Decluttering Cables - DTNS Weekend

0:00This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W. Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting and Walden is here to help you achieve it. Take the first step to make your impact. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by Shev. Your daily supplement routine doesn't need to be managing a handful of different bottles.

0:40Onnit's Total Human brings key research-based vitamins, minerals, herbs, and amino acids together in convenient day and night packs. One all-in-one product designed to make supplementation easier. The day pack supports cognition, focus, and cellular energy production. At night, the night pack helps you wind down and supports a calm, relaxed state. Less time managing your supplements, more support for your day and night. Shop Total Human now at onnit.com. Every next move starts with being prepared. Because tomorrow brings opportunity, and opportunity brings new risks. Meet your next project prepared with experienced professionals who know your industry.

1:23Meet new markets prepared with one of the industry's largest global networks. Meet change prepared with a dedicated team helping businesses move forward with confidence. Meet tomorrow prepared with Zurich Insurance.

1:41This episode is sponsored by HeyGen. AI is great at saving time, but only if it actually fits into your workflow. That's what makes HeyGen so compelling. Instead of spending hours setting up lights, cameras, and retakes, you can turn a script, photo, or presentation into a polished video of you in minutes. No production crew required. Whether you're a creator, consultant, attorney, financial advisor, or real estate agent, HeyGen helps you create consistent, professional video content without making content creation your full-time job. It's rated the number one AI video platform for small business on G2, features some of the industry's most realistic AI avatars, is trusted by more than 30 million people and 85 % of the Fortune 100, and supports over 175 languages, so you can communicate with audiences around the world.

2:27Here's the wild part. Record yourself for just 15 seconds, and HeyGen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand, so you can post everywhere your audience is, as yourself, without filming every time. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com slash pod. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-O-D.

3:04Welcome to DTNS Weekend Edition, the show where we deep dive into technology and tech events shaping the world around you. I'm Roger Chang, your host for today, and today we're wrestling with one of the most important topics you can possibly deal with as a tech person who owns their own home, or actually even if you don't own your own home, cables. You know that closet bag or plastic tub full of them? I actually just have Ziploc bags full of them, but you know what I mean. Meticulously organized and labeled. Exactly. You know what? should do that. Which reminds me, I haven't even talked to you about it.

3:40But joining me now in that voice off camera is none other than fellow old guy and cable collector, Patrick Norton. I'm delighted that I have upgraded from cable hoarder to cable collector, or at least keeper of highly functional cables. It's a weird thing. But before we get too far into it, I want to give a shout out for everyone who's been supporting the show, supporting DTNS, because without your support, shows like this wouldn't be possible. Supporters like David Smith, Horace, Sean Whittier, and Sabrina Hackney. You're actually a part-time therapist, at least for me. Why do we collect, why do we hoard cables?

4:19I have this little cable that's just, you know, a three-and-a-half-inch millimeter to a three-and-a-half-inch millimeter just sitting around for no care. Well, first of all, it's not three-and-a-half inches, 3.5 millimeters. Oh, yes, you're right. Or one-eighth of an inch. And because invariably, right, the way if you're a certain type of geek and I think of like, you know, my old boss, your old boss, you know, who was an incredible influence. It's Jim Lauderback, who like at one point we had some weird thing in the lab and I couldn't find a cable for it. And Jim's like, oh, I got one and opens up this desk drawer in his office, reaches in with both hands, you know, like like fingers spread like big salad tongs and pulls up this giant snake ball of like like literally like 18 inches across, like two feet long and drops this ball of cables onto the desk.

5:20and we start sorting through and invariably we found whatever bizarre cable we needed. And I got to, you know, went back to the lab finishing review. But, you know, there's this sort of be prepared mindset. You know, it's thrifty. You know, you've never, anybody who's ever not been able to finish something or not get a job done or not, you know, anybody who's been through Christmas morning and not had a USB cable with the right end on it to charge a new toy, It's like, I will never, you know, I will never be cabelless again. Right. And it's, I laugh because one, there used to be on some levels, it feels like there used to be a lot fewer cables, but we'll get into why that's not true later on in the podcast.

