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Overview
There’s a lot of talk about travel. Including picking your own hunk of meat at a restaurant and taking your towel.
Besides that, the Sonder hotel in Philly was better than it could have been. Check last weeks episode.
And to afford the travel – make good investments. This week, Alan attended the Motley Fool conference.
And here’s out tip of the week – if you sign into your Roku or other streaming on the hotel television, make sure you delete it before you leave.
Recommendations
https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/david-attenborough-a-life-on-our-planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Wolf
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Transcript
Alan: There we go. Got nice little rainbow ha for you today. Yeah, there you go. You find the pot of gold. Exactly. Being’s biggest lip.
let me do a couple things here. Save this and get out of it. I often try to return as much memory to my system as possible so that there’s no. Oh. And then I stopped responding.
okay. I
Stephen: think we’re good. You all good? All right. So kick off our discussion. I had an interesting revelation this past week, past couple days.
Alan: When you mention that, I was curious as to what would it, what would merit the word revelation? Let’s hear
Stephen: it. Yes. and I figured you’d like that. As an apple guy, you pretty much buy your machines.
And that’s what you get that this is what you have a couple choices of memory and processor, you don’t buy parts and put it together that that’s oh, that’s
Alan: You can they’re opening things up now, but for a long time, it was closed and only all a authorized dealers and stuff like that.
Stephen: That’s right. Okay. So I talked about my computer parts. I bought, I got a good deal. I got some a couple generation old stuff, whatever which I’m still working on. Just haven’t had the time and I did get it together and it wasn’t responding. I’m like, oh, great. What did my hook up correctly?
It’s not like I have five places. Everything goes into one spot, but the processor did not have pins. It just has flat contacts. So you can’t put it in and bend
Alan: pins. That’s cool. I guess they’ve fixed that, which was, we mentioned a couple times ago that was like the most nervewracking part of doing in the system world was one pin gone and I just blown hundreds of bucks,
Stephen: you know what I mean?
But the problem was there’s four positions that it could fit in and the very helpful documentation pictures that come with the motherboard and the processor do not help to make sure you get it in the right spot. So I’m like, huh, have
Alan: a notch on one side. Or they have a that there’s like a little dividing line, but it’s not right in the center.
So you can see, but yeah, you would hope where you would’ve done it.
Stephen: It’s symmetrical it. I looked at the same all around, like what the heck? Why would you do that? So I’m not sure if I put the processor on the right slabs but I thought it was interesting that there’s no pins anymore, at least for the I got the AMD okay.
Yeah.
Alan: That’s why I haven’t swapped a CPU in a long time. I’ve regularly, still done memory, video cards, whatever apple has allowed you to do, I’ve often put a new hard drive in or something like that or added memory. But they, when they did allow it in various different things like the Mac minis or Mac books, it was often you just take the back off, as you were saying, there’s only one where one place to put it.
It’s not like there’s five choices for where you put memory, make sure you put your little antistatic strap on and just be careful. And I’ve had even things like changing out a battery and stuff like that, where they really do say, Hey, those the leads not leads. Polls can be live.
In fact, I’ll take you a long. The worst thing that I remember reading about that could have happened to me was way back in like the Mac mini days, where you actually had the CT within the housing of the computer. Oh. That really could blow you across the room with extra charge. So I was always, when you were doing any kind of thing and the old in the old original generation Macintosh is, or whatever, had a monitor, that’s where they had in big, bold 18 point letters.
You need to be careful and do not treat this, like it’s a nurse, this carries a charge, that’ll put you on your back. Yeah. Yeah. Working
for you yet, but hopefully you only got three more things to try one per each orientation we’ll see unlucky
Stephen: yeah. I don’t know. Cause it, it didn’t beep or anything.
So I’m like that’s weird so I stripped it back down and is it shorting out on the case? I’m like, I don’t see anywhere that the pin the screws or. They usually design it so you can screw it in and it doesn’t but, so exactly.
Alan: We’ll see. I also haven’t I, as I strictly screw on working on Colleen’s MacBook air and I’m this week, I’m taking it over to the genius because I don’t have the tool.
He said, they’ve gotta have some kind of special guy that will let me grab the top of it without having to actually unscrew it. I don’t have that, but they must, so we’ll see what happens.
Stephen: Yeah. I’ve got the same problem with the right blinker on my car. I can’t get to it cause of the, where it’s at very, yeah, not designed.
They don’t want you to mess with it. So there we go. But anyway, what else is going on?
Alan: So actually just over the last two days, went to the Motley fools yearly conference, yes. The smarter, richer, happier conference and very good. They, it’s a very good combination of main sessions where pretty much any investor wants to hear.
How to do it. How does Motley fool do it? What are the kinds of things that are going on in the modern world that would make this worth talking about on a yearly basis? Instead of read the book it’s all in there that kind of thing. They always have a good guest interviews. So in this case, it was like the president of TRX, which are a very successful composite materials maker, like for Dex and stuff like that.
Morgan, who wrote the psychology of money, really good book about like how the world works and how it portrays itself through this exchange of value and how your mind doesn’t always work well in terms of funny about money. And right along those same lines, they had Annie Dcon as the final keynote interview.
Annie duke is that was actually a professional poker player. She’s the daughter of Richard LEDR of Mensa book fame. Yes. When actually one point and so forth. And she’s wonderful. She’s very well spoken. She talks about so you pulled away from the Paul poker world and she goes, yep.
I quit. And the reason she said it very clearly like that is because she’s written the book about quitting about that. One of the things that people really have are all kinds of limitations mentally for where they don’t think of a situation in terms of what are the odds of what different ways it can go forward.
When will I know if something is continuing to do well or not, how will. Prepare myself for not just saying, come on back to me, 23, I really gotta make this money back. She approaches it in, in seemingly many ways from a gambling point of view, but not really gambling roll the Dyson.
Hope it’s more, what do you do if you’re a good poker player, you figure what’s the money on the table. What’s pot odds. What’s what am I worth? What’s my chance of improvement. What do I see everybody? Else’s chance of improvement? What could they be betting on? Those are my competitors very much. Every single decision is not.
Here’s hoping it’s very much like what are the numbers behind it and not hunches. And so she applies that extrapolates from that into the world of all kinds of different decisions. Are you in a financial situation? Are you in a relationship situation? Whatever else it might be, and it’s not published yet.
It’s doing out in October. I think it might be available virtually like Hindle wise and so forth, but not as a book yet. And gosh, you, I want to read a book. I don’t want to get digital version yet, so I haven’t gotten it yet, but. That’s one of the nice things about going to this conference is it gives me all kinds of good leads to not just what’s the compressed half hour or hour version.
But I wanna read what they recommend, what they’ve written. There’s some really bright people there. Nice. Okay. So that was kinda a good use of my last day and a half. You know what I mean? That they, and a nice variety, one of the best sessions available, that was a lot of what people think about a conference like this would be, so did you get any hot stock tips?
