#647 – Dave hanging with Fran Blanche

Dave Jones: This is The Amp Hour podcast recorded October 10th, 2023, episode number 647 with Fran Blanche. Welcome to The Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Fran Blanche: And I'm Fran from those there internets. Again.

Dave Jones: Part of the furniture again, Fran. Number four at least on The Amp Hour?

Fran Blanche: Four.

Dave Jones: Four.

Fran Blanche: Four. And we only do this like every 10 years, so...

Dave Jones: Right, okay. So we're at least 40. Okay. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Fran Blanche: At least...

Dave Jones: We were talking about just before the show, we should have hit record before the... You watched a, like, what, two-hour documentary on HBO or something in the... I've never heard of it. It's about Australia. Tell us what the heck happened.

Fran Blanche: Well, it's... Yeah. Well, you... Did you pull up the page on that?

Dave Jones: I've... I've... Actually, I've got the tab. I can... I can actually pull it over now. And I will do... Sorry for those... We are recording video here. Quite a boy. I can do this. I can do this. Okay. I have the tools. Uh... I think. You can edit this in post. Right. Here we go. I got it. And... Ta-da! We are in. Look at that. Oh, there he is. There he is. We are... We killed Patty. Who killed... Who killed Patty? It's a... Sorry. This has nothing to do with electronics at all. No. It's... It's... It's an Australian-ism. And you... Yeah. It's a documentary about this tiny Northern Territory town called Larimer. Larimer. Larimer. In fact... Larimer. In fact, I think I have heard... I must have heard about this on the news at the time. But I didn't know there was a documentary. Somebody... It's like a tin pot town. But what are they? 30 people or something? Living in this tin pot town? Yeah.

Fran Blanche: But they're only... There's only like six people in the whole documentary. But... But you know, it starts out with that... Well, it's total spoilers. But it starts out with them, you know, being really... You know, we all... You know, we all get along and everything. And then like 10 minutes in, you find out that they all hate each other and want to kill each other. And so everyone accuses everyone else of killing Patty, even though there's no body. And they trace it back to the great meat pie war of 2018 or something, where they, you know, where Fran, who has the tea house, who doesn't drink, is making her famous camel meat pies. And then she's getting some business from tourists. And then the pub across the street, they make their original famous Laramah meat pies to compete with her and pull her business away. And, you know, Patty disappears. And they think that Fran killed him and fed him to a crocodile.

Dave Jones: This is great. And I'm pulling up the video. And the name of the tea house... Is this the original pie?

Fran Blanche: That's the house, strangely elevated house in the middle of nowhere. Yep.

Dave Jones: Which is common. The stilt houses are quite common here if they're in a flood-prone area. Anyway, it's called Fran's Tea House.

Fran Blanche: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So this is... And the guy who says he admits any wrongdoing, he looks suspiciously like Chopper Reed.

Fran Blanche: Have you heard of Chopper Reed? He's got the thing on the Chopper beard.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So you've heard of Chopper Reed.

Fran Blanche: Oh, of course. Yeah. Right. Okay. He was fodder for the reality news shows of the mid-late 90s. Right. But yeah, all these characters, it's like the most Australian thing I've ever seen. It's all about wars about dogs. Yep. Meat pies. Yep. There's a guy on a ride on Esky. Oh, there's a lot of ATV stuff. And... Oh, this is great. And Prime Suspect is a crocodile. Like used...

Dave Jones: I reckon there's a crocodile involved. Okay. It's got everything. Oh, this is great. Okay. I'm going to have to watch this. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: Yep. It's pretty riveting.

Dave Jones: Oh, great. Okay. I'm going to have to watch that. How did that get on HBO and not here? Like... Who knows? Yeah. Because you said it was a... You said it was a... Probably American. Maybe American or Canadian. American-made, probably. Okay.

Fran Blanche: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Interesting. All right.

Fran Blanche: I think the last time you and I were on... Like did something like this was for the Artemis... Original Artemis launch that got scrubbed. Yes. That's right. Didn't actually launch. Yeah. No. But we did like a two hour.

Dave Jones: Yep. And then we ended up doing a separate independent stream when it did actually launch, didn't we? I don't think we were...