6:02But, but essentially, you know, it's like literally, cause you might need it someday. Cause cause you, you know, you have, so you have a replacement. I literally, in my backpack, I have, you know, basically what amounts to a laptop charger, a laptop charger with multiple USB ports. And I have at all times a minimum of two USB to lightning cables. Because, you know, if you use cables enough, especially USB cables, they start to break down over time no matter how good they are. And there's nothing worse than, you know, running out of power when you need to do something on your phone and you're 800 miles from home, you know, and nobody's seen a pay phone in a decade.

6:45Right. Or again, Christmas morning, like somebody is missing a cable, but you can charge there, whatever it is, because you've got that cable stored away in the garage. So let me ask you this, because I have only come across this in my own life. And granted, it isn't a very lengthy one at this point, hopefully longer. That have you come across like, man, I am really glad I kept on, I held this cable because it is proving to be invaluable at this point in time in my life. There was a point a few years ago where I, you know, there's a point about, gosh, probably before I left California. when I was like, okay, I am never going to use a SCSI cable again.

7:29And if I do, for some reason, find a hard drive with SCSI connections on it, I will get SCSI cables and Terminators, and I will figure out where to buy them, whether it's on Craigslist or eBay or Facebook marketplace. But whatever it was, I was just like, there was a bunch of cables. I didn't have any FireWire drives left. I didn't have any SCSI drives left. I didn't have any SCSI devices left. And there's some cables that are just such rarefied air, weird adapters from early video capture cards that were using RCA jacks going into something that looked like a DB9 jack or some proprietary connectors.

8:10At some point, I just got pretty ruthless and started getting rid of all that. I kept the USB cables. I kept the video cables of various flavors. um you know i i feel like unless you're really convinced you're going to need that weird cable because you know i i have a friend and his whole thing his hobby is retro pc gaming and he can't run you know a dos game on a emulator it's just anathema to him his whole goal is like you know i have a legitimate like 1983 pc running a 1983 game and in his case he might actually need some bizarre cable for some bizarre device. So, you know, in his case, you know, because he is a collector of a very specific type, it could be incredibly valuable to have these bizarre agent cables at hand.

9:00Let me ask you, and you're probably one of the worst people to ask because I too am this way, is that we are loathe, loathe to toss anything away lest it become useful in the next month or so and we're kicking ourselves because we didn't keep absolutely and and you know there are instances i i used to keep really long firewire 800 cables because i bought two because because part this is the other thing about me i cannot pass up a sale if there's like buy two you know buy one get one free i would be that guy you know that that makes that marketer's dream come true because I will go in on that. So I bought two six-foot firewire 800 pin to a firewire 800.

9:48And it came in useful exactly one time back at Revision 3 when one of the boxes that we used to adjust video, the cable was jacked up. And it's like, well, I have an extra one. And so they were able to use it. But more often than not, a lot of it just sits in my closet. and as we all know when you have a family, especially as your kids get older space is a premium so I've been wondering what is okay to toss and what is one of those things where, you know what, this is still useful I should keep it I mean you know, a really good friend of mine one of his friends is his goal, he says he's an eight-hour man now and his life goal is to be a two-hour man.

10:38And that is literally like if he decides or he has to move for work or if he decides to move to a new place, he currently takes him to eight hours to pack up everything he needs to move. And his goal is to be able to pack up everything in two hours. This is not an individual that has a couple of 15-gallon buckets of cables sitting in a closet somewhere. This is like a Zen focused, you know, I don't even want to call it minimalist because I think that's insulting. I'm going to call it, you know, the guy has the essentials, you know, pretty sure he's got two USB lightning cables because he's a belt and suspender kind of guy.

11:15But in terms of everything else, he just doesn't keep a bunch of crap around, you know, and, and it's a very different approach from the average geek or mini geeks I've seen where they have boxes full of cables. And, you know, I was recently witnessing to a crate full of cables that a friend of mine was clearing out because he was losing the storage space they were in. And it was, you know, I'm pretty sure if we dug deep enough in there, we would have found some SCSI cables. You know, but at some point, like, you know, there's a couple things I've started doing a lot in the last few years, right?

