728: No Face to Shoot

29:01At this point, it's not actually clear, as the industry would like to suggest, that autonomous vehicles will achieve either of those goals. So, you know, all that is PR bullshit. Oh, man. See, and it's funny that when the Waymo drove through the active crime scene here in L.A., that somebody didn't shoot it in the face. Give it time. No face to shoot, Jason. There's no face to shoot. God damn it. That's how they got around it. Yeah, so, okay, they fudged the numbers. Shocking. So, I'm still not getting in one. No, I'm not either after reading that. Yeah, especially after reading that, especially not at dawn or dusk or when there's a turning incident involved.

29:38Because God forbid, if I'm going in a straight line in the middle of the day. If I'm going in a straight line at noon. Yeah, then I'm in. I'll try it then. But if we got to turn, fuck that noise, man. No way. Well, I just saw this last one and it just it kind of it just it sums up how I feel about it. How much does Tim Cook and other Apple execs make per year? And some numbers came out. In total, Apple says Tim Cook's compensation totaled$74 ,294 ,811 in 2025. Now, Cook revealed back in 2015 that he plans to give away all of his wealth during his lifetime after providing for the college education of his nephew.

30:18He plans to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy rather than simply writing checks. Tim, I got – hold the phone, Tim. I got an idea for you. I have just a small idea. So put that little bucket of money away for your nephew. Take a smaller salary and distribute the wealth to the people who work for your fucking company. Like, you know, I don't know all the people with suicide nets in China because they're going crazy. Are you a fucking communist? What is this? I'm sorry, Brian. I'm sorry. Yeah. Fucking commie. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It's an idea. It's an idea. Run it through Grok and see how it tracks.

30:58Okay. See how it looks in a bikini. Yeah, yeah. Some of the other greatest hits. The CFO got$22 ,467 ,309. General counsel got$27 million. The lawyer got$27 million. That's a lot of money. COO got$27 million. The former CFO walked away with$15.5 million. Maybe that's why they quit, because they weren't getting the whole 27. And the retail and people SVP got$27 million. Brian? I don't know how hard you have to work day in, day out to get$27 million a year. But that's, you know, they must have extra hours in the day that us mortals don't have. Because, you know, you have to be working at least 400 hours a day, I'd think, to make$27 million a year.

31:49But I guess that's just tech. I guess so. Unbelievable.

32:05Media Candy. Well, Brian, over the break, Stranger Things wrapped up. If you haven't read every news article everywhere, people are complaining about it. People are loving it. Some people are thinking that it was all a fake out. There's going to be another secret episode that was supposed to drop yesterday. Spoiler alert. It didn't. It's done. It was fine. I ended up fast forwarding half of it. Like most of the season, I ended up fast forwarding half of it because I didn't really care about a lot of the emotional storylines. I'm like, just get to the bad guy, kill him and let's just let's go home.

32:38It was it was good. I liked it. You know, I didn't I didn't complain about it. So what I would I recommend you going back to watching it since you've been, you know, away since season three? No, don't. Don't take your time. Yeah, that was kind of my impression as well. Well, I kind of monitored the feedback that was going on online about everything. And my thought was like, if people say they stuck the landing and hit a home run, then I'll go back and start watching it all again. But it kind of seems to be a collective meh. And for a collective meh, I'm not going to go back and watch the 19 ,000 hours of Stranger Things that would be in front of me still, having only missed two seasons.

33:20Yeah, you can actually go watch the extended editions of all the Lord of the Rings again and still have a couple hours to spare. Yeah. So I'm glad that the people that liked it liked it. I'm not sure what anybody who hated it was expecting, but it is what it is. And it's it's over now. Yeah, man. I did have a John McTiernan holiday movie marathon, though, which was kind of fun. I watched The Hunt for Red October, classic movie in my top 10. Can't go wrong with that one. Die Hard 3, also fantastic movie. Can't go wrong with that one. And the sleeper hit that I really, really enjoy is The 13th Warrior.

33:56I really like that movie for some reason. I think it's a fine movie. So sadly, John McTiernan has been kind of run out of Hollywood. I don't know if it was Rollerball, which I didn't know he did Rollerball, which is funny because I actually worked on Rollerball for a little bit. Remember our good old friend Dave Riggs? Oh, yeah. Mr. Riegler. Yeah, yeah. We worked on that together for a while. And yeah, it was apparently such a bad movie that I completely forgot that he did it. But all three of those, I think they all have legs and hold water. So just, you know, something to do. Traders UK and US are back.

