 It's Thursday, August 27th, 2020. I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is Geeknice tonight We are talking about our own personal histories of buying stuff online, which wasn't always the thing Got an opening bit of any kind. I Could talk about the bike to nowhere thingy that I got. It's not too bad It's the only different thing that's happened. Yeah, I haven't done much new I haven't been anywhere. Nope All right Yeah, start with that. I'll talk about my exercise bike a little bit then Did you even ride it? Not yet Oh, you get oh, yeah, I'm good. You can start anytime So we already did a podcast about like exercise video games or whatever. Yeah And of course we should have waited to do that episode, but we didn't have another show idea I recently got this thing called Zwift, which is it's good and bad, right? So it's basically the idea is you get some sort of stationary bicycle or bike trainer That has the necessary Bluetooth connections, right to report to so that it can report it You're your power and cadence and whatnot to some other device externally like a bike computer And you connect it to your phone tablet or computer and you run the Zwift software and Zwift is a virtual world where people are biking around and it comes to training programs and all this stuff And if your trainer or stationary bike is fancy enough The game will actually end up controlling the bike to make it harder or easier to pedal Based on you know, like the world that you're in it's like you're biking up a hill and it suddenly gets harder to pedal, right? So Since the gym in my building, you know, I was like, well, I can't go outside too much I'm gonna go use the trainer the the stationary bike and the jit the buildings are closed I did it for a while. I was about to do it. They closed it then they opened it again So I did it and then they closed it again, and it's still closed Our gym is really still open, but no one will use it like no one's willing to use it, but it is open Anyway, so I already had this wahoo kicker bike computer that I use for GPS when I'm outside So I got the wahoo. I was gonna get the wahoo kicker trainer Which is direct drive trainer, which is where you take off your rear wheel And you directly connect your bike to the gears on the trainer and if those are vastly superior to the ones you keep Your wheel on they're just way more expensive. Obviously. It was it was a lot of money And I was thinking about getting it, but I didn't get it I didn't get it. I didn't get it and then they came out with a slightly upgraded version That's the way to get Scott like go pro is pretty good, but do I really need to go bro? There's a new go pro. Well, I guess if I'm gonna buy one the time now's the time Right, so if I'm not gonna buy if I don't buy it now, then I'm never gonna buy it. Oh, I Figure winter's coming, right? Yeah And also, you know all indoor sports equipment is just gonna sell the fuck out in like October But that's the other thing is the previous version was sold out this new one came out and they had him in stock I'm like, well, okay. Yeah, and also the Zwift app thing costs 15 bucks a month So we'll see if we keep it. I haven't even paid for it yet I just had a free trial that came with the trainer. You keep doing it though. It must be pretty good Yeah, so I'm doing it and I'm streaming it on my twitch channel So you can watch me bike to nowhere if you really have nothing better to do But I found that a streaming this has worked out for me better than streaming other video games because When I'm streaming other video games, I don't say much and I'm trying to focus on the game Yep, and if they got it, you know, I can't that's why I stopped streaming XCOM because well, that's really fun It's a lot of energy. It's not it's not the same This is like when I'm playing a game by myself just like sitting there like a slow playing my game versus like all right Like and subscribe. I'm gonna attack this guy because of this reason like I can't keep that energy up for four hours Streaming is real video game streaming is hard work But this is not hard because when I'm on a bike Talking is sort of natural like a bike with someone and I talked to them, right? Yeah, I finally got a pretty good setup where you can just you know, it's like bike and chat It's really good. Plus I can the Zwift, you know app makes riding the stationary bike like way way way better And I like okay. We know I knew in advance. Yeah, it makes the Communicates of the trainer makes it harder and faster to pedal. Yeah, there's a poorly rendered low Quality CG world that is definitely way less than $15 a month should get you That you see yourself biking in and you know, there's races in there, which I'm not doing all this other stuff I like I knew all that in advance But after doing it it vastly exceeded expectations like you you're right you're biking up a hill It feels like you're biking up a hill as much as it's got up because I've been on non trainer exercise bikes worried Oh hill mode the pedal just gets harder to pedal. It does not feel like I'm actually biking up a hill It feels like my brakes are stuck. Yeah, no It's so smooth and so quiet and you know, it doesn't disturb people around versus like the wheel on trainers Make a lot of noise. Yeah, the other people living with you You obviously need a fan blowing on you while you're riding this And some you know, you need a towel to cover your handlebars. They don't get all sweaty We need a dynamic Blower so it speeds up the blowing if you're going fast they do they do sell one of those Dollars and they sell a bunch of extra Accessories you don't need which I didn't buy any. I need a UV lamp. So I get the sunburn. I would have gotten But yeah, it greatly exceeded expectations and I keep using it and I'll probably keep using it through the winter We'll see if I keep when if I ever stop paying for it Sounds like it does enough like despite though, you know, kind of like VR is a similar thing in that despite the Low quality of like the visuals it's showing you I feel like it's enough for your brain to sort of map everything together like yeah It's kind of like biking like okay, I'm biking now like I put your brain in a different mode And the way the training programs work is this thing called erg mode where instead of you know The difficulty matching the terrain what they do is they actually set When I was you know just biking on the stationery bike in the gym I was like my my plan was stay at 90 rpm regardless of difficulty make it easier if you have to just stay at 90 rpm For as long as you you know for the time period I mean, that's kind of how I bike like my goal is I was trying to simulate biking outside which is stay at 90 rpm Unless you're going up some crazy hill and you can't and your lowest gear, right? But otherwise always shift to whatever gear that you can bike at 90 rpm in so The trainer though the erg mode what they do is it's not about the rpm It sets the trainer at a particular wattage. It forces you even if you shift here Even if you shift gears like let's say you shift into a lower gear, right? You'll see your cadence will go up Sure But it's gonna get harder to pedal Relatively because it's forcing you to put out a particular wattage Constantly if you could shift into a higher gear and suddenly pedaling will feel a little bit easier kind of your cadence will be lower Because you're putting out the same wattage though So that's the way the training works But the trick with that is that as long if you can keep it up you're good to go Right as long as you keep pedaling it's it's a plus But if for some reason like you get