And they had a very good section on the semiconductor world, the current one, and what we’re looking to in the future. And as you might imagine, it’s not only about technology especially from a financial standpoint, it’s not what kind of technical miracles are we working, but there’s global politics.
Some of the most important companies that do this are Taiwan, semiconductor, and ASML. And they’re like put Taiwan into that equation. You mean that little island off the coast of China, that China is continually circling with warships and saying, we don’t really think you are your own country. We think you’re a part of us and Nancy Pelosi just visited.
And it was, oh my God, that’s a provocation without going into any of the politics as the why and the where for it absolutely does impact the business plans of these places. That’s a strategic enough partner. Technically that might be one of those things that other countries would be willing to go to war for.
Cause they can’t lose access to those. The whole world nowadays cars nowadays have $3,000 worth of various different ships in them because it’s not just running your instrument panel. It’s everything about how you drive and how you steer and how you do your hybrid engines and all that kind of stuff.
So one of the. I don’t mean to be bouncing around so much, but these are some of the things that not only they talked about, but then I thought we just had very interesting steps forward here in the United States for making it so that we’re not dependent on foreign whether allies or enemies for things that matter, like those chips.
And so there’s a whole bunch of the chips act is all about returning some of that and not just farming it out and then having it be wow. So supply chain disruption over these last two years has meant we couldn’t get cars, right? We couldn’t make cars, et cetera, et cetera. So the fact that they named like Taiwan summit got there and momentum specific companies that I wanna be in because of all the various different trends, the model fuel is very good about.
So here’s the various different trends we see. There’s more AI coming up. There’s more renewable energy coming up. And what are the companies that are best positioned? To make that real and that therefore you should put your money in bed on them. So I like having a lot of my stuff that I’m already into.
It was confirmed. You know what I mean? As I think I mentioned before, part of my investment philosophy is I’m buying the future. I want to create this better future. And so to have that be that not only did I learn about most of them from the moley pool, but they still think it’s a good bet. Two, three years in compared to when I first jumped on it it’s reassuring.
You know what I mean? It’s heartening and then to get some new ideas for, okay, next time I have my, my little bets that I can make, I’ll expand my portfolio and include some of these guys as well.
Stephen: And what you’d said definitely goes with that old give a man a fish, teach man, the fish philosophy, because someone will say, oh, what’s a good start tip.
I could tell you five of them, but the minute those start to go down, what do you know to do? You don’t know what to do. Do you keep it? You cancel it. Are they going up? You’re getting this education to evaluate and make your own stuff. So that’s way better in the long run
Alan: AB Steven. Absolutely. And in fact that’s one of the underlying things about virtually every discussion interview presentation that they have is here’s what the numbers say about how the market will work so that you can win.
You have to be in for a longer time period than in and out in six months, you have to, you’re aware that when the market goes down, it goes down rapidly, but always comes back and higher than where it was. And that’s proved by 110 years worth of data now or something like that. And even when you look at is a big disruptive events, the black Swan events the housing crisis or the war or we’ve been one guy did a great presentation mentioned in this presentation when you look at, oh, we got massive inflation historic inflation, and we’ve never seen this before.
And he was happy to say, actually we have, and we have quotes from the people saying, this is just like the inflation that we saw in 1890 or in 1910 or in 1930. You know what I mean? So it’s very reassuring to know that capitalism the the innovation that brings about progress, almost always.
There’s all these ratcheting upward, it ratchets, you will get your downturns and it’s 5% every year. And it’s 10%, every three years and 20% where they talk about what does that equal a recession does that equal inflation or stag, but that if you buy and hold, you can have some confidence.
If you bought a good stock, if you bought a stock that really. And named the fundamental criteria it’s makes a good product. It’s got a motor route it so that others can’t easily jump in and compete. It’s got good leadership and they’re invested in the company cuz they’ve got stock and skin in the game and all different kinds of things who are their competitors.
When you make those kind of fundamental choices, you don’t really play the technician game. I have any number of friends that, that they’re really especially cause I’m a computer guy they’re looking for. What’s the algorithm that’ll tell me that I could get in and out day trading wise. And that’s at the weird micro aspect, but even they’re like I put in stop loss orders so that when I’ve made enough money, I’m gonna pull back celebrate my wins and wow.
I of was pretty sure that we continue to go up. I don’t know that I want to get out. I don’t wanna get out when it’s going down, but I also don’t wanna get up when it’s going up and there’s no real end in sight. So it I have a big portfolio. I have more than a hundred stocks, but every single one of them out of the 9,000 stocks, and maybe I’m going low, there might be like 19,000 worldwide out of all those companies that have stories behind them and numbers behind them, what can we learn?
How much information is publicly available, baked into the price of the stock. So that one, one of the things that Vermont fool was good for, and I I hope you don’t mind. I’m not trying to chill for them, but so much of how I think they really do let you get ahead of the market. It’s kinda you can, you can’t beat Vegas unless you learn to count cards and really look for what you do know.
And even then you’re only like a half percent up, but half percent, if you do it right over time is still a win. And moley fool really seems to be good about how to identify those companies that can beat the S and P 500. It’s not only buying into an index fund, which is a way to make money six to 9% over the course of time forever.
It’s a way of being able to maybe just get ahead of the market in terms of. What industries are you in? What companies are you in? Different approach than just buy the market with an index and ride it out. So I’m one, one of the joys of the conference is I’m re heartened.
You know what I mean? My portfolio was down half since the height that it was at about a year and a half ago. And yet I’m seeing signs of recovery. It’s ratcheting, recovering. It’s not okay, we’re going back up, get on the elevator. It’s giving me still I went up this many towel and then I went down half of that, but it’s going back up.
And I, especially that idea of the mindset of don’t panic you really should never be making these decisions on the take your towel exactly. That be a real hoopy fruit. So I really like that. The other thing that I think that I mentioned that before coming back home to go to this conference, Colleen and I were in Philadelphia this last weekend for an extended get.
And the brief thing was we had bought like a hotel room through a Saunder that I wasn’t able to move the dates or something and said, I was really right, no flexibility. But then we showed up and we decided we’re not gonna eat this money. Let’s go do a getaway weekend. Even if your business meeting is not the precipitating event for that.
So the the hotel was wonderful. It’s not even like a room, it’s actually a little apartment. So we had all the room we needed and closet space and a full of working kitchen and nice, modern, not like old fixtures where you turn on and here’s hoping the rust water doesn’t come out first, all very modern, good wifi, et cetera.
In the heart of the city. And I had not really spent, I, I teleport in and out of Philadelphia before to do specific things, go to a concert. So we were total touristy. We, there’s all kinds of cool mixture of historic sites as well as more modern skyscrapers but you go to city hall and there’s William Penns and his hat.
And for a while, they had the EIG that you couldn’t build taller than that. So there’s this nice little, multiple block area where everything is relatively short building wise, and then whatever that cordon that they had, that it had to be that right after that, the skyscrapers rear up cause it’s the financial district and there’s all kinds of things going on, but they we went to independence hall and the Liberty bell and the constitution center and the museum American revolution.