34:32Yes. You know, I'm a super fan of the Traders. So far, UK has got five episodes out and the US just dropped the first three yesterday. Traders UK has been amazing. It's been so much fun. I'm enjoying every second of it. I can't wait. I'm going to watch the U.S. one tonight, but that's on Peacock. Lots of them are on Peacock. The U.K., you have to go to Sweden to get right now unless you live in the U.K., and then you can just watch it on TV. But, yeah, as a Trader Superfan, I'm tickled pink because that's how it is. All right. Well, something else has returned. The Pit is back for Season 2 on HBO Max, and the first episode is dropped.

35:09It is a weekly drop. They do not drop them all at once, which I like, especially for this show because it's pretty intense. more of the same. Just as good as last season was. First episode was riveting and gross and all the things that you would expect if you watched the first season. So good times. Looking forward to that. Okay. By the way, it was renewed already for season three. Oh, yeah. I saw that as well. Good to go there. Yeah. I mean, it's great acting. It's really well done. I recommend it as long as you're not squeamish. Okay. They go in. So I also flew to LA and back. So I have some not really drunk on the plane movie reviews because early morning flights.

35:48I finally got around to seeing Downton Abbey, the grand finale. Did not need it. The previous one was fine. Didn't care. Who cares? Who gives a shit? Like, just wrap this shit up already. Everybody's married and happy and you have to give happy endings to everybody. And oh, my God, she got a divorce. How scandalous. And she survives. Okay, great. Okay, great. She got a divorce. Save me two hours. come back to do the show anyways yeah it's don't bother okay i won't thanks yeah the last one where where maggie smith's character dies is is that that is a perfect ending to the whole thing so let it go with that selection was limited uh so i decided to give a movie that i normally wouldn't watch a tried jurassic world rebirth this is the attempted uh reboot again with scarlett johansson to bring some heat.

36:39I don't know how you take a movie with Scarlett Johansson and dinosaurs and make it boring as fuck, but they did it. Maybe they needed some AI. Could not have cared less about anything that happened in this entire movie. It was so boring. There was like three dinosaurs tops and I did not care about a single character, a single dinosaur, the point, the plot, nothing. The soundtrack was boring. The fucking title sequence was boring. The font they used was boring. Everything was boring. Even the font. Even the font is boring. That's bad. That's bad. They had the DeJarlene Limited was available, so I decided to watch that.

37:21It was a Wes Anderson movie that I had not caught. Now, my history with Wes Anderson, I loved some of his first movies. Bottle Rocket is excellent. Rushmore is one of my favorite movies. I loved The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Really good. after that everything's been crap and this is crap this is so bad he's become a parody of himself you can't i can't even watch him anymore it was unwatchable so i stopped watching it and i instead went and watched a movie that is actually quirky weird funny and brilliant oh brother where art thou fantastic movie haven't watched it in years boy does it have legs boy is it awesome and boy it a clean clear that fucking stanky darjeeling taste out of my mouth and i normally like darjeeling i want to watch that again that was a great movie oh brother that was fantastic it really cheered me up and i i really enjoyed watching it again uh i watched honey don't which is a newish movie that's got uh what's her name uh margaret qualley and aubrey plaza this is also a quirky weird movie uh kind of noir-ish uh very sexy lesbian scenes uh so i felt a little awkward watching it on the plane so i had to stop watching it on the plane because i'm not an ex and grok ai user and you know i don't like to expose children to pornography so i saw it can i have a blanket stewardess please yeah i had to stop i felt really creepy so stopped watching it on the plane and i finished it when i got home it's a fun of course you did i finished one particular part 19 times there we go nine times it was actually a pretty fun movie uh well acted and interesting i think you dig it jason this is this is up your alley regardless of the lesbian seats okay i like aubrey plaza i like her i like her too she's she's great i forgot that she was in uh scott uh scott pilgrim versus the world we watched that i totally forgot she was in that it was great yeah and i watched the uh documentary about john candy john candy i like me uh good not great i think they're very limited by the fact that they believe it or not even though he's one of the biggest stars in the world it was like 1994 when he died so not a lot of footage and so many years later like people's reminisces are aren't as cutting or interesting or vibrant as they may have been it's all very kind of washed away with time like my god he was such a great guy what a great actor blah blah blah and that was kind of yeah i didn't get a lot of the feels from it yeah that's because you know i look at it i'm like oh that's probably sad but like at this point it's like it was so long ago you know it's so long ago yeah yeah it was a bit uh like 20 years too late on bringing this thing out so yeah sounds like it still great and it was a good reminder of all the different roles he played because there's a lot of clips from movies and things like that so it was enjoyable for that uh mtv has shut down its remaining 24 7 music channels in several countries including the uk and australia at the end of 2025 however a developer who goes by the name of flexosaurus rex has paid tribute to the mtv of old with a web app that has several channels of non-stop streaming music mtv rewind has 11 channels at this time of writing including one that features videos from the original channel's first day of existence in 1981 there's a channel dedicated to mtv unplugged performances a rap focus stream one for each decade from the 70s to the 20s and 120 minutes and headbanger ball options and i'm so loading up 120 minutes tonight and watching this so get it quick because somebody's gonna somebody's good some lawyer somewhere is gonna say take this shit off you know absolutely so he said that uh he felt a wave of sadness when the announcement hit that they were all shutting down nothing felt like i could fill that void youtube so i started coding built it in 48 hours mtv rewind and they've even put in era appropriate ads in some of the feeds which is great like i gotta check this out this is awesome so i it's certainly gonna get shut down as soon as possible but i'm very gotta gotta take a look at this that's this is a good use of technology you fucks and finally start star trek starfleet Academy begins streaming on Paramount Plus January 15th.