Fran Blanche: I was... When it launched, I... You were doing something else. Well, it was in the middle of the night for you when it... Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's right. It was... Was it?

Fran Blanche: Oh, yeah. Because it was... Was it a nighttime launch eventually? Was it a nighttime launch?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes, it was. Yes. Oh, it was like...

Fran Blanche: Have you seen... It was like three in the morning for you. All right. Well, while Dave is getting his thing...

Dave Jones: I've got... I've got memorabilia from that launch. I have... I have a signed... Look at that. A signed picture of Billy and the crew. That's the red crew, they call themselves, which went out and fixed the hydrogen leak. And there's Billy there, if you can... For those watching. And yeah, and that's Bill Nelson, of course, the administrator. And Billy has been there 35 years. And he actually worked on Bill Nelson's shuttle launch. So back in the 80s. So that's how, like, you know, it's just unbelievable. Anyway, yeah, because I did a video on Billy. I did a specific video on Billy, which they passed around down there and they saw it and they liked it. So they sent me a signed autographed photo of the crew. So that was very nice of them. That was great. That's a keeper. Yep. Absolutely. So yeah, Artemis. When's Artemis 2?

Fran Blanche: They keep pushing it back. You know, honestly, it might not launch because the last thing that I read was that the budget... At NASA, there's an administrator that just does the budgeting. And they did an audit of the whole program and found that it's so far behind schedule and so over budget that they wouldn't authorize any more money to go to Boeing or any other contractors. It's like a whole slew of contractors to Artemis. But they were so late with the second rocket and they're so over budget that they weren't going to allocate any more money. So I'm not sure. The thing is, if SpaceX gets their launch approval, new license for Starship, it would be very hard to sell the idea of a rocket that's like $4.5 billion a shot, completely disposable, against Starship, which is going to be completely reusable. It just... It's like, you know, the problem is that the Space Launch System, it's a great rocket for 1974. Right. You know, it's a great mid-70s launch system.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fran Blanche: But it's just got no place, you know, a $4 billion, completely disposable, once-and-done rocket in this day and age. It's just... It just seems a bit...

Dave Jones: It's just a pork belly program. At least partial reuse, you know, like if you can't do the upper stages or something, you know. Maybe.

Fran Blanche: Well, at least, you know, the... I have no idea why they didn't even want to recover the solid rocket boosters like they did in the shuttle age.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because these are all reused boosters from the shuttle. These are all... The first one was... They've already gone up multiple ones. Yeah. Multiple times.

Fran Blanche: The first one was partially reused. The next one's going to be all new sections.

Dave Jones: Oh, is it? Okay. Right.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. But, you know, the... But the other... And you want to... Why not recover the center stage with parachutes that you can reuse the engines or, you know, or try to. Yep. Or jettison the engines. But they didn't even design... There was no consideration to make any part of it even somewhat reusable. So it's just... It really has no place. It's that there's... It's a red herring already. It's already decades past its date, you know.

Dave Jones: But it worked. And it worked first go.

Fran Blanche: It worked, of course. Yeah. It damn well better have worked. You're right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, imagine if it blew up. Like, that would have been the end of it. They would have...

Fran Blanche: It would have been the end of the program, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. But it might be the end of the program just because of the cost.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fran Blanche: You know, it's classic NASA pork barrel because... Yeah. People complain about NASA, NASA, NASA, wasting money, NASA, NASA. And I always have to remind people that it's not NASA that makes these decisions. It's Congress. You know, we have...

Dave Jones: Yes, they control the purse strings.