And just I dunno if you had a chance to do it, but I the country’s not always been in the best of shape, the last 20 going on 40 years. And so I’m not as moved as I used to be when I see the flag go up and I put my hand over my heart and sing the Anthem, but this kind of stuff to read about.
The incredible brilliance of who trained the declaration of independence and the constitution, the incredible bravery of people who said this. So what that, this is the biggest army in the world. The biggest empire the world has ever known since the Romans, we’re gonna thumb our nose at and say, we declare ourselves to be these truths are self evident.
All men are created it’s it really is reaffirming as an American to see those are real American values. Those are not founding father control, oriented, bullshit. It’s all about freedom and all about the value of every person and all about we didn’t get it. All right. So we’ve built in mechanisms to make it right.
And some of those things that we’ve done over the course of years, little things like freeing SLS and giving everyone the vote. It’s. Have incorporated that. So it’s not just the musty history of it. They’ve really said here’s how this has worked pretty well. This incredible experiment in the United States continues to succeed.
If we do it, if we work the rule of law, if we work the principles of life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and Hey, anything, that’s not in line with those, maybe that’s not what the, what America is all about. So did they have, I’ve not been in depth in Philadelphia. I’ve been through there, like you said, did they have little plaques up, like on this spot, Ben Franklin and stuff like that?
Absolutely. They had all kinds of historic houses where this is where there’s things that are very commemorated, Betsy Ross where she lived, Benjamin Franklin’s grave the. There’s wonderful historic documents in, in the essentials area, they really do have the draft working copies, if you will.
And I think also some of the finals, the ones that were posted everywhere of the declaration of independence, of the articles of Confederation and of the constitution, just like you read about in high school history and stuff like that. And lots of good people on site that are really knowledgeable about here’s what they did.
Here’s how it happened. Here’s what they meant by it. You know what I mean? That it’s not, it doesn’t only stand alone. You have to have historic context for it. You have to have it, a lot of people there very knowledgeable, but not within agenda of trying to do anything except tell you the truth. As far as I could tell, it’s not that it so much of this stuff was just, wow, you walk through the area that they keep to Liberty bell, and they have all the ways in which. The Liberty bell has become a symbol, not only used by the United States but not only by suffragists and then civil rights here, but also any member of other countries have used that the silhouette, the picture of the bell, as we declare ourselves to be equally free, we have a constitution.
Wow. That’s cool. So that was also very heartening to be, you’re not allowed to touch it, but you’re allowed to be like within touching distance of it. And it’s there it is this multi to got a crack in it. They put a spider in to stop the crack from proceeding further. And it’s just I’m not a mystical guy and yet there’s.
Stephen: Poor there. Yeah. That that’s so cool. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds a little bit like the city version of ha farm
Alan: like that. Exactly.
Stephen: Okay. But the important question is. Did you run up the steps like Rocky. And did you go to all the places Nicholas cage was to find the gold to do national
Alan: treasure?
Yes. Oh they’ve moved the Rocky statue from the top of the steps. Oh man. At the bottom of the steps off to the side. So the people would stop doing that. We run up and what we did was we walked everywhere. It was quite hot. It was in the nineties regularly. Yeah. But Cody and I are relatively Hardy.
So we, everywhere that there were the big grassy places where they have here’s the older buildings, here’s the museums. We walked all those malls. We walk along the school river which, which is know, spelled child kill and then that’s how you get to the Philadelphia museum of art.
And but by doing that way, you come at it from the side, the back instead of the main thing. So we did not run up the steps, even though I that’s, when I was going to Philadelphia, I’m picturing. You know what I mean? We didn’t do that, but. We it the museum itself also beautiful, massive.
And they, that’s where sunflowers is from veal. They really have wow, that’s like in books, but here it is also distance. And I’m a couple great casting of the sinker, one of the eight, like original it’s that’s the right word for a copy, but there were eight main castings and we have one here in Cleveland and they have one there.
Oh, okay. So all kind and like beautiful collections. They had armor collection, they had modern and what is it called? Illuminated art where it’s very Christian oriented. Those were the only ones that could sponsor but tons of good stuff to see. And we didn’t even see it all.
You know what I mean? We did as much as we could. We went to the motor museum, which if you’ve heard about it, it’s where they have all kinds of medical. Preserved bodies, skulls, and not only normal ones, but especially the abnormalities. So you get to see, oh my God, that’s a conjoined twin skeleton.
Wow. For that’s the guy that had a cruciferous cor well horn growing out of his head and things like that.
Stephen: Sure. That wasn’t Ripley
Alan: Honestly, it, they were very straightforward about it, but some of the things were straight out, oh, come on. You know that, did they just stick a horn on a goat and call it a unicorn?
No, it was all real. And I’m, that’s funny. I really was worried like, okay, is this gonna be unnerving? I tend to not. Watch movies that have such horrific images that then it’s in my mind and I can’t get rid of it can cause there’s so many of them there, they have a whole wall of skulls and not warped, but just all, but all different shapes and sizes.
Then they had little bio sometimes of this person really was like an idiot. And so they were looking for, how do we know from his skull? Is there any way to do it chronologically or by skull size and the various different little measurements you can take? They had they had a thing about Einstein’s brain and how it had been taken out of his skull and oh, the guy kept it like in a cooler in his house for a while.
You know what I mean? Thanks for not wrecking it. I guess he didn’t feed it to your dogs or whatever. So that was fascinating because it’s just like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You know what I mean? The abnormalities, that’s often how we’ve learned, how does the body work? Cause it goes Dewire and then you find out, oh, it really does grow skin cells, but if it grows too many, then you get cancer or whatever else it might be.
So we, like I said, happily touristy, usually out on our feet, 8, 10, 12 hours catching, we maybe made a point of getting a cheese steak because that’s Philadelphia. Had very, we went for one meal. Colleen is much more the carnivore of the two of us. And so we went to a place called pecan, which is kinda like a Foggo to C it’s one of those Brazilian steakhouses where you sit at your table and they have a big, like a salad bar.
We can get various different side dishes, but then guys emerge from the kitchen with big meat on spits. Wow. And they stop at your table and say would you like some ribs? And they carve some ribs off and you grab it with your little tos. And then there’s 15 different things they bring out.
Wow. So you can get your Minan and your bacon wrapped minion and their specialty, which I think was pecan. But it’s this particular seasoning style and marinating style and whatever. And you have a little What sorry, let’s call it a coaster that you can flip red or green, pretty much meaning Moss or no Moss more or no more and Colleen, she’s a petite thing.
And yet when there’s good beef to be had good meat, good pork. I had the shrimp, I tried the chicken, she doesn’t do those, but we just and it was luckily on, we went there on a, let’s see, it was a Friday or Saturday night, I think, Friday night. And, but, so we were expecting to be elbow to elbow.