41:40So time to renew that subscription with ads. No, it's not. No, I will. I'm jumping on this bullet for you, Jason. Don't you worry. OK, well, I'm going to watch it. I'm just going to go to Sweden Academy to download this one. I'm I'm not given given the Ellison any of my cash. No, no, thank you. Fair enough. Ups and doodads. so Brian I got a Christmas present this year I got I got the DJI Osmo Mobile 8 my roommate gave that to me and I love it because my uh this is one of the new gimbals that use the camera kit in the iPhone so you don't actually have to use an app if you don't want to which is really nice because using the Osmo Mobile's I have a six and using the the app that comes with it's just a pain in the butt it doesn't it does half the shit right I don't know but the new one has cool like like face detection things.

42:33So you can make hand gestures to turn it on and turn it off. So you don't have to like go around the back and try and find your face to lock on, to track you and stuff like that. So I like that part. I like it. It was, I don't know. I don't know how much it was. It was free. It was Christmas. Yay. It was Christmas. Yeah. I did pick up a DJI mic too to go with it though. So I can have a lavalier with it instead of having to use the phone mic. So if it's farther away and I, I put this on my Christmas list because you know, Since we're doing this stupid fucking YouTube thing now, I want to be able to make some shorts easier and not standing here in my place so I can do them when I'm out and about and stuff like that because I got some cool product reviews coming up that aren't here in my garage.

43:12So it's cool. I like it. I played with it for a little bit and kind of got the hang of it. It works pretty much the same as the other ones. The nice part about this new one is it'll spin 360. The old other ones wouldn't go all the way around. And yeah, as far as an upgrade goes from the Mobile 6, it's definitely a big upgrade and it's not that much money. I think it's like under 150 bucks for what it is. It's like magic. And even, Oh, and the handle now has a tripod built in so you don't have to carry a fucking tripod with you and a longer selfie stick. So it's pretty cool. You'll see some videos with that fairly shortly.

43:44All right. Well, Netflix rolled out Netflix games in mid to late December. And I did not know about this until I went over to some friends house for New Year's Eve and they brought it all out and the kids grabbed their iPads and the parents grabbed their phones and we all started playing Boggle and Pictionary together as we were waiting for the new year to ring in. Well, the East Coast New Year, so everybody could go to bed with their kids as soon as possible. These are actually a lot of fun. We're playing Boggle and Pictionary pretty regularly, even back at our house now. They've got Lego Party, Boggle, Party Crashers, Pictionary Game Night, and Tetris Time Warp.

44:21There's also some other stuff like Red Dead Redemption, and they're rolling out more games and obviously branded games to their shows as well as all that is coming soon. But yeah, this was kind of a blast. Like we had a lot of fun playing it. So is the Boggle a multiplayer? So everybody has to play on their phones? Yeah. I'm used to playing Boggle with the thing and you just take a piece of paper and write it down. You don't know apps required, but... No paper required now. So yeah, it's just up on the screen. It gives you timers. You just go through it and yeah, it's a blast. It's fun. Okay, cool.