Fran Blanche: Congress controls... Not only the purse strings, but really largely Congress decides what NASA does. So NASA has a laundry list of things it wants to do with planetary exploration, vehicles, research. And people think that all NASA does is launch big rockets, whereas, like, you know, 80% of what NASA does is aeronautical research, you know. Yeah. You know, jet engines, aeronautics, new wing configurations, you know, plane designs. That's, like, the majority of what NASA does, sort of projects. But the majority of the money goes to these really, really big, you know, lifting projects. Spice. Yeah. And because of that, because Congress allocates this, they say, well, you know, we want a moon rocket. You're going to build a moon rocket, and we'll give you X billion dollars for that. And here's the kicker. You've got to use contractors in every single one of our states. States. Yeah. So you can't build a moon rocket. You know, all of our constituents that are going to vote for this, you've got to have contractors in our state to build parts of that. And then you're going to put this Frankenstein monster together, and it's going to work. And you're going to do it on time and under budget. And it never happens. And so it goes years over time, and it goes billions over budget. And that's the way it goes. And then everybody who hears about the cost of runs, they blame NASA for it when they've got nothing to do with it. You know, they're given a mandate from Congress, and they're given a budget from Congress, and they're given all these restrictions. They can't just build it one spot. They can't just use one contractor. They've got to spread it around, spread the money. And then, you know, SpaceX is building one system in one place for, like, pennies on the dollar for what space launch system costs. And so it's like, yeah, that's... Personally, for as great as a rocket as space launch system is, I would like them to just stop doing it and put the money where they'll actually get results. Because it turns out that, you know, they've got Artemis 3. It's going to be a starship anyway. It's not even going to be an SLS rocket. Oh, really? Because they've already agreed with it.

Dave Jones: Oh, is that new? Is that new news?

Fran Blanche: Well, the last thing I read is that Artemis 3 was going to be a starship.

Dave Jones: But starships are not human-rated. Are they going to now plan to make a human-rated?

Fran Blanche: Well, Artemis 3 is not going to be... Apparently, it's not going to be personed. But that they were going to try a...

Dave Jones: But it... Oh, that'll be a soft landing trial, Willard, or something. I don't know.

Fran Blanche: I mean, I've become confused by the whole thing because... It's a mess. The intermix of the original Artemis, which is going to be all Boeing and all SLS. Now it's like, well, we don't have the funding to actually complete SLS, but SpaceX are going to have starship running, so let's just use them for Artemis?

Dave Jones: I don't know. Boy. No, no. And then lunar gateway is still a thing, right? They're still using the gateway concept?

Fran Blanche: Again, it's like, are they going to build lunar gateway if SpaceX is going to have starships, you know, doing the figure-

Dave Jones: Yeah, but starship... Well, yeah. I mean, the whole idea was that the Artemis would take them to and from the lunar gateway, and the starship was only the lander option. That was all starship was... That was the original plan. And starship was only going to be the lunar lander. It was going to take them from the gateway down.

Fran Blanche: But no one even has a lunar lander... No. I mean, no.

Dave Jones: They just changed that recently. I haven't kept up on the news, but I did hear they had scrapped... No, had they scrapped starship for the lunar lander now, I think? And they had...

Fran Blanche: Like I said, it's all happening so...

Dave Jones: It's a blur. I don't know if there's a new... There's a change in direction.

Fran Blanche: Blur.

Dave Jones: It's just nuts. Oh, boy. Anyway. But... My spidey sense is still not strong on starship. I don't know. I don't know. It's just... It's trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. And I do know that jack-of-all-trades usually don't work. They usually come a gutter. So I hope not. Hope I'm wrong. But... I don't know. That's my spidey sense. We'll see. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Oh, goodness. Oh, boy. So, yeah. We just can't keep up on the space news. Sorry, people. Just can't do it.

Fran Blanche: I don't think even they know what's going on.

Dave Jones: No. No. It's just a mess. Anyway. We have a... I'll share this with you. We have a question on Twitter from... Apodictor? Sorry if I'm butchering that. Wants to know... What's the story behind this... You built this tube... Tube? Tube? Tube? Tube as we call them here. Tube. Testing rack at EHX. Is that a company that you used to work for?

Fran Blanche: Electronronics. Yeah, that's the first one right there.

Dave Jones: Right. What's the story behind that?