So we were COVID conscious and stuff, and instead it just wasn’t that crowded. So we weren’t close to people and we weren’t getting laughed on or whatever. We had a nice leisurely, so we hardly ever go food. Touristing you know what I mean? We don’t mind finding nice places. Otherwise we had a nice Italian place where we had spaghetti meatballs and we had a pizza and a salad and pretty conventional stuff, but this was.
Not so much our anniversary cuz that’s last month, but for our birthdays, we really hadn’t gone out in July. And so we said how, if we do a combined big meet night the night of too much meat that thing just was it’s fun once in a while to do the overwhelm I, it just was, wow, this is indulgent as hell.
And it costs a little bit of money, but we, it was just what we wanted to do. It was just right. It sounds like talk to Philadelphia, really a good walking city, lots of people all over the place. Good diversity, good tostone streets as well as modern. It’s a really interesting combination of historic and modern.
And I really liked,
Stephen: it sounds like it’s one step away from the restaurant, the, of the universe where the cow comes, walking out, what piece you want,
Alan: recommend which
I for and. Always I’m thinking of how do we tie this into nerdy? It isn’t just like food as indulgence. It really was cool to be like, here’s how they’re doing history nowadays. Where my guess is these museums over the last, in my lifetime, 60 years, they must have started off with just here’s the thing.
And here’s a little plaque about it, but now they have a multimedia extravaganza. They have multiple films that talk about it. They have recreators, people can come out and interact with things. Here’s what it would’ve been like to work on a, in the bay and really nice and immersive.
And I came away with a real appreciation of the facts of it, but not a stodgy way in a very much Hey, if you’re gonna deal with people nowadays that are used to quick cuts and movies, you have to do what you need to do to keep their attention to not have it be, oh God, another plaque, oh, I’m done. I’m done. I
Stephen: wanna go home. I’m good with that. But
Alan: yeah, but that’s I was thinking, and I. I really liked that they’ve got ideas about, Hey, this is how crowd control works. You know what I mean? If you’re gonna have it’s a national park or monument or whatever the designation is. So you have to get checked to make sure you don’t have weapons or anything that you’re gonna throw acid on the constitution or something terrible.
Cuz there’s been, all you need is one idiot breaking the pinata with a sledge hammer. And then every other place has to say how do we proof ourselves? How do we maniac proof ourselves? Yeah. You know that
Stephen: kinda thing. Now I assume that they’ve gotta have some like tours or walking tours this location and to that, cuz it is a very historical.
Alan: Exactly. We, I must admit we didn’t seek any of those out. We occasionally walked by them and heard a docent or someone giving a tour. What we did do was, and it’s funny, cuz usually you would do this at the start to get the lay of the land everywhere. Instead towards the end of our last day in town, we hopped on one of the open double Decker buses and it goes like 26 stops all over downtown historic and it went to places like it went out to the Philadelphia museum again, it was like, wait, this, we should have taken a
It took you all the way to where you can see Camden, New Jersey across the river from there. And unfortunately this kind of our tour guide was if he was knowledgeable, he didn’t share it enough because he was too busy telling his very self-involved stories. What I’m doing in college and what I, it’s just, I just, it he wasn’t as good as he could have been, but he really got here’s other famous buildings that I wouldn’t have known the name for. And here’s why, like, when I had mentioned that we were going friends on Facebook had said, oh, you should go to Macy’s because the oldest biggest still operating organ is there.
Oh. And we didn’t make it, but now we ha whenever we don’t do these things we have a
reason
Stephen: to go something to, yeah. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I was gonna say something I learned in new Orleans was those tour buses. They circle around, you can get like a full day or a two day pass, so you can jump on it, get the tour and get off where you want and then get back on a different one and go around.
So there’s a travel tip that I didn’t know till recently. I
Alan: totally, in fact we were foolish about it because we got on and just did the tour. We could have used it as our shuttle bus for the entire city for all the time that we were there. That’s exactly right. So we still liked the tour of it. And I will say this, luckily I was very conscious of what on some sunscreen and where your hat Al, because when you’re in an open double Decker bus, the sun at a 90 degree day is baking you
Yeah. Yeah. And so I got hot, but luckily not BA I really did not get burnt as far as I could tell. No horrible redneck or anything like that, good. So it, I, we have reasons to go back cause you didn’t get to everything and yet it not having been there before. It’s some extrapolation to the future for Colleen and I is we’re gonna be retired soon.
What are we gonna do? There’s 10 big cities that I’d love to explore like this Washington, DC, New York Boston, Seattle, Portland, whatever else it might be. Hey, we really like this Saunder hotel. It’s right. Downtown in the heart of things. It was now I know don’t make a reservation that you’re not gonna keep, cuz that was my big dissatisfaction solve was how unworkable they were.
But the facility itself was fantastic. So I could see doing that five day getaway weekend, times 10 whatever those cities are that we want to go to just go to and in a lot of cases I would like to do it in Chicago because while I was living there working there, the only time you went to do those things is when somebody came in town and you wanted to show your city off.
And Cleveland’s kinda like that too often. Do I go to the west side market or the Lakeview cemetery or the rock roll hall of fame? Because someone’s come into town. Isn’t that weird? The Sears tower now I still call it the Sears tower, even though it’s been name changed for 35 years. Yeah.
So what is it? The Willis tower. Yeah,
Stephen: Wilshire.
Alan: How parochial of me, but that’s a kind of a cool idea. Is there any big city that doesn’t have enough cool stuff like that? They’ve all gotten museums in history and that kind of stuff. That’s spending a couple days, right in the heart of downtown walk to everything, eat a couple nice meals.
Repeat. That’s a really cool idea for what we’d like to do to see more of the United States that we haven’t really explored yet.
Stephen: And I’ve found things like trip advisor are great for this, but it’s sometimes even the little towns and stuff you travel through. When I travel with the kids, we would always try and find little towns and stuff, see what’s there and available and adjust our schedule or whatever, cuz oh wow, that’s a weird museum.
Let’s check it out. The rattlesnake tail museum or something, yeah. You get that on the outskirts and sometimes it’s fun just to look for those and see what you can get.
Alan: I agree. That, that’s kind what we’ve done. We’ve done so many big driving vacations that’s the mode that I’ve been in is find a place you’re gonna drive to anything.
So find a place on the edge of town where it’s a little bit less expensive, but then still make sure you go to the odd museum, the odd historic place, the I don’t know. There’s all kinds of. America. Oh, this is the biggest ball of twin. I always ever uses that one, but we’ve seen all kinds of biggest goer statue here’s a and we’ve seen the biggest bison statue and the biggest cow statue.
Stephen: a little thing that a lot of people don’t know about or heard about. It’s just like an hour south of me is layman’s hardware. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. It’s like an old general store, old fashioned hardware, and it’s huge and sprawling it’s everything.
Alan: Exactly. If you’re looking for not only Royal and metric measurements, but if there was ever an alternate measurement system, I’m sure they’ve got the bolts and nuts and screws.