44:54because Netflix games have been around for a while. I had the Mahjong version of Stranger Things that they had, and there were like 1 ,500 boards in it or something like that, and I finished it, and they never – I finished all 1 ,500 Mahjong boards. Yes, I'm crazy like that. But they never updated it again. And I guess they're probably not going to update it now now that the show's over. But this sounds cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. We talked a little bit about CES earlier and how we didn't really see or hear about anything. I did see this in the news, and I had to question.

45:23Now, technology may have moved on a bit, but Victrola, the old timey company that put out radios and turntables back in the day, is still out there doing turntables. They put out a speaker that sits underneath the turntable and streams audio via Bluetooth. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I only took audio engineering as a double major at college, but speakers create vibrations. That is how they make sounds. Yes. It's vibrations. So, you know, they tend to vibrate. If you put your hand on a speaker, it's moving because that's how it makes the sound. Needles on record players read vibrations, basically waveforms that are put into the record.

46:05If you have a vibrating item underneath your record player, it will bounce that needle ever so slightly, thus killing your audio fidelity. that is the reason when you see djs with turntables they're in these big road cases that have all kinds of foam underneath them to isolate them from any vibrations caused by the sound from these speakers so you put a speaker underneath your turntable okay curvy frog i am sure that you have worked very hard on the technology but still this seems very fucking stupid to me oh well i you know victrola is still working on 1800s technology so who knows i didn't know they were still alive comes with optional leeches for your health yeah after the bloodletting you play the turntable yes but they do say they have a vibro vibration isolated design to which i say you fucking better you fucking better is right well it's just silent that's the whole point it's just a brick.

47:11You put it under there. It doesn't make any vibrations at all. You have to use your imagination. Oh, I just saw this one. This came in. California's Privacy Protection Agency has launched DROP, the delete request and opt-out platform, which is a free tool that lets residents of California submit deletion requests to more than 500 registered data brokers in a single submission. According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, the service went live on January 1st with data brokers required to delete your information within 90 days and continue deleting it every 45 days going forward. The process is straightforward.

47:49Verify California residency through the state's identity gateway, create a profile with as much or as little personal information as you choose and submit it. That's it. One form, 500 plus brokers, no charge. Now, one of our advertisers is DeleteMe. Do not get confused with DeleteMe. DeleteMe does a lot than this. And this is only the registered brokers that California is following. So you still maybe want a backup plan like, I don't know, delete me slash GOG or grumpy old geeks or however the code goes. It'll be it'll be around somewhere. But this is pretty cool for Californians. I recommend giving it a shot.

48:23Yeah, might as well. You should sign up with as many as possible. That and say delete me.

48:34The dark side. With Dave. It's a new year and it's a new Dark Side with Dave with super podcast host Dave Bittner. Welcome back to the show, Dave. How you doing? I'm doing. Missed you. I missed you too, both of you. And I just want to, at the outset, say congratulations, Jason, on three years. Oh, thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much. I am proud of you and admire you at the same time. Three years is nothing to sneeze about. Absolutely. I mean, I look at the news and I'm happy to make it three minutes. Yeah, I can really use beer right now. But hey, what are you going to do? It's been at least three minutes since my last sip of whiskey.

49:21I'm really white knuckling it right now.

49:27So this is an interesting question, Jason. How to what degree is it annoying or bothersome at all that folks like us who do not have the disease of alcoholism when we joke about it the way we just did? Is that at all bother you or are you just along for the ride? Just along for the ride doesn't bother me at all. OK, no, I'm not I'm not going to yuck on your yum because I just can't have any. It's, you know, you can make fun of cancer patients, too. If I had cancer, I wouldn't be yelling at you. It doesn't matter. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. No, it's just a thing. I was born with it. I got it. C 'est la vie.

50:10So, yeah. No, you guys have the chuckles at my expense. That's okay. I'm used to it. That's true. I've been on this show long enough. It's not like that's what triggered us having chuckles at your expense or anything. I know. I know. So waking up in the morning is just a good enough reason. Who needs a reason? That's right. No, but seriously, no, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't think it bothers most people in recovery because, you know, you get used to it. So my roommate has a bottle of wine every day. And it's like I think of it as training like the Olympics, like the Olympians go up to Colorado because the air is thinner, because that way they're, you know, they're stronger when they come back down.

50:49So, you know, I just hang out at bars, watch people. Exactly. That's all I do. Just to, you know, strengthen up, you know. Yeah. Play the Rocky theme, go in there, have a Diet Coke and go, ha, and walk out. Well, hats off to you. Excellent. Well, I hope everybody had a holiday break. I thought we'd get the Disneyland thing out of the way quickly because I did go. My wife was able to get free park hopper tickets through her work because we had said we are absolutely not going to Disneyland this winter. And of course, we got free tickets. So we went and it was very nice. We went on the 30th of January.