you get some weakness and you can't keep up with the wattage You end up in a spiral of doom because your cadence goes down So it makes it tougher and your cadence goes down and it makes it tougher and then you're sort of you get stuck That's a lot like when you're biking up a long hill climb and you run out of steam But you're already in your lowest gear, right? So doing this training thing that's gonna determine my like something threshold power or whatever and measure nonsense and whatnot Yeah, there's lots of factors there like your view max matters Yeah, there's all kinds of ramp, but it but it was like okay do a hundred watts for two minutes Okay, now do 205 watts for one minute. I'm like it's like oh god That sounds a lot like when I got a view to max like test at the doctor when I was in high school And it was just like yeah bike harder bike harder bike harder bike harder so you couldn't bike any harder. Yep, but yeah the The the heart rate monitor that goes with it. I don't have that and I don't care too much, but that sold out But you could use any Bluetooth heart rate monitor. You could but it does one that goes with it specifically Yeah, I might as well get all the stuff from the same company for maximum compatibility Yeah, I mean that's what I do with cameras and everything else Yeah, so the point is if you want to come watch me bike in place But really just talk to me about anything not just biking in place. You can come to my twitch channel I'm doing it somewhat frequently. Actually, I have a good setup So that makes it easy to do and if you want to bike in place You probably want to set up that is cheaper than this setup Yep, like I instead of getting a trainer because my I want to do more like spin class style like just Cardio training in the winter and I'm only interested in biking outside So this is basically replacing biking outside or helping me bike outside. Yep. See I have a different mode I've been running a half marathon every week since the quarantine started and I have not missed one But I can't do that in the winter and I'm not gonna do it on a treadmill one because I don't want to go to the gym downstairs, I don't want to have a giant treadmill in my apartment and Running on a treadmill for two hours is the literal definition of hell Like that is just that is not fun for anyone. So I basically wanted a spin kind of Biking just exercise bike to be able to do like two hours of cardio once a week to keep that up all winter So basically my plan will be like every Saturday morning. I'll get up. I'll get on this thing I'll bike hard for two hours while I like watch a movie Play a switch game Yeah So, yeah, yeah the the setup I have was I mean if you count the cost of my bicycle because it's using my real bicycle, right? The price will be very high. Yeah You know the using your real bicycle. That's a lot like buying a new computer around a fancy video card you already own Mmm But I made this bicycle when I have to go back outside. I take it off the train or put the wheel back on Yeah, so it get dual use out of it. Yep So in the news there was one like really big news and you have to pay attention to this because Regardless of if it continues or not. It was a historic moment and it's like it's not gonna Seems like it might not continue But basically if you somehow like even people I know like didn't notice this news right away But basically the NBA went on strike They didn't use the word strike because they would just contractual obligations and legal nonsense Yeah, but like the NBA is not allowed to strike Yeah, so basically and I'll link to this article that talks about why it was a strike not a boycott But the point is the box. I mean you're not buying something a strike. Yeah, we're not going to work They didn't go to work this gets complicated for a lot of reasons because there are a lot of groups in America Who are either contractually or in some cases? Legally not allowed to strike. That's why I like teachers unions. They can't strike in a lot of states It's illegal. They can as long as they just have to make sure strike, right? So when a strike is illegal, right when some wild cat's like meaning you there's no official union moment Well wild cat strike is different from any legal strikes You can have a wild cat strike even if it's legal to strike It just it means the union didn't officially say it was a strike, right? The union didn't declare a strike the people the workers just stop working, right? You can also have a slowdown. You can have a work stoppage. You can have a sick The original point is that if you if it is technically illegal for you to strike example teachers union or something like that, right? It's not actually illegal for you to strike It's only the all that means is if your strike fails There will be severe consequences. You'll all be fired and maybe soon if you have even if it's illegal for you to strike I'm gonna I'm gonna ex-union and we're not allowed to strike because it's teachers or something if you just strike successfully if your strike works Then you won't face any of the consequences from the law for the strike being illegal because you won Yep, because no one with a gun is gonna come to your house and force you to do your job The only exception to that the only people who actually can't strike are the military Sure, if you try you'll be a wall and you'll be arrested. That won't go well The unless the MPs are also on strike well at that point. That is not a strike. That is a coup. Yes I believe so But this was historic is basically and you can read the news like we're not gonna try to explain to you everything that happened You can read like real journalism that covered this also the situation is evolving rapidly It's like 6 30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday So like stuff could move real quick like last night stuff move real quick, but basically the box Decided they weren't gonna play game five Because in solidarity with racial justice concerns because another black man was murdered well shot by the police He didn't die. He was shot seven times, but yeah, but that was seven too many times Well, yeah, that obviously police violence against black people is a huge problem in the United States But they decided they just they would not take they would not come out of the locker room They're not gonna play game five So a few other basketball teams also said possibly spontaneously, you know what? Yeah, we're not gonna play either Some I do some MLB teams did this the Detroit Lions said, you know what no practice fuck it. No practice we're not gonna take the field today and Bunch of bad soccer teams did this bunch of minor league women's hockey this spread real quick and a huge chunk of professional sports in America basically struck last night All in support of racial justice un-striking they didn't last very long Yeah, so this gets to be seen there is an article like Dateline today a few hours ago on Wapo that I'll link to the NBA short playoff halt was the sports world's boldest push for racial justice in decades But it also links to an article Supposedly saying that the players have agreed to resume the playoffs at least in the NBA Yeah, I mean we're too white dudes like we don't get to say what the players should do All I will say is that this is a powerful moment and those players have a lot more power than some of them might realize right now America's got a lot of bread and circuses. I Think the circuses are very important to the continued Tolerance of our societal breakdown. Yeah, my hope is that like okay We couldn't you know, it's like everyone hopes at least you know the good