Five Points for Smell
Casey:
I know I'm going to end up disappointed by the end of the night, but sitting here now, where ignorance is Liss, I am so excited for the after show.
Marco:
You've been on fire with the Liss puns recently.
Marco:
They've been... Well, I don't know if fire is really... Don't encourage him.
Marco:
You've been on this mud waterfall for...
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So Rob Sayer writes, Casey mentioned the Oracle Android Java case in the S3 API conversation.
Casey:
So to back up a half step, we were talking about, is it OK to copy another party's API?
Casey:
Is that cool?
Casey:
Is that not cool?
Casey:
And I said, oh, well, you know, there was a big lawsuit between Oracle and Android, who had basically copied but re-implemented the Java APIs, or at least that's my vague understanding of it.
Casey:
So anyway, Rob continues.
Casey:
The Supreme Court said that this was fair use.
Casey:
I've always found this case funny because Oracle, in fact, copies the S3 API.
Casey:
So here it was.
Casey:
Oracle took Google and Android and so on to court saying, oh, you copied our stuff.
Casey:
And then Oracle turned right around and said, oh, you know, we're going to copy the S3 API.
Casey:
That sounds great.
Casey:
Thank you.
John:
I'm sure what Oracle would say is that, well, APIs are not all the same.
John:
We're talking about a programming interface or local code in a machine, and this is a network protocol, HTTP requests with certain paths and parameters and so on.
John:
And that's totally different.
John:
These days, we think of them all as APIs, but there is a case to be made that
John:
If there was to be some kind of law coming out of that Java Oracle thing, it might not apply to network APIs.
Casey:
That's a fair point.
Casey:
And with regard to Marco's tear, which I thought was justified at the time, about Apple in the hypothetical Apple car application.
Casey:
They wouldn't want to put any branding on the tires.
Casey:
They would want a completely flat tire.
Casey:
You didn't go so far as to say white walls, but you never know.
Casey:
If Johnny is still contracting, it could be.
Casey:
He loves his white rooms.
Marco:
You know what Johnny would do?
Marco:
All white tires.
Marco:
And just pretend like they don't get dirty.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
That's the same way.
Marco:
There's never a power cord in their product photography.
Marco:
You know what?
Marco:
We're actually going to have this white car driving on this white storefront, this white Apple store floor as the demo with white tires.
Marco:
And forget what it looks like in the real world.
Marco:
It'll always look like this.
Marco:
Well, they'd have a space gray option too.
Yeah.
Casey:
If it's all white with white tires, am I contractually obligated to buy one?
Casey:
Is that how this works?
Casey:
It would just happen to you.
Casey:
That's what happens with white cars.
Casey:
It would just happen.
Casey:
Anyway, so with regard to Apple wanting brand-free tires, TK wrote to us to point out an article about how Ford apparently demanded that Goodyear remove the Wrangler branding for tires installed on Broncos, which I thought was very funny.
John:
Although they didn't, as far as I can tell, they're not removing the word Goodyear.
John:
And when they removed Wrangler, they only removed it from one side.
John:
It's like, if you're going to remove Wrangler, they only removed it from the outside side, so it's still on the inside.
John:
It just seems kind of half-hearted all around.
Marco:
Well, and I'm sure there's probably practical reasons, like maybe like when they stock these tires in the warehouse, they could more easily see what they are or whatever.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But yeah, it's kind of funny that there's this weird fluke that like a popular line of off-road capable Goodyear tires is called the Wrangler, while also elsewhere in the car business is a popular vehicle called the Wrangler by a different company, which is kind of this amazing failure of trademark law.
Marco:
These two should never have been allowed to coexist in the same industry, but oh well.
John:
A tire and a car.
John:
I mean, you can drive your Bronco while wearing Wrangler jeans, probably.
John:
Yeah, that's a whole different industry.
Casey:
Yeah, that's a different industry.
John:
I know it's different, but tires and an entire car, it's fine.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, regardless, a friend of the show, Sam Welsamid, who you might remember from a recent episode of Upgrade, which is very good.
Casey:
Anyway, Sam writes to say,
Casey:
They look identical, but they may have different rubber compounds or even different internal construction, the aftermarket ones or the generic version.
Casey:
I had no idea this was the case, so I thought that was fascinating.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
John, tell me about your TV.
Casey:
Do you have any updates for us, please?
John:
I do.
John:
I have a handful of updates.
John:
So first, on the whole Wi-Fi front, my television wouldn't connect to Wi-Fi.
John:
We had some ideas from folks out there that...
John:
First is from Jeff C, who said, asked if your date and time is set correctly on the TV.
John:
He says, my Sony TV wouldn't connect to Wi-Fi when the date and time was incorrect.
John:
That is a common thing, also a common thing for SSL certificates.
John:
If you're connecting to websites and telling you the certificate's invalid, make sure your date and time are set correctly.
John:
Now, most modern devices, especially ones that connect to the internet,
John:
connect to some kind of network time service you don't have to really do this manually like like in the old days and on some you know very behind the times electronic devices the very first thing you do when you turn it on it would ask you to set the date and time but these days if there's an expectation they'll have a network connection they don't ask you to do that so they should be set correctly but it's worth looking into that maybe ntp server you can't get to it on your network for some reason or there's some kind of problem or it thinks it's in the wrong time zone or something so that's worth checking that was not the problem with my television however
John:
uh justin winchester says make sure you have limit ip address tracking turned on of your home turned off for your home wi-fi or your phone also make sure local access is turned on for the app this is so when you you do something on the tv and it says hey just launch the youtube app and press a button and we'll sign you in right limit he says the limit ip address tracking uh should be turned off on your phone and on your wi-fi i don't think that's the problem i double checked it to make sure i
John:
I don't have that turned on, I don't think, on any of my devices and also the local access thing for the app.
John:
That's when you launch an app and it prompts you and it says whatever app wants to be able to access the local network and you're not sure what it means.
John:
So you just say OK.
John:
I would just say OK, too.
John:
So I don't think either one of those were the problem.
John:
Unfortunately, I haven't had an opportunity to set up another app since I already did all my setup.
John:
So I haven't tested these theories, but it's two more things for people to check if you're having problems with this.
John:
None of these helped my, obviously, get my television on Wi-Fi.
John:
The thing I was thinking of when I was messing with it, the very obvious first thing to try is, how about just unplug the Ethernet?
John:
Because maybe it just gets cranky that you have Ethernet and Wi-Fi at the same time, and it can't handle it.
John:
It just wants there to be one network connection.
John:
It's not sophisticated enough to handle both of them.
John:
So just unplug the Ethernet.
John:
And the reason I didn't do that immediately is, oh, I've got to crawl behind the TV again.
John:
I've got to pull off that panel.
John:
I've got to unplug the cable.
John:
Like, just...
John:
i thought i could get it work and i didn't want to go crawl behind there but eventually i did crawl behind there because i was behind there for other reasons which we'll get to in a minute uh and yeah if you unplug the internet it connects to wi-fi just fine so that's a pretty cruddy limitation of whatever version of android google tv thing this is running that it just can't handle ethernet and wi-fi if you have ethernet plugged in wi-fi will never ever connect but as soon as you unplug the internet it connects just fine
John:
And the reason I was interested in that is something I discovered about my television that I should have known, but maybe it didn't concern me.
John:
All right, so there's an app that comes with the TV.
John:
It's called Bravia Core.
John:
Lots of listeners to ATP wrote in to tell me, hey, I've got a Sony TV too.
John:
Make sure you don't look, don't ignore the Bravia Core app.
John:
It's a terrible name.
John:
Bravia is Sony's like brand name for their televisions.
John:
Technically my television is the Bravia XR blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
The Bravia Core app, it's a movie app.
John:
You know, Sony is also a movie studio, and they have a bunch of movies, right?
John:
So you can pay for, download, or stream movies from the Sony movie collection.
John:
Maybe others, I don't know.
John:
But the advantage of the Bravia Core app is, one, when you buy the super expensive TV, it comes with like 10 credits to get movies.
John:
So, hey, free movies.
John:
You know, I think each movie is like one credit or something, so I can get 10 movies if I want, as long as they're Sony movies.
John:
And two, apparently, Bravia Core movies...
John:
let you either stream or download or both movies in much higher quality than even the iTunes store.
John:
Like that there are, you know, 4K, full res, high bit rate, maybe not as high as Blu-ray because Blu-rays are like, you know, 60 gigs of movie or whatever it is, but much higher than you would get on a typical streaming service.
John:
And I'm like, OK, that's cool.
John:
I should check that out.
John:
But then I heard from other people and they said, oh, yeah, I tried to use the Bravia Core app, but I couldn't play the movies back at the, you know, at the high bit rate because it would like stutter.
John:
My network connection wasn't fast enough to keep up.
John:
And I was like, well, I won't have that problem.
John:
I'm plugged into Ethernet.
John:
Then some people were saying, oh, yeah, I'm on Ethernet, too, and I also couldn't get my Wi-Fi to connect.
John:
But by the way, I was trying to play movies from Broadview Core, and they were stuttering even when I was on Ethernet.
John:
And the reason for that is that the Ethernet is 100 megabits.
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
I don't know what century this is.
John:
But, I mean, you would think 100 megabits is plenty for a movie because most things that are on streaming services are like single-digit megabits.
John:
Like, it's heavily compressed video.
John:
You know, this is the magic of modern compression algorithms.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You can watch the movie and it doesn't take up.
John:
You know, you don't need huge amounts of bandwidth.
John:
That's why people can get away with it on Wi-Fi.
John:
Because even though the theoretical bandwidth on Wi-Fi is very high, from wherever people's televisions are to wherever their routers are with interference from walls and stuff like that, maybe you're only getting 10, 20 megabits at your television.
John:
Heck, maybe you're getting 9 megabits.
John:
That's still enough to stream most things, especially if it's not 4K content, right?
John:
So it's 100 megabits.
John:
And apparently 100 megabit Ethernet is not enough to stream some of the bigger, chunkier movies that are there.
John:
And so the first thing I wanted to, you know, check what kind of speeds I'm getting on Wi-Fi because people saying, oh, you know, don't use Ethernet.
John:
You should use Wi-Fi because you can get higher than 100 megabits on Wi-Fi.
John:
So that's why I unplugged the ethernet cable connected to Wi-Fi and then I had to figure out how fast the Wi-Fi is.
John:
So I needed to get a speed test application and I had to get it from like the Sony app store, right?
John:
Because I can't do it on Apple TV or something because that wouldn't be testing the TV's ethernet connection would just be testing the Apple TV's ethernet connection, which by the way, the Apple TV was 100 megabits for years and years, right?
John:
I hope it's still not and I'm not entirely sure.
Marco:
No, I think the modern ones are.
Marco:
I think once it went to 4K, I believe that's when they upped it.
John:
Yep, I believe that's when.
John:
Although I'm not sure there's any content that I watch on my Apple TV that exceeds 100 megabits anyway.
John:
But yeah, so I have to download it from the Sony App Store.
John:
So go to the Sony App Store, search for speed test, and there's like...
John:
Just, you know, like the usual suspects lineup of sketchy looking applications that all claim to be speed tests.
John:
You know, none of them are recognizable brands of any kind of thing.
John:
They all just look like generic speed tests like, hmm, which one of these is least likely to destroy my television?
John:
So I downloaded a couple of them.
John:
One of them didn't work at all.
John:
One of them looks a little bit janky, but one of them did actually run a speed test.
John:
And on my Wi-Fi, from the position of all my routers and everything, I was getting like, you know, 70, 80 gigabits, not gigabits, megabits, 70, 80 megabits per second.
John:
which is less than the Ethernet.
John:
So I plug the Ethernet bit and tried that, and sure enough, it gets like 9900 megabits, just like you would expect.
John:
So my Wi-Fi in my position in my television, where all my routers are in my house, is not faster than 100 megabits.
John:
So what am I supposed to do?
John:
I want faster than 100 megabits into this television because, I don't know, I want to watch Bravia Core.
John:
I want to see the fancy stuff.
John:
Granted, I have a Blu-ray player for all that too, but I have these 10 free movie credits and I'd like to see the full quality.
John:
I asked this to Merlin last night on Rectiv's recording, which will come out sometime in the future, but I'll ask you two, what should I do?
John:
Can you DFU restore your TV?
Yeah.
John:
It's 100 megabits Ethernet port.
John:
That's never getting any faster, right?
John:
And my Wi-Fi is not fast enough given my router location.
John:
So I want to get more than 100 megabits of data into my television.
Casey:
Could you put another Eero connected via Ethernet directly next to the TV?
Marco:
Is there any way to otherwise pipe in Ethernet?
Marco:
Would a USB 3 Ethernet adapter work?
Marco:
Probably not.
John:
That's the thing I pursued.
John:
If you search, you will find plenty of USB-A to Ethernet adapters that claim gigabit Ethernet speeds.
John:
This television does have USB-A ports on it.
John:
Most modern televisions do.
John:
And from other Sony people out there who have Sony televisions,
John:
older sony televisions they said yeah i got a usb to ethernet adapter and it let me get faster speeds right unfortunately since this television is so new i had trouble finding people who had this television and had done that successfully so people like oh i've got an a80j or an a90j and i did this and that worked i was like well
John:
I don't know, you know, things change.
John:
The OS version is different.
John:
This is a brand new TV.
John:
I'm not sure what will work.
John:
If you look at the USB to either adapters that you will see for sale, you know, at Amazon or whatever, there's tons of them, but there's nothing to really distinguish them other than the price and some branding.
John:
They all kind of look the same.
John:
But this is not a computer, right?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I can't install drivers as far as I know to make this adapter work.
John:
So it's either going to work or it's not going to work.
John:
So I ordered one and I picked a name brand.
John:
I ordered the anchor one.
John:
I'm like, I've heard of them.
John:
I have their power adapters or whatever.
John:
This seems like a, you know, reasonable quality product.
John:
Let me try it.
John:
TV didn't see it at all.
John:
Plug it in.
John:
Nothing happens.
John:
It's totally invisible to television.
John:
There's no way to make it detected as far as I can tell.
John:
It just didn't work at all.
John:
In the time that it took to ship that, I had been doing more Google searching.
John:
I found someone with an actual A95K, and they said, I use this specific adapter, and it worked.
John:
So I just bought the exact one that they had.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
It is one of those Amazon products with a giant name that I'm not going to read right now, but it is from Cable Matters.
John:
It looks exactly the same as the Anker one, but like a different color.
John:
And this one works.
John:
Apparently, the theory is that you have to have the RTL8153 chipset inside the adapter.
John:
And that, you know, the Google TV OS will recognize.
John:
And yes, you plug it in, it recognizes that it works.
John:
I did a speed test.
John:
I wasn't getting a gigabit, but I was peaking around 700 or 800 megabits.
John:
So pretty good.
John:
And that's much more convenient than getting a whole other Euro thing and putting the Wi-Fi two inches away.
John:
And, you know, especially since all my like top end Euro 6 Pro or whatever things are in use in the house.
John:
I would have to either buy another fancy one to get the maximum Wi-Fi speed or use one of my older, lesser ones that can't even do the most modern stuff.
John:
wi-fi standards and i also don't even know what wi-fi standards the television supports i don't even know what the most modern one is but what is the top end one now it's not ac anymore six yeah they just went to numbers anyway or six e i don't know anyway the the usb to ethernet adapter you know it's a little bit weird and janky and you might not think of it but it worked and so now that's how my television is connected
Marco:
even though that's a stupid thing you shouldn't even have to do that i'm glad that was the answer because the wi-fi right next to it thing just kind of seemed dirty it's like it's like when you wanted to like record stuff on a cassette when you were younger before you knew anything and had anything and it's like all right i can hold my boom box up to the speaker of another radio and hit record and maybe it'll work and it does kind of work but not well and it seems wrong and it's not the right way to do it like so i'm glad you found like the the correct way among the limited options that were available to you
John:
although honestly it's pretty shameful if sony's gonna have this service and the selling point is we have super high quality movies like put a gigabit ethernet porting a tv it's it's mostly has to do with i think the fact that the even though the panel on the a95k is this fancy new samsung quantum dot oled thing the guts of the tv are not substantially different in terms of like the decoding hardware and everything than they were on like last year's model of sony television so that's part of why the limit has the limitations in gaming uh and stuff uh that the lg1 doesn't because the lg is just ahead of them on their
John:
sort of in the computer that is inside the television so you know that's a shame but seriously you know for a television this price there's no reason it should have 100 megabit ethernet port or at least it should warn you about it say don't use this it's bad the fact that the usb port to the rescue geez what a world
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by the Stack Overflow podcast.