Stephen: And if you want good cast iron, they’ve got that. And it’s the stuff you could live off the grid with, but also things you can use in your kitchen. And it’s just a huge rambling store. Is it down in Amish
Alan: country or is it close to right? I think it.
Stephen: Very much. Yeah, it’s down by Wooster in that area.
Alan: Exactly. So in Chicago, they have a couple of these called American science and surplus, and it’s like that for all the geekery stuff you go in there and they have honestly transistors and capacitors and everything by the bin. And you can put together the little light emitting diodes that you’re gonna put along your Halloween costume.
So you look like a board or something like that and they have all kinds of medical instrumentation and the thermometer and whatever. That’s one of those places where you come to it’s I can’t believe I just spent two hours browsing here, but there’s so much cool. Yeah.
It’s really geeks paradise. It’s wonderful. What’s that called again? American science and surplus.
Stephen: I think I’ve ordered something from them back in the day. It sounds so familiar. They
Alan: mail order catalog. Exactly. And like I said, I know that there’s one that’s out. Maybe either Batta or Fox. River Fox lake that I think that’s their main one, their biggest place.
But that when people, when we would geek it up at men meetings and talk about I’d love to do that, but where would I find that someone in the group would immediately say American sciences surplus has like everything. If you need a weather balloon, if you need a, they got
Stephen: everything.
Everybody should get a weather balloon at some point a weather balloon. So that was my excitement. What has been happening for you these last couple weeks? I’ve
been well. Work’s been crazy, but I’ve been you came out, you saw, we got our building that’s falling down.
Yeah. We’ve been cleaning that out to get it torn down. We gotta quote to tear it down and just outrageous. So I’m like, okay, wait, if we move things out and get rid of a bunch of stuff ourselves that should lower the cost a bit. And if we just let the winner take care of it, it’ll probably be knocked down.
So we might cut down the guard. And so really the funny thing is on the nerd aspect, my father has a lot of old machinery that I’ve had to figure out what it is and what it does. And is it running? And if not, what do I need to do to fix it? So
Alan: I’m not trying to sell it. How do you even describe it? So those might be interesting.
It’s a combine
Stephen: harvester. Oh yeah. Cause when I go out there and he’s got an old. Rainbow vacuum hooked up to this, what used to be a computer or somebody’s desk, and it’s got this thing sticking up out of it. That used to be the metal part from the back end of a car.
And then there’s some other motor hooked up to it. And I’m like, I have no idea what the I’m like casually turning it on and what’s it. Do, you can start flailing at me. Is it gonna, the RO tiller doesn’t work? Let’s learn a little bit more about small engine repair, which is geeky in itself.
Cause I’m not a big engine guy, but just what where’s the gas flowing. Where’s this that type of that’s been what I’ve been doing besides trying to get my computer together. there’s, that’s my whole life.
Alan: I actually I’ll throw this out there. I, and it’s, I don’t know that many people have this perspective, so where they’re at the Saunder place and they have both.
A Roku box and Chrome cash attached to their TV. Nice. So it’s I can log on with my stuff from home, but then you go on and there’s six people that have already logged in and I’m like, okay, this is what Netflix was complaining about how they’re losing money because they didn’t scrub their credentials out of there.
We went in and watched a couple episodes of castle on Hulu because it was right there available and I’m, and depending on who had signed in, we didn’t go looking, but I’m pretty sure that somebody had Netflix, somebody had HBO, max, somebody, they had the premium channels and I guess it’s generous to leave that behind for others, but.
But then it’s there’s gotta be a time when you’re at your home system and you’re saying, Hey, somebody just signed in from Philadelphia. Oh I, how I just did that. How am I gonna go back and get rid of it now that I
Stephen: am? I would bet. And here, this is, I guess our geek tip of the week.
I bet most people don’t even think about that or realize it. They just, oh, we can log in. They log in with their account and their account is ABC 1 23. So it’s and then they leave the next day and don’t even think about it because they don’t understand and realize, Hey, you just gave everybody access to your stuff.
Alan: That’s right, exactly. So it, maybe as the reason I thought it was interesting because, and not having ever done it outside of my home and then out in California, where I made a point of bringing a Roku box with me, I hadn’t seen how you really could leave those things behind you. You know what I mean?
That your credentials stay in the box. So it I’m. It was very nice that we were able to do that without having to be, oh, I could swear that’s what the password was, but it’s not. So now, and as when you’re trying to do it on the TV, it’s not just like typing it in again, it’s that torturous, moving back and forth with your little arrow keys on a remote and we don’t get it wrong.
It’s like I have a 24 characters thing. I don’t wanna do
Stephen: it. Mixed characters. Yeah. But that’s the good thing about those boxes is they’re so easy to pack up and carry. Especially if you have an express stick, it’s literally a USB you plug in and the HDM I, you plug in and then you have your, everything it’s already logged in.
It’s yours. You could take that with you everywhere forget about the premium stations that cost $25 for whatever they’ll tell I’m
Alan: inspired to do what you just said. I, I. Like the RO Roku four premium, whichever one, it is costs like 99 bucks having the one besides we have here to just take on the road with you wherever I go.
And having that is got everything that I’ve already got set up in it and stuff like that. Yeah. That’s, it’s very much beyond cutting the cable. Now you actually carry your wealth of stuff with you. That’s a good idea.
Stephen: So yeah. And tablets and everything, laptops and most people don’t think about just have an H D M I cable with your laptop, plug your laptop into the hotel TV.
Most of the time you’ll be able to.
Alan: That’s I have to, my MacBook error doesn’t have a straight HDMI, but I have a little adapter and it works just fine. Everywhere
Stephen: I go. Oh, of course you have to be different.
Alan: well I, yeah what it is I have to step down the good one on the apple to the crappy HT M I standards.
Yes,
Stephen: that’s right. So speaking of all this tech you mentioned some nature show that has a lot of cool tech, what’s up with that? One of the things we discovered we love David Attenborough and he’s done like planet earth and planet earth too. And blue planet, a series of them for the BBC.
Alan: used to do all
Stephen: the
Alan: stuff for school. Exactly. That the voice is so distinctive and so forth. It seems that every two years they put out another one there’s one, it was like dark planet where they were using ultra low light, sensitive cameras to be able to capture here’s the rhinos.
Like we thought they were solitary creatures at night. They get together and have a little rhino party that kind of thing. So they have one, the latest one is called something like seven worlds, one planet, it focuses on each of their various different continents and the specific things that go on there that nowadays they’re getting incredible footage because they have devices.
They have drones that can follow things. You’re not worried about spooking. The herd of will to be with your Jeep or something like that. If you can just send in a drone. So they’ve just got and of course with telephoto lenses or lenses that you can just get real close, they just show like up in the canopy of the cloud forest down in, is it Ecuador?
Peru, I think, oh wow. They show ums and here they are seeking out the juiciest little baby avocados and like, how do they get this footage? It’s just amazing. They had one wear. I think I mentioned before, I’m fascinated by I gusu falls. It’s a huge confluence of rivers right on the border between Argentina and Brazil.