people right we hope like oh well We don't actually hope for a strike. We hope to just solve the problem We hope for the rise of fascism to be blunted and for a reasonable government We just see massive strikes as an effective tool that we have because they are Yes, strikes are such a powerful tool, but only if they succeed, right? So, you know, it's you kind of imagine like your your dream like oh everyone just doesn't go to work today Everyone like nobody it's like that'll fix everything and it probably would yeah There's a precedent for that in other countries over the years And every rich person would go Yep, or like there's other types of strikes like here's a crazy scenario This is not likely but imagine if the wealthiest states within the United States like at the state level like say things got bad enough To our New York and California. We're just like we're not gonna submit federal taxes We're just not gonna send money to the feds We'll see what happens, but the point is Everyone imagines, you know, we imagine this giant strikes like but you can't have something like that come out of nowhere, right? You can't just that's not real that's boots on the ground. That's organizing like with a capital. Oh, there's hard work It's like a fantasy, right that you would have right especially because America has mostly destroyed the infrastructure of unions being able to coordinate such an action Even a strike like this of like one day, right can sort of be like, okay We do one day now and then next time we do like a week Yeah, and then the next time more people join in and then exit right and it could be you know Finally getting the ball little snowball here a little get the ball rolling by preventing the ball from rolling. That's right You know Yeah, like this this was a powerful moment like stop some people walked out of other positions in sports The cool thing like one of the things I really appreciated was that a lot of the coaches and a lot of the staff are white because there's obviously a lot of other disparity problems in these leagues, but as far as I could see all the coaches of the teams that refuse to play Not only like affirmatively supported their players, but also step back and let the players explain what was going on Well, the NBA is is is sort of unique in this way right into where it's really a player run league Yeah, the players union in the NBA is pretty powerful But it's not just the union isn't as strong as say the baseball union now the baseball is the most powerful Because of the structure of the not just you know the history of the league and the history of basketball, right and You know the involvement of black people in basketball, right? But also the structure of the game itself here's some geek nights territory, right? basketball is five on five right and it's a game such that just a Few good players are like you have Michael Jordan, right? You get Scottie Piffin and you need all you need is a Dennis Rodman the other two people, right? Like they're good, but yeah, they're good. I mean they're good enough to play professionally You got to be good enough to be on the court with the stars Right, but the stars are 90% of the story You can just get like three two to three star players on the court and the rest of the people as long as their NBA level It's like you're gonna be good enough to win, right? So a few players like you know are huge stars. They're not wearing helmets, right? You see their faces. They have personalities. They express themselves, right? They're not like hockey player robots like, you know, not saying much, right? They're proud to have Andrew Cain for saying a lot recently. Yeah, they have huge endorsement deals They're public figures. They get involved in other things besides their sport a lot of the time, right? So because of the the nature of the game and just that a few star players are what makes the team You know the player chooses the coaches, right? If you're the star player, you're more important to the organization than the GM or you know, right? Whereas in baseball, it's like no the owners the GM the coaches the managers they run the show You're just some player even if you're the star player, right? You don't run the show here You can't pick. Yeah, you can't tell us what to do because individual players have relatively little input into the result of the game compared to basketball, right? So that has allowed that unique, you know Happenings to happen in basketball first and other sports are largely followers in these in these things. Yeah. But you know, individual sports have a long history, right? In this, right? You know, you're your Olympics, plenty of politics in the Olympics. Yeah, you get your thing. Naomi Osaka refused to play tennis, I think. Yeah, I saw that like that's what the situation is evolving rapidly. And even if the NBA resumes play, I suspect a lot of the other teams in other sports and leagues will not resume play and the situations fluid. Pay attention to this. The biggest like a general strike could possibly be the impetus to solve a lot of our racial violence problems in America. I want to see some strikes and like, you know, some other entertainment. Like, really, you know, just imagine I just want TV to turn off. Well, look, the writer's strike, shittier TV made just as much money. In fact, probably made more money because the quality didn't actually matter. Well, that's because they only lost writers. I'm saying like the people like the people who are keeping the TV on go on strike. Like literally people go to their cable box and there is nothing on, right? Like they can't even find someone who you want to talk about the machinery. What if the broadcast reruns that now the op the console room network admins that tier two ISPs could go on strike and the Internet would stop working in about three weeks. That's also true. Like the whole Internet would just stop working. I'm not I'm not kidding. People at like, say, Verizon could just turn off everyone's phones. And even if the Verizon CEO is like he wouldn't be able to find someone to turn them back on. Yeah. But here's here's the key. The part of the reason why we haven't had like a general strike to respond to the rise of fascism and the murder of black people in America is that if you strike, even if you is an organization, like even a powerful union, if enough other people don't strike at the same time to give you a critical mass for the movement to succeed, then you basically suffer all the consequences of your strike personally with no positive outcome. Like you look like, you know, the spectrum strike is still ongoing, I believe. So the ISP slash cable company in New York Spectrum used to be Time Warner, the evil bad one that you try to avoid. Yeah. All of their like support workers, the ones that would drive around in vans fixing people's cable, right? They basically have been on strike for a very long time now. The longest strike in US history. Oh, OK. I found an article that's talking about it. It's not going. I assume all those people are just doing other jobs now because they're all skilled and Spectrum just has like independent contractors, you know, doing that all that work. There's a bunch of scabs doing work who've been doing it for a while now. If you call Spectrum to get help, a scab will come to, you know, to do the work for you and that's that. So like, yeah, it's like I really want that strike to succeed. But so far, it's just been a failure. All they basically did was quit. Yep. And that's the problem. Get anything. If you take a stand by just quitting your job, someone just replaces you. Like, you're not that