Marco:
For more than a dozen years, the Stack Overflow podcast has been exploring what it means to be a developer and how the art and practice of software programming is changing our world.
Marco:
I have personally listened to the Stack Overflow podcast for most of that time, I think.
Marco:
This was one of the first podcasts I ever listened to on a
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The people who built that and the culture and the company that they created over time, they're now doing all sorts of great stuff, including the Stack Overflow podcast.
Marco:
From Rails to React, from Java to Node, they host important conversations and fascinating guests that will help you understand how technology is made and where it's headed.
Marco:
It's now hosted by Ben Popper, Matt Kiernander, Cassidy Williams, and Siora Ford.
Marco:
So the Stack Overflow podcast is your home for all things code.
Marco:
They offer new episodes twice a week.
Marco:
And of course, it's available in every podcast app.
Marco:
Wherever you get your podcast, you can find the Stack Overflow podcast.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
I love Stack Overflow and I love the company they built and I love the product they built.
Marco:
And the Stack Overflow podcast is exactly as good as you'd think it would be from Stack Overflow itself.
Marco:
So see for yourself.
Marco:
Once again, the Stack Overflow podcast available wherever you get your podcasts.
Marco:
Thank you so much to the Stack Overflow podcast for being in my ears for so many years and for sponsoring our show.
John:
So in terms of the TiVo remote codes, trying to get my TiVo remote to control the power and the volume and everything on my television.
John:
And first the codes weren't working.
John:
Then I swapped the batteries.
John:
And then the codes were kind of working.
John:
But it was janky, especially for like volume up and down.
John:
You'd hit the all volume up button and nothing would happen.
John:
You'd hit it again.
John:
It would go up three notches.
John:
It was not quite working right.
John:
So I actually did contact TiVo support, which apparently still exists, and said, hey, I've got this new TV.
John:
I tried entering remote codes.
John:
None of them quite work the way I want them to.
John:
What should I do?
John:
And they replied and pointed me to the article that I had already seen that many other people pointed me to.
John:
It was like, oh, here's how you can make the remote scan through all the codes with this, you know, point, you know, enter in 0999 and it will just go through all the codes and press the channel up button every two seconds to keep going through the codes.
John:
First of all, that article tells you to do that.
John:
Like, I understand what it's saying.
John:
Like, oh, it's 10,000 codes.
John:
You're not going to type them all in yourself.
John:
So just let the remote do it for you.
John:
It never said...
John:
what happens what should happen all it said is every two seconds you know allow at least two seconds between presses and then press channel up first of all why am i doing that why doesn't it just go through all the codes and second of all what is supposed to happen during this process like when it finds the code will it stop when it finds the code how does it know when it finds the code should i be watching for something that happens should i be watching for the tower to turn off and then i should hit a button to say hey you found it there's no in the article doesn't tell you what you should do so
John:
Either this doesn't work at all or I don't understand what I'm supposed to do.
John:
Because I tried it like three times and nothing happens.
John:
The television just sits there showing whatever it's showing.
John:
The remote sits there and nothing ever happens.
John:
So I don't understand it at all.
John:
But anyway, they said that and that wasn't helpful.
John:
And they said, if you have any other problems, contact Sony.
John:
so they passed the buck so I don't know what I'm gonna do because contacting Sony seems like it will not be fruitful at least TiVo replied and had you know a suggestion but not not a great support experience because I'd feel like in the good old days of TiVo it would be like it's their job to know all like they put these codes in the UI it's part of the TiVo experience like don't worry we'll figure this out for you here if you have a Sony television here are the codes we figured them all out and when there's a new code we put the new code in the UI you know
John:
And this is a brand new TV, and you would think, oh, we're going to be on top of this new TV.
John:
We'll have the new codes for whatever.
John:
But nope.
John:
They just said, if it still doesn't work, you know, this is all we know.
John:
If it still doesn't work, contact Sony.
Casey:
So, I'm sorry.
Casey:
You said that you mash on the channel up button repeatedly, which, okay, so far, so good.
Casey:
Channel up is an interesting choice.
Casey:
But
Casey:
You said there's no way to indicate that it has worked because my expectation is like I've done this with remotes before.
Casey:
In fact, we'll talk about that later.
Casey:
And what you would typically do is do like power or volume or something like that, something that's generic across any sort of input.
Casey:
And then when you've hit the right one, when the volume changes or the TV turns off or what have you, then you hit a different button on the remote to say to the remote, yeah, yeah, that was that last one.
Casey:
That was the one.
Casey:
Save it.
Casey:
And you're saying that there's no option for that in the TiVo?
John:
I mean, all I'm saying is the support document didn't say that.
John:
It just said, enter this code, and then allowing at least two seconds between presses, keep pressing the channel up button, and it will try all sorts of codes, right?
John:
The way you do it normally is you hold down some buttons for five seconds, you enter a four-digit code, and then you try the power button.
John:
Like, entering the four-digit code says, I'm going to be this kind of universal remote code, right?
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
So as soon as if you try the power button, it works, you're done because you don't have to enter any more codes like that configuration process to hold down the button.
John:
So light turns on and type in the four digit code.
John:
That's it.
John:
You're done.
John:
There's no other step.
John:
But the whole point of this other thing is it's going to cycle through the code.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
And I don't it didn't say like, oh, when the television turns off, the remote will just magically know and it will stop cycling.
John:
Or when the television turns off, quick hit this button to tell the remote, hey, you found it.
John:
It didn't say that in the support article, so I don't understand if the support article says, yeah, oh yeah, hold down the buttons and enter 0999, and then every two seconds hit channel up, and then just live there for the rest of your life hitting channel up every two seconds?
John:
I have no idea.
Casey:
A real-time follow-up, RIPMac, I guess RIPMac, says in the chat, at the very bottom it says, quote, if you press channel up and your TV turns off, press enter to select the code.
Casey:
Press the TV power button to test the code.
Casey:
If your TV turns on, you have successfully programmed the remote.
John:
This is interesting because this is a different document than the one I had.
John:
Because the one I was pointed to was at a different URL and it had the 0999 code, not the 199.
John:
I guess the 199 one's for AV stereo receivers.
John:
All right.
John:
So, I mean, I can try that next time.
John:
Let's see if it'll go through all the codes.
John:
But I do wonder if it's actually using all 1,000 of them.
John:
The other thing is, how many codes is it going through and how long it'll be sitting there hitting channel up?
John:
Because I know a couple of them will at least work for the power button and kind of work for the volume.
Casey:
It seems to me like it's just time to abandon that piece of craft Tivo.
Casey:
Am I right?
John:
No, still pretty good.
John:
Except for not 4K, obviously.
Casey:
There's got to be something that would serve these purposes without actually being a Tivo.
Casey:
And somebody wrote in to scold me justifiably, and I don't have your name in front of me, I'm sorry, but to say...
Casey:
You know, Channels, which sponsored us once in the past, and one of the co-founders is a personal friend of mine, but Channels does darn near everything that TiVo does and arguably does it better.
Casey:
Now, I'm not a TiVo person.
Casey:
I've never been a TiVo person, so maybe I'm overselling here, but it is worth thinking about.
Casey:
Maybe it is time to get rid of the TiVo, John.
John:
Lots of people promoted the channel's UI, especially as a way to not have to use the YouTube TV UI, which other YouTube TV users also complained about, like the guide thing only going one item at a time.
John:
They said, well, you don't have to worry about that because if you use channels, you don't have to use their UI.
John:
You can just use the channel's UI, which is really nice.
John:
Lots of raves for that.
John:
The problem with me for channels, at least right now, is the product that they have, like the hardware product that they have that accepts cable cards, they don't manufacture anymore and haven't manufactured it a long time.
John:
On their website, they say, oh, just go on eBay and get it.
Casey:
And that's not what I'm looking for.
Casey:
I'm almost sure.
Casey:
I'm not going to search for it while we're live.
Casey:
But I went down this road just a couple of months ago to see if I could get the HD Home Run that takes a cable card.
Casey:
And I am pretty sure Amazon had some in stock at the time.
John:
Well, the getchannels.com website links to eBay now.
John:
But the whole point is it's not a product they make anymore.
John:
The website, they say, we don't make that anymore.
Casey:
Actually, I'm looking at it right now.
Casey:
It's Silicon Dust HD Home Run Prime Cable TV 3Tuner.
Casey:
It takes a cable card, $150 on Amazon.
Casey:
Available right now.
John:
Right, but they don't make it anymore.
John:
It's a dead product.
Casey:
It doesn't... And TiVo isn't?
Casey:
Like, first of all... No, they still make TiVos.
John:
You can buy one right now.
Casey:
Oh, well, first of all, I don't understand why you think it's a dead product.
Casey:
If I'm looking at it... I know, but you can't make it.
John:
They don't make it anymore.
Casey:
I don't think that's true, John.
Casey:
I really honestly... I understand what Channel says.
John:
I'm not arguing that, but... One, this model is no longer manufactured.
John:
You can still find them on eBay, though.
John:
That's what it says on the GetChannels.com website.
Casey:
Yes, but why wouldn't you trust Silicon Dust?
Casey:
Like, I'm pretty sure...
John:
But why don't they make it anymore?
John:
Why is there no replacement for it?
Casey:
I think they do.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure.
John:
It says on their website they don't.
Casey:
No, but you're getting confused.
Casey:
Channels doesn't make the hardware.
Casey:
Channels is just talking about Silicon Dust's hardware.
Casey:
Channels is software only.
Casey:
So they're not the arbiter of what Silicon Dust is or is not doing.
Casey:
And so if you go to Silicon Dust website, it's so busted and ancient.
Casey:
It says that it's actually in development, but it's available on Amazon right now.
Casey:
You can buy it right now.
Casey:
I'm tempted to send it to you right now, but I'm too cheap.
Casey:
So it is available.
Casey:
I don't think it's a dead product.
Casey:
I really don't.
John:
Is it the same product they're talking about?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure.
Casey:
It's the HD Home Run Prime.
Casey:
Yes, that's what's on.
Casey:
Let me put the link in the show notes here.
John:
Why does Get Channel say this model is no longer manufactured?
Casey:
I understand what you're saying.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
I really do.
Casey:
I can't put an affiliate link in.
Casey:
That's annoying.
Casey:
Anyway, I just sent you the link.
John:
Amazon has plenty of things that aren't manufactured anymore.
John:
But anyway, I mean, the real problem with the Get Channel thing, from my perspective, aside from the sketchiness of getting something that works with cable card, and by the way, it only has three tuners instead of six, which is...
John:
Not great.
Casey:
How often do you need to record more than three things at once?
John:
A surprising amount of time because I've had six tuners for many, many years and you just get used to not having to worry about it.
John:
How do you have time to watch all of this TV?
John:
Yes, seriously.
John:
It's just sometimes there's, it's not that there's so much TV.
John:
It's just like television.
John:
There's a popular times for shows to be on.
Casey:
And you watch every, so you're recording like ABC, CBS, Fox in all, and I can't even, NBC.
John:
Not network TV.
John:
Come on.
John:
It's madness.
John:
It's madness.
John:
On cable shows, there are popular times where there's multiple things on and then you might want to be watching something else.
John:
I don't think I need six, but three is pushing.
John:
Because I think I had a three-tuner TiVo, and sometimes you would bump into limits.
Casey:
Then get two of them.
John:
I mean, it starts to add up.
John:
Anyway, the other thing about the... So that thing with the cable cards is the cable card box thing doesn't actually record anything.
John:
It is just to ferry the signal.
John:
So then you need to run the channel software on some device.
John:
And to its credit, the channel thing runs on tons of things.
John:
It runs on Synology.
John:
You can run it on a PC.
John:
I think you can run it on a bunch of Apple devices.
John:
But that means that you need to have a hard drive that you're going to dedicate to this or at least have enough hard drive space to store stuff, which is great.
John:
You can have as much space as you want, but bad in that now you have to buy and build this thing.
Casey:
No, John.
Casey:
I have it running on a Mac Mini, the refurb Mac Mini that I just bought like a month ago.
Casey:
And you know where it saves all of its stuff?
Casey:
To the Synology.
Yeah.
Casey:
Because why wouldn't you?
John:
I think you can run it on the Synology.
John:
You don't even need a Mac Mania.
John:
Potentially, but I don't trust that.
John:
Maybe when my TiVo finally dies, I will probably look into this.
John:
I mean, what I really want to do is not have the cable card either, which is kind of the direction they're going.
John:
You can do the whatever TV Anywhere thing where it uses the API to get the stuff.
John:
But it still kind of seems like on the fringes even more so than TiVo because TiVo, for all its wonkiness,
John:
has a very established tech stack.
John:
There's nothing in the tech stack that is imminently going to be destroyed other than cable card being essentially discontinued, which is a bummer.
John:
But aside from that, no sort of streaming service is angry that TiVo is recording channels and stuff like that.
John:
Whereas I can imagine the various streaming services, even the ones that do currently support whatever API they're using to scrape video from the web,
John:
might decide that it's not in their best interest to support that anymore already some of them don't support it so it just seems it seems like more moving parts and more stuff to deal with now that said i'm kind of interested in just using it just to see the interface and just connecting it to streaming services because you don't have to use cable card or do any cable you can just point it like sign in with your you know streaming service credentials or also sign in with like your cable credentials and it will try to pull them from the web too because you don't need to use a cable card to use this so i'm going to look into that to see how that goes because if i can
Casey:
get youtube tv-ish 4k content for regular shows through you know without cable card which is what i want because that's kind of also a dead end uh i may be interested in that but really i just want to see what the ui looks like so uh real-time follow-up from john maddox who is the aforementioned co-founder of channels uh i said are is this still being manufactured linking him what i did on on amazon and he said they found more of the chips last year they've been selling it again for a year
Casey:
there was a there was a box in the back that had some more chips so uh so he said having fios which uh you do john you're silly for not getting one for channels it's hands down the best setup and he said yeah they weren't for sale for a while and i told him you were very very worked up about the website and he said he would change it for you tonight so by the time you look at this uh listener and
Casey:
If you look in the show notes, you may not see what John saw, but it will be updated soon.
Casey:
Anyway, John Maddox, the co-founder, said it's not a dead product or it's not any more dead than CableCard is as a whole.
Casey:
So there you go.
John:
So the co-founder of the company says that you should get this product.
John:
Got it.
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
John, again, he doesn't care whether – he doesn't get a cut from HD Home Run.
Casey:
It's a different entire company.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
That's also kind of part of the problem.
Casey:
It doesn't sound like you get it though because channels is just software.
John:
I was reading their website that said it was no longer manufactured and that made – and they also didn't have any information about another cable card model.
John:
And I was like, okay, well, fine.
John:
This one isn't manufactured, but I'll just buy the new one.
John:
Right.
John:
And they didn't have a link to that either.
John:
So that makes me think, I mean, I know I was saying, like, like I said, cable card itself is, you know, not really going to be a going concern for much longer.
John:
And it kind of isn't anymore either, but it's what I'm currently using and TiVo supported.
John:
Um, and so I would, and you can buy a brand new TiVo today that supports it, a model that is still manufactured.
John:
So TiVo still got that one up there.
Casey:
I mean, I hear you, and as much as I love poking fun at you for using this ancient-ass piece of technology, I really genuinely think that you would probably be better served by using Channels and one of these boxes.
John:
What I would suggest to Channels is, for someone like me who's a Mac person, suggest a build.
John:
I would...
John:
build myself a little PC or, you know, suggest like, what is the best experience?
John:
Should I use my Synology or is mine too old and weak?
John:
Should I use a Mac mini like you?
John:
That seems pretty expensive way to do this, right?
John:
If there was like a little, oh, here's, you know, if you want to build yourself a PC that works great with this setup, here's a cheap way to do it.
John:
Because I don't want to go through the research building my own PC that does all this stuff.
John:
And I'm not quite ready to buy a new Synology yet.
John:
I don't want to spend thousand plus dollars on a Mac mini to do it.
John:
Like,
John:
So face with that kind of situation where, oh, it's, you know, they don't even make it.