If I remember correctly. And it’s an amazing amount of water coming in and there’s ways to get close to it on, on paths out onto Pories that I just wanna be there, feel that power and that overwhelm of the mist and the noise and everything. So
Stephen: that’s you got your VR goggles. We need that in VR.
Exactly. And those falls were the bases of the falls that they used in episode one, Phantom MENA star wars. The,
Alan: the, because it is, there’s so much water and so many different places that it’s coming from that it’s other planet league other world they actually use seven different falls that they composited into that movie.
OK. so what was cool about this was they have, so here’s all the waterfall. It’s just to tons of water. There’s a species of Swifts that lives on the cliffs behind the water. They go through the water without getting just battered senseless, make it to the other side. And they nest there and then have their babies.
And then the babies first experience of not a curtain of water closing out the world, but having to follow the parents through, to go out into the rest of Brazil is to go through this waterfall. And what a, I can’t imagine that crazy as a baby, you’re cobbled for your first two years before you’re taking a step.
These guys are like just weed, fledged, whatever the right bird term is. And then they gotta go, okay. Kind take my life into my hands. The waterfall. the fact that they could get so close with these drones, that they were able to show the birds like struggling and then emerging from the curtain of water.
And I don’t know so many other examples of here’s how they can show here’s. Too many walrus, like 500,000 walrus all on this one beach and they’re all on top of each other. And then here comes the penguins and have to make it through those walrus to get to the ocean that they have to go to feed to bring back.
And so just, you are writing amongst these walrus with these penguins and like they little gen two penguins. So they’re hopping on top and they’re incredibly agile. And as, as as they run away, they’re making time, but they look like they’re gonna get crushed by what? Cause I just, I was laughing in amazement at they got incredible footage that I just couldn’t have imagined.
They go under the ice in Antarctica to show the entire world that’s underneath there. They got all these weird plants and Enes and like star when really looks, oh man, it’s a nightmare to see how things with too many append tentacles, like moving and fighting. And you know what? I like this one’s.
Jellyfish trails, its tend rolls down to capture things, but then something actually captures it. And then a bunch of them team up on him and pull him down. It’s like how, who would’ve imagined. They would’ve captured that. Oh man, I just again, to geek it up the technology, that’s enabled us to capture those things so that it’s not a human element that automatically is clumsy and maybe scatters them for fear of human contact, but that they’ve been able to integrate themselves into multiple environments.
Some of them quite hostile, we haven’t flown into volcanoes yet. I don’t know how well a drone can handle that before it overheats or whatever, but so close to so many, it’s just fascinating. So much about like how we get to know the world is it’s not only a matter of, Hey, we can watch it, but as our instrumentation gets better and better, we go deeper, we can see smaller and smaller.
We can see here’s the scales on a chameleon. And here’s how they really do have almost like individual control of every single cell. You know what I, and just I love that we’re getting more and more knowledge and experience of those cool things. So
Stephen: what’s that streaming on?
Alan: That might be HBO, max. I,
Stephen: the HBO max is phenomenal.
Alan: yeah we have Netflix, Amazon prime and HBO, max. I think we, we let paramount go and we have Hulu cuz it’s free. And in fact, APR and Hulu because we get our Amazon, no, our at and T and our Verizon. So between those four, it’s wow, I have four infinities of things to watch. I’ll never run out of streaming.
So I I still get certain things via. Netflix dis because they’re just not available anywhere. But the Roku box, you can also say I’m looking for Dexter, where’s it available? Oh, here it’s for free. Here’s the first episode is free, but then you gotta pay here’s the subscription price.
The reason that when you ask what it’s on and I don’t always know, because I sometimes follow just oh, I wanted to watch it and I followed the twisted path to get in . Yep. Yep. What I mean? Yeah. Cool.
Stephen: Off the look that up, we’ll put a link cuz now I’d like to sit and watch it. I don’t watch enough of the documentaries anymore.
I used to you, I get sucked into ’em once I do, but then I just haven’t that the last couple years with all the stuff Colin did I tend to catch paranormal, this, that, and the other thing. And that’s just been the rut I’ve been in. Time to get off of that.
Alan: We, we really try to mix it up enough so that, Hey, if we’ve watched too many documentaries, let’s go watch some action movie.
Let’s go watch some baking. Let’s let’s go watch a comedy special. And also, I, it’s kinda funny. I can’t really didn’t mention this. We got home in time to go see on Sunday night, Doug stand hope, a great standup comedian. Really. It can be very ascetic. He tells the truth really Whitly but very, he tells big truths.
And sometimes that really gets in people’s face about it. Last night, we saw Michelle Wolf who was a big hit from a couple years ago in either Montreal, Toronto, and now continues to build her career. And then this coming Sunday night with labor day weekend, we’re seeing David tell. So in a week we’re gonna see three great standup comedian.
Nice. And that’s what a one that’s our favorite night out, to go and guess laugh your butt off for two hours. Sip a couple diet Coke. In the company of all these other people that there’s hardly anybody ever at a comedy club that doesn’t want to be there, you go to a ball game or various other things.
And half the people there are like, I’m gonna get another beer or a hot dog, and I’m gonna talk to my friends, but most people they’re really there to see the act on stage, so I just, we love that. Laughter we love hearing that seeing that people can be that witty after you’ve seen, I’ve seen 60 years worth of comedy.
And yet they’re still finding ways to surprise me to come up with a new twist on a joke and commentary on modern times and stuff. It’s it. So we had then wonderful times both Sunday and Monday nights. Nice. It just good stuff. Hill is the picnic and troll the club we have in town. It’s like they have a little clip now before that, of all the comedians going, I just was that Hillary, what a great club.
So it really is. It’s cool to have one of the best things in the world, right? In Cleveland, every comic loves to work. Hillary. So that’s kind cool. You know what I mean? Anything that’s going between New York and Chicago, they’re gonna stop in Cleveland because Nick Cox says cost. This does such a great job.
And the crowds here are always good. One, one of the guys makes a comment comedian comedy always does good in cities where people have no hope. So I was like, oh, that’s kinda a lefthanded compliment to Cleveland. And nonetheless, we don’t take ourselves too seriously here. So there’s no point on of
Stephen: errors.
You know what I mean? It’s kinda so I’ve been doing is starting to promote the author stuff. I’ve been on a couple podcasts recently. Wonderful. And this is here’s the geek thing and you’ll appreciate, this is to gain some interest from some of these cuz some of ’em are pretty booked and they like really vet who they want to be on there.
But the ones I’ve the last couple weeks that I’ve gotten, I put on there that something along the lines in my bio of, Hey, you know what, he owns a Wolf, so why wouldn’t he write fantasy? And every single one’s okay, wait, you own a Wolf. And they wanna talk about the Wolf, which gets me that in the door, and it’s that it fits
Alan: in. That’s a good tagline. That’s a good little fun fact to know in trouble. Yes. Good for you. That’s
Stephen: And I think kids too, you tell kids that you have a Wolf and and that’s a good in with that. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to use this and that’s gotten in.