Fran Blanche: Well, actually, there's a blog page. Oh. Explains everything. If you... Probably if you Google it, you'll find my old blog page from the aughts where I did the backstory of the whole thing. Okay. JC Morrison was the lead designer. He designed the whole thing. I built it. Most of it myself. And, yeah, it was a whole convoluted thing. It was just one of those paid assignments, you know. I got paid by the hour. But, basically, they wanted to burn in tubes so that they could be matched. Because with amplifier tubes, you have to put some hours on them for them to stabilize their transconductance. And so, if you want to do matched pairs in amplifiers, they really have to be run for a while to stabilize. And then, after they've run for a certain number of hours, like, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours. Wow. That's actually quite a lot. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, and... So, it's not quite... It's not temperature? There's some other factor? Because I would have thought that the heater would get them up to temperature within minutes or whatever.

Fran Blanche: Yeah, they're run under load, too. So, those racks were automated. We used stepper motors from an old telephone exchange system, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, multi-wiper stepper.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that moves the contacts and moves the multi-wipers around.

Fran Blanche: Basically, I just... It's all electromechanical. So, I built a timer system that would trip that and it could be set. So, and basically, it would run, switch racks and rows. So, it would go through time cycles, turn on... Basically, they'd be... The heaters would be on the whole time. And they'd be on standby. And then, it would put the racks under load alternately. So, it's like there's 8 racks per... Is it 8 or 10 racks? But it would put the racks under load for a measured period of time. And it would do this. They'd run them all night. And then, the next day, they'd be pretty well baked, pull them out. And then, they'd go to the other machine, which was the tester. And Mike Abram built that one. And so, the test was all automated. I think it was running Windows 3.1.1 or maybe Windows 9.5. But it would go through and it would test the parameters. So, it would run each tube individually in the tester and put it through these various cycles, take measurements. And then, based on that, the tubes would be matched based on how they tested. Right. That was a long time ago. That was, you know, 98, 99, 2000. Yep.

Dave Jones: I still had production test racks running Windows 3.1.1 into the late 2000s. It was still, oh, yeah, easily, like, it was just, it was nuts.

Fran Blanche: Well, I had my circ boards made, was that 2016, 17? But, yeah, they had a testing jig in there that was running, like, Windows 3. Yeah. It's very common. People just don't understand that in industry, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. No, you don't fix it, though. So, there's a lot of machines running in industry, running CNC mills and testing gear and everything. You know, they built it around the system in 1992, 3, whatever. Yeah. And you just keep that part, you know. You have to maintain it, yeah. You know, you don't update it to, you know, Windows 11. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Fran Blanche: You know, you got to keep the old stuff running.

Dave Jones: There are still industrial computer companies that make machines designed for DOS and Windows 3.11. They still make them. Yeah. You know, like the little form factor PC 104 form factor boards and stuff like that. They still make them with DOS in ROM so that you can build up, you know, so that you can boot up instantly to DOS in ROM. And they still make them. Like, it's just nuts. But there's a nice market.

Fran Blanche: I really like Windows 3.11. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 3.11 was, I mean, it could be buggy, but I really like the file system. I don't think, I mean, XP is pretty good with the file system, but, you know, the modern systems, even Windows 10 bothers the hell out of me. The software designers that design Explorer, it's like, do you actually, it's like every time that I'm trying to use Explorer, I'm screaming to myself, do software developers actually use computers? Yeah, right. You know, it's like, for me, a computer is just one thing. It's files and applications. That's it. Right. You know, and 80% of everything I do with a computer, I want to be able to access my files. I want to organize files. It's just files. Yeah. It's just a file tree. Like, why does it have to be so hard? You know, why does it have to be so convoluted? Why doesn't it show you the whole thing, the whole tree? As soon as you open it up, boom, it shows you exactly what you want.