John:
It's a different company.
John:
It's all different people doing the things they want.
John:
But if I just want to go in and say, I don't want to deal with any of this.
John:
I just want something that's as easy as TiVo or as close as I can get.
John:
They're still a little far from that in terms of the setup.
John:
Obviously, if that's not what you want, if you want the ability to customize it, you can build the way you want.
John:
You can put the storage that you want.
John:
Then channels is great.
John:
And apparently everybody loves the UI, which is the main reason I'm looking into it.
John:
But if you're just looking for that TiVo type experience, now that TiVo is slowly fading away, no one is there to take its place.
Casey:
I hear what you're saying, but consider that I use a Mac Mini because I don't want to deal with supporting anything else.
Casey:
And you have a Mac Mini.
Casey:
If I had one, I would use it.
John:
Right.
Casey:
But if I wasn't doing all of this, I believe they have a build for Raspberry Pis.
Casey:
And of course, if I'm not going to solve a problem with the Synology, then I'll solve it with the Raspberry Pi.
Casey:
But I genuinely think you're making this out to be much harder than it really is.
Casey:
I understand what you're saying.
Casey:
I really honestly do.
Casey:
But if you got one of these tuner things, these HD home runs, which again, completely and utterly different company than Channels.
Casey:
If you got one of these and put your cable card that's currently in the TiVo into this and hooked it up to any computer in the house.
Casey:
You have so many computers in that house.
Casey:
I mean, any computer that's running 24-7 or really running any time.
John:
I would have to be in the basement.
John:
That type of thing can't be in the upstairs with the people.
John:
what what thing what what anything anything that is not in the set like a you know any computer that's unless it's completely silent any other computer doesn't stay up well is tina's is tina's imac on 24 7 it's just not an imac she has a mac studio and it's under the desk and it's on 24 7 and it's silent
John:
so then so run run the channel software on the mac studio you've already got your problem i'm gonna do that why because i don't know you're restarting the computer while someone's watching tv right now how often do you restart the computer i don't know what she does on her computer it's her computer but she does not want and i don't want the state of her computer to to affect people watching television it's unacceptable entanglement you are being incredibly difficult i mean i run the plex server on her thing but a plex oh my god john
John:
Why is that okay?
John:
Why is it different?
John:
I don't have an SLA on my Plex server, and I'm the only person who knows how to use Plex.
John:
So it's not like it has anyone else's stuff on it.
Casey:
Holy smokes, my dude.
Casey:
Am I just kidding?
John:
I mean, I also run the Plex server on the Synology, too.
John:
So if the Plex server is... I have so many Plex servers on my house.
John:
If that Plex server is down, you can go to the one on... I have it on two Synologies.
John:
So you can go to either one.
John:
And yes, they all point to the same data.
Casey:
So you can go to any of those...
Casey:
I don't even have two Plex servers running in this house, and I'm obsessed with Plex.
John:
You should.
John:
It's handy.
John:
I have everything be mirrored, right?
John:
So I have her Plex server points to the Synology with just an SMB mount of the Synology, right?
John:
Yeah, that's the way mine works.
John:
And then Synology obviously runs Plex with its local storage.
John:
And then I have a second Synology that I cloned the first Synology to, and that runs its own copy of Plex on the clone of the data, which is kept in sync with that synchronization service that we couldn't remember the name of that other time.
Casey:
Well, all I'm saying is this doesn't have to be as difficult as you're making it out to be.
Casey:
I understand how you got to where you are, but you are making this way harder than it needs to be.
John:
What I really just want is a 4K TiVo.
John:
Do you have the co-founder of TiVo on the phone with you?
John:
Oh, no, they're long gone.
John:
no but but i can tell you this i don't know if actually channels does do 4k but i bet you if if anything could feed it 4k i would be surprised if it didn't accept it and eat it i think to get 4k it would have it would i mean i don't know but i don't think cable car can even handle that i think it would have to be the streaming service thing because get channels can just pull stuff from your streaming service and any of the very streaming service that's how it works with youtube tv and stuff like that yes although i think
Casey:
that 720, which is not channels' fault.
Casey:
I think that's what the streaming service gives you via TV everywhere, but I could be wrong about that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
All I'm saying is the software is super easy to install.
Casey:
Migrating it is hilarious.
Casey:
Like when I migrated from the old Mac Mini to the new Mac Mini, doing the Plex migration was not a nightmare, but was not fun.
Casey:
Doing the channels migration was basically install the channel software and then point it at the right folder and then magic happens.
Casey:
It's as though it was on that machine forever.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So it really is really, and again, John, the other John, is a friend of mine.
Casey:
I'm a little bit biased, but I went kicking and screaming into using channels.
Casey:
He kept beating me up about it, like, why are you using Plex?
Casey:
Why are you using Plex?
Casey:
Use this, use this.
Casey:
And I don't think channels is a reasonable replacement for Plex, although you could do that.
Casey:
But I will say, as a DVR, channels really is fantastic.
Casey:
Plus, you can set it up to do fun things like make a virtual channel that just plays Letterkenny 24-7, which I have done, or whatever your particular vice may be.
Casey:
So genuinely, I mean, they are a former sponsor.
Casey:
The guy is a friend of mine, so take all this with as much salt as you desire.
Casey:
But hand to God, it really is great software, and it's worth trying out.
John:
Yeah, I will.
John:
I will try as much as of it as I can without like changing any hardware setups and just to see if I like the UI or whatever.
John:
And then I'll see where I go.
John:
Kind of like I did with YouTube TV.
John:
I knew when I got the new setup, I was going to try it.
John:
You know, I got I stumbled on the UI.
Casey:
I would definitely give it a roll.
John:
The final TV thing, the mystery of the box.
John:
How does that box work?
John:
The top and the bottom halves don't seem to stay together, and yet somehow it got into my house.
John:
The answer was that apparently I blacked out when the TV was delivered because when it was delivered to my house, it had two of those thin plastic mesh straps that come on packages wrapped around the thing.
John:
so i'll put i'll put a tweet in the show notes you can see exactly what it looks like uh uh yeah and i cut those off and that's what was holding the top to the bottom but i totally forgot that i had cut those off oh sweet i mean no i mean that you can't they're not like you have to cut them off to open the box are you able to properly disconnect those and throw them away without cutting your hand because i'm not
Marco:
yeah you just gotta be careful like literally every time i operate those plastic strap things like all right careful don't get like don't get a cut like it's like it's like a paper cut easy sliding it through your hands or something yeah somehow i do that and i always cut my finger like it's like a big paper cut it's terrible it's like the word and i have i have never operated those things and successfully gotten them from the box to the trash can all the way without getting a cut yeah those things are a nightmare
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else about your TV or are you solid?
John:
I think that's it for now.
Casey:
Are you enjoying it?
John:
Yeah, we watch some stuff on it.
John:
I mean, you know, having a fancy TV.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, I've been podcasting a lot, but other people have been watching it.
John:
But having a fancy TV really, you know, now it was easier before when I could be like, oh, this show is in 1080.
John:
Oh, this is in HDR.
John:
Like all the things that I never noticed or cared about before.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Now, there's this hierarchy of, like, you're more excited to watch shows that take advantage of the features of your new TV and less excited to do ones that... Because, honestly, like, a 1080 SDR show, it looks better than it did on my old TV.
John:
But not, wow, you better, because it's 1080 and it's SDR and it's being upscaled and, you know, so...
Marco:
yeah i hear you we are sponsored this week by trade coffee you know people know i'm a coffee nerd and they often ask me hey what's the best coffee what kind of coffee should i get and i always tell them get freshly roasted beans that matters more than anything else get them freshly roasted trade is a great way to get fresh roasted beans delivered to you however often you need it and from 60 of the country's best craft roasters
Marco:
They keep over 450 different kinds of coffee live and ready to ship in their system every single day because they know that there's no one perfect coffee for everyone, but there might be a perfect coffee for you and trades human powered algorithm will find it.
Marco:
They are so confident they will match you with the coffee that you love the very first time that if they don't, they'll take your feedback and an actual coffee expert will work with you to send you a brand new bag for free.
Marco:
This is a great service to try a bunch of coffee.
Marco:
You tell them what you like.
Marco:
You tell them things like, I like maybe a medium or a light roast or whatever it is.
Marco:
You tell them how you're brewing it, what kind of brewer you're using, whether you need to be ground by them or whether you're going to grind it yourself, certain other flavors you might like or dislike.
Marco:
And they have this system that matches you to exactly what is going to be best for you.
Marco:
And it gives you a nice variety, too.
Marco:
You don't get the same thing every week.
Marco:
You get something that fits your profile every week.
Marco:
And they even ask you, like, how much do you want to be surprised?
Marco:
Like, basically, how much variability do you want?
Marco:
It's a great service at Trade.
Marco:
They have an amazing selection.
Marco:
And the variety you get from them is incredible.
Marco:
Right now, Trade is offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order, plus free shipping.
Marco:
when you go to drinktrade.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free.
Marco:
Get started by taking their quiz at drinktrade.com slash ATP and let Trade find you a coffee you'll love.
Marco:
That's drinktrade.com slash ATP for $30 off.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Trade for sponsoring our show.
Marco:
The two of you went on vacation recently, and I was curious to hear your respective tech experiences.
Marco:
Every year when John does this trip, we get a camera report of how the camera situation has changed and evolved and how it performed.
Marco:
And Casey, when you take your vacation, usually I know you take good drone photos, and you probably connected at least four or five Apple TVs to a hotel or rental TV at some point through your various HDMI cables that you keep in your travel pack.
Marco:
So I'm wondering what kind of tech experiences do you have on your vacations?
Casey:
I mean, let me start because I don't think I have that much, to be honest with you.
Casey:
The big to-do with regard to my travel a couple of weeks back was the aforementioned issues with HomeKit and the Apple TV and the Apple TV being convinced that my home was actually now in Cape Charles rather than in Richmond, which was super fun.
Casey:
But other than that, not that much was that different.
Casey:
Having my desktop computer come with me was kind of neat because I only have a laptop now.
Casey:
Desktop laptop.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
So that was kind of neat.
Casey:
I kind of liked that.
Casey:
It was nice to be able to process photos as much as I do with my cockamamie setup.
Casey:
And then because I was connected to my VPN at home, I could...
Casey:
copy and upload all of those photos to the Synology as though I was at home from the beach.
Casey:
So I didn't have to do like, you know, several hours of going through all of them when I got home.
Casey:
I just did a little bit each day with the pictures I had taken and then just uploaded them just like I always do.
Casey:
Granted, it was a little bit slower from the beach because they were on a...
Casey:
You know, a cable connection with not a particularly strong upload side connection.
Marco:
You couldn't find a really fast bench there?
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
No, unfortunately not.
Casey:
But nevertheless, you know, it's nice having your desktop with you, which I enjoy.
Casey:
And then I wrote a blog post about this like a week ago, and I'll put this in the show notes.
Casey:
But I have, as Marco mentioned, a GoPack.
Casey:
And what I mean by that is I have a...
Casey:
it's actually a Harry's, former sponsor Harry's Shaving, I have a Harry's toiletry kit that just so happens to be like a perfect size to carry all of my travel cables and things and whatnot.
Casey:
And so it used to be that I had just an obscene amount of cables in there.
Casey:
And in short, what I did was I would get, I had one of those like plug it into the wall boxes and then it had five USB-A
Casey:
connections on it.
Casey:
And so I would typically use four of them at the very least.
Casey:
I would use one for Aaron's phone, one for Aaron's watch, one for my phone, one for my watch.
Casey:
And then I would have some USB-A extension cables so that the box would be on my side of the bed, but I could put a couple extensions and then a lightning cable on the end of those extensions so I could get the connection all the way to Aaron's side of the bed so she can put her phone down when she's ready rather than having to hand it to me for me to plug in.
Casey:
And it was just cables upon cables upon cables upon cables.
Casey:
And it was annoying.
Casey:
And what I ended up doing, as we spoke about, you know, a few episodes ago, is getting these absurdly overpriced Mophie things.
Casey:
And that was super nice because all I had to do was plug in two of those.
Casey:
And then they have MagSafe, they have, you know, the Apple Watch chargers on them.
Casey:
And that worked out real well, and I liked that.
Casey:
I did bring, you know, the Apple TV and connected that via HDMI.
Casey:
I connected the Switch with the Switch dock via HDMI.
Casey:
And, oh, and the other thing I did was Merlin turned me on to this idea.
Casey:
I brought with me, I don't remember the exact model name, but it's on the blog post that I'll link in the show notes.
Casey:
I brought my own universal remote, which I use now when I go to hotels or Airbnbs and whatnot, because people say, and maybe this is BS, but people say that remote controls are some of the most disgusting things in like a hotel room or what have you.
Casey:
And because of that, I've decided, yep, no thanks.
Casey:
I'll just bring my own, which is a little bit tinfoil hat.
Casey:
I'll be the first to tell you.
Casey:
But I did that.
Casey:
And that lets you program in what TV or whatever you're using based on a four or five digit code.
Casey:
And it also does the whole scanny dance like we were talking about earlier.
Casey:
But I brought that and used that on the TV there.
Casey:
And that worked great.
Casey:
And unlike last year, I didn't lose one of the Apple TV remotes in the house.
Casey:
So I didn't have to spend $70 when I got home.
Marco:
So that's an expensive loss.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, well, I was really pissed.
Casey:
And this was right after it came out, too.
Casey:
I was really, really pissed about it.
Casey:
But nonetheless, it worked out real well.
Casey:
The drone, I didn't use it quite as much.
Casey:
It was really windy when we were there and windier than my little Mavic Mini or DJI Mini 2 could handle.
Casey:
But I did take a few shots.
Casey:
And I got to tell you, even though I don't use the drone that often, about a year and change on, maybe a year and a half on,
Casey:
I am still glad I bought it and I still do enjoy using it.
Casey:
And I still think aerial photography is super fun, partially because it's just not something that a lot of people are capable of doing in the sense that they haven't spent obscene amount of money on a drone.
Casey:
But I do enjoy it quite a bit.
Casey:
And I wish I had had the opportunity to get out more.
Casey:
But like I said, it was just the weather was super crummy in terms of wind.
Casey:
Like it was fine in, you know,
Casey:
But for the drone, it was really bad, and that was unfortunate.
Casey:
But I think that was mostly it.
Casey:
The only problem I had was when we're driving up, I like to use my GoPro as kind of a poor man's dash cam.
Casey:
And what I'll do is I'll put the GoPro pointed out the front of Aaron's car, and I'll put it on time-lapse mode so it takes a picture, a still, every, like, second.
Casey:
And my theory is it's better than nothing if, God forbid, we get in some sort of accident.
Casey:
I'll have some sort of documentation of what happened, right?
Casey:
And the problem with that, though, is that on a two-and-a-half-hour trip, which in this case ended up being three-and-a-half hours because of traffic, the GoPro will deplete its battery during the span of that time.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
I typically use a battery pack that I keep in my laptop bag, which is also mentioned in this blog post.
Casey:
I'll connect that to the GoPro, and it'll keep the GoPro charged fine.
Casey:
But in this case, I thought to myself, well, I wonder if I could use my travel computer charger, which is a very unremarkable, what is it, G-A-N, G-A-N, I don't remember, something nitride?
Marco:
Gallium nitride?
Casey:
Something like that, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
So basically, it's a physically small...
Casey:
And I thought, man, I wonder if I could use that to plug in.
Casey:
So it's an AC adapter.
Casey:
And I wonder if I could plug in the GoPro in my iPad, which I was using for most of the trip, or maybe even my computer if I felt it.
Casey:
Plug both of those into the AC adapter.
Casey:
And then we have a very, very old inverter.
Casey:
So this is a thing.
Casey:
You plug it into the cigarette lighter, and it has an AC outlet on the other end.
Casey:
And I thought, well, I wonder if I could plug this in and power the GoPro off of the car rather than this battery pack.
Casey:
And then plug in my iPad as well, which would be kind of nice because my iPad now, since my switch to Verizon, it has cellular service.
Casey:
And I got to tell you, you know, Marco, have you known how wonderful it is to have cellular service on a device other than your phone?
Casey:
Imagine, Marco, how freaking great it would be to have that on your desktop laptop.
Marco:
Wait, are you talking about Verizon's ultra-fast worldwide 5G network?