11:52USB cables, they're kind of disposable commodities, not necessarily the one that's on this headset or the one that is plugging my desktop-attached storage into the back of my PC. Because if cables are stationary, they often hold up pretty well for a really, really long period of time. But anything where it's like headphone cables, the USB cables that you use to charge your phone, they get thrashed. And they, yeah, they disintegrate over time. I'm on my third micro USB cable for this keyboard. I am on my second USB cable for my DAC. This one is still the original because I don't use this headset more than a couple hours a week.

12:39I am on, I have replaced three cables in the cars in the last two months. three USB charging cables, lightning charging cables, because certain members of my family who shall remain nameless keep, you know, not putting them away and letting them drop on the floor and then stomping on them and snapping the ends off. Not that I'm bitter. So, but it's also, it's like at some point a couple of years ago, I started religiously cutting the ends off of dead cables because I found myself thinking like, well, maybe it's, maybe it's fluff in the phone, jack maybe the cable's okay or the cable works on this phone but it doesn't work on any other device and i was like this is stupid and it's problematic and i'm going to be so pissed you know if you grab it well or or if it's the only one in my bag the semi-functional cable is the only one in my bag when there's a natural disaster an emergency an event you know the car explodes while i'm you know trying to get back from a show and the you know you mean like it's just i mean is this is Is this an issue of just going through and seeing what your daily device, for example, you know, I have a smartphone.

13:50As long as I have a USB, who's it, you know, a USB cable, USB cable. That can handle the wattage. Handle the wattage into a brick. Just collect those like anything else. For example, I have the old USB A to USB B, you know, for printers and stuff. Well, all my printers are networked. I connect them with an Ethernet jack. I don't actually connect them directly to USB to my laptop. Well, sure. I mean, if they're Ethernet, they're on the network, they're shared. It's simpler for everybody. I mean, I was laughing because, you know, one of the notes you had in here was like, which USB cables do you keep?

14:26And I was howling, right? So my sort of like platonic ideal, like if I'm in Plato's cave and seeing the perfect image of Patrick's relationship with USB cables, It's because I have hit the lottery and I have replaced every device in my house that doesn't have a USB-C cable with a device that uses a USB-C cable. When I am insanely wealthy, I'm going to have nothing but USB-C cables in my house. Unfortunately, right now, I need lightning to USB, USB-C, USB-C that can handle wattage for some fairly powerful laptops, type A, type B for my desk attached storage, It's USB mini, USB micro for most of our portable chargers and a couple of tools and gadgets that just won't die.

15:14So I keep using the micro USB or the USB micro and then USB micro B for two or three portable hard drives I have. Right. So and that's not even getting into the sort of like type A USB 3, type C USB 3. So let me ask you, let me be the actuary in the accounting who says, wouldn't it make more sense to just buy the really thick gauge, high powered USB to USB-C and then just get adapters for the ends? Or does that complicate issues with your cable, like tossing out cables? So, I mean, at some level, like one, they're kind of expensive if you're buying them from legitimate sources because you're worried about, you know, running 60 watts through some jank under spec, you know, cable of questionable origins.

16:05And I will say my personal cable standards have risen a little bit. I still buy a lot of USB cables off of Amazon. But, you know, like looking at CableMatters.com, dealing with people who are doing high-end integrations at an AV firm, you know, I've decided that when I can, I will, you know, and I've always been really good about investing in HDMI cables. And I've occasionally gotten a little cheap on the USB cables. But I try to do, you know, I try to buy cables that are going to last. I don't need a 60, 100-watt capable USB charging cable for my iPhone. In fact, having something like that could be problematic because if it is – I need something where it's not going to like accidentally – the cable is so thick it's going to whip the phone off the tabletop, right?