51:30So in between Christmas and New Year's. 30th of January hasn't happened yet. I'm sorry. 30th of December. Look, we're trying to get through this month as fast as possible. I know. I don't know what day it is. I don't know what year it is. I just know I don't like it. That's where I'm at. So that's about it. So, yeah, we had a good time. I mean, it was very busy, but of course they roll out all their holiday decorations and special treats and drinks and all that sort of stuff. So we were able to enjoy all that and walk around. I have to say, though, that as much as I enjoy the Christmas decorations and whatnot at Disneyland, over the past few years, it appears to me that the Imagineers much more enjoy Halloween.

52:15and as they've started to make it a much bigger deal, Halloween is, they go above and beyond compared to Christmas. Christmas is very nice and it has been that way forever, but ever since they've really kind of adopted we're going to do Halloween, they have gone all in and I would much rather go during the Halloween decorating season time than Christmas at this point. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I have been at Disneyland at Halloween because I remember the pumpkins outside, the gate where you get in, there were all these pumpkin heads and things. But it was nice. And I've seen the Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween Haunted Mansion there, which was great.

53:00But yeah, that's interesting. So the crowds weren't too overwhelming? It was busy, but we were able to get on most of the rides that we wanted to go on. We've definitely had better trips, but it's still Disneyland. it still does what it says on the tin. It's a blast. And it was free. And it was free. I mean, yeah, it was free. So can't complain about that. That's true. That's true. We were pretty quiet over the holidays, just stayed close to home and had family and visited with family and just kind of vegged out over the break. So much so that I was kind of ready to come back to work by the time it was over.

53:42I was getting a little bit of cabin fever, but overall nice to step away and recharge and do a lot of napping and eating and all that holiday stuff. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, we did the same. I actually took Brian's advice and took time off. I started, I got all these ideas. I'm going to do all this stuff. And then like a day or so into it, I'm like, nap. I can take a nap right now. Holy shit. I don't have to do anything. All my work's done for my clients. They're gone. Brian's gone. I don't have to open my RSS reader. Oh, shit. I can get used to this. So it turned out I literally took two weeks off and enjoyed every second of it.

54:24It was amazing. Good for you. I'm glad you finally did it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I came back on January 2nd just like ready to rock. I'm like, let's go. And now I'm like, let's go somewhere else. Anywhere. Yeah. I did get retro tech support requests this year. I had to set up an HP printer on a Windows 10 machine. That was challenging. That was challenging for me. I haven't used Windows in quite some time, and I haven't used an HP printer in quite some time. And most of it was trying to get around them making you set up an account on the HP site so they can send you ink notifications over and over. The dark patterns that they use, I'm setting this printer up for a 97-year-old woman.

55:21There is no way in hell that she could ever do this. I'm trying to disable stuff and I'm like, okay, if it asks you this, don't do this. If it asks you this, don't do this. At 97, there's probably going to be little need for an ink replacement cartridge. That's right. This is true. This is true. We don't need a subscription. We don't need a subscription. A couple of years ago, I took my father to buy a new TV at the local Best Buy. And the guy said, like, do you want the extended warranty? I said, my father is 90 years old. He doesn't buy green bananas.

55:56And the guy shook his head. He said, understood, understood. So that's funny. so yeah it was it was a good good tech support experience and you know like it's not like the old days the old days i'd be like i'd walk into a room and everybody'd be like can you help me fix this can you help me fix this can you help me fix this and this and this and this but this time i was just like yeah oh you got that okay that's what i had over the break i uh my nephew got a ps5 that i had to set up and you know nothing is just plugging it in and figuring out cables anymore now it's accounts accounts where do you have to set up accounts how are the accounts connected how do you do the parental account how do you oh so no what's your email as what who's what was which email do you want me to use for that and then of course you know somebody else is streaming the streaming stopped working on the tv and there go fix that oh the wi-fi is down again which part of the wi-fi is down which there's two different wi-fi's here which one's okay i'll do that oh my mom got a new computer so i had to set that up not only do i have to set up the new computer i have to figure out it's dell dell used to have a software package that would be transferred from one Dell to the other Dell.