Casey:
That's exactly right.
Casey:
But seriously, I really wish I had the option for that on a computer because I know it would be obscenely expensive and I would grumble about it for months, but I would be so happy to have it.
Marco:
No, it wouldn't have to be.
Casey:
It's only like $129 premium on the iPad.
Casey:
Yeah, but you know they would charge $250 on a Mac.
Marco:
Well, of course they would, but it doesn't have to be.
Marco:
I feel like we do a slight disservice whenever we make it seem like this is some huge reach to add cellular to a Mac.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
It's been done on PCs forever, and you can do it on Macs with those USB dongle modem things that they've had forever.
Marco:
um i don't do those still exist like i used to use those back in the day i don't know if they i don't even know i mean they probably do but anyway um like it's not like this is a hard thing to add cellular to laptops it can be done and yeah there's a couple of minor things i have to do with mac os to make it aware of like hey maybe don't download the latest episode of mad men from itunes over cellular and burn up your whole data usage not the e
Marco:
ever done that no definitely not um but you know they they already have almost all of that infrastructure in place um in the you know recent url session and url connection um apis there's all that stuff is already there for detecting metered connections and limited connections and stuff like that um so anyway like it's not that much work to add cellular to the laptops just like what are we waiting for just do it it's fine yes
Casey:
Yes, please.
Casey:
But anyway, so I wanted to power all this via my inverter and the inverter, we haven't used that in years.
Casey:
Like it still works, but I think the last thing that was plugged into it was a breast pump when Aaron was breastfeeding.
Casey:
So like it hasn't been used in a while.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I tried plugging in this like, I don't know, 80, 90 watt GAN charger and the inverter was like, no, nope, that's way too much.
Casey:
And so none of this was a problem, but I have since purchased, and I'll put a link in the show notes, a pure sine wave inverter, which is very cool.
Casey:
And that has two AC outlets on it and supposedly is up to 300 watts.
Casey:
And it actually has a 60-watt USB-C PD port on it in and of itself.
Casey:
So I may not even need to plug in my GAN charger if I'm only plugging in one device.
Casey:
But anyway, I'm going to try that out next time we're on a longer trip and see if that works, because that would be kind of cool.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
For the most part, it was basically same old stuff.
Casey:
But I tell you, when you do have your travel setup locked in and squared away, which I feel like I do pretty well now, it is super nice.
Casey:
And again, I preach the gospel of the go pack.
Casey:
Just have a package or packet or a bag or what have you that has cables that you never, ever use for anything else.
Casey:
you never, ever use for anything else.
Casey:
One more time, you never use it for anything else.
Casey:
And then, you know, at a moment's notice, all you have to do is grab that bag.
Casey:
You don't have to worry about, oh, I got to undo the thing by the bed, or oh, I got to do this, I got to do that.
Casey:
No, you just grab the bag.
Casey:
You grab the bag and you're set.
Casey:
I cannot preach this gospel loudly enough.
Marco:
i too do that like i have so first of all like i used to be a little bit more of a backpack nerd and i had you know three or four different bags you know i i would watch chase reeves reviews on youtube and get all the cool bags he recommended and i loved how you know how cool different ones were and uh i i realized over time that it was kind of a pain in the butt to have a bunch of different bags to have to like keep stuff shuffled between or never quite have the stuff you think you have or have to maintain duplicate copies of everything
Marco:
So I went down to just having one backpack, and that's the backpack I bring to everything.
Marco:
And in that backpack is what you're talking about, like a complete set of everything, cables, chargers, adapters.
Marco:
And those things are only used outside of my home.
Marco:
They are never used in the home.
Marco:
They are never taken out of the backpack because then they will never go back into the backpack.
Marco:
And then when I'm out somewhere, I won't have them.
Marco:
So I do the same thing, and it is so, so worth it.
Casey:
And it's expensive.
Casey:
Like a lot of these things like Apple dongles are super expensive.
Casey:
These freaking $150 Mophie things that I do love, but obviously that's silly expensive.
Casey:
But I do genuinely think as frugal as I am spending the money on having a complete go pack that is redundant for things that you would use in the house.
Casey:
I can't speak it highly enough.
Marco:
And the good thing is, too, over time, we need fewer of these things.
Marco:
By the way, this is part of the reason why I push so hard on getting rid of Lightning.
Marco:
Because if we get rid of Lightning, I need even fewer of these things.
Marco:
But now that everything is USB-C everywhere, we have USB-C multi-port chargers, as you mentioned.
Marco:
The new generation of GAN chargers is even smaller and can fit even more ports and even more wattage.
Marco:
So we have this amazing abundance of great charging equipment and technology now.
Marco:
And it's really just kind of waiting for Apple to make it simpler.
Marco:
The thorns on my side are Lightning and the Apple Watch.
Marco:
Those things needing their own special charging things are annoying.
Marco:
But otherwise, so many things that we used to need in the past, we don't need.
Marco:
And with this new generation of laptops, you don't even need most of the dongles anymore.
Marco:
You need a way to get...
Marco:
uh usb a sometimes but that's about it like you know i have my sd card now built in hdmi is built in if i ever need it although i probably won't but you know you do you know other people use it so a lot of that stuff went away now it's new generation so you know hopefully we'll keep moving this direction and get more and more standardized more usbc stuff you know fewer custom chargers from apple and fewer reasons to carry around like the mini usb adapters for other crap
John:
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John:
John, how was your trip?
John:
Yeah.
John:
i i certainly back singular yeah i'm sorry backpack monogamous now i've given up my old ways i travel so little and when i do travel i bring the stuff that i need it's not a big deal but you know if this is a thing that you're into and you want to have a go bag you can have a go bag i do not have a go bag when i go i put things in a bag it's a little bit different
John:
Sorry.
John:
And it's cool.
John:
It's fun.
John:
I'm just saying like if you're listening to this and we preach the same gospel like, oh, you really need backups or whatever.
John:
I'm going to say this is a different category of things like back up your family photos.
John:
But if you don't have a go bag, you'll probably be fine.
John:
Unless you're like a frequent business travel, in which case you should definitely have this because you will forget stuff.
John:
But none of us are frequent business travelers.
John:
By the way, I travel more than both of you.
John:
I know, you go back and forth.
John:
But when you do that, you're not bringing your go bag because you've got stuff at both places.
Marco:
No, I'm bringing my backpack every time.
Marco:
You know what's also in my backpack?
Marco:
The car key, the house key, like an inhaler.
John:
Well, I mean, do you have to have a special go bag to keep your wallet and car keys in?
John:
No, everyone just brings them with them when they go.
John:
No, but, you know, if I'm going to like, you know, take a boat across the bay first, like I want to make sure that that you're not bringing like make sure you have adapters to connect your iPad and your phone and your watch charger.
John:
Like that's not essential for you to bring with you because there is a watch charger and an iPad charger and all that stuff at both places you're going.
Marco:
i know i can take the exact same bag with me either whether i'm just going to westchester or whether i'm flying across the country like i know i can take that same bag and have the things i need and the things you're talking about are not like a massive amount of size or weight or cost you're talking about like three cables basically i just feel like you could also pack that bag when you need to go
Casey:
But why would you?
Casey:
Why wouldn't you?
Casey:
For someone who, I think, and I am a very nervous traveler, but I think of the three of us, you are the worst.
Casey:
For someone who is such a nervous traveler, just cross this off the list.
John:
I never travel anywhere.
John:
Not traveling is the most relaxing.
Marco:
Rememberful.
Marco:
allows you to do this and it's used by some of the biggest creators on the web and memberful includes everything you need to run a membership program things like custom branding gift subscriptions apple pay free trials support for hosting private podcast and tons more and best of all memberful seamlessly integrates with the tools you already use this is why so many people are into it so you know because you don't want to have to like write your own whole custom integration or anything with memberful
Marco:
They already support some of the biggest tools, some of the most popular stuff out there, so you probably don't have to write anything.
Marco:
And they do all the hard stuff for you.
Marco:
Trust me, I've written payment stuff like this before.
Marco:
You don't want to write it.
Marco:
It's a pain in the butt.
Marco:
Memberful takes care of all the hard stuff for you, and they have great features.
Marco:
Optimize checkout to get you more customers.
Marco:
Of course, Apple Pay support, member management, dashboards, analytics, so much built into Memberful.
Marco:
If you need any help, they have a world-class support team ready to help you get started, simplify your memberships, and grow your revenue because they are passionate about your success at Memberful, and they always give you access to real humans.
Marco:
And best of all, you always retain full control and ownership of your audience, your branding, and your membership.
Marco:
Payments even go directly to your own Stripe account.
Marco:
That is fantastic.
Marco:
I'm big on ownership, and Memberful is great for that.
Marco:
You brand everything yourself.
Marco:
You own your audience.
Marco:
Can't beat that.
Marco:
Get started for free with Memberful with no credit card required at memberful.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Once again, visit memberful.com slash ATP today.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Memberful for sponsoring our show.
John:
So speaking of traveling one, I mean, you know, I've been going to Long Island every summer for many, many years now.
John:
We rent places down there used to have we had like two steady places that we rented.
John:
One of them we outgrew and the other one that people stopped renting it basically, which is kind of a bummer.
John:
But and so we've rented in many other places in between.
John:
And, you know, if you're listening to this and you have a rental house, please make sure that in this day and age your Internet stuff works.
John:
It amazes me how like I how many places I've never been in a place with good Internet.
John:
And I'm like, do people ever live in this house?
John:
In one case, I knew they did.
John:
This is what someone's actual house where they live.
John:
They just rented it out for the summer.
John:
Like, how do they tolerate not having good Internet in their house?
John:
Right.
John:
And maybe it's like they make it bad when the summer renters come and then they make it good again.
John:
And how would they make it bad and good?
John:
Well, there seems to be this thing with people.
John:
Why would they make it bad and good?
John:
Well, I'll explain it to you.
John:
There seems to be this thing that every place that I've ever rented...
John:
Like they let you use their house.
John:
You're in there.
John:
You're using their house.
John:
You know, if you ever had a rental house, there's usually some part of the house or some part is like locked up that has like the owner's stuff that you're not supposed to go into.
John:
Right.
John:
That makes sense.
John:
Like, don't touch the good China.
John:
Like, this is where the stuff from our bedroom is.
John:
Don't go in there.
John:
That's fine.
John:
That all makes sense.
John:
Right.
John:
But.
John:
100 of the time and all the rental houses i've ever been in the internet router like you know internet connection stuff is one of those things they lock up oh really i don't think i've ever seen that always no i've always seen it like you know shoved behind the tv yeah yeah yeah all the rental houses have been it is locked up somewhere it's locked in a basement it's locked in a cabinet it's just all locked up and you would think okay well that's so like the renters don't screw it up because it's
John:
non-techie people are going to come in and they're going to... Something's not going to work and they're like, I can fix it and they'll screw it up and then they're going to call the owners and say, hey, the internet doesn't work and then it's just a big hassle.
John:
So lock it up so they can't screw it up, right?
John:
That would be fine except it's pre-screwed up almost all the time.
John:
And the second problem is where they lock it up is often...
John:
someplace that doesn't acknowledge the fact that hey do you realize that's where wi-fi is coming from you put it in the basement in a locked room in the corner you think i'm going to get that wi-fi in the living room on the other side of the house anymore no it's you buried the router that's that's the source of your wi-fi oh just put it like a repeater no the repeater doesn't help when it's on the other side of the house it's like a hundred feet and three floors from the actual source of the wi-fi and i know this because what i always do when i go into these houses i say where the hell is this people's internet stuff like what are they using and let me find it
John:
Like, let me set it free.
Casey:
Right, right.
John:
And it's always locked up.
John:
So this year, we went to a house, the same house we went to last year, and its internet is so bad, just it might as well be useless.
John:
A lot of the time, it's just you can't load any web pages.
John:
It's just down.
John:
And, you know...
John:
Is that because the actual internet is down from their provider?
John:
I don't think so.
John:
Part of it might have to do with the fact where they lock up their stuff, right?
John:
The clue, if you search the house and you're like, where the hell is it locked up?
John:
Because there are sections of it that are closed off.
John:
It must be in there, I guess.
John:
But no, based on signal strength, that doesn't seem like that's where it is.
John:
They use Eero, so you can find an Eero.
John:
It's like, I found an Eero, but it's just a, you know, it's one of the satellite things.
John:
It's not the thing.
John:
Like, there's no Ethernet cable going into it, right?
John:
So they're using Eero, and the Wi-Fi signal strength is good everywhere because Eero is good at blanking it with Wi-Fi, but where is the actual, where does the Internet come from?
John:
And if you pick up that Eero and turn it over, you see the ominous word in Sharpie written on the bottom of this Eero, which is shed.
John:
Yeah.
John:
What?
John:
So their internet stuff was in their backyard in a locked shed far from the house.
John:
It's a wooden shed.
John:
It's locked up.
John:
It's got a padlock on it.
John:
And that's where they're into.
John:
Is cable buried under the ground?
John:
Is cable internet?
John:
How does the internet get to there?
John:
But either way, when it goes down and the light on the arrow turns red and you can't get anywhere, there's nothing you can do about it.
John:
And when it's up,
John:
It's just the speeds are awful.
John:
Like I would I would do the thing you're speaking of Casey, like reviewing photos on vacation.
John:
That's what I do.
John:
You take pictures during the day.
John:
I load them onto my laptop that I brought with me.
John:
I sort through them or whatever.
John:
Usually have a slideshow at night showing the day's photos to the family.
John:
Right.
John:
But also the other function I'm doing is I load them onto the computer and then I usually leave the computer like plugged in and on so it can shove them up the iCloud photo library.
John:
Right.
John:
In this house, if you leave this thing open while you're asleep, it will upload like three photos.
John:
Like the upload speeds and the connection is so bad that it's like it's pointless.
John:
Right.
John:
You know, so when we go there, this is the house we're in.
John:
But the rest of my family is in another house.
John:
It's like a couple blocks away.
John:
Their Internet connection at least works well enough to upload.
John:
So what I would do is I would go over their house, plug my laptop and shove it in a corner and let it upload because at least, you know, it would progress over time.
John:
so that continues to be a frustration people locking their internet stuff in obscure locations because i mean again i get it i understand they don't want people screwing with it but it just plain doesn't work half the time and then you get kids there and they're all on their devices so they're complaining the internet doesn't work luckily they both have phones so worst case scenario you just drop back to 5g which is mostly what they did and now you just hope you don't burn through all your data because the kids just give up on wi-fi because it never works and the cellular is faster anyway
John:
Was it the Verizon Nationwide Ultra?
John:
It was an ultra-wideband like the bench, though.
John:
So it was just at least web pages will load.
John:
And, of course, my daughter's always on Spotify, so that's all streaming all the time.
John:
So we are using a lot of bandwidth.
John:
But, yeah, the Wi-Fi is just grim.
John:
And, you know, at the other house, the Wi-Fi is better but still not good.
John:
I'm not sure where their router is locked up.
John:
I didn't go searching for it.
John:
But yeah, every house has bad Wi-Fi.
Marco:
I don't know how people live like that.
Marco:
I see.
Marco:
I'm surprised because like – so I live in a vacation town and so almost every house here gets rented on a regular basis in the summertime.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
the the clear standard here is that people usually make the wi-fi router easily accessible like in the middle of the house like but you know by whatever the primary tv is in the living room and the reason why first of all it's there because that's where they install it because that's what that's where verizon usually this is a fios town that's where verizon always defaults to installing it um and it's accessible because what often much more often happens than people messing it up is that they get there and it doesn't work like what happened to you and
Marco:
And they call the owner or management company like, hey, the Wi-Fi doesn't work and somebody has to go reboot it.
Marco:
And it's much easier and more practical for them to just tell the renter, just unplug it and plug it back in.
Marco:
And they can kind of fix it themselves rather than having to send somebody out there who has access to the owner's shed or whatever.
Marco:
I'm surprised yours is done that way because if it's rented every summer, it's a different piece or at least to a bunch of people.
Marco:
I'm surprised that issue hasn't been bothersome enough to them that they haven't just been like, hey, fix it yourself.
John:
I mean, well, part of the thing is when the Eero light turns red and it's like I have no interconnection, I didn't do anything to fix that.
John:
It eventually fixed itself and it went back to its normal, terrible speeds.
John:
And I don't know what caused that.