literally, very few people are quitting. You're effectively quitting because you didn't show up and then they just fire you. Very few people are actually that critical to a company to where you striking by yourself or just your team striking would actually force a change. And even then, even if you do that, your company might not have enough power to actually force a change in broader society. You really need to organize a reason for me to strike my company. What's my company going to do? I can't put pressure on them to what they're like. We already agree. Yeah, like my company is formally endorsed by like it's formed. Like the issue in statements of donating money to these causes. It's but yeah, the other thing is that, you know, an NBA player on strike. It's like even the lowest NBA player, they got money. They're not it's like, yeah, they're losing money if they don't play possibly, but if none of them play, the NBA can't make money. So now suddenly the NBA's got to talk. But some of the star players are still going to be just fine. But there are there are players who would lose some money, but they're not going to be starving or homeless. They all have even the lowest NBA totem pole player, right? Is making enough that they're not going to be starving, right? They might lose a significant amount of their income. And, you know, it could be hurt to them relatively speak. Yeah. And the biggest danger would be. So if a spectrum worker goes on strike, if some Verizon tech dude, right? Or, you know, someone at your local Starbucks, right? The baristas go on strike. It's like, yeah, those people could be homeless very quickly, right? So it's it's much harder for them to go on strike. They need to basically a guarantee of success to even start. Yeah. Right. Whereas here at the NBA, someone like that, they can afford to go on strike and fail and just go back to work. So my hope is that even if this does not continue immediately, that it was a sign that these groups are willing to do this again and may hopefully a movement will come out of this. Because the whole all of America is talking about it. Like they they succeeded in one thing. This is now the front of the news. If they succeeded in nothing else, it was teaching people how to strike again, maybe, or showing people that it's still a thing. Yeah, because that might there's might come a time where that's the only tool we've got left before it gets to very much different and more dire tools. All right, I think we can go on to things the day. All right. But anyway, things of the day. What do you got? What do I have? So you all know how it works, right? I don't think most people do. I I don't think most people actually know how it works or how fucking dangerous they are. And if you don't know how it works, you should not touch one. Well, yeah, if you don't know how it works, you shouldn't touch one. Yeah, because you're going to put your own out. Go to go to the Internet type and how does it work? But, you know, the long and short of it is that a wave goes down the whip. The speeds up. And then at the end, the very tip of the whip breaks the sound barrier and goes crack, right? OK, so the question is, what if instead of a normal old, you know, Indiana Jones whip, right, right? You went out and got yourself a big ass chain, like a big chain, way big, and you whip that chain and the end of the chain breaks the sound barrier. That's scary. This video is scary because there's way too many people way too close to that chain. Yeah, this guy basically whips the chain and then starts running away from it. But then other people are like crowned around like, oh, let me watch. People are standing too close to it. Luckily, no one is hurt. The video is very short. But yeah, still awesome video. So when I was a kid, I was at stand further away and run faster. I was at Farm City Week, which is like the local fair in like Macomb County when I was a kid and there's like carny rides there. And we were waiting in line to ride one of the carny rides, like a spinning thing. And my parents hated the fact that I was wanted to ride these dodgy carny rides like they really, really did not want us to ride these rides. And they always ended up giving in and letting us ride the rides. But these rides were not safe, obviously. No kidding. So we're in line and the chain that drives like the center shaft, one of these spinning things snapped. So now it was it was a it was no longer a circle. It was just one long whip. And it did this thing. It like flew out of it flew out like I saw it fly outward. It didn't hit anyone somehow. And then right at the end, it went crack and it hit a tree and the tree fucking fell over. That's right. And then it was chaos everywhere. People thought they were heard, but they weren't like police showed up and firefighters and it was it was a really fun spectacle that we didn't get to see because my parents were like, we're getting the fuck out of here and they drove us home. Well, no one was hurt. Yeah, no one was hurt. It was a miracle. But that was terrifying because I, you know, you wouldn't people like it's understandable why someone would not understand the danger of a whip motion because it is not intuitive that that thing would go as fast as it will. But yeah, it's also not intuitive to me why if you're a carny with a reputation for dangerous rides, it's like, yeah, have your dangerous rides, but I'm going to maintain those rides as well as like, it doesn't cost me more. Yes, it does. How much more could it cost to just make sure you have a nice chain on there? A lot of those places will hire people like local people that day laborer just to run the rides and they have like one technician who oversees everything. If they are not yet, get the technician to do a good job. But don't let the chain rust. Yeah, no, that is not how those things go. Tell you what, start a carny business and see how much money it's a bad business to be in. It's probably a large insurance expenses and low incomes. So I was talking about I found a video that went viral, but it wasn't as good as the I went and got like I found a better video of a similar thing, you know, horror games and horror movies. That there's a certain kind of ambient soundtrack and music that's often in the background, like spooky stuff. Yeah, you ever wonder how they make that sound like that kind of sound? I mean, it depends which there's a few sounds like, you know, so what if I showed you a video of an instrument and I've seen people make these instruments before like there are companies that will either bespoke make these instruments for your horror project or you can hire them and they will basically send people or like work with you to have someone play these instruments to the timing that you want for how you want the horror movie nonsense to go in your thing. So what this is is a video of someone demonstrating one of those instruments. A lot of times these are made by a custom instrument. This one happens to be called the apprehension engine. Interesting. It's a violin looking thing with bits on it. And it's got a hurdy-gurdy style control and a bunch of stuff. And if you watch this thing or listen to one, it just sounds like every horror soundtrack ever. But to they demonstrate all the different kinds of sounds this can make and how you can combine them. This is a fascinating and complex instrument that I think would be really, really fun to play. No, well, that's much more impressive than the lightsaber instrument, which is an electric razor and a metal bowl. No, this thing is ridiculous. In the middle of a moment, we're going to be live and not well, live