16:58And it's like – go ahead. Is there a point where just being cheap with cables – for example, you were saying like you don't buy the super bargain basement cables where that's like you buy really cheap and your cable – like I used to do this. like you know i did for two years bought like super cheap like get like a half a dozen for like five bucks and they would just break because they were literally like dental floss you know gauged at some point in it i mean it's at some point years ago i was like you know i had i had tried a bargain brand that somebody had recommended on on amazon and two of the lightning connectors and two of the cables died within like four months.

17:41And so, you know, I've done a lot of like, you know, Amazon house brand. I've done a lot of Belkin. I've done a lot of, oh, goodness. Well, Ugreen is pretty solid, but I'm thinking of a anchor. I've done a bunch of anchor cables. I had really good luck with the anchor cables. um i want to say that apple cables are better but they're just more expensive in my limited experience um although i will say the apple you know usb c to headphone and the apple i've or lightning connector to headphone jack are two of the biggest bargains in audio and in the history of audio um those are ridiculously high performing devices that cost nothing but but like in a lot of cases, you know, there's a difference between if somebody at work is, you know, has a, you know, $300 ,000, you know, super sophisticated high-end Teams room, they're not going to cut any corners by saving a couple bucks on a USB cable because USB is problematic enough in high performance environments.

18:50So, you know, and we have really have very simple standards. We have a select group of places we trust to provide cables and that's who we buy them from. You know, it's the bigger problem for me is like, you know, if I'm looking at USB cables on Amazon and it's$6 for three USB cables, you know, the brand that has eight reviews, I'm not going to touch. The brand that has like 4.7 stars across 37 ,000 reviews, that's probably going to be okay. And then I can, you know, and it's not so much money that I'm going to be emotionally traumatized if they don't work out. So, okay. Well, let me shift gears from traumatic cables to possibly the most ubiquitous cable.

19:34And that's power cords, right? The AC power cords you get with PCs. A lot of appliances come with them. But you also have different sized ones. For example, my PS5 and my Blu-ray player both use the one – they call it like a Lazy 8 – not a Lazy 8, but a figure 8. A C7 connector? Yeah, the shotgun, figure 8 shotgun cables, but also like the standard thick ones that – 515P to IEC C13, a.k.a., yeah, like the NEMA 515P, which is like – spare ones just sitting in a plastic tub and i don't know if i'll ever really need them but i feel very comfortable knowing that they're there and i never have to buy one again well it's it's funny right because it's one of those things where if you know i love micro center i have nothing but love for micro center you know but occasionally i'll see the price for something like a you know a pc power supply cable uh you know uh 515p the icc 13 or whatever it is and i'll look at the price and they'll be like that's like a measurable percentage of what the power supply cost and and they do that because it's not something they sell very often i need to make their margin and you need to basically deal with it sitting on the shelf not being purchased for a couple years right like i i i get it and i am willing to support my local brick and mortar store but it's a lot easier you know to have a half dozen cables you know in the cable box you know uh i did a huge purge of them a while back um because when you know one of the places i worked at shut down they were like just take all these cables because otherwise they're going in the garbage and uh you know i got rid of all the lighter gauge ones i got the ones that looked like you know they had been heavily used uh and it's funny right because when you start digging into those they go from 18 gauge to 14 gauge like 18 16 or 14 gauge um you know so i got rid of like all of the lighter gauge ones except for a couple like six foot long 18 gauge cables that i use when i'm trying to do weird things with monitors and i don't want to have to fight bending the cable um you know but it's crazy when you look at the amount of wattage those can handle even with the smaller you know wire inside of them so i'm i'm not uh you know long story short is is you know you probably don't need a hundred of them like i think i i think i i recycled uh you know at a legit e-waste recycling center to make sure the copper didn't end up being lit on it make sure somebody in india was inhaling plastic yeah um extracted well but it's like you know a half dozen like how often are you gonna because like i kept a lot of the 10 foot ones because most televisions you know most you know consumer electronics devices come with a decent four to six foot k power cable so i kept some of the more extreme ones for when i need like a 10 foot cable or something i have all the ones i have are six foot except i have one that's maybe double the length and i always keep it because i know at some point i'm going to have something that's a little too far away from the plug and i don't want to pull out a power strip or an extension cable uh to plug it in but i mean so So you would safely say keep like a dozen or so if you have them.