John:
And maybe something is rebooting inside the shed or whatever.
John:
At the previous house, I had the habit of bringing a Wi-Fi extender with me.
John:
This is in the days before Eero.
John:
I would bring a Wi-Fi extender so I could get the Wi-Fi signal from where I knew it was locked up.
John:
And I would sort of daisy chain these cheap Wi-Fi extenders.
Casey:
Oh my gosh.
John:
It's not, you know, not a mesh network, not like Eero, but just like a repeater to get the signal.
John:
And that would make it so, because there was so bad in that house that in the main sort of living room, the one with this big giant eighties sectional sofa, like the biggest sofa I've ever seen in my life.
John:
I'll just show you a picture.
John:
It was hilarious.
John:
Very eighties.
John:
This house was super eighties.
John:
Like it was so eighties that it had, I think I've talked to before, like the in the in wall intercoms that rich people houses had in the eighties.
John:
And like the new tone, like radio.
John:
So you could pump radio and a cassette player to play through all the speakers throughout the house.
John:
super 80s welcome to long island yeah exactly it was it was such a time capsule it was amazing uh but in the main room with a giant sectional and what was originally a gigantic rear projection television again total 80s rich people house right um it was zero wi-fi you just you couldn't do anything right so i had to because that's where we wanted to be hanging out and like as we got more and more devices it'd be like well you could be on the comfortable couches talking with people or you could be in this room on like sitting on this uncomfortable wicker thing but you can get wi-fi and people would slowly migrate in that direction because they just wanted to be able to use their phones um
John:
Um, anyway, so that's what I used to do there.
John:
Uh, in this house, what I considered, because I've watched a lot of YouTube, I've watched enough like lock picking channels to know how to pick those combination padlocks, combination, combination padlocks.
John:
Like most of those things where you have like a wheel where you turn the zero through nine numbers right on each one.
John:
there's pretty simple ways if you watch youtube videos how to open those locks with nothing more than your fingers and feel it's not as easy as they make it look especially when the lock is like outdoors and rusted but i considered doing that but i'm like you know you're like breaking and entering don't just go to the other house and so that's what i did i went to their house do my uploading so i did oh i just managed to get everything uploaded um i think i talked about did i talk about photography uh stuff no you talked very briefly on rectif about it but but not here yet
John:
Okay, so I brought the two cameras this year.
John:
I brought the camera that Marco gave me, A7 III.
John:
The curse gift, yes.
John:
Yes, which I was cursed to buy very expensive lenses for.
Casey:
Yeah, I was literally laughing out loud when I heard that.
Casey:
It was delightful.
John:
And I bought my previous year's camera, the A6600, and my plan this year was to not change lenses to the beach, which is something I have done in past years and I'm pretty good at doing, but it's always nerve-wracking, you know.
Yeah.
John:
there's wind there's sand there's water there's kids running around the you know the the area where you're sitting kicking up stuff like yeah so i don't want to change lenses the beach but i always have to because i got my super long lens to get the kids out in the waves and i've got when everyone's back on the blanket you can't be using a really long zoom because they're two inches away from you and you know playing on the beach stuff like that so my plan was uh to use my really long zoom lens on my a6600
John:
And then use a more reasonable length on the A7 because I don't have a really long zoom for the A7.
John:
If you want to get a decent quality, really long zoom lens for a full frame camera, A, they're as big as a truck and B, they're really expensive.
John:
Right.
John:
So I don't have one of those.
John:
I just have it on the small one.
John:
I'll put the links in the show notes, but the small one I have is the Sony 70 to 350.
John:
So it's 70 to 350, but it's an APS-C sensor.
John:
So that 350 is actually whatever the equivalent is, probably like 400, 500.
John:
And it's a good lens.
John:
I think it's the most expensive lens I have for my small camera.
John:
And the APS-C is not a big deal because it's super sunny at the beach.
John:
You don't need extra light gathering or whatever.
John:
So that setup served me pretty well.
John:
And then on the on Marco's camera, I have the horrendously expensive Sony 24 to 70 GM2, which is smaller and lighter than the original GM, which is why I got it, which is why they got it to liberate that money from my wallet, because I wasn't going to buy the other one because it's like, oh, it's kind of old lens and it's big and it's heavy.
John:
And they said, but wait, here's exactly the lens you wanted.
John:
But now it's smaller and it's lighter and it's brand new.
John:
And so I got that and it was very expensive, but it's also probably cost more than the camera.
John:
it was close and i also i also have uh i got a used uh 85 millimeter 1.8 i think i think i talked about on the show but i didn't really use that on the vacation so these are the two lenses i used uh it was great not having to swap lenses uh but i did find myself in the slightly awkward situation of now i have to swap cameras
John:
Usually not a big deal because, hey, if you're down by the waves, you have the one camera, right?
John:
But very often, if you're not familiar with the ways of Long Island beaches, there are lifeguards sitting in chairs trying to keep you alive.
John:
But in general on the Long Island beaches, if you want to use surfboards or boogie boards, you're not allowed to use them where the lifeguards are.
John:
I always wondered about that.
John:
It's been that way since I was a kid.
John:
I guess you're more likely to drown when you're using them.
John:
Does it make harder for the lifeguard to see?
John:
I don't actually know the reasoning behind that.
John:
It's just something I never questioned because it's just been part of my life.
Marco:
My best guess is a combination of if you're going to do stuff far out on floating devices, they don't want to be responsible for you.
Marco:
And then secondarily, maybe that if you're in their zone, you know, they have to keep watch over the water constantly.
Marco:
And if it's probably hard for them to watch a couple of people way out there and also a whole bunch of people like really close to them.
John:
Yeah, I mean, it's not really a distance thing because they don't let you use the boogie boards even if you use it two feet from the shore, right?
John:
There's just no boogie boards allowed, no surfboards allowed.
John:
I'm sure there's very good reasons for it, but I've really never questioned it because it's just been an obvious law.
John:
And as I explain this, it probably seems weird.
John:
So, you know, it doesn't seem weird to me because I grew up like this, but so they have flags in the sand saying here is the area where if you swim, you know, if you extend those lines out into the water, if you swim between these flags and they move the flags, more lifeguards come or whatever.
John:
So between these flags, lifeguards are in theory watching you and may save you, right?
John:
Right.
John:
But if you're outside those flags, you're on your own.
John:
And so you're like, well, if they're worried about people dying or it's a safety thing, forcing them to go far away from the lifeguards where no one is watching them doing the ostensibly more dangerous thing doesn't seem to make sense.
John:
But that's exactly what happens.
John:
Right.
John:
So we go to the beach.
John:
We bring boogie boards and sometimes surfboards.
John:
And then sometimes we basically take a trek to or we're going to go down the beach.
John:
We're going to go boogie boarding.
John:
We're going to go surfboarding or whatever.
John:
And so you bring all your stuff and you go down the beach.
John:
It's away from, you know, our blanket is by the way the lifeguards are.
John:
And that's where everyone's going in the water mostly.
John:
But we want to do that.
John:
You go down the beach.
John:
I want to go down the beach.
John:
I have to take both cameras with me.
John:
One for the long lens for the people who are out surfing, but also for the people, you know, for collecting shells or going into little tidal pools on the other side and doing stuff like I need both cameras.
John:
And I've got two cameras around my neck walking down the beach and I'm like swapping between them.
John:
How do you not get arrested?
John:
Yes.
John:
I mean, I'm going with a family group.
John:
You know, it's obvious what I'm.
John:
you know i have occasionally had people come up to me and give me dirty looks or say stuff about like who you're taking a picture of i'm like that's my daughter they're like oh okay yeah oh my gosh yeah but you know it's not not that big anyway so i got two cameras around my neck um and i got pretty good at swapping between them but it was a little bit awkward and heavy dealing with that now doing it the other way where i have one camera and a backpack with lenses that i get down and swap was probably worse uh but yeah the two camera system uh
John:
Overall, I give it mostly a thumbs up.
John:
I did kind of miss using primes because both of these are zooms.
John:
I did kind of miss using primes because I wasn't going to swap to them.
John:
I had them with me.
John:
I had all my lenses with me if I wanted them.
John:
But in practice, I just didn't.
John:
I never thought I needed to prime enough to...
John:
deal with having to change it on the beach the other thing it was we had a bunch of days that were overcast ish so a lot of my pictures i you know it's nicer when it's sunny but rain was predicted for a lot of days rain mostly held off which is good but the light wasn't great on a lot of the days so that kind of made my pictures more dull than usual um
John:
The final thing, and this is not really tech related, but it is.
John:
Well, it kind of is.
John:
I like to take pictures of birds at the beach.
John:
The birds are always there.
John:
They're fun to take pictures of.
John:
It's fun to mess with the camera.
John:
If you follow any of my things on Instagram, you can see lots of pictures of birds.
John:
That's me usually using the super really long lens to get them far away and to pull them real close in.
John:
Sometimes planes fly over the beach.
John:
I get pictures of them.
John:
That's fun to do.
John:
I did that this year, too.
John:
I don't know what the deal is because we were on Long Island last year, right?
John:
Like I did this trip last year, I think.
John:
So I can't really blame it on like COVID.
John:
Like, oh, you know, so many people haven't been going to the vacation, but now the people are back, right?
John:
But this year, the birds were different.
John:
This year, the birds were way more aggressive than I had seen them on these beaches in my entire history of going to these specific beaches at this time of the year.
John:
you know gulls on the beach are always they want your potato chips let's face it they want anything you're eating that's just what the gulls are like on the beach it's just you know something you accept right but normally they do the bird thing which is they just kind of hang back or whatever and then like some kid throws a chip because he thinks it'll be fun and a thousand birds descend out of nowhere and it becomes a giant thing or whatever and then the parents say don't throw things to the birds right because it just gets them all you know riled up
John:
This year, they weren't waiting for anybody to throw anything.
John:
They weren't waiting for a kid to drop a sandwich.
John:
They would walk by and they'd give you this little side eye and they'd be looking at what you're eating.
John:
And you'd be looking at them and you're like, I won't throw anything at them, it'll be fine.
John:
And they just kind of get a little closer.
John:
Maybe one or two of them would see somebody who like, oh, someone went to the water and then someone else went to the water and now no one is at their blanket.
John:
I'd go over to that blanket and say, hmm, a backpack.
John:
What?
John:
I'd stick my nose in that backpack.
John:
What do you got in here?
John:
Oh, I got a bag of chips.
John:
Oh, I got a bag of chips.
John:
And he pulls the bag of chips out of the backpack and a hundred birds come down and they tear the bag of chips open, you know.
John:
And then the people come back from the water and it's just their bag of chips is gone.
John:
And there's a mess by their thing or whatever.
John:
They were so aggressive this year.
John:
They were pulling things out of people's bags, pulling, pulling bags that I posted on Instagram.
John:
You can see one pulling a bag of pistachios out.
John:
It must be expensive bag of pistachios.
John:
It looks pretty big.
John:
They would just go into your stuff and get your food.
John:
They weren't waiting for you to throw it.
John:
Right.
John:
The other thing is, so we'd all be there like it's lunchtime.
John:
Everyone comes back to the blanket.
John:
They're all wet.
John:
They got, you know, their wet hair.
John:
They got the towels around them or sitting under our umbrellas.
John:
All the kids are eating their sandwiches, reading the stuff or whatever.
John:
And the birds are looking at you and they know you got stuff.
John:
Whatever, you know, we're experienced.
John:
We're not going to throw them food.
John:
Even the little kids know you don't throw food to the birds.
John:
It gets them all riled up.
John:
Keep your food to yourself, right?
John:
But they keep walking by.
John:
And then like, you know, we had our like chairs in like a U shape.
John:
And you could see if you're on one side of the U, you could see on the other side of the U, they're walking behind the other people over there.
John:
And you'd be like, psst.
John:
This bird behind you, and you turn around and look at it, and you think, oh, I turn around and look at it, it's going to fly away.
John:
No, the bird would just look at you and say, what?
John:
I'm just walking here.
John:
Don't mind me, right?
John:
And, you know, aside from getting pooped on, which should happen once, because occasionally they'll fly over your head and poop on you, I'm there with the camera going like, wow, this is great.
John:
That's awful.
John:
These birds, these birds are real close.
John:
I can get lots of pictures of them.
John:
And they were, it was really windy and they were doing a lot of low level flying, like back and forth over the blanket area, which was good for, you know, taking pictures of them, whatever.
John:
But they were also doing a lot of low level flying.
John:
I'm like, hmm, you got the walkers and you got the flyers.
John:
And at one point I wasn't paying attention.
John:
I was just talking to the people on my side of the thing.
John:
And then one of the little, one of my little nephews started crying on the other side.
John:
They're like, you know, what happened?
John:
What happened?
John:
It's like, Oh, a bird, the bird tried to like grab his sandwich or something like that.
John:
I don't think anyone saw it happen, but he was very upset.
John:
And he said that a bird had tried to grab something that he was eating.
John:
Right.
Right.
John:
Not that he was throwing food or the bird was pulling something from a bag, but he was trying to get the thing that he was eating.
John:
He was very upset by it.
John:
And they're all going and comforting the little boy and everything, right?
John:
While this is happening, I'm eating my sandwich.
John:
Like, you know, we make our own little sandwiches and bring it to the beach.
John:
I'm eating my sandwich, and a bird comes from behind me in the air and takes a bite of my sandwich that is in my hands that I'm in the process of eating.
John:
Oh, my gosh.
John:
He didn't get the sandwich because my grip, I grabbed it as they went away.
John:
But he took a bite out of it.
John:
And of course, now I got to throw out the whole sandwich.
John:
It's got a bird bite on it, right?
John:
I don't want the bird slobber that came on this thing.
John:
But I'm like, it's in my hands, right?
John:
And that happened, I think, once again to one other person.
John:
So the new move was like when we're eating lunch, hold your food close to your chest and be aware that the nearest bird may be behind you.
John:
Right.
Casey:
Like we're watching in front of us.
John:
We're watching all those birds, watching whatever.
John:
Like I thought I was covered.
John:
And there was an umbrella to the thing flew like under the umbrella over my shoulder, over the back of the seat.
John:
And, you know, while still flying, went a chomp and tried to grab the sandwich out of my hand.
John:
These birds are out of control.
John:
I don't know what has gotten into them, but they don't.
John:
They're not afraid anymore.
John:
And they're pooping on us and they're stealing our food out of our hands while we eat it.
Marco:
that's incredible that is nuts that does not happen here well we i mean here we we actually don't allow eating on the beach because we have a very small very densely populated beach and that would cause too much litter um wait are you serious yes what kind of we have a very large volume of people that come to a very small section of the beach um and so we have a lot more rules than most of the surrounding communities because if we didn't it would be ridiculous
Casey:
So if you go to this beach, you can't have lunch on the beach?
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Marco:
And everyone tells us that.
Marco:
But trust me, if you see the number of people that come to a very small area, you would see why.
Marco:
It makes sense when you see it, but the idea of it angers everybody.
Marco:
Wow.
Casey:
I'll go on faith, but it's not making sense right now.
John:
One of the things they added at our, the beach that we go to is they have little baskets.
John:
They said, Hey, if you want to pick up the litter on the beach, you can use one of these baskets.
John:
Like in practice, I don't, I mean, maybe the people who run the beach, the County or whatever cleans up the beach, but people are usually good about litter or good enough that you don't find litter on the beach for the most part.
John:
If you find anything, it's stuff that came from the ocean, not stuff that was left on the beach, but it's, that's probably because they have a big staff of people cleaning it up.
John:
So as a, you know, like I would suggest for your community, uh,
John:
not letting people eat is one way to do it another way is to pay people to clean everything up i mean that you probably why you don't have aggressive birds are like well no there's nothing here people don't have food so we have aggressive teenagers who leave white claws everywhere but i think if the birds drink those that have different problems like this beach there's nothing changed about this beach and it's not any different than any other sort of south shore beach that i've been through my whole life the birds are there they go nuts if someone throws some potato chip or whatever but this year this year they've just they've
John:
I don't know.
John:
They've become more intelligent.
John:
The hive mind has descended.
John:
I put a link in the... It's funny.
Marco:
Actually, what we do have is people will... They'll park their wagons or oftentimes a baby stroller at the bottom of the staircase that goes up and over the dune.
Marco:
And we will often see deer...