56:59That software package has been depreciated. You can't use that one anymore, so you have to buy this software package. But go through Dell to buy it so we can get our beacon. No, well, it's not taking my credit card. Screw this. I'm going to their site directly. I'm just going to buy the software package from them. Okay, fine. Let's start that process. Let's transfer everything from one Dell to the other Dell. Let's do it over Wi-Fi because I don't want to buy the goddamn cable. 35 hours later after having it crapped out five times, oh, it's finally all over there now. Great. Awesome. That's done.

57:25What's next? Okay, I'm getting PTSD just listening to that. I think, well, we've all lived it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I think that happens so much these days is the excitement of a new gadget is tempered by the fact that the first time you power it up, it has to do two hours worth of downloads and software updates before it'll do anything. Or charging, even if it doesn't need that. It's got to charge up. Right. Right. As soon as I got my Osmo Mobile, the first thing it did was it's like, OK, got to charge it a bit. And then you had to do the firmware updates and all that crap just so you could even turn it on.

58:06I'm like, can I just play with my new toy, please? Dare I ask, did you put the 360 camera on the Osmo Mobile? Kind of defeats the purpose. You don't really need to put a 360 camera on a gimbal. I'm just giving you crap about the 360 camera. Yeah, it's sitting right next to the DJ Osmo Mobile right now. It's got a 360 degree view of the Osmo mobile. It does. I can tell from any angle I can see that. All right. Fair enough. We had a surprisingly tech free Christmas this year, especially for me. There really wasn't much. My son got a, my oldest son got a Flipper Zero. So he was playing with that all day, you know, copying remotes and everything.

58:55So he's looking to use that for doing lighting control, like for special events and things. He's a lighting technician or programs the lighting boards. And evidently, a lot of the lights have like IR receivers on them. So he can use the Flipper Zero to program lights and things like that. My Flipper Zero is sitting right next to the 360 camera on my shelf. Yeah, I think, I mean, he's going to use it for that. but he's also going to find ways to get in trouble with it. I know. He was already talking. He was like, I hear people can get out of free for parking garages. I'm going. Yeah, you can. That's the one time I've actually used it is for that.

59:39Is that right? Great. Yeah. Yeah. You just walk by somebody that has a pass and you can clone the pass and then just use that to get in and out of the park. Yeah. I was, I was going through the airport and I don't know if you guys have flown recently, but to you, if you go through the airport and especially in the U.S., obviously, you will get a lovely Christy Noem video. Ooh. And that was playing on one of the TVs, and I'm pretty sure somebody in the area had a flipper because all of a sudden that TV went off, and it did not come back on. What was the remote, the gadget that you could have that would turn off all the TVs?

1:00:17What the hell is the name of that thing? I have one of those. Yeah. I have one of those here that I purchased for a very specific purpose. namely when the um the monitor in the lobby of our office building was stuck on fox news all the time i would just walk by and click my keys and off it would go okay yeah uh well since it is the the new year now i'll just i get a little question for both of you guys Well, actually more for Dave than Brian because Brian's in Canada and you have free health care. But are you getting gouged on your health insurance now? Because everybody's has gone up. Mine went up.

1:01:01I got hit fairly lightly compared to most of my friends. Mine only went up to$740 a month, which is$120 increase. So how are you doing, Dave? How did you get? Well, I had a mixed. No. So my experience this year is a little odd because my oldest son turned 26, so he rolled off of the family insurance. So I saved some money from that. So because of that savings, my bill was pretty flat this year. I got hit hard last year. Mine doubled for my family. It went from about$600 a month to about$1 ,200 a month for the family. so now i and i have i admit i have very good insurance for twelve hundred dollars a month there's not a lot yeah and and you know that's even i mean that's a company policy so that's you know the company's pitching in on it probably that much themselves yeah um so yeah it's it's so um madding madding maddingly frustrating maddening thank you maddening is the word i was looking for problem yeah um wouldn't know anything about it anymore yeah it says the fucking canadian well i know but but brian i mean you can't get any services right you can't go to the doctor you have to wait forever for everything that's what everyone here tells me i mean last week i got a doctor appointment two weeks from now um yeah yeah yeah when uh when i had my cancer issues Not a problem.

1:02:39Scheduled. Everything was scheduled, taken care of. I think I got charged$35 once. And it's$35 Canadian, right? So it's like a quarter. Right. What's that in real money? Right. It's not that hard, people. All the rest of the countries in the world have it. That's right. Yeah. And I bet if you get shot in the face in Canada, they'll patch you right up. They don't shoot you in the face here conveniently. Oh, it saves on the insurance costs, I guess. Sure does. That's how we keep the cost down. Okay. We don't have government thugs shooting people in the face. Yeah. Excellent. It's all rolled together.