22:53Just flying around. I think it depends on how much gear you have around your house and how tremendous – how do you want to be able to repair all of the cables for some reason? It's very easy to sort of fool yourself into thinking that you're going to need all of these at some point because you're going to wire a bunch of things in series. It's going to save the world because only if you carried like, you know, 350 of these cables that you could line together. All right. Moving from power to video because you mentioned video earlier. Oh, man. Video cables are kind of a strange breed because you have television, you have HDTV, then you also have PC monitors, all at which point in time use different cables, right?

23:39Right. I can safely say that I no longer need RCA video cables or S video cables, or am I being incredibly deluded in thinking that I'll find that one magical CRT? So I have two, I have a couple of like, it's been really funny watching cassettes kind of have the, you know, vinyl resurrection moment. Not because, you know, I like, you know, again, digital audio files and CDs are 9 ,000 times easier to use in a cassette. although merely holding a cassette and slamming it home in a cassette player brings me a certain amount of joy. But I literally own basically what amounts to a professional cassette deck, like a studio-grade cassette deck I got at a ridiculous sale at one point, and I still own a VCR.

24:38And the only reason those exist are so that I can transfer when I occasionally run into a mixtape I have treasured memories of, or actually right here, I have a front of house recording from one of my favorite bands of all time. That was a gift from a friend of mine and, uh, uh, who is a taper and collector. And it is the only copy of that show I have ever heard of or seen. And, you know, so like I have, I originally bought that, that, you know, that nice professional grade tape deck so I could transfer that tape to digital files. I've used it, you know, loaned it to a friend of mine who is a professional musician and his partner had a bunch of demo tapes that she wanted to transfer so she could send the MP3 files to people she was rehearsing with on a new band.

25:28And, you know, so if there's some older stuff in your life and it'll be useful, keep them. Otherwise, like get really vicious about getting rid of them. You know, I have like, I think I have two VGA cables left in my life. And what I effectively think of as my garage monitor, which is this industrial grade Dell ultra sharp display that's. Episode prep gets messy when research, Slack threads and script trackers are all in different places. That's where ChatGPT work comes in. Give it the goal and connect to the tools where work happens, like apps and files. and it can help pull the pieces into a draft you can review, without you having to re-explain the project at every step.

26:13For example, ChatGPT work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs. You stay in control reviewing the draft and deciding what moves forward. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place.

26:54Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Hi, I'm Jack Ravici, Kramer host of The Best One Yet. At T-Boy, we're always talking about small decisions that can have an outsized impact. One of the simplest is staying hydrated. Whether I'm traveling, getting a workout in, or heading into a busy day, I keep Liquid IV on hand. It's clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone and contains three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients.

27:27It's an easy addition to your daily routine and helps support hydration when you need it most. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you. Rothy's is up to something big. The famous Flats brand has reimagined their iconic point shoe to be better than ever. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Rothy's made the point even more beautiful and comfortable than before. Every closet needs a little black flat, and Rothy's makes the best one of all. Discover the point at rothys.com and learn why this timeless shoe is so special. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S dot com. Hola, soy Natalie Marcus, nutróloga y conductora del podcast Las 3 R's.

28:08El cáncer de colon tocó de cerca a mi familia y me enseñó que detectarlo a tiempo puede marcar una gran diferencia. Así que hablemos de lo que no se habla. Por eso es que estoy colaborando con ColoGuard para decirte que si tienes 45 años o más y tienes un riesgo promedio, pregúntale a tu profesional de la salud si ColoGuard es adecuado para ti. Es una prueba que puedes usar en casa y detecta el 95 % de los cánceres de colon. Obtén más información en ColoGuard.com. diagonal prueba. La prueba ColoGuard está diseñada para detectar el cáncer colorectal en adultos de 45 años o más, con un riesgo promedio.

28:39Visita coloGuard.com diagonal prueba para obtener más información, solo con receta médica. Hacerte la prueba es un acto de amor por ti y por tu familia.