Marco:
eating whatever was left like you know they if they like pack a lunch and it'll be like in a stroll you'll see you'll see a deer eating out of a stroller which looks hilarious and you know i can't even imagine like you know the people coming back to whatever mess that creates where the deer just ate their sandwich you know while they were at the beach
John:
I got a deer photo this year, too.
John:
We don't see as many of them as you do, obviously, on Fireland.
John:
But this was just on our beach.
John:
It was just hanging out in the longlands.
John:
Let me reel it in.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes to the picture.
John:
So I put all these pictures of birds on my Instagram.
John:
And I also put a final sequence of birds saying, let me show you what they're really up to, which is stealing your food.
John:
And so you can see in that one a picture of a bird standing on someone's backpack about to get into it and a bird pulling a bag of pistachios out of someone's bag.
Marco:
oh and that other bird the previous one the bird is like looking under a seat that's in our little circle they just walk right into the circle like oh there's no one in the seat let me check under here there might be some potato chips all right we have a bit of a long after show special this week so we're gonna call it here thanks everybody for listening thanks to our sponsors trade coffee memberful and stack overflow thanks to our members who support us directly you can join us at atp.fm slash join and we will talk to you next week
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N
Casey:
I'm getting my driving permit for driving on the sand.
Casey:
The sand driving permit, that is very exciting.
Casey:
I will confess that I knew this already, but that is extremely exciting.
Casey:
I'm very, very excited for you.
Casey:
And so you will finally be able to use the FJ as it has been intended.
Marco:
And this will make a massive difference in the quality of my life and the things we were able to do in the winter.
Marco:
Because, you know, we live on Fire Island.
Marco:
The only way to get here normally is by ferry.
Marco:
The ferry does run in the winter, but they only run like a few boats a day.
Marco:
And it's such that you can you can go off island to go shopping or go to the doctor or whatever.
Marco:
for either 90 minutes or eight hours and the way the schedule works and the last boat leaves the mainland at like 4 p.m.
Marco:
or 3 30 p.m.
Marco:
so you can't do anything off the island that would take longer than you know 3 30 p.m.
Marco:
otherwise you cannot get back to your house that night cool um so this year we will have the driving permit and that makes so much difference because then you can just drive yourself off in the winter you can't you can't drive in the summer because it's full of people and you don't need to because there's tons of fares in the summer so that's fine um but yeah in the winter finally we will have this and this
Marco:
I need to like get glasses probably I have to go to the eye doctor and I just it's hard to do that you know like there's so much stuff like that that just we've kind of been putting off for the last couple of years because it was very difficult to do year round so oh man I'm so so happy
Casey:
Okay, so to be clear, in the future, you can take the FJ, and the problem is that the particular town you're in, in Fire Island, the streets, as you would call them, are not really streets at all.
Casey:
I mean, I guess you said, I've never been, but my understanding is you maybe could put a car on it if you really, really tried, but it's certainly not meant for that, whether or not it's legal.
Casey:
And so the issue is that you have to drive on the sand to...
Casey:
to get to the end of the regular car streets.
Casey:
And then once you're on the car streets, then you can go to like a bridge or a causeway or what have you in order to get to the mainland.
Casey:
Is that all fair?
Marco:
Pretty much, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, there isn't even a road that has no sand that goes the whole way, even if I want it to ride.
Marco:
So the roads on a fire round are basically wide sidewalks.
Marco:
And they are just wide enough that one car or truck can fit down them.
Marco:
And they're so narrow that if you're driving your car or truck down them, your mirrors will be brushing against everyone's bushes the whole way down.
Marco:
That's how narrow it is.
Marco:
It is exactly wide enough to fit a truck or a car, and that's it.
Marco:
And so this has a number of challenges when you're driving on these, quote, roads.
Marco:
So one is...
Marco:
obviously cars can't pass each other you so if someone's coming the other way somebody has to like stop and back up into a side street to let the other person pass and so there's a lot of like backing up around these corners and everything and and you got to have very good visibility you have to really know your vehicle it has to be hopefully as like small of a footprint as you can get it while still being able to have very good four-wheel drive capability to go over the sand to get there in the first place and
Marco:
There's a bunch of houses that all have landscaping and stuff that butt right up against the lock sometimes.
Marco:
And so you really have to be very careful.
Marco:
It's a very slow, careful way of driving here.
Marco:
And again, visibility, vehicle maneuverability, and footprint are very important.
Marco:
But everyone's driving trucks and SUVs so they can actually get them here.
Marco:
So that's the situation.
Marco:
For me to drive off of the island...
Marco:
I basically have to either drive this – we call it the inland route, which is through all the towns on all these very, very narrow walks.
Marco:
Or I can drive a short distance on narrow walks and then get myself onto the sand and drive about – I think it's about three miles on the sand and then cut back in at the last minute and go off onto a bridge or whatever.
John:
I didn't even think there was an inland route.
John:
There's a way you could do this without going on the sand?
Marco:
It just has less sand.
Marco:
You don't drive on the beach, but you have to drive on the inland route, and the inland road has a few sections in it that are just extremely loose, like sugar sand, which is very... It's even harder to drive on the beach.
Marco:
So, anyway, that situation.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
It came in right at this time, right between two school years, and the amount of time that we are planning on continuing to live here is measured in school years, and it is going to be most likely either one or two more school years.
Marco:
So the timing of this was like, wait a minute.
Marco:
If we now need a car for either one or two years for this role, maybe I should trade in the FJ Cruiser for something new that would be nicer for this purpose.
Marco:
And I'll tell you some things that went into this decision.
John:
Wait, wait.
John:
Before you go on from that, why is it that there's a one or two year thing, suddenly that means you need a new car?
John:
Make this connection.
Casey:
Because it's Marco.
Marco:
I have two clear paths here.
Marco:
Path number one, just keep the FJ Cruiser and don't touch it.
Marco:
Just don't change anything.
Marco:
Keep what I have.
Marco:
There are some advantages.
Marco:
Obviously, that's the cheapest solution that is the least hassle.
Marco:
And the advantage of owning something outright as opposed to like a lease or anything like that is flexibility, too.
Marco:
I don't know exactly how long I'm going to need or want this vehicle.
Marco:
When I move back to, you know, civilization, I'm probably not going to want to be driving an off-road SUV as my main car.
Marco:
I won't need it really for that.
Marco:
So I'm probably going to need this car for two years.
Marco:
That's the most likely term here.
John:
But you already have a car that you could keep for exactly two years.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
You already have it.
Marco:
Correct.
Marco:
However, the long-term reliability of this car is a big question mark because... Of a Toyota.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Well, it has almost 100,000 miles and it's been driven very hard on the beach for all those miles.
Marco:
The previous owner of this car would drive it back and forth to the mainland a few times a week at least.
Marco:
That's a lot of mileage for sand miles because you don't understand what this does to cars.
Marco:
The underside...
Marco:
all rusted out like the frame tons of rust everywhere i got a little concerned because the other fj cruisers that have been in this island of similar vintage have been dropping like flies in the last year they've been replaced because they keep rusting out in critical like you know frame ways and when that happens your trading value goes through the floor and it's a big pain in the butt etc so anyway um so that's one factor is i'm a little concerned about reliability for two years of regular use in this way
Marco:
Also, I mentioned the maneuverability and stuff around the town.
Marco:
The visibility in the FJ Cruiser is horrendous.
Marco:
It's really bad visibility for a couple of reasons.
Marco:
Mainly, it has those wide body color C pillars, I guess, would they be?
Marco:
or B pillars, whatever they are, it has these big blind spot blockages in its frame design.
Marco:
And also, while it has a backup camera, as I mentioned when I got it, it's the tiny little display in the rearview mirror that has the approximate resolution of a QuickTime video in 1996.
Marco:
It is very small and low resolution and you can't see crap at night.
Marco:
So one thing I thought was, OK, well, maybe I just keep the FJ and install like a new CarPlay radio with an aftermarket backup camera that has like a nice new backup camera.
Marco:
So that's one option I could do.
Marco:
you know but visibility in general in the car that's something that's harder to change there is a lot of as i mentioned a lot of undercarriage wear and rust and like so much of like when i when i went to install the license plate the license plate mount is all rusted out so i had to like go buy my own license plate mount
Marco:
Screw it on with some screws into something that might work.
Marco:
You know, I got a tow hitch shackle so I could be pulled out if I had to.
Marco:
I tried to remove that tow hitch shackle recently and I just can't.
Marco:
It's the new piece of metal that I put into the old tow hitch receiver is now rusted into it.
Marco:
cool like so this the amount of rust that i'm that i'm hitting here is substantial um also driving the fj cruiser there are certain things about there that are convenient you know it has all these like nice old style controls everything's all like manual um but that's also a downside in the sense that it lacks a lot of modern things that i am accustomed to that i really miss when i don't have them so one thing bluetooth
Marco:
It has Bluetooth, but it's very limited, and I found it to be very unreliable.
Marco:
It doesn't have modern conveniences like proximity keys, climate control.
Marco:
I like having big manual knobs when I want to adjust things manually, but I hate having to then constantly tweak, all right, wait, turn the temperature up a little bit, wait, turn the fan speed down a little bit, like...
Marco:
I know I did this forever when I when I was learning how to drive on older regular cars for my entire youth.
Marco:
But I also know that now I'm you know, now climate control is nice.
Marco:
It's one less thing to worry about.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Automatic headlights.
Marco:
Great feature.
Marco:
And I have it, you know, I had it on have it on the Tesla.
Marco:
So, you know, that's fine.
Marco:
having to turn on and off the headlights manually it's like one more thing i have to now think about and possibly fail at some point to do other things that i've gotten used to a speed limit display on the dash like you know the car is using some kind of camera to recognize speed limit signs and displaying the speed limit on the dash i love this feature
Marco:
because i don't have to keep a lookout for the signs constantly if i happen to miss one and i wonder hey am i going to speed i can just glance down and it's right there on the display that's a nice feature i'm now accustomed to that i know i could drive without it i have with the f drive driven without it but it sucks to drive without it once you're used to it um the brake hold where you push the push the brake to stop the car and then when you're stopped you can let go of the brake and the car holds itself there
Marco:
I love that feature in the Tesla and many other modern nice cars.
Marco:
I really love that feature.
Marco:
And of course, the F3 doesn't have that.
Marco:
So it makes it feel more like an automatic where as soon as you lift off the brakes slightly, you start creeping forward pretty quickly, actually.
Marco:
And it's like, wait, hold on, I don't want to go yet.
Marco:
And then other modern safety features like the little blind spot warning lights on rear view or on side view mirrors rather.
Marco:
um stuff like that you know i like that kind of stuff i like having modern safety features um and then finally you know obviously carplay would be nice to have it could be added aftermarket though so that's not this thing but other factors that played into my decision here
Marco:
The parking situation has proven to be more burdensome than I expected because the ferry lot, we have to pay for permits, and they're very expensive.
Marco:
And so it's not really worth paying for two permits to park two vehicles and then having to move two vehicles, having to shuffle them around and everything.
Marco:
Ideally, I would love a car that one vehicle...
Marco:
could just be my car to be four-wheel drive and be able to drive back and forth from Westchester to the ferry.
Marco:
And the FJ, the amount of rust and wear and tear on this car, I don't think I would trust it to be reliable in that role, to be doing those long-distance drives as well as the four-wheel drive stuff.
Marco:
Not to mention, you know, I would miss all that modern tech and the comfort of more comfortable vehicles.
Marco:
But what finally kind of pushed me to look at something else...
Marco:
is that i made the mistake of looking up what it's worth no no and the fj cruiser is worth more than i paid for it oh my gosh you bought it like six months ago right or a year ago at most i got it like last i think like last november so almost a year ago so but after after less than a year it is worth more than i paid for it and and more enough to even cover things like that i had to pay the sales tax to register and all that other stuff like it even covers all that like
Marco:
It's worth a lot more.
John:
I'm sure that motivates you, but as we get to the later part of this segment here, I'm going to say that in no way does getting rid of the FJ result in you eventually saving money, as we will see.
John:
No, of course not.
John:
I mean, none of these options, but...
John:
This is very much like, I mean, for people who are longtime listeners of the program, Marco often does this with Macs.
John:
He will get a Mac that he think is going to be the Mac that is going to serve his needs.
John:
But then, you know, three months later, he'll be like, you know what?
John:
I got this Mac expecting to X and Y, but really Z. And so he sells it and gets a different Mac.
John:
This is exactly like that, but much bigger.
Casey:
Yes, that is a perfect analogy.
Marco:
Well, and yeah, no part of this is about like, you know, I'm not pretending like I'm going to save money by getting a new car.
Marco:
No, it's more like I have this car that I, you know, quote, just bought, really, but it is now worth so much more than what I paid for that I can kind of see that as like, okay, I can keep this or I can basically use it as a credit towards something else.
John:
Hopefully whoever you sell it to doesn't hear the part without all the rust underneath.
Casey:
Well, I'm thinking it's going to be pretty visually obvious if they even take a cursory look.
John:
It's on the underside.
Marco:
Maybe they don't check.
Marco:
You can't miss it.
Marco:
You can see it from the side.
Marco:
You can't miss it.
Marco:
When you're driving it, can you see the road below you?
Marco:
Not yet, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Casey:
So, Marco, at this point, you've decided in a very Marco way that you would like to solve a problem that may or may not even be a problem in the first place by throwing money at it.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
Welcome, new listeners.
Casey:
This is the same as it ever was.
Casey:
But anyway, so you want a car that you said has great visibility.
Casey:
It's easy to know the edges of the car and it's very good on sand.
Casey:
So what you're saying is you want something that's got very, very short overhangs.
John:
I think you left out one item there from the bullet list, which is comfortable to drive back and forth.
Casey:
So like I said, you want a car that has short overhangs.
Casey:
You want a car that has short overhangs that is extremely capable off-road and can do both of those things reasonably well.
Casey:
So what you're saying is you want a Wrangler.
Marco:
So I decided I did I did some research and I asked some friends like, hey, you know, what should I be looking at here?
Marco:
And and, you know, watched a bunch of YouTube car reviews and off road tests and everything like that.
Marco:
What I came to was a short list.
Marco:
I wanted to look at the Toyota 4Runner, the Jeep Wrangler and particularly the 4xe, the plug in hybrid Jeep Wrangler.
Marco:
and the lamb rover defender um i will say at the towards the end i was i was tipped off i should look at the ford bronco this came kind of too late for me to plan to see it but but based on based on reviews because like i knew the bronco was just towards the end we've been yelling bronco at you for like a month i was about to say we've been saying this both of us i know i get it well and and i also i thought based on just not listening very closely i guess i thought they were like impossible to get
Marco:
i thought that was i thought that was true too in your defense and that it does not seem to be true but i also thought that they were hard to come by yeah i should also say um i have been on the wait list for a rivian for a while now my current estimated delivery for the for the and i'm looking particularly the r1s the suv model um because if you want an r1t and you're willing to pay a premium you can there's a whole bunch of them for sale nationwide now like people who are just who are flipping them
Marco:
And you can get a lightly used Rivian truck model, the R1T, for a lot of money, but you can get it.
Marco:
The R1S, the SUV, seems like it is just barely starting to be trickled out, and there are currently none for sale anywhere as far as I can find.
Marco:
So my reservation would hold, which was like, you know, a year from now, which is like, well, I probably at that point...
Marco:
I'm not even going to really need this car that much after one more year.
Marco:
So that's probably not a good option.
Marco:
Also, I mean, that's a lot.
Marco:
That's even more money than everything else I'm looking at.
Marco:
So anyway, we had this kind of break in the summer between summer camp for Adam and this other thing he was doing.
Marco:
And so we kind of had nothing to do for a week.
Marco:
And I'm like, wouldn't it be fun to take my kid for car shopping?
Marco:
Because I know when I was a kid, I think we only got...
Marco:
two cars in my entire childhood um but i loved the shopping process like it was so much fun for me to like go and like whenever anyone else whenever like family friends would buy cars i'd want to go with them like to their car buying experiences because it's just fun you know and and i wasn't sure if adam would like it or not um you know so he's he's 10 so that's like right at the age where i think you start thinking this stuff is cool
Marco:
um so anyway i decided right we're gonna go off i plan this whole trip we're gonna go off and go to toyota jeep land rover drive all three and i'm gonna have adam actually rank them as well to see what he thinks because i never sit in the back seat i don't know what's what's important for backseat passengers the way he does and he had a lot of fun doing it and so he developed a 25 point review scale for the cars oh
Marco:
There were 10 points allocated for what he first called comfortability.