to tape and not one, but two upcoming conventions. The Virtual Crunchy Girl Expo, which just announced a ton more guests on Friday, September 4th at 4.30 p.m. Pacific Time, 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time on the Yuzu stage. We will be presenting Judge Anime by its cover. We will be in some form of social media to answer questions and interact with anyone who may watch this thing. And then on Friday, September 18th at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern, got him having flashbacks to when I was a kid. And every ad for any TV show was always eight o'clock, seven central because TV was weird back then and local on the PAX 3 channel. Where is the finish line? A brand new lecture from Geek Nights about when and how competitive games should end. Yeah. So we've already recorded and submitted these. So they're going to play them if they approve them, if they don't if they like, if they don't find anything they don't like. I haven't got an email back telling me to never contact them again. So so far, so good. Seems like they're going to show them on their channels and we'll try to be in the chat rooms associated with these channels. I think the PAX one will have like our Twitter handles like prominent. So we might like I might even just like live tweet the panel and like respond. Well, we'll see. We haven't planned on just on Twitch. So it's going to be twitch.tv slash PAX 3. I presume. Yeah. But the I don't know. I was once the host of PAX 2 in a distant time. This is PAX 3. The crunchy roll one. I don't know if you have to pay or something. I don't know. But you basically for free, you can register for an online Crunchyroll Expo badge. Oh, OK, I'll have to do that because I did it. It was painless. It seemed to work like I have. OK, I have an attendee badge to this thing. If I just go to crunchyroll.com, I'll just see it. Type like Crunchyroll Expo and you just find it like it's all. It was really straightforward. OK, seems good. Yeah, I feel like if the free online conventions are the way to go. Very few people are willing to pay a lot of money for conventions online, though some paid conventions, Expo.crunchyroll.com. Here it is. So Game Devs of Color online is coming up real soon. We are obviously not presenting at that. That is not the place for us to present. But I will be attending that because that convention is awesome. And the panels there are better than most of the panels I see at other gaming conventions. 100 percent agree with that. Yep. Otherwise, like seriously, it's a pandemic. A lot of people are stuck at home. Check out the Geeknize Discord. Like people hanging out in there just chatting. Sometimes scottles is like stream something. I'll just stream something. We're playing some train games with the listener. So you can the listener can join us for other games. You could be the listener that joins us. Yeah, played some root the other day until we broke the root and then we stopped playing the root. Root still got some bugs. But yeah, just literally like hang out with us, add us, email us. Scots like I'm responding to tweets. Scots responding to emails. This is a brave new world. We are responding much more to the listener than we have in the last several years because we're also stuck like we're stuck in the same boat you are. I am now registered for the Crunchyroll Expo and my ticket has been activated. Yeah. So I guess we get right into this. This was an idea we had because we thought it'd be fun. We came over the randomly while we were doing another show. And basically the gist of it is that one until relatively recently, you could not order things online. Like that was a new thing. I remember there'd be the blue screen at the end of a TV commercial where you could call a phone number and either read a credit card over the phone or like do COD, which I don't think anyone listening to this will remember or know what collect on delivery was. I don't think that's even a thing anymore in the US. I think it might still be. But yeah, the point is, is that the there was there was a catalog phone. Right. There were phone and mail in catalogs, right? You know, shopping from home, QVC, stuff like that before the web and the internet. The web and the internet came into existence. But e-commerce came a little bit later, right? So like, for example, if you install the doom shareware and you wanted to upgrade to full doom, it told you right on the screen. Yes, you know, send money to this, you know, call this number or send something to this address and we'll send you back the full version of doom in the mail. Scored shirt, they send you back the code to unlock the triple tank. Yep, exactly. I don't think I ever saw anyone in my life who had that unlocked. I didn't either. The point is, is that in the earliest days of the Internet, the e-commerce did exist in like the late 90s in terms of type your credit card info in, buy something the way you do now. But it was super new. And there were a lot of websites that existed that were simply existing businesses that existed before e-commerce existed that had mail in catalogs or phone shopping. And they made websites because it was easy to make a website that just listed their catalog, but they did not set up e-commerce because that was hard to do in those days. Yeah. So you could just go to their website and then buy from them by a mail or phone. And it wasn't until a few years later that, you know, e-commerce was just easy for anyone to set up. And nowadays we have things like you can just open up an Amazon seller account or you Shopify or, you know, all it's anyone. It was like literally like 1999 to 2000. I went from there aren't many things I can buy online to I buy literally everything online. Yep. In addition, you know, we've been buying we have in the unique position of being so old that I've been buying things online as long as buying things online has existed. Yep. And websites that you buy things from keep a history of what you've bought. And even if the websites go away, you still have your email address. My email address is super old, right? It doesn't go. I don't have the very first email address I ever started. I don't. Yeah, because some stuff was on my RIT one or I don't have my full history. But I do have a long history of I can search and look up everything I bought online and when. And if you look at that, that gives you sort of a scarily accurate look of like, this is what your life was. This is what the world was at this time on this exact date. You bought this thing at this price, right? And it's like that's where you were in life. That's where the world was. It's like just by looking at this one thing, a single person's online order history from Amazon or somewhere, right? You can learn so much. So we decided to do a show where let's look at our order histories and there will be many fascinating things to talk about. Gleamed from the information held within mostly Amazon. You know, we're not endorsing Amazon. They're a company. But, you know, I see you also participate in society. I do have a short list of things I bought from like the prehistory like before, like things. Let's talk about that first. Right. So what did you buy online? Like so old so long ago, you don't really even have a record. Yeah, I'm not going to talk about the first thing I ever bought online ever because I bought it by mailing cash in an envelope to some guy who then opened up a BBS account so I could download wares. But it was 1996 because I wanted to have an account on Sierra's The Realm, the first graphical MMO. Oh, I guess that counts as an online purchase of sorts. Yeah. So