28:52Probablemente, no creo que sea más viejo que Seamus, pero está en ese neighborhood. Está al menos 10 años más. you know but it's it's uh it's uh it's got like six inputs on it or something ridiculous like that it's like the last monitor i've got where there's hdmi um uh hdmi dvi um vga and i don't know if i think displayport it was pre kind of displayport but i have that because a in case somebody brings an old piece of technology around and then I can get a display connected without buying some weird adapter off of, uh, Amazon or someplace. And two, because it just won't die. So, you know, I can do something silly, like attach a, you know, I have, I mean, it's, it's something I have.

29:43The only reason I have the cables is because I still have this one monitor with a VGA input on it. Do you keep around like anything that's super esoteric? Like maybe, uh, For example, the old style 8-pin RGB cables where it ended out into eight BNC connectors that you – and certain monitors use it now. Pretty much no. I mean, although ironically enough, I'm pretty sure there are some VGA connectors on the back of that monitor. But I basically – I have like two VGA cables left, one which is attached to that monitor. I've got like one DVI cable because pretty much anything I own with or have owned with DVI had HDMI.

30:24And I've kind of gotten rid of all the old HDMI cables in my house, partially because as, you know, we went from like, you know, 720p HDMI 1.0 to getting to 4K 60 hertz. um you know as my home theater equipment upgraded i just you know got rid of you know again i've got a couple three spare cables that are in my vastly smaller cable drawer cable box uh and most of the rest of them have gotten rid of them not because they might not be you know useful someday but at some point you're like you know how did i end up with 26 hdmi cables and what about hdmi now the The tricky thing with HDMI is when you bought them.

31:10If you got the first or second generation, they're still useful, but if you have a 4K or 8K TV and you have set-top boxes, a game console, something that can feed it, you need to have the rated HDMI cable, or am I not understanding and you can still get by with the first or second gen HDMI 1080p cables? If you don't mind running your 4K TV at, you know, 1080p at a maximum 60 hertz, by all means, use that HDMI 1.0 cable. But, you know, I mean, it's crazy, right? Like HDMI 2.0, that was 13 years ago, right? And that's, you know, 4K video at 60 frames per second. HDMI 2.1 is, let me look it up because it's been a while, 2017.

32:03That's the 48 gigabits per second bandwidth, you know, and that's like, you know, resolutions maxing out at 10K frame rates up to 120 frames per second. But, you know, that's like, that's 2017. So, you know, you're probably, if you're running a 4K, you know, monitor or you're running a 4K television, that's probably the cable you have connecting it right now. I'll be honest. I have HDMI cables from 2008. I have one from 2009 I still use. And it is one of those things I've often wondered. I got a lot of these. Should I just toss them based on a spec? For example, the NeuroSpec is backward compatible.

32:46And so other than the fact that one of them for some reason is 12 feet long because I got it from a central computer and that's all they sold at the time. But other than that kind of weird bit, I mean, it's just a standard, like, HDMI 1.0 cable. You know, if you've got the space, you know, if you have, you know, a 6 ,000 square foot barn on your property and, you know, you can store the cables without, you know, raccoons peeing on the box and ruining what's inside of them, I'm bringing that particular. I'm bringing that up because I wouldn't call it a metaphor. I think I would call it an example.

33:25and a friend of mine who had a bunch of stuff stored out in the barn and literally a nest of raccoons were peeing on it. It turns out raccoon pee is really, really bad for those fancy, those tiny little pins on the end of cables. But that gross example aside, if you've got the space, keep whatever you want. If you don't have the space, if it's time to downsize, if you suddenly realize you've got the giant ballast of cable that weighs 40 pounds and takes up this three foot wide, you know, file case cabinet drawer, you know, on one hand in certain office environments, I can see where like being the silverback with the giant collection of cables going back to since before you were born kid can be useful.