Marco:
I later taught him the word comfort and that's the word you're looking for.
Marco:
So he corrected it.
Marco:
So 10 points for rear seat comfort, 10 points for rear seat visibility.
Marco:
And five points for smell.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
He also ranked the dealers themselves separately from the vehicles.
Marco:
He didn't have a point scale for the dealers themselves, but he wanted to rank things like, how comfortable are the chairs that he was forced to sit in while I was talking to the salespeople?
Casey:
one of the so we first went to toyota because i thought the forerunner was the most likely thing i would pick i maintain i still think leaving aside the fact which is a big aside i'm coming back to it leaving aside the fact that the on-road manners of a jeep wrangler are not stupendous i will i will concede that i still think all things considered the wrangler is the best option
Casey:
And for the purposes of the show, if nothing else, if you somehow end up with a freaking Wrangler when I don't, that would be amazing.
Casey:
And so I stand by, I think the Wrangler is the most correct answer.
Casey:
I think, however, that if you do any of these terrible ideas, and the Wrangler is also a terrible idea in its own way,
Casey:
I think you're going to end up in the Defender because it is the most Marco answer possible.
Casey:
With that said, John, I would like your opinion.
Casey:
And then please, I would like the blow by blow in excruciating detail of all these visits.
John:
Well, I mean, I'm against the Wrangler for many reasons.
John:
And now when I'm thinking about the comfortability score of that Wrangler, it's not looking good.
John:
I really don't think those back seats are going to be Adam pleasing.
John:
I would lobby for...
John:
Excluding the comfort of the chair Adam had to sit in while you talked to the dealer from your decision-making matrix.
Marco:
Fair enough.
Marco:
And also, I've been not massively drawn to Wranglers so far, but the 4xe, being a plug-in hybrid with a 20-mile battery-only range and, by all accounts, a very good plug-in hybrid, that really got my attention.
Marco:
And that's why I started looking at Jeep again, because...
Marco:
I love electric so much.
Marco:
That is the only even electric-ish off-road option besides Rivian.
Marco:
And therefore, it's the only electric-ish option you can get for a nice off-road vehicle that you can actually buy today that's actually available to buy.
Marco:
So that's what got me looking at it.
Marco:
But I admit, I had low expectations of the rest of it, but I thought electric is really compelling to me.
Marco:
So let me give that a really good look.
John:
And before people send things in, there are a lot of electric SUVs.
John:
It's just that the off-road demands are, at least according to Marco's criteria, like we need more than something like the Solterra from Subaru and the Toyota Twin to that.
John:
There's lots of like sort of small SUVs that are full electric or even something like the Mustang Mach-E that are basically tall wagons.
John:
Those apparently don't have the off-road chops to do what needs to be done.
John:
Only the Rivian and something like a true dedicated off-road thing like a Wrangler or Defender or 4Runner or something.
Marco:
can handle the sand yeah those vehicles really they they mostly lack in uh ground clearance that's what really kills them i wonder if an f-150 lightning would have done the trick but i don't think you can get your hands on one yeah trucks would for sure most people out here drive either you know either these off-roaders or very large suvs or trucks um but i just i don't i didn't want to drive a truck like they're they're a little bit longer which i think makes the maneuverability a little bit more difficult on these streets especially for you know a truck novice like me
Marco:
um and also like i that's not the kind of cargo allotment that i want because i wanted this to be able to go back and forth to westchester it needs to hold a lot too and and i i know trucks can hold a lot in the bed unless it's raining or snowing and then and then you get the covers and all those other and like i didn't want to deal with any of that i just wanted like a large vehicle that's fine anyway also i think it's hard to get lightning still
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I agree.
Marco:
I would expect that to be very difficult.
Marco:
I didn't even look, but I expect that anyway.
Marco:
So first went to Toyota because everyone here, like all the year round residents here who had FJ cruisers have replaced them with either four runners or Wranglers.
Marco:
So I figure, all right, the forerunner and the forerunner, you know, as soon as you see one, if you do any research at all, if you see both vehicles, it's clear that the forerunner is like it has taken up the crown of the FJ Cruiser.
Marco:
I know I probably existed at the same time, but, you know, it is clearly like this is like the same kind of vehicle with many of the same kinds of appeal.
Marco:
Okay, so Toyota, you know, the dealer was very convenient.
Marco:
It's in a great location.
Marco:
Giant dealer.
Marco:
Adam said it was the best chair he ever sat in up to that point.
Marco:
However, buying a car in mid-2022 is not normal.
Marco:
Obviously, we are in the midst of a supply chain crunch with the world and cars in particular have gotten very hard hit.
Marco:
And so to give you some example of the situation, the Toyota dealership, the dealer website listed they had 16 new forerunners in inventory.
Marco:
When I got there, they had zero.
Marco:
Also, every new 4Runner they have has a $7,000 quote dealer adjustment added to the price.
Casey:
Oh my gosh, get out of here with that.
Casey:
So you didn't spend very long on Toyota then?
Marco:
Well, they did have a couple of used ones that were like a couple of years old.
Marco:
And the thing about the Forerunner is that it basically has not changed in like 10 years or something.
Marco:
It's been a long time.
Marco:
It's a very old model line that is waiting for an upgrade that is supposed to be updated, I think, next year.
Marco:
But the current one is very old.
Marco:
that's also very ugly what happened to the forerunner i remember it back from you know when i was a kid it did not look this ugly yeah um but anyway so i did get to drive a 20 i think it was a 2020 model it was a couple years old um and there aren't really major differences between that and the new ones except the new ones have a slightly bigger uh media screen and they have a nice um side camera view which i really like a lot and i wish i got to see it but i couldn't compared to their views like because i'm looking at the forerunner is the cheapest
Marco:
But this is, again, this is relative and this is with today's market.
Marco:
The off-road premium model that I'd be looking at as a minimum would be like $56,000 with the dealer markup.
Marco:
But keep in mind, I have a very highly valued trade-in.
Marco:
And by the way, not only is the FJ Cruiser worth a lot, they want it.
Marco:
It's a rare car that people love and it's in high demand.
Marco:
They know that they can flip it instantly.
Marco:
So anyway, I show up at that thing and I got a lot of salesperson attention.
Marco:
Hey, what can we get you into today?
Marco:
You know?
Marco:
but you know the forerunner it has the worst colors of all the bunch it is the oldest looking it is the most boring looking the interior is exactly what you expect from toyota it is ultra fine i know those feels it is functional and it is totally forgettable that being said it had the biggest trunk space that i saw that day by a lot it has a very big trunk
Marco:
driving felt a lot like the fj cruiser but bigger it feels like you're driving a giant box and that is not a great thing um visibility is okay not great um backup camera and screen are still very old low resolution you know as i mentioned the modern ones are improved but not massively so and it has because it's such an old platform it has an old engine and a five-speed automatic transmission and that really they really hold it back and they make it feel old like
Marco:
when you step on the gas and it has to wait wait wait and then upshift like to like this very different gear from the one it was in like you kind of feel like okay now i now i understand why these like eight and ten speed automatic transmissions are better than the old five speed ones because you have a lot more gears in the middle that it can shift to and get you know be more responsive and more efficient and everything
Marco:
but you know ultimately i the forerunner didn't make me feel excited because it it felt like an old car being sold as new it's like if you bought one of those like one of the non-retina macbook airs brand new in like 2018 like it felt like that like overall the for i came out of the forerunner experience thinking like okay i'm probably gonna end up buying this but i'm not excited about it you know this is a vehicle it serves a function it will take me where i'm going and i will feel nothing like that's
Marco:
That's the function this vehicle serves.
Casey:
So it's a Toyota.
Casey:
It gets you where you're going and you feel nothing along the way.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Then we went over to Jeep.
Marco:
I wanted to drive the 4xe.
Marco:
So the Jeep, the dealer, it was not a great, you know, it was like this terrible location.
Marco:
Adam did appreciate that it had balloons inside the dealer room.
Marco:
Everything was like, you know, all red, white and blue, you know, flag balloons.
Marco:
Like it was, you know, super over the top with, yeah, America, you know.
Marco:
He rated the chairs as a medium.
Marco:
The dealer listed that they had eight new Wrangler 4xe's in inventory.
Marco:
They had one.
Casey:
That's better than zero.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And they seem to be selling it for MSRP.
Marco:
So not adding on weird things to the price.
Marco:
Also impressive.
Marco:
Yeah, very.
Marco:
So we went out for a test drive.
Marco:
the battery was totally dead there's a surprise of course great dealer guys great good job you're selling an electric car you don't plug it in thanks a lot so i could not test any electric driving at all i've watched enough reviews and stuff that i knew they have these different modes you can you can push this button on the side for electric only or hybrid or this thing called e-save where it basically won't use the battery at all but will charge it as much as possible with like regen breaking and stuff like that
Marco:
So I did the whole test drive in e-save mode and did a lot of intentional speed up and then let it regen break for a little while and then speed up and just doing a lot of regen hoping that I could at least at the end of the drive get a little bit of electric anything.
Marco:
I got no electric experience at all.
Marco:
and this is the only one they had and i'm not i'm not going to sit there all day waiting for them to try to charge it you know i have i have a 10 year old and i have other stuff to do so you know but i will say so and the the wrangler this is for for a decent four by e we're looking at like seventy thousand dollars this is not just real quick wranglers are absurdly expensive like i understand they hold their value blah blah blah but the
Casey:
They are ridiculously expensive.
Casey:
Part of the reason I'm in a Golf R right now and not a Wrangler is because I started pricing out Wranglers and even getting like a beater Wrangler and optioning it with what I consider to be the bare minimum amount of options.
Casey:
This is what, four years ago now?
Casey:
It was still like $50,000, $55,000 four years ago.
Casey:
They are so expensive.
Casey:
It's preposterous that you could spend $70,000 on a Wrangler and not even blink an eye.
Marco:
yeah and again and cars in general right now are very expensive but but this the wrangler you're right the wrangler has kind of always been like this um but i will say so it was it kind of surprised me actually i'd never actually driven a jeep before um it was much smaller inside than the others now it's interesting it's not that much smaller outside they're they're they're big vehicles like they're they are full-size suvs basically
Marco:
between the forerunner the wrangler and the defender they're all about the same size they're within a couple of inches here and there but they're all approximately the same size so anyway it was very cramped inside because the jeep like it has the like it kind of flares out the body from the doors and everything and so the inside's kind of like it's like it's like somebody applied padding or a margin they like inset the whole inside compared to the footprint and
Marco:
So you have a lot less space in the Wrangler than the others, both the trunk space.
Marco:
And I hated the way the trunk opens where you have to like pull the bottom out and then lift the glass up because like that's not that I did not like that at all.
Marco:
But everything is cramped in the Jeep.
Marco:
Even the controls are cramped because since you can remove the doors, they don't put any controls on the doors.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So everything is just shoved into the middle in this giant wall of switches.
Casey:
Yeah, that's fair.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
But at least you have switches.
Casey:
I mean, it's more than we can say for your damn Tesla.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
Also, because the Jeep is convertible, you have those giant, what are they?
Marco:
Like the C pillars, the big diagonal pillars that run from the backseat into the trunk.
Marco:
You have these giant pillars that are eating into the inside space even more.
Marco:
And so it feels like you're in a roll cage for a race car.
Marco:
inside your car well you are i mean that is what you're in yeah you literally are so everything kind of just felt cramped niceness wise this does not feel like a seventy thousand dollar car even at today's prices and adam did not appreciate the comfortability of the back seat um he the headrest in particular he said like it was tilting his head at a weird angle it was not getting good reviews um from either of us that being said when i drove it um even without the electric drivetrain working stupid dealers
Marco:
It was surprisingly fast and nimble.
Marco:
I was very pleasantly surprised by that, much more so than the others.
Marco:
The 4Runner just felt like a big slow box.
Marco:
The Wrangler really felt almost car-like in its weight and nimbleness.
Marco:
Nimbility?
Marco:
Whatever.
Marco:
I was very impressed by how it felt, how it handled.
Marco:
If I actually had electric to help me out, it would have been even better.
Marco:
I totally see why people buy them.
Marco:
And in fact, I would even say it did not seem less comfortable on the road than the 4Runner or the FJ Cruiser.
Marco:
So sorry, John.
Marco:
Thank you.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I consider this a moral and personal victory.
Casey:
I know you're not going to buy a Wrangler.
John:
Maybe you didn't hit any potholes.
Marco:
oh god stop it john well hitting a pothole in any of these vehicles is not fun but the other ones have independent suspension don't they uh i think so yeah but i was expecting it to be way more rough than than what it was thank you very much i would say it is exactly as comfortable in at least you know for like you know a 10 or 15 minute test drive it was exactly as comfortable as the forerunner in my opinion well adam disagrees
Marco:
oh yeah okay frankly though i i think i think the jeep would be low on my list um also because i learned since then that that electric range of 20 miles or so on the sand it would be more like four maybe 20 yards maybe
Casey:
You said you only need three.
Casey:
You're good.
Marco:
Yeah, but OK, so I can power off one way and then not be able to use electric on the way back at all.
Marco:
So it's not that's not great.
Marco:
The appeal is less so when it's that short.
Marco:
But that being said, as they have things like they have a Cherokee four by E that's kind of out, but nobody has them yet.
Marco:
But, you know, so that that might become, you know, something in the future.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But anyway.
Marco:
I totally appreciate the Wrangler now that I've driven one.
Marco:
It's not for me, though.
Marco:
It has a lot of personality that the 4Runner doesn't have.
Marco:
You drive that car and you feel something, but it's not what I want to feel.
Casey:
And that's fair.
Marco:
But I get it.
Marco:
I get why people like it.
Casey:
I consider this a victory in the Casey camp.
Casey:
I just wanted you to understand that this isn't a rolling piece of crap.
Casey:
I totally understand and sympathize that it may not be for you.
Casey:
That's fine.
Casey:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Casey:
But if you were to look at the chats that the three of us and a few other people on the Relay Slack were having, according to John and Marco before Marco drove it, that thing was like driving on wheels shaped like squares.
Casey:
Like that's how rough apparently it is.
John:
I mean, did you take it like on the highway at like 70 miles an hour?
John:
I mean, it's not.
Casey:
John, when was the last time you were in a Wrangler?
John:
I don't know, but they don't get good reviews.
John:
Like I said, the phrase that rings to my mind when I see these things.
John:
And granted, this is a fancy Wrangler and it's not like a two-door tiny thing with a short wheelbase or whatever.
John:
But we've said this in past programs.
John:
Like driving a grand piano with a door open on it.
Marco:
or the lid open sorry driving like driving at piano with the lid open i will say too so this the model the one we were test driving had the electrically retractable soft top roof and boy that thing leaks a lot of sound and probably temperature as well if i had to guess so did you drive it on the highway or no
Marco:
No, we were on like, you know, Long Island, you know, car dealer neighborhood.
Marco:
So they were these, you know, you could go like 55 on some of the bigger roads for a little while and then you stop and turn and, you know, go down some side streets, then go back to the bigger roads, you know, that kind of thing.
Marco:
Because I have to imagine that the 4Runner is going to be smoother and quieter at highway speeds.
Marco:
maybe well and also i should point out too um with the fj and with the way i drive these things because these trips begin and end on sand you don't keep very much tire pressure when you have lowish tire pressure you don't want to be driving that fast on the highway or taking you know really fast turns or anything so i drive these vehicles very gently and on the highway i i don't usually go above like you know 60 i keep it very slow you wouldn't reinflate after getting off the sand
Marco:
If I was going to Westchester, I would.
Marco:
But if I'm just going to the grocery store, no.
Marco:
So therefore, I keep it slow and gentle, for sure.
Marco:
Anyway, the Jeep, again, I get it now much more than I did before, but it's not for me.
Marco:
It's clearly, you give up so much for it to be convertible and disassemblable, and those are things I don't want to give up, and I don't need that.
Marco:
So went over to Land Rover.
Marco:
It was across the street conveniently.
Marco:
Long Island.
Marco:
Adam's chair rating was medium, although he later found the large leather cube chair like after the test drive.