you literally you put your credit card number into a website and like did stuff and then your account would activate. And I did this with my parents credit card. That was the first time I ever completed a transaction entirely online without mailing a check or cash or something. Nineteen ninety six. Yeah, I guess AOL had a lot of things I could have like extra stuff. You could have put a credit card in for to get more stuff, right? Like you go to AOL channel and it's like, yeah, to do this thing costs money. I would just never do anything that cost money. Yeah, pretty much like I don't want Mad Maze to be better. I don't give a shit. Yeah, that was zero times I did that. The first things I bought online were mostly computer parts for my first computer that I built in the late nineties. Some of those things I ordered by I think it's like T.C. computers had a website, but there was also a website by.com, which is like one of the first big e-commerce sites. Apparently, it's now owned by Rakuten, but they had like by.com, which is just buying stuff. But the one I went to was by.com, which is selling computer stuff specifically. So the way it worked is I would go there. I would add stuff to my cart, check out. Then I would print a piece of paper, write a personal check, put it with the piece of paper in an envelope, mail it. And after the personal check cleared, then they would send me the stuff that I had ordered. So it took a while. It was faster than you think, but still obviously slower than one click shopping, what we have today with a credit card and whatnot or PayPal or anything. Yeah, there were no. There were no PayPal's basically PayPal didn't exist yet, quite yet. You know, or any other sort of Apple pays or any payment mechanisms. They weren't around because like in 1999, I wanted to get anime fan subs. And I did a transaction online, but then I had to mail a check to the guy because he didn't have a way to process credit cards. Yep. PayPal came into existence in what year? Let's say I've never had a PayPal account ever. And I refuse to use it my whole life. I somehow got away with that. December, December of 98. PayPal came in. I remember in 98, like I didn't fucking trust PayPal and refused to use it. Oh, yeah. But PayPal now is pretty is actually kind of trustworthy, especially if you're going to shop. If you're going to buy, I use it because sometimes you go to a site where you don't trust that e-commerce site. Yeah. Right. And it's like, oh, it's just some guys like, you know, tiny little e-commerce store. It's like, well, I'll use PayPal because I don't want to put my credit card info onto this weird site, right? And PayPal is actually mostly good for if you're a customer buying stuff with it. I just would not recommend it even today as a store receiving money. You can get grifted by them in quite a few ways. Yeah. But so my first actual transactional purchase, that is the thing I bought with the credit card myself, no shenanigans, anything, was in the year 2000. Right before I went to college, I spent almost $4,000. I cashed in every bond that every relative had ever bought for me in my entire life. And I bought an Athlon K7800 and out every component I needed to build a computer that I was going to bring to RIT from Egghead.com. New Egg is called New Egg because nerds wanted Egghead to come back. The Egghead died and went out of business or closed or whatever. And then they're like, someone's like, well, this clearly a demand for this business of selling computer parts. And an Egghead was so crazy. Like compared like normal e-commerce was not great in the year 2000 yet. But Egghead was like, hey, nerd, here's nerd shit. And it's really straightforward, like search by spec. Yeah, here's all the RAM you can buy based on the spec you put in. Pick the ones you want. Like it was it was my home. I would just hang out like poking her out of that site, making wish lists. And all their e-commerce sites were not yet sell. In those days, even Amazon was still selling books only. But basically, yeah, there weren't. You know, buy.com was sort of like the only one that was like selling a bunch of stuff. And even like I said, they had different sites for each different product category, right? So, you know, it was the only place like to buy computers online was from a computer only place. They went out of business. New Egg came into existence as basically like, hey, nerds, now here's up, you know, you like New Egg and it's gone shop here. That seemed to be a smart move. I don't know why Egghead couldn't continue doing what they did instead of letting New Egg come around. But hey, we have it now. But the notable thing is what the two things I bought in this other than the Athlon K7 is the PlexTor Scuzzy CD burner and a 21 inch CRT. So I went to Amazon.com. So the oldest things I bought were computer parts from buy.com, right? But the oldest thing in my Amazon history is obviously books from 1999. You know, I never bought books on Amazon. Yeah, actually, then I bought a CD later in summer of 1999. So I guess they added CDs pretty early on the first book. This is great. You couldn't have planned. You could not have planned this, right? It's like it's like I did this on purpose so that I could say it was true, but I can prove that it's true. Right. The first book that I ever bought on Amazon.com on February 10th, 1999, 21 years ago is catch 22. Right. Joseph Eller. It's like it's like I was thinking like, huh, you know, business, the whole world is changing. Let me write like Chris in this new world by buying the perfect first book on Amazon. Like you would go back in time to intentionally make this the first book you bought on Amazon, right? I bought the first thing I ever bought on Amazon was in 2004. And it was the Simpsons fourth season DVD box set for thirty five dollars. Yep. Yeah. If I go ahead, so I didn't really buy anything on Amazon after 99 until we get to 2002. So this is like midway through college. Yep. I had my own credit card now. Yeah. And most of the stuff I'm buying is still books. I'm buying some manga. I'm buying some anime DVD, right? I bought a Gundam C DVD, I guess in oh five. I think that was after media play. There's so many DVDs in my Amazon history. That's like 90 percent of what I bought. I got box sets one and two complete first and second seasons of Rocky and Bullwinkle. There were only 20 something bucks. I remember those. I remember those exact DVDs. Here is a D&D players handbook three and a half. So I guess that was in 2006. So that was we were in Beacon, but I had lost access to a game store, right? Because I was buying my nerdy stuff at Millennium when I was in college, right? So that was not being bought online. Yeah. But here we see having to buy stuff online because the nerd store is gone. I'm buying lots of comic books. I bought a copy of Paranoia XP. It's funny. You can see, like, you know, I'm looking at this because there's a pivotal purchase in October of 2005 here. I'll get to in a second. But basically you see me buying mostly like DVD box sets of like classic things until we leave college. Then I bought so much media like in that era before we were really like podcasting and we were just kind of like hanging out. I just bought so many books and so many comics and so many movies. Yep. Here we get to 2007. I start buying Wii games, DS games, right? But on October 24th, 2005, you know what I see right here? Two things I bought at the same time. I bought some real shaving cream because that's right when we started shaving with real razors. I didn't buy that on Amazon. I bought it from like a specific shaving site. Taylor