1:03:15Just real quick back to Christmas stuff. I resigned that I am not getting my Home Depot R2D2 this year. They are down. It saddens me too. They're down to$75 on clearance. So if you can find one, you can get them super cheap. Okay, listeners. You have your assignment. That's right. Dave will give you the$75 and cover the shipping. That is true. I will absolutely do that. If you have a Home Depot with a R2-D2 nearby, hit me up. And I will send you a... We're going to tune in next week, and this is going to be a wall of R2-D2s. There's like 20 of them. Okay. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that.

1:03:59I'll find places to put them. Just to clarify, reach out to Dave first on Mastodon. Yeah. I'll find places believe me I'll find places to put them don't worry about it 75 bucks a pop no problem you know what the resale value on this mountain is yeah so I don't know if they're going to come there's a lot of scuttlebutt over whether or not they'll be back next year because they had a high number of returns because they weren't packaged very well so they came they got delivered cracked and broken and all that stuff so hopefully I don't know they'll be back next year or I may just end up buying a more robust one somewhere else.

1:04:39I don't know. Speaking of R2D2, one of my favorite gifts that I got for Christmas, which actually was just delivered yesterday, was this book. Oh, look at that. Yeah. So this is the newest coffee table book about ILM. It's called Industrial Light and Magic, 50 Years of Innovation. uh we've talked about the ilm coffee table books here before the first one is still the best one uh because it has the big gate folds of matte paintings and things like that uh this book is excellent if you love movies and special effects and all that stuff it's you're gonna want it for your bookshelf uh it's lovely i haven't had time to read it yet but i've just flip through it and it's everything you want a book like this to be lots of old pictures lots of new pictures this book covers up through the modern era including things like the mandalorian and the the newer technology that they're using and so uh that was a lovely christmas gift um very much enjoyed that uh i also uh put a link in here the rumors are flying that dave filoni is going to be the next one to run lucasfilm i guess star wars i heard that there have been multiple rumors about kathleen kennedy stepping down over the years so i'll believe it when they've removed her name from the sliding door over a millennium falcon but right now um right now nothing's confirmed i i would love to see it i i don't think there's anybody better to to do it so Yeah, I agree.

1:06:18I agree. He seems like the perfect fit of that would the person who would most make who would make the most people happy. Yeah. He's obviously a fanboy, but he has his own ideas. And I've liked the majority of what he's done. Book of Boba Fett accepted. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, man, there were two of the greatest Mandalorian episodes in the Book of Boba Fett. So that's true. So, you know. Yeah. I have a link in here to a story from the Financial Times where the Financial Times is not holding back. I know you guys talked about the stuff going on at X Twitter with all the deep fakes and undressing young girls and all that kind of stuff.

1:07:00The Financial Times did a rundown of the people who work at X but used AI, used Grok to put clown clowns. costumes on all of them should have put them all in bikinis

1:07:17right interestingly i did not uh put a costume on elon uh i wonder if grok is somehow prohibited from uh making adjustments to him and we all know he's a clown no costume needed yeah yeah exactly i love the title of this article though who's who had x the deep fake porn site formerly known as twitter it's beautiful yeah yeah that's good that's his moto level writing right there yeah uh i mean i hope the eu really comes at them they're they're they're saying they're going to um so yeah we'll see hopefully there'll be something to report next week right right i wanted to ask you guys uh coming into the new year if you had any ios games recommendations I'm itching for a new game.

1:08:08I am so boring, Dave. Go for it, Brian, because you're the gamer. I am so boring, Dave. I do not. I have solitaire, and I enjoy that. That's it. That is the one game on my phone. Oh, wow. That is boring. Jason? Did you ever play Tiny Wings? No. Tiny Wings. I think you can get it. Do you belong to Apple Arcade? I do, yeah. Yeah, I think there's a version on Apple Arcade that they put out. Okay. Look, Dave is writing a note by hand. I am. Ooh. Old school. Wow. Old man. How do you spell tiny again? Tiny wings. There you go. Tiny wings. Okay. Yeah, it's really fun. It's an older game. It's like, you know, 10 years old at least.