34:14But at some point I just like, I just didn't want all the crap around. So it was like, I got rid of all the old HDMI cables. And then also I won't have to worry about any HDMI cable in my collection not working if I, you know, if for some reason, let's say a large 22-pound Tomcat somehow manages to get wrapped up in the HDMI cable and bends the HDMI cable miraculously without breaking it off in the television or yanging the television off the stand. Not that I'm getting specific again for a reason. It's nice to have a spare cable, you know, around the house. But I also like – I have sort of a pair and a spare mentality or I live on the farm and we're going to keep everything because it might be reusable someday.

35:02And I've been trying to dial that back as I get older. I mean that's really hard because even at that point, I'm thinking like, man, this 12-foot HDMI cable might be out of date, but long enough for me to tie someone up with, right? So it's – I mean I just – That's one of the most creative excuses for holding on to an old cable I've ever heard. I kid you not. I've had like, you know, I could still tie something with this. And an earthquake happens and I need to carry someone out of a building or something. See, I have like paracord and climbing rated rope and, you know, thousand pound ratchet straps.

35:43Yeah, but I mean, how often do you use those? Alarmingly regularly. Well, you also have like, what, three trucks, three pickup trucks? I mean, I ratchet strapped something, you know, a furniture box to the top of the Subaru a few weeks ago. I, okay, side note, that's the one thing I miss about not having my truck after I donated. You know, behind the seat is you have a little bit of space between that and the back of the cab. You should have gotten rid of the cables and kept the truck. I know. I left the ratchet straps all back in there. They weren't expensive, but there are times where it's super handy.

36:25Okay, so let me boot us back into what we're talking about. Cable-wise, your general rule of thumb is USB, USB-C ideally. I mean, I've gotten rid of all the cables I don't use around the house. is that your rule of thumb just whatever you use if you want to again my rule of thumb for me at this stage of my life is i do not need obscure cables and connectors you know that have not been in common use since the early 80s you know what i mean or even the mid 80s right partially it's a space thing partially it's like you know after 20 years of reviewing products and bouncing around and building and relocating and shutting down, you know, various lab and testing environments.

37:16You know, I had a alarming amount of cables. Like, I feel, the group is a safe space, so I'm using my feeling words. I feel that I probably had 75 pounds of cables. I just never bothered to weigh them, but it was, you know, I could basically pick up one box at a time it was essentially you know 12 you know four like a whatever the you know i can't think of how many gallons six eight 12 gallon container um full of of cables and it's like i i have a fun you know private equity has bought all the storage unit systems up and you know even the ones who aren't owned by private equity have learned all the private equity games for maxing out the price And it's like, I don't need to have, you know, a whole bunch of, you know, stuff I'm never going to use.

38:09I don't need to be paying for a whole bunch of stuff I'm never going to use for the privilege of having it, you know. In your face. At arm's reach, you know, because I can go to my storage unit that's accessible 24 hours. And if I need this really weird ass cable at three in the morning on a Thursday, I won't have to wait until, you know, eBay or Amazon can deliver it. I can drive out to my storage unit. It's like, well, storage units have gotten pretty expensive. And so, you know, maybe I'm just Swedish death cleaning early. This is my thing. I have, you know, I used to keep the oddball cable around for old devices, for example, an old, not a mixer, but an old, no, actually it was an old audio interface because it only took Firewire 800, but it was also from like 2005.

38:57and there's a much better version of things like that now that I've replaced it with. So it's not necessary. And I keep holding on to things because, you know, I'm just that kind of person. But I find that I only really need USB-C. I only need your standard AC power cord. Yeah. And I only need HDMI. And that's like 90 % of the cables I use in my daily life. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's partially it's like, you know, you have this list in the script that's pretty funny. Not because it's funny. I like how you call it out. Roger, you ridiculous fool. You listed all these things. That's not, no, that's not how I meant it.