of Old Bond Street Rose shaving cream jar. Yep. And I bought a Beringer to input UB 802 mixer that we were going to start doing real geek nights with. Oh, that is when I replaced the stick microphone and the bullshit microphones that we bought from Radio Shack with a real mixer for the first time. It cost fifty dollars. And Amazon is really sad to tell me that the return window closed on November 28th, 2005. I can't return it. Yeah. But yeah, you look at like, you know, 2007, right? So this is, I guess, I think by this time, maybe, like I had my second job after college or close to it, right? So I'm buying all kinds, you know, it's like I graduate college. I'm buying all the nerdy stuff that I couldn't afford earlier in life. Right. Yeah. The sword problem started to happen. Have money in the hay day of the yes and the we. I'm buying basically every important comic book, every DS game, every Wii game and so many games. I feel like I bought a DS game like every month for that period. Right. Manga. Here's a Pokemon Pearl pre-sale stylus. I guess when Pokemon Pearl came out, there was a special exclusive stylus that you could get as a pre-order bonus. You see that in here, right? As long as Pokemon games coming out. Yeah. It's basically all video games and media here. And not much else. Oh, and this is interesting. I didn't start buying household goods until around 2008. Like that's when suddenly mundane crap appears in my Amazon. Like a hair dryer, a bucket, some batteries. Like that's when I think I Amazon expanded a bit to sell just stuff. Yep. And when I stopped going to stores, we got the pizza stone I ordered that broke several times. The waffle maker that got fungus. We got the giant crock pot that was too big. Yep. My ice bucket iron that I still have to this day that I still use. Yep. Because that 2009, 2010, especially that's when we were moving to the city. And suddenly you see me buying like a lot of light bulbs, a bunch of coat hangers. Oh, wow. Still even in 2009, I bought a giant pack of CDRWs. A whole bunch of antelope batteries. We discovered antelope batteries. I think we both bought the antelopes at exactly the same time. Prince of nothing books. Yeah. Embarrassingly, I see an order where I bought three copies of some fantasy novel and three copies of the God delusion. I'm pretty sure those were gifts for relatives. Because we didn't know Richard Dawkins was a piece of shit back then. Yeah. Here's the knife block that I still have in my kitchen in 2009. Yeah. But it's interesting. Like it's weird to see this transition of like buying computer technology online because nothing else is online to buying all nerd media online because it was cheaper than going to the store. Like I wasn't buying DS games on Amazon because it was easier. I was buying it because it was cheaper than GameStop. But then there's a sudden switch of only buying nerdy stuff online to literally buying everything online. Like as I go to 2010, 2011, it's obvious that this is replaced almost every store for me. And I literally just don't buy anything anywhere except on Amazon or Sweetwater or New Egg. Yeah. Once you get to 2010, 2009, 2010, it's like each year is several pages of orders versus the previous years mostly fit onto one page or two. There are 14 pages of orders from 2019 on Amazon. Oh, let's see what. Yeah, let's look at 2019. It's my whole life. It's everything I bought is here. In 2009, I have how many pages? Hold on, six. Four teams. What I got. Six pages. I bought less than you last year. You know what's depressing, though? You know what I bought on December 11th, 2011? Risk legacy. Do you know what remains unopened in my closet? I think we opened it. We never played it. I know we never played it. Maybe we definitely never played it. I bought it in 2011. It's really strange to see stuff that like I own. I still have. I still use. I still know I have, right? Yet somehow it's like I really have had it for that long. Yeah, I'm feeling that with a lot of things. Here we go. Here we go. For example, here's a here's a seven pack of headbands right for my head, right? This is from 2012, right? So I guess I've been bald longer than 2012. And I guess around that time, I realized somehow that I was. Oh, yeah, because look, I bought the crappy bike trainer that I got rid of for the fifty dollar one right around the same time. And I guess it looks like a week later, I realized that sweat pouring from my head was a problem. And I ordered a seven pack of sweat bands right for my head. And I'm still using those ten dollars, the ten dollar for seven sweat bands. I was just using those the other day on this vastly superior. So last weekend, I went rollerblading a bunch because like I used to rollerblade a lot because I grew up in the eighties and nineties. Like that was the thing used to go to roller rinks. When I moved to New York, I had rollerblades, but they were so old that the technology had advanced to the point that they were obsolete and dangerous. They're also broken because I'd worn them out at RIT because it was poor. So I bought new rollerblades and I can see here in 2009, I bought risk guards. Those are the same risk guards I'm still using today. Yep. I can't believe I bought them in 2009. I bought them as soon as I moved to New York. That's almost that's literally one of the first things I bought when I moved to New York City was risk guard so I could rollerblade. Yes, you know why? You know why? I guess this is interesting. It's reminding me of my life because in Beacon, I didn't rollerblade because there was nowhere to rollerblade that was safe in the suburbs. I moved to the city. I can rollerblade. I bought rollerblades and I bought like new rollerblades and then I bought the risk guards. This is like better than any kind of like diary you could use to like remember your life. Right. It's just what did you buy? What did you buy? When it's like, oh, look, you know, I started buying camera stuff. I guess that's when I got it. I know exactly now when I got interested in 2011. There's like three full pages of skiing shit because that was when I went from skiing kind of to like being super serial about skiing. Right. Oh, look, that's when I bought the canvas bag to hold coins in. That's when I started having to do laundry with coins. Oh, look, that's where I bought a bike pump. I guess that's when I started biking more seriously. Oh, that's when I bought the razors to my clippers to shave my head. That's when I started shaving my head. Oh, that's when I bought a second television because the first one got burgled. It's like you can see all these life events to the basically the exact day but just from what you bought only, right, which is why, you know, privacy concerns are a thing. Yeah, this data could definitely be used to figure things out about me as I'm looking through these things I've bought. But the other thing I noticed going through this over the years, I bought increasingly big, like expensive, large, like things on Amazon up to a point. But around 2015, I stopped buying them on Amazon and I start buying them directly from the manufacturer or directly from a handful of industry specialty resellers like Sweetwater or B&H instead of Amazon. B&H I'm not a fan of. Oh, no, I hate B&H. Like I don't buy things from B&H anymore. But there were some things that you could like if you tried to buy LED panels like like studio lighting on Amazon in like 2010, it was all like dangerous garbage. But B&H had professional lights. So I bought professional lights from B&H. Yeah, I noticed that there's like a there was like a spike of buying stuff, right, at times when I