out in the field, smiling and dialing and knocking on doors. And I'm a chaotic distraction in the office occasionally. I've seen Marvin, you have that angry look. So which one of the 17 things that came out of your mouth in three minutes that you want me to do today, Tom? Oh yeah, that's right. I'm going to go back to my office and close the door. It's so accurate. Who would figure it out? We get it done. We get it done. Prioritizing things is always hard because I want to do all of them at the same time. That's like for everything I do. All at the same time. But that's my job. Tom spits the things out and then I figure out in what order we should do them. Yeah. And money is a driving factor because you do have to make payroll. There is that. There is that. That comes back to, it sounds like money doesn't matter. There is at least some, the bills have to get paid. We have to keep the lights on. We have to keep the cameras rolling. We have to keep the internet on. The priorities get shifted based on that. Truth. I also may do some tutorial videos. This may be something we do in-house because a lot of people ask like, just general how do we do networking? So I thought about that. The physical side is something that I've been doing for so long. It's a afterthought. It's just kind of like we just do it. But someone pointed out, there's actually on the other side over here, sitting a rack. I thought about that might be a fun training thing to come in and we'll do a training video on how to do this. And the training videos always have two purposes. They serve us internally. We'll actually share them with employees. I loved it. I think I mentioned before one of our employees was trying to figure out something, work with DNS and how to check something. When he searched it, our YouTube video came up on how to use it. So we've, exactly. So they work as internal, but they're also just good information for IT. That's why we enjoy these videos. I enjoy sharing the knowledge with people. So I may do one on there. I'm going to drag the rack in real quick and that'll be our ending. I also want to review this. This is another project review. This is an actual NetGate one. And I realize I've never actually reviewed the genuine PF Sense ones. That's on my to-do list. The genuine article. Framed in a frame. So we'll leave you with this. Maybe we'll do some videos on how to wire this thing. And why we need it. And what this is. And what that is. Some of you may be curious about it. Some of you may have a complete disaster. In there. This top board is much more interesting from this side. Yeah. This right here. Oh, yeah. Let's spin it around. It's where you punch all the wires down. That's what Marvin's talking about. It does look more interesting. But we may talk some more about this so we can, you know, make a video on it. Yeah. All right. Thanks for watching the Vlog Thursday. And we'll keep trying to keep the video going. Thanks for watching the Vlog Thursday. We'll keep trying to keep the videos rocking out. Always comment, like, subscribe. Let us know what else you want to see. Or if there's something, if you can prioritize all the randomness that Tom does, that'd be great. That would be a big help. Marvin would find it very helpful. Oh, so would. See you next week. That only doesn't recline. But it'll go forward. Now you have a table with cup holders. And cup holders right here. Hold on. Hold on. There you see it right there. Perfect. And it spins. But it also has a lever that probably gets it back up. Side cup holders. So we can have our Vlog Thursday coffee right here right at the ready. So this is there. So for those of you who don't know, Marvin's dad is quite creative and a builder and builds awesome cars and other things. He builds whatever he can build. He's been actually doing these for years. So he made me... This is like my third or fourth one that he's made me. I have a few at home as well. These are great chairs. You take car seats and you take bottoms of chairs and you build... I mean, car seats are expensive items if you didn't know. So this actually makes a really comfortable chair. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I like it.