Marco:
He found that and then he upgraded his rating to the best chairs.
Casey:
Oh, excellent.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
He also – he was – this was getting in mid-afternoon.
Marco:
We were getting a little bit hungry and bored by this point.
Marco:
So I found the little push-button coffee machine in their waiting area, and it had a hot chocolate option.
Marco:
He gave solid marks for that.
Marco:
He did suggest next to the coffee push-button maker thing.
Marco:
There was another push-button machine for dispensing all sorts of garbage chemical sweeteners to your coffee.
Marco:
He suggested they should add marshmallows to the dispenser for the hot chocolate users, which I think was a good suggestion.
Marco:
Anyway, the dealer website here listed four new Defenders available.
Marco:
Zero of the four were actually there.
Marco:
Oh, cool.
John:
Why did you settle on the Defender, by the way, of all the vehicles that they offer?
Marco:
um it seemed like the most direct competitor for these things i don't know i didn't look that much into it to be honest but like their other ones are seem like they're both more expensive and um you know that you you give a bit on stuff like ground clearance and a little bit of the off-road abilities so anyway they had no new defenders available despite listing for them on the website the the new models on the website they listed the
Marco:
a quote accessories charge on each one that was between 12 and 19 000 oh my gosh and when you it would say what it was for and it was for vague things like the protector package it's like you know stuff that it's like they're obviously this is just what this is just their dealer markup but yep they just for whatever reason didn't want to say that or couldn't say that so
Marco:
anyway they did however have one used defender from last year the 2021 model on the lot and there was a customer owned one parked in the lot that was a different color that i could compare i could test drive the one used one they had and it had most of what i wanted anyway so anyways i'm like all right let me let me see this and it was like it was you know it's one year old you know 10 000 miles great
Marco:
Overall, the interior space was very kind of medium.
Marco:
You know, the 4Runner was the most space by far.
Marco:
The Jeep was the least space by far.
Marco:
This was right in the middle.
Marco:
Medium-sized trunk.
Marco:
For some reason, massively tall headroom.
Marco:
Even John, I think, would feel comfortable with his perfect hair in this car.
John:
Land Rovers are always very tall cars.
John:
They look tall, and I guess they are tall in real life.
John:
They're just...
Marco:
you know the better to tip over yeah oh people in chat are asking which size defender the four-door um 110 model um they apparently they have a 130 coming out now that's even bigger if that's like casey's suv size because it has to fit more more people in it but um no this is the 110 the the kind of medium-sized four-door one
Marco:
Anyway, so we went for a test drive on that.
Marco:
I will say also after the test drive, this was fun.
Marco:
It's one of these dealers that has this little mini off-road demo course in the parking lot.
Casey:
Oh, that's cool.
Marco:
That's not fair.
Marco:
And so the salesman took us on this.
Marco:
i thought i was gonna die adam thought it was the most amazing thing ever where you know the car you know you you drive the car up on this like 45 degree angle and you're like how is it not tipping over i feel like it why is it not how like it should be tipping over and it doesn't it was it was really fun but this is the the most off-road use that most of the cars they sell are ever going to get is in this parking lot you're actually going to use it off-road but most people are like exactly
Marco:
um but anyway so uh yeah everything inside was you know medium-sized by far the nicest interior not even close there's a surprise not even a little bit close like by far the nicest interior also by far the nicest drive i was surprised how car like it was in handling not in size you know it felt like a big car very big car
Marco:
And all of these cars, like when I'm driving them, because I'm used to driving car cars, I'm used to sitting much lower.
Marco:
And all of these feel like I'm sitting in the sky.
Marco:
You know, not only is it an SUV, it's an off-road SUV.
Marco:
So you're looking down into other SUVs.
Marco:
Like you're even higher than most SUVs are by like six or seven inches.
Marco:
So like you're looking down at like, it's the weirdest thing for me because I don't usually drive these kinds of vehicles.
Marco:
So it's like, anyway, it's good to feel tall.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, so the Land Rover easily won the Atom vote with its many USB charging ports everywhere.
Marco:
He was amazed that his backseat had three USB charging ports available within his reach.
Marco:
By far the nicest screen, like the big media screen.
Marco:
It has this really nice 360 degree camera system.
Marco:
It uses multiple cameras to simulate an actual 360, like swoop around view of the car.
Marco:
So you have both the top down view and you can back it out and look around.
Marco:
Look up YouTube videos of this.
John:
Doesn't your Tesla do that too?
Marco:
No, it doesn't.
Marco:
Tesla has backup camera and that's it.
John:
Yeah, all the big Lux brands have the swoop around the camera, the car thing now.
Marco:
Yeah, Aaron's car does.
Marco:
Oh my God, it was so nice.
Casey:
Your M5 had that.
Marco:
No, it had top-down.
Marco:
Yeah, it had top-down.
Marco:
It only had sides and back.
Marco:
It didn't have a front camera, so it was a little bit limited.
Marco:
But anyway, and the 4Runner has the side cameras and sort of a front one now.
Marco:
And it's a similar kind of...
Marco:
camera arrangement but not the way they don't like composite it together into anything cool but it does have that for the for reference um but when i saw that in like youtube reviews i'm like oh my god to have that on the streets here when i have to like back up and not crush somebody's lawn uh or you know break their fence or you know if i like you know back up into somebody's side street to let a car pass like oh my god to have that over what i've been doing with the fj is very different i
Marco:
um it also has i've never seen this before um maybe maybe you guys know about these it has a an option that if you flip the rear view mirror so that you normally you'd like flip it to turn on the polarizer or whatever it uses a camera in the rear fin on the roof and gives you a screen as your rear view mirror
Casey:
Yeah, I'm familiar with this as a thing.
Casey:
I don't know of any models off the top of my head other than this that have it, but I'm familiar with this as a thing.
John:
Yeah, that's the thing.
John:
On supercars where there's no rear visibility, there's only a screen, but yeah, the ones that switch between regular and screen.
John:
And honestly, I understand why they have both in the ones where you have both because screen technology is such that there are situations where the mirror is...
John:
superior to the screen but that gap is shrinking real quick i do wonder how long because the advantage the camera has is unobstructed view right it doesn't have to go through people's heads or headrests or anything like that or the spare tire mounted on the back trunk lid you know exactly yeah or the car or the cargo if you if you've packed the thing with cargo you can't see anything right
Marco:
yeah like the rear visibility outside of all these vehicles is is compromised because there is a wheel stuck to the back of them and and you're going through like the visibility with this with this camera mirror was better than the visibility of any car i've ever seen like it's better than my tesla because it has the headrest in the way and like the shape of the trunk oh my god massive like game changer to see that kind of mirror that was amazing also adam said it had the nicest smell
Marco:
So by far the nicest option of all the contenders, but also the most expensive.
Marco:
So it's basically the Apple, you know, slash Marco choice, right?
Marco:
It was the only one that I actually felt something about.
Marco:
And I actually wanted after the test drive.
Marco:
The other ones, I walked away.
Marco:
I'm like, okay, fine.
Marco:
You know, this me feeling like I wanted an SUV is like John wanting a laptop.
Marco:
that doesn't happen like that this is a category of things that i don't think i ever want i actually wanted this even though it was more money than the others it wasn't even that much more like when you compare you know it was like the difference between economy and first class on a plane but if first class only costs like 30 more instead of three times more and if you were committed to your choice for like years instead of hours yeah
Marco:
It was a huge difference in niceness and features and comfort for not a huge price increase.
Marco:
So I got it.
Casey:
Wait, the used one?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Oh, well, congratulations.
Casey:
So to be clear, you decided to replace a admittedly old, but still a Toyota.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
which will probably run until the end of time.
Casey:
You decided to replace that with a British SUV.
Casey:
Godspeed.
Marco:
The Toyota's engine would run until the end of time.
Marco:
Yeah, fair, fair.
Marco:
Did you buy it or did you lease it?
John:
I bought it because, I mean, can you even lease a used car?
John:
What happened to the whole leasing plan?
John:
The whole idea was you got the two-year window.
John:
You don't want the car that's going to be damaged by salt.
John:
You do the lease.
John:
You give it back at someone else's problem.
John:
What happened to that?
Marco:
First of all, the prices of the new ones, especially being so inflated by the dealers, are way more than the prices they used once.
Marco:
The difference is even bigger than it usually is between new and used.
Marco:
And I don't know if I'm going to need this car for one year, two years, or maybe even three years.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So to have the flexibility is actually nice.
Marco:
Plus to apply a trade-in that covered like half the cost was very, very nice.
Marco:
I don't even know how you would have done that because I think the trade and value would have covered all of the lease payments.
Marco:
So I don't even know if that would even function that way.
Marco:
Anyway, so that's why I did that.
Marco:
And the condition of the frame and stuff on the FJ and the amount of rust trading into a dealer was the way to go.
Marco:
And they saw it.
Marco:
They knew what it was.
Marco:
But they also know the market.
Marco:
They did the same research I did, found that they could probably flip it to some auction for X dollars.
Marco:
And they gave me a really good price.
Marco:
I negotiated a very good price for the trade and everything.
Marco:
So yeah, that was good.
Marco:
what color is it it is the blue all right that's and that's part of the reason why i got the used one actually i i had located there was a new one coming in in the green color um coming into a different dealer sometime soon but i said at the front of this like i they had a used one a lot and they had a customer's car that was something that was owned so i couldn't drive it the customer's car was the green color and i parked it right next to each other and i looked at i'm like you know
Marco:
I don't like the green, actually.
Marco:
In person, it's much lighter than you think it is.
Marco:
It looks almost like a green-tinted silver.
Marco:
And the interior trim of the one that I had located was all green trim also, like green leather and stuff.
Marco:
And I'm like, it looked very military.
Marco:
And there's a lot of black trim on them.
Marco:
And the combination of the green with all the black trim, I didn't think it looked as nice in person as I wanted it to.
Marco:
Whereas the blue, I was like, oh my god, I have to have that.
Marco:
It was so, the blue is so nice.
John:
This website is so terrible.
John:
I cannot for the life of me go to a configurator unless we change the color to blue.
John:
It's like, oh, this trim level is only available in these two colors.
John:
Just show me a blue one.
Marco:
Can you have a picture?
Marco:
Make the window narrow.
Marco:
The whole website is broken, but if you make the window narrow, it changes the whole layout and you get a thing on the side and it works.
Marco:
Yeah, it's like a medium.
Marco:
It's called Tasman blue.
Marco:
It's like a medium blue, kind of like a, I don't know if like a dusk kind of, I don't know.
Marco:
It's a really nice blue.
Marco:
So anyway, I saw that and I looked at other inventory and I'm like, you know, and the used one had almost all the exact features I wanted, but it was way less money and it was only very lightly used.
Marco:
And to address Casey's reliability question, I'm probably not going to own it for long enough for the manufacturer warranty, which is the first four years.
Marco:
to be over.
Marco:
And that covers all the stuff that Elise would cover.
Marco:
So I did the research on what does it cover?
Marco:
Does it cover things like corrosion?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
It was a pretty great fit.
Marco:
And based on the options of what's actually available anywhere in the region, it was an obvious choice.
Casey:
Well, congratulations.
Casey:
That's exciting.
Casey:
It's the most Marco-y of Marco answers.
Marco:
Yeah, it's a very predictable result.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Yeah, it's surprising nobody.
Marco:
I will say, like, you know, and, you know, so I drove it, you know, bought it, did all that, you know, drove it back to the ferry and everything.
Marco:
It is really nice.
Marco:
Like, it is still a very big car.
Marco:
And, and,
Marco:
but part of it is just that i don't i'm not used to driving vehicles this size or height in the sky um and so i keep thinking it's bigger than it is like i'll you know i'll park it in a spot using the amazing camera system and i'll be like oh my god like i feel like i'm just barely fitting here and then i get out and i'm like oh my god i have like four feet around me like it's fine
Marco:
Um, the instrument cluster has a bunch of like customization options and everything.
Marco:
None of them are amazing, but some are okay.
Marco:
I love having a sunglasses holder on the roof.
Marco:
Like many cars do.
Marco:
One thing that Tesla sucks at is there's never anywhere in a Tesla to put your sunglasses.
Marco:
She's got a Honda Accord.
Marco:
Sunglass holder right in the roof.
Casey:
Golf R. I have two of them.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
every car has a place to put sunglasses except tesla i don't know what it is like they don't they have sun in california like i'm pretty sure they're known for that no it's always foggy remember oh yeah but yeah so love the you know the lots of little details of the interior um and it has car play right yes it does wireless car play oh welcome to the new world your tesla is now ruined baby
Marco:
I will say the center array of buttons and knobs that is the main control area for HVAC and some of the off-roading features and everything, it is a bit confusing.
Marco:
I think I just have to get used to it.
Marco:
There's a lot of good controls everywhere.
Marco:
One of the things I really love about the CarPlay, it's something I never have had before, I love that you can use the steering wheel button for Siri and that it works instantly.
Marco:
Before...
Marco:
I would just like hold the Siri button on my phone going over regular Bluetooth and a Tesla or whatever.
Marco:
And when you do that, you have to kind of wait a second or two for the phone to tell the car, hey, I'm in phone call mode.
Marco:
So turn on your microphone.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
of beeps and you might hear you know you might hear the doo-doo or you might it might get cut off or weirdly and so you end up having to like retry or fail with siri a lot because you have to you have this weird delay to take care of whereas here when you have native a native siri button on the wheel you push it done like that was really nice and uh otherwise you know the rest i don't really know yet you know i haven't driven on the sand yet because i you're not allowed to during the summer i don't know how it'll go on the sand yet but by all the reviews and everything i'm very optimistic it seems like it's extremely capable off-road
Marco:
and uh that's about it so where is it's in the ferry parking lot yeah i i have parked my tesla in westchester um and i'm going to leave it there for a while um you know because i mean it's a it's a paid off tesla that has that needs no maintenance basically ever um
Marco:
And so it's going to sit there for a while, and I'm going to figure out whether I'm going to keep it for the next two years and resume using it when I move back there, or whether I say, you know what, the Defender is good enough to serve this role for me for a while, and then maybe I'll sell the Tesla.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
That decision remains to be seen.
John:
Don't forget to have someone go and start the engine on a Tesla at least once a week.
John:
You didn't answer the most important question.
John:
So Adam, I was hungry for food and you gave him hot chocolate.
John:
Did you go to my pizza place that I recommended?
John:
Sounds like you didn't.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Instead, part of the agreement with Adam was that if he was going to come with me to these car dealerships, that we were going to go to Shake Shack afterwards.
John:
So that's what we did.
John:
He went to Shake Shack instead of my favorite pizza place in the entire world that you were like five minutes from.
John:
Sorry.
Casey:
It's a shame.
John:
Well, when you go there, you get the Land Rover service.
John:
You can check it out.
Casey:
Yeah, which you will be doing sooner than you think, I'm quite sure.
Marco:
Actually, I literally am.
Marco:
Because I ordered the rear recovery loops, and they're going to put them in sometime soon, and I have to bring it in for that.
Marco:
So yeah, I'm going to be back there probably in a few weeks.
Casey:
Has Tiff even seen it yet?
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
She declared, because when I'm in car buying mode, I get really annoying.
Marco:
Like, hey, what about this?
Marco:
Or what do you think about this?
Marco:
Should we do this?
Marco:
Should we do this?
Marco:
And eventually she's just like, just shut up and just get whatever you want.
Casey:
I don't care.
Casey:
This sounds familiar.
Marco:
she left it to you and adam to figure out yes and adam had he had such a blast like i i didn't know how that would go you know because i i was worried he'd be bored or you know he loved it he absolutely that's awesome that's really awesome it was it was almost worth buying a new car just for that wonderful bonding experience he was like this is this is my favorite trip we've taken in months like he was so happy oh that's so great can we buy a new car next month you should say maybe if it's anything like laptops
Marco:
Well, the good thing is the novelty will have worn off after this for a while.
Marco:
So he's not going to care about cars again until it's actually time to get a new one years from now.
John:
Yeah, I mean, it'll probably, like maybe it was in high school, you can finally succumb to, we know where this is going, you can finally succumb to the pull and go boat shopping with him.
John:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
John:
That's true.
John:
That's way off in the distance in Marco's future.
Marco:
No, not a boat person.
John:
It's like a giant black hole for money.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Marco:
I got cars for that.
Thank you.