Dave Jones: Oh, I had a nightmare the last month on Twitter. I was trying to, I backed up all my videos, right? So I backed up, like I kept them on my NAS RAID thing, right? And I tried to back them all up. Then once I backed them all up onto my separate hard drives, I went, right, delete. And then it tried to delete. Like, I tried to delete hundreds of directories which contained like 10,000 video files or something. And it wouldn't delete them because there's these hidden network files that Windows puts on the drive. And like, I was going to have to do them like one by one. It wouldn't do it. And it was just like, and I had to put it on Twitter and people were giving me these convoluted workaround systems with command lines trying to get rid of these files. And like, oh God, it was, it was a nightmare. And I had, in the end, I had to end up using the, the file manager inside the NAS box. I had to use that, that actual file manager to kill the files. Windows couldn't do it. I could not do it under Windows. It was nuts. I had to use that. Yeah. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: I run into similar walls, you know, where, you know, well, it's like with the, with, I'm still on Windows 10. I, I, I'm not, I won't go to Windows 11 until, you know, they get every last bug out of it. Yeah. But, but yeah, lots of things. I mean, you, I mean, in certain window, in certain configurations of Explorer, you can't just drag and drop or cut and paste. Or you can't create a new file window. It's like there are little, little caveats where it won't do that here. You have to set this up over there and do it over there. No, I want to do it here. But that's why I think, you know, when, when you boil it down, 3.1.1 had, for me, the perfect file management system. I mean, it wouldn't work in that system today because it's so vulnerable, but it was just, everything was there. It was just totally like naked, you know, it's like, boom, it's all right there. You can do everything everywhere. It's like, well, you, we don't want you to do that because you might accidentally delete that file that you really want. And we're, oh, you, you don't want to move those files. You just want to play them all in media player right now. Because that's the problem, you know, I just want to like grab these files, move them over here. I grab them, move them over here. And it doesn't do that. It just plays them. Oh, no. You want to sweep over those files and play them all in media player. No. Who wants to do that? No. I want to move them. So it's like all the, I could, I could bitch and moan about it all day. Yep. Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah. It's like software developers. They, it's like, it's like the, they're probably, you know, programming, um, windows, but they're using Macs at home because it's like, oh, you don't want to do that.

Dave Jones: You know, that's, that's the, you know, I can feel all Apple software.

Fran Blanche: Apple software just has, it's, it's all built under one moniker. Oh, no, you don't want to do that.

Dave Jones: Oh God. So do you own any Apple products?

Fran Blanche: No.

Dave Jones: No.

Fran Blanche: I did, you know, early on I, in the odd side, I got a, you know, I got a big power Mac and I really wanted to like Apple, but it's, it's not, it's like, it's not a computer. It's, it's, it's an entertainment system.

Dave Jones: It's an appliance, is it?

Fran Blanche: Yeah. It's a television. It's a smart TV. It's like, you know, like I said, for me, a computer is just two things. It's files and applications. Yes. And 80% of everything that you do on a computer is just file management. And that's the one thing that Apple will not let you do.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. It won't let you do. I have so little experience. I don't know.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. Well, and the other thing about Apple stuff as opposed to like a PC is, you know, I, I want to have options. I want to, I want to be able to have control parameters. I want to set it up my way. I want to have options about what I can do in this application. And that's another thing that you don't get with Windows stuff. It's like, you don't want to do that. Yeah. You do it this way. Yeah. No, no, no. You don't want to do that. Just push this button. Do it that way.

Dave Jones: Sounds like there's a, something happening outside your, there's always something. There's always something here. The sirens wailing in the background.

Fran Blanche: Center city, Philly. It's a hundred percent Philly out there.

Dave Jones: How's it going? Like, you know, have they jacked up your rent again? How's inflation impacting you? Yeah. Oh, they will. Okay. When's the next rate review? Is it yearly?

Fran Blanche: It's like, uh, they recently, I got another notice for the storage. My, my storage. Oh, what's happening with the storage? No, not the storage. I am paying right now. I'm paying five times what I was paying seven years ago. When I, when I set up the vaults, I'm paying five times. It's 500%. Uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Is it a similar location? Similar size, similar location.

Fran Blanche: It's the same fricking place. Oh, it's the same place. Yeah. Yeah. There's no other options. The, you know, as far as like environmentally controlled, uh, quasi environmentally controlled, uh, storage. The, there's really only like two options in Philly. Um, although people will go on Google and say, no, Fran, you're wrong. Look at all these places. Well, you know, physically go to those places and you'll find that they are not actually that. Right. They're just, yeah, yeah. There's something. Right. Environmental control. You find out that it's just a fan blowing the hundred degree air around. Uh, no.

Dave Jones: So environmental control is that cause it's like, uh, like underground storage or do they have air