moved. Yeah, 2009, I bought a shit ton of stuff, right. And, you know, times when my life situation changed, I had to buy a lot of stuff. And then it basically it's like as eventually it's like over time, it's like now my, you know, not only do I bring stuff from a previous place as I've lived, but it's like I've really, especially recently, right. And not just because of the pandemic or whatever, but like buying the amount of stuff I buy. It's not like I buy nothing, but it just goes way down. More and more of the stuff I buy is simply restocking. Consumable. Consumables like what am I buying in 2020? Like I'm going back to my list. Other than I bought a ton of stuff for our panel production pipeline because of the pandemic, but that's that's a special circumstance batteries. Dishwasher tabs. Let's say batteries. I'm looking at Amazon liquid. I bought a pack of people. I got a pack of quadruple batteries. I got some paper towels, some toilet paper, cliff bar, cliff energy shots, the gels. I keep just buying those over and over again. Yeah, lots of cleaning equipment on here. Yeah, for some reason, replacements for stuff that broke. I see here. Oh, I can tell there's the day when I must have been sick of all my old socks because I remember I did a sock purge and I heard of all my bullshit old broken socks. And I bought like 10 pair of the exact same smart roll running sock to use forever. Like I bought all these socks all at once, you know, and also being a nerd, right? You know, where at least the kind of nerd we are, where your computer is such an important thing in your life, right? And like building the new computer is like a big event like every five, six years or so. Right. It used to be more frequent. Now it's less frequent. You go back to new way. You can see exactly which computers you got when, right? Because I'm starting to like there was a point at which I was like, this is my first computer. This is my second computer. Yeah. Right. And then eventually it's like, which computer is this? Six. I don't know anymore. There was a computer. I was thinking back and there was a computer I forgot about that I built around 2006. Used for several years and forgot, right? Yep. Because that computer was not. It was an avid motherboard and it was not stable. I remember that computer. I remember the day I built it and the power supply didn't work and I was in a pissy mood all day. All these memories came back from November of 2006 when I built this computer with a bullshitting motherboard because honestly, 2006 bad year to buy a computer. That was like the height of Athlon's not being stable, but good in tells. We're not cheap yet. Yep. But yeah, it's like I go back and I can see exactly which computers I got when computers I built for other people. HTPCs also. Yeah. You know, all that stuff. And it's like I can really I can even track my own, even though that's less of a privacy concern, like someone else who sees that won't be able to learn much from it. Right. They'll just say, oh, Scott bought computers every five years. OK. Every four or five, six years. But I can look at that and just because of my memory plus the order history, right, I can get a better reminder of my entire life, right? Yeah. Where I was, what I was doing, what life was like. Literally, seeing that order history. Seeing a bit, a bit, a bit, a B9 Pro just brought back a flood of memories from that year that I would never have accessed again otherwise. Yep. That needed that motherboard. Also, every computer I bought is funny. I noticed something looking at all the computers I bought because I now have I'm in front of me. Literally every computer I've ever bought, every one of them has a bunch of external like five and a half inch drives doing shit. They all have a DVD player. They all have except for the first one because DVD players too expensive back then like a CD burner and then that just stops. Like my new computer doesn't even have an external port. The other thing is that you can try to do the opposite, right? Think about a life event you had that was so significant that you don't you wouldn't forget it ever. And then go and look and find your order histories or just check your email for order. You know, if you don't want to go to like any particular website for like, you know, your email at the time or your order histories at the time, right? And you'll learn about like, oh, this is, you know, you'll sort of put pieces together like, oh, I bought this stuff and did these things. And that was like the same week as this other, like, you know, this vacation I went on that I could never forget, right? It's like, oh, look, there's the stuff I bought before the vacation, right? And then here's the stuff I bought when I got home, right? You know, it totally makes sense. Yeah. Oh, look, I bought a new luggage. Then I left, right? Then I came back. Then I bought, oh, I don't know, some sun lotion because I burnt myself horribly. I remember, I don't know. That's not something in my list. That's just something I thought of. Yeah. I'm just skimming through here, like randomly looking at stuff because there are some things like cell phones are not here because until recently you didn't buy cell phones online. You went to like a cell provider store and bought a cell phone. Every cell phone I bought is either from a cell store, either from a phone store or from an Apple store. I remember going to the mall to buy my first cell phone. My first cell phone is given to me. Yeah. Because you had the cell phone at RIT before we did. When I was co-opping at IBM, I went to the mall and I bought a sprint phone because that was the only phone I could afford. Yep. Anyway. So there's no moral to the show other than that. It was surprising to us looking back at this history, how interesting it was to see like this track of data about us parallel with the memories we have our lives up to this point. It's also, I guess, one other thing is it's interesting to see if your preferences changed over your life. Right. It's like, it's like, oh, I was, they know they haven't really at all. I've been buying the same like laundry detergent forever. Yeah. Or the thing I noticed the most, every technology thing I'm looking at here is either the cheapest bootlegious piece of shit or the most expensive option. And there's nothing in the middle, anything I've ever bought. I've never bought a middle of the road thing. I either go big or I buy garbage. I can see book club books that I've bought for the podcast in here. Yeah. Oh, man, this is like, it's just fascinating. So yeah, everyone, go check out your order histories. Hope that no one ever leaks them to the world. Like, say, let's go go search your email for like invoice and go to the oldest email, go to Amazon, just go to the oldest thing and just you might be surprised. Yeah, type in things like invoice or order and then go to the end, literally the end of your email, like the earliest possible time. I paid $200 for that piece of shit. OK, OK, in 2013, like I was saying, LED panels weren't good until recently and they were expensive. I spent $200 in 2013 for an LED panel that I still have that is like the most dangerous, poorly soldered piece of shit. I should probably just throw this thing away. I still have it. I don't use it. It's like buried in my video equipment box. Yeah, this is you cannot buy this thing anymore. This they do not sell this thing anymore. Nope. All right, I'm hungry. So we're just going to stop there. I'm also hungry. I think that was a fine show. Stop the stream. I'm going to take my pivotal turn in that train. All right. Oh, here's my oldest purchase.