1:08:53I think I actually played that one. But it's one of those ones that has legs. Yeah. Yeah, it has legs. I beat it. That was one of those games that took me like three months to beat because the last level will drive you mad. So good. It was, I tell you what, it is one of my most proud accomplishments. Definitely. If you have, if you have, I know, I don't have much to live for, Brian. It's okay. Dude's been sober three years and his biggest accomplishment is he beat Tiny Wings. Yeah. Funnily enough, I beat that when I was drunk. No. Be honest, Tombstone. Beat Tiny Wings. Yeah. You know, I've had this John Mellencamp song stuck in my head for a while, and there's a refrain in there.

1:09:36Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone. That's pretty much what sums up my life right now. So, yeah, Super Monster Ate My Condo is a fun one. Check that one out. That's on Apple Arcade, too. I got to write quickly. Hold on. Super Monster Ate My Condo. Super Monster Ate My Condo. Okay. Fantastic game. It's very fun. They just revamped it with new graphics, and it's on Apple Arcade. So, check those two out. That's good. Come back to me next week. Can't go wrong with any of the Angry Birds variants. There was a Star Wars one for a while that was long gone. You can pay for all those now.

1:10:10Oh, do you? That's what sucks. Yeah. They're really free Angry Birds. I was thinking about revisiting. Remember Where's My Water with the little alligator? It was an iPad game and water would flow and you had to create different ways for the water to flow. That's the kind of thing. you know i i'm i guess what i'm looking for most in games these days is occupation like occupying my time not i don't want it to be too hard i don't want it to be too easy i want it to be pleasurable i want it to be distracting uh so that's what i'm looking for yeah you can go back to the old the old standbys plants versus zombies that was a fantastic one play that again and Cut the Rope.

1:10:54Cut the Rope's another classic. That's fun. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's what I'll do, just revisit all the classics. Angry Birds is a great one too. Yeah, I think the golden age of iOS games is, you know, long gone. And the ones that, when they were really making, you know, a big deal about apps and games, you know, back then, seven, eight, 10 years ago, those were some great games that still have legs. If they still work, because some of them don't get updated, you know, like, was it Flight Controller? or whatever, that one where you land the planes and I'm desperate for Apple Arcade to buy and revamp because I love that game so much.

1:11:30Yeah, that one was great. But yeah, the old stuff, the old stuff totally has legs. Totally has legs. That's a good idea. All right, well, before we wind up today, as we're recording here today, I just want to point out it is David Bowie's birthday, also Elvis's birthday. But David Bowie, were he alive today, would be 79, which I don't want to think about. But I, there's a, who was it? There was an actor who posted a thing about how nothing's been right since Bowie died. That's been a longstanding theory that Bowie dying has sent our planet off on the wrong axis and everything is wrong. Yeah. It's harder and harder to deny that that may indeed be the case.

1:12:18So yeah. It does not sound incorrect. Yeah. Happy birthday, Mr. Bowie. Thanks for all the good music and entertainment over the years. Agreed. Wherever you are, be well. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers, Jason, Phil, and Jeff. And Peter upped their donation, so thank you very much. And from the legacy files of people who are still supporting the show that we love, Brent, Don, Corey, Stephen, Dave, Paul, Mark, Jesse, Kira, and Rude. Or Rudd. Rude? I think Rude. I'm going to go with Rude. It's our show. It's Rude. Thank you all. Over at PayPal, we've got Joseph, Tom, Jens, Charlie, Levy, Florian, Nicola, Ralph, Judge, Cedric with a$10 donation, Jonathan with a$20 donation, Thomas with a$25 donation.

1:13:12Going up another$5 is Marcel at$30, leaping$20 ahead, Leslie with$50, and Robert, matches at 50. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much for those year-end donations. It really helps. It brings a smile to my heart and keeps the show on the air because you guys are what's keeping us on the air. And over at the tip jar, we've also got Adam, Jennifer, Sarah, and Matthew, and Michael M with the big$160 tip. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. And we've even got some merch, Brian. Leonid and Dror both bought some merch. So thank Thank you guys very much. You actually kept the store going with your purchases this year.

1:13:52So, yeah, that's it. No reviews, though, sadly. Yeah. Well, that's okay. It's 2026. We've got a long way to go, obviously. We've got 10 more years to go before 2027. What are you talking about? Until February. That too. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFellippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 728. That's a lot of episodes. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air, and that is not an exaggeration. Love the show?

1:14:27Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air. And guess what? We've got merch. I was going to make some new merch over the break, but I took a vacation instead. So new stuff coming soon. Yeah, new stuff coming soon. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show and stay grumpy.

1:15:05Where's the fucking off button?