Yeah. So I’ve been on a couple podcasts and then this weekend is the Pennsylvania RG that I’m giving my talk at practicing again once again with men of friends to get good feedback, but I’ve also got my card game. I don’t did I talk, I mentioned to you the card game, the L. Christmas.
Yeah. So I finally, it clicked one day on oh, here’s the element. That’s not been working. That here’s a way to make it work and stuff. So I talked to some of our friends and we’re gonna play test it. The hopefully improved final version. That’s actually playable. Okay. So
Alan: are you print your own cards?
Are you 3d printing? Little figurines? What, how are you? Yeah
Stephen: I’ve got next. I’ll put a link in. There’s a great program on steam called card creator by pixel lotto. And it’s really, they’ve been improving it, working on it. And it’s a really great program for making card games. They have layers, so you can have your pictures and your outline to the card and you set it up.
Everything goes in its own spot and it, so it’s easy to keep things aligned and looking
Alan: goods and logos and where the info that’s very
Stephen: cool. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then they just started coming out with another one called tabletop creator to help you create board games. Wow. Yeah. And I like really and it prints out and I, and you just gotta cut ’em and stick ’em in sleeves and you can play so it’s really nice and easy to iterate.
Oh, okay. That didn’t work. Make notes, change the cards, print out the new version works really well. Yeah. And if I play trusting you get a better ter idea. Is it balanced now? Is it, does it move forward? Is it the hour and a half that I want instead of the 10 hour that I want? Yeah, it’s gonna be a busy weekend.
I’m looking forward to it get through all the work stuff this week. If I can relax on the weekend and PA they always have the book sale, so I’ve got a bunch of books to take and I’ll probably come home with just as many exactly. And they’re doing karaoke Saturday. So I’m like, oh, do I really wanna do karaoke?
Maybe I know there’s always enough free alcohol. So yeah, I’ll probably end up on the karaoke stage. ,
Alan: it’s been honestly eight, 10 years since we’ve been in Pittsburgh because CO’s family often has a get together usually on like Sunday. And so it’s right in the heart of when we wanna be out of town.
And after a while I’ve stopped even trying to hold that weekend free because there is so much that we know we’re already taking for there. So it’s almost always there’s concerts. There’s we’ll go to the last baseball game of the season. We’ll have a nice I don’t know, on our own kind of a relaxed, but get together with family, but no longer the sup Pittsburgh almost through a very nice gathering.
It’s hard for us to get away
Stephen: from that. Yeah. It is a, it’s a rough weekend. I understand why they do it cuz it’s a nice three day thing and it’s a pretty big RG. It’s not as big as Chicago obviously, but good size. And I’ve missed a few things. Like I, the Canfield fair is always that weekend and I like the candid fair.
The air show is that weekend. I like the air show. So
Alan: you always hear it right here. Cause we’re near the lake.
Stephen: Know that’s right. Yeah. But I it gives me a good chance to play my game and test it and people willing to give me feedback and enjoy it and chance to do my talk play some games myself and no driving.
Okay. You might get a little tipsy last time I was heading to bed at 1:00 AM and somebody drug me into a hearts game you know how that goes
Alan: yeah. I remember that on any number of times Colleen and I wrote way late because when you know, you don’t have to be like.
Really back to the world until Monday, you can really have fun on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. Yeah. And know you’re gonna have time to recover. exactly. We, not lately, but I dunno. I’ve been going to since like early nineties easily for the first 10, 15 years we saw Dawn either Friday or Saturday night, we just were playing games and it wasn’t the game.
It was you’re with your friends and you’re laughing, you’re butt off for hours and hours. And just one another game. Sure. Some people swap in and out at the table you get some fresh blood and stuff, but, or to, I don’t know when we replaced it as oh, they have a little ice test or a freezer that has.
All the ice cream you might ever want. That’s bad.
Stephen: One an hour, one an hour. And some of the programs look really cool. They have a mime workshop. They’re doing a juggling workshop. They’re gonna have service dogs in I think bill and Bria had that the one year they had the service dogs.
They demonstrated the training in that they’re gonna have the zoo in to show zoo in all things again, the topics range all over the board. And I think someone’s doing a knitting thing, so that’s right.
Alan: There’s almost stitch and bitch for the people that are doing either knitting or crocheting and stuff.
I remember seeing what about rescued greyhounds, not service dogs, but were they, when they let, ’em be done at the track, they don’t destroy them. They get they adopt them out. Yes. And so whole people brought in their fun Greyhound and I was still a little bit weirded out because they’re.
Built for running that they have no extra mass on them. Yeah. And they’re standing, they’re kinda like shaking, cuz I think they’re cold and like that’s not a, it makes me nervous to see the doggy nervous. I want them to be like relaxing and sitting on the floor and people giving them a belly rub, want them looking like they’re getting ready to bolt.
Do you know what I mean? I dunno why that image stayed with me, but. Felt bad that he has no body fat. Yeah. I do not suffer from that problem. And I think bill is doing a talk on science fiction in the twenties. Cause the theme is back to the twenties. Finally getting back into our 2020s.
Stephen: So got it. Bill, I think is doing 1920s science fiction talk. So that’s cool. How
Alan: was it Pittsburgh that I met William 10 like guy was a bill told me after I heard him talk, he was also like, let me tell you even more about what this guy was like, he’s the name that you don’t know amongst the top 10 guys that were writing back in the thirties, forties, fifties.
Wow. You know what I mean? So it, he, bill is an incredible resource. He’s just, and he’s such pleasant company and he’s so knowledgeable, such a dry sense of humor. It’s that’s one of the biggest things that I miss is not getting a chance to say hi to bill and Bria. Yeah.
Stephen: And
Alan: that’s and David, Shirley, my other friends.
Yeah.
Stephen: Then Paul and Marty there’s and Dave, his whole family that’s right. One of the things I’ve said since I met bill is I appreciate authors because authors can be like celebrities and rock stars. When you read a book and you love it and you love all their books and you meet ’em, you’re like, oh my God, it’s so great.
You have that feeling, but it, but they’re not, they don’t get that as much as celebrities. And they’re much more down to earth. They’ll talk to you and bill. I remember Colin, we went to Bill’s house and he’s got books all over the place. He let us borrow books and wow. It was just really great.
And then Colin was in high school and the kids were all talking about some of their favorite authors. Some of his friends said, oh yeah, I love William Keith and Colin goes, oh yeah, I know him. I’ve stayed at his house. And they’re like, what? . And they were just flipping out about it. but bill is, you’d never know it going down the street at who he is and stuff, but he’s been writing for 35 some years or whatever.
Exactly. And he gets in the top 10 list. He’s on the USA times, but you can approach him and talk to him and he’ll take the time. There’s no egotistic feeling to him. No, I’m better than you at all. Absolutely.