39:39If I'm going to call you a ridiculous fool, Roger, I'm going to sing that out. But it's no, you're like a bunch of stuff you put under odds in it. It's like SATA cables, SLI jumpers for, you know, video cards, right? parallel cables, old 25-pin parallel cables, SCSI cables, FireWire cables. I can't tell you the last time I saw. We cleared out some old Macs at an office I worked at, and that's the last FireWire jack I saw. I haven't seen anything that plugs into the other end of a FireWire jack from a computer in probably a decade, maybe longer it feels like. you know parallel cables i have a couple parallel cables around in case somebody brings me you know in a in a you know parallel cable hard drive you know usb adapter you know and you know and some spare sata cables um tucked around because you never know when you're going to add a hard drive here to need like one more sata cable in but like again for me it's like getting rid of for at this stage of my life getting rid of a lot of the stuff that i was 99 sure i was never going to ever have a use for you know again i probably had in one bucket 40 plus you know pc power cables um you know 515p to c13 whatever they are and it's like you know a half dozen you know i got a couple of mickey mouse ones i got a couple of the cutoff ones like you know the standard ones and that's i'm good you know because it's um well i mean no i mean this is really good information because i i keeping on to a lot of stuff out of just i mean you know i hate to say that's kind of a security blanket uh but i don't i i don't really need them though right i all the wire cables i have came with the external drive enclosures I have, but I don't have that many hard drives left because I opened them all to take the magnets.

41:50Cause I mean, this really is turning into a therapy session because you got to remember Roger, like, like the other thing I like, I have, you know, audio equipment that I'm, you know, I have, I have a fist. Well, I'm laughing. It's like, I have, you know, I finally started there. There are some amps. there is one amp that I refuse to get rid of that I've had since I was 19 years old. And it's oddly enough, a bit of a collector's item. It's not a tube amp. But I kind of upgraded amps on and off for about 10 or 15 years and managed to not get rid of most of them. And then I kind of got to what audio enthusiasts call my endgame, which turns out to be a commercial.

42:32Just like this company called ATI makes amp in California, amps in California. And in my mind, it's little old ladies that used to solder together all the connectors for like f14 comcats and then like whenever their factory went down they ended up uh manufacturing amplifiers because like the the quality is just so good um and as ridiculous as that sounds i'm bringing it up because like you don't have like i have spare parts for two diesel trucks i've got you know probably enough tools to sink a small battleship um you know i mean like like i i have an excess of hobbies and uh and it was time to get rid of a bunch of stuff and the cables for the stuff i'll never see again that was an easy that was an easy skim for me you know the third set of metric wrenches the ones that i don't use anymore because they were my dad's boy you know like i i i will i'm looking forward to gifting those to the first of my children that leaves the house for their you know for their apartment tool set right No, I mean, this is all really good, and people get special insight into my psyche.

43:40But unfortunately, we've come to the end of this show. That's it for this episode of DTNS Weekend Edition. What are you thinking about? Got some insight into a story or actually any of the things that we talked about? What sort of cables fill your dreams or nightmares or your closet? Let us know. Feedback at DTNSShow.com. And you can learn more about the entire family of DTNS podcasts and shows at DailyTechNewsShow.com and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash DailyTechNewsShow. And if you like what you hear, consider supporting us at Patreon.com slash DTNS. I'd like to thank Patrick for being with me today.

44:19Thanks for having me. Sharing his cable story, because really it's Patrick's story, with us. And until next time, you've been listening to DTNS.

44:40The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

44:53Hi, I'm Jack Ravici, Kramer host of The Best One Yet. At T-Boy, we're always talking about small decisions that can have an outsized impact. One of the simplest is staying hydrated. Whether I'm traveling, getting a workout in, or heading into a busy day, I keep Liquid IV on hand. It's clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone and contains three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients. It's an easy addition to your daily routine and helps support hydration when you need it most. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

45:25Hi, it's Brooke DeVard, host of Naked Beauty, and I want to talk about how I upgrade my hosting experience. There's a moment just before guests arrive when my home stops feeling like a series of rooms and it becomes an atmosphere. The light settles, the air shifts, and then the beautiful scent of jasmine, rose, and fig fill the air. It feels warm and considered. That's what Pura does. It turns fragrance into environment. A collection of beautiful, clean fragrances, all controlled from your phone. Choose your sense of place at Pura.com.