Alan: That’s if anything that’s one of those as the way those things work is there’s usually meals and everybody just takes whatever.
I almost always get a chance to sit for one of the meals with him, just by the way, we share the same birthday. So we birthday brothers have to catch up and wish each other. Because it’s August, then we usually, and so just that it, one of those things where I often have, I like going to programs, I like learning new things.
So I finish with whatever I’m doing and I run off. He must be the guy that the most times I’ve said, why don’t we just keep talking? I don’t really need to see the skunk rescue thing. I really wanna sit here with you for a
Stephen: moment. I’ll tell you one of Collins’s fondest, RG memories. Yeah. He we’ve been going to RGS for a while.
A couple of them Chicago, and some of the other ones, one of his favorite memories was when he got to sit down with you and talk like three and a half hours of comic books. And there was a whole table of people, but you actually engaged him. And he’s I, it was great. He was talking to me and not ignoring me and stuff.
So that’s one of his fondest memories talking to a that’s very
Alan: sweet. I just that given that, how much is there? 30 plus years between us? He knew all kinds of stuff, so it really was a conversation. It wasn’t just, you try all about comic books. It was fun to hear what he most liked, what his favorite memories were and my trying to share my favorites and then Rediscovering sometimes there’s things that you don’t think about for 20, 30 years until someone brings it up.
It’s oh, that was a great storyline. Yeah. So that was really a pleasure for me as
Stephen: well. Yeah. Yeah. He enjoyed that. so got a good RRG and it’s almost winter time. It’s almost our holiday time. So yeah, I told you, sorry. I was going through the building and my father used to do wood cutouts that he’d put in the yard.
So I’ve been pulling those out cuz we wanna save em before the building collapses and I put all the Halloween ones out and I’ve got 50 Halloween wood cutouts in the yard and like a whole pumpkin patch and
Alan: that’s pretty cool. Just all sorts of stuff. You’re one of the houses that people like slow down on the road to see all the stuff in your yard.
I
Stephen: hope so. I hope so. He put a lot of work into those drives me crazy cuz now I’ve got his final place to put ’em all they do look cool.
Alan: I am. I am looking for it obviously to, to Halloween that’s the biggie for the year for us. We had to miss the ag. I think we’re gonna, we will make it almost certainly to Cincinnati.
Sometimes I’ve gone to that solo. It used to be that December was really tough month for Colleen, because she had so much year end close meeting. And so many clients that pushed it to them. Wow. He has regularly worked with them now to not have it be that everybody gets their holidays spoiled by handling things on December 23rd.
You know what I mean? So really might be that we’ll both be there together, but that’s another one, like Dayton, like Columbus, like others that it’s couple hundred people. So many people have become my friends over the years. So it’s just so nice to catch up with everybody over the course of time, the usual great programs, great games.
I give a program, whatever else it might be. It’s just men and weekends are still a delight to me. Yeah. Even though sometimes they’re Sometimes they feel a little bit the same, there’s not enough necessarily different about them, but I like that thing it’s I don’t stop writing rollercoaster cause I’ve written it a couple times.
I still like that feeling. And so I
Stephen: No matter what, you can always sit in hospitality, talking with somebody about some topic and there’s always games to pull up and play. There’s always somebody around the play. That’s one of the things with we in Chicago when I’ve gone to that is I walk around the room and it’ll take me an hour just to see what all games I’m like.
Okay, there’s only 45 games I need to play before I leave but then someone will just come up to you and say, Hey, we’re getting ready to play such and such. You wanna join us? That’s I love it. Sure. I’ve never played this. That’s okay. Have a seat and that’s the great thing.
Not only about most mens, but game players too that’s
Alan: true. Very welcoming. They’re very much like they don’t keep it to themselves. They do Hey, come over here. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Once in a while, Alene and I would go win with the intent of let’s have a quick game of Scrabble and then we don’t end up playing by ourselves because we want people ask us to join.
Of course we wanna join. You know what I mean? Yes.
Stephen: Yeah. Learn lots of new games that way too. So yeah. Yeah.
Alan: Orreal is wonderful about that. Whatever his latest favorites are. He’ll always be like, come in, let me explain this to you. We’ll be playing in minutes and we’ll have a couple good rounds. That’s a couple people
Stephen: next year.
They’re doing the the the games thing in Columbus. Yes. Meant to select stuff. Exactly mind games. Thank you, duh. I couldn’t think of it in my mind. But so I’m really looking to wanna do that next year. I missed it when it was in Canton and maybe some volunteer time to help out a little bit and stuff.
So exactly. Looking forward to that too.
Alan: Yeah, in fact I’ll be helping with that one. It James Nelly and his, I think I know for him and maybe his wife are the co-chairs and he said, Hey, would you be one of my day chairs so that I’ll be the guy that like, make sure the games get put back in alphabet loader, make sure that the signs of food combat , that people actually clean up their tables a little bit.
It’s, it’ll be harder for me to fit in my 30 plus games, but I like him a lot. He’s always been a very good guy. And so I want him to not burn. I want him to have a nice time too. Yeah. And for sure, that’ll be an episode then want to talk about some of the games, what we’re allowed to talk about live
podcast from there we really could,
Stephen: right.
We talked about that in the hallway, in between game sessions. So what’d you play? What’d you like, okay. Gotta go yeah. And then we’ll just spring it all together.
Alan: Exactly. Instead of being a big hour, we should do little dispatches. You know what I mean? Every once in a while, I’ll I’ll hold the micro for you and you can gimme your what’s your latest three good ones.
Oh, B I don’t think there’s any restrictions on saying what you liked if it’s just out to the world, I think you’re not supposed to try to influence other people at the event while you’re playing. Yeah. But hopefully of course anybody could just watch it while we’re there. I don’t know.
It might be one of those things that we just have to ask permission. You know what I mean? The downside is that we’ll talk a little bit about the games. The upside is that more people will know about this cool thing going on, because we have a couple thousand listeners tune it in that kind of thing.
Stephen: And I’ll probably do a few clips and stuff this weekend. Put it up on YouTube at least like the service dogs, things that I other geeks are interested in. Those little clips sometime are
Alan: cool. Yeah. It’s funny. I, I. I took lots of photos of the Philadelphia is full of murals.
And yet once I got home immediately started to work on other stuff and I haven’t done except for a little write up. I haven’t really done here’s the Philadelphia experience and maybe I still will post some of those things. Cause that’s one of the fun things is sharing that and then hearing everybody else chime in with, oh yeah, I was there and everybody loves to talk about travel.
Stephen: We should put it into a slideshow with the Rocky theme.
Alan: we, it’s kinda funny that the most turnaround, the quickest turnaround I’ve ever done for be Hey, in October I’m here’s trip, we went on in August. You know that.
Stephen: Hey man,
Alan: thank you so much for flexibility on time today and we, no, we’ll see you in a week. Okay. See you in a week. All right, bye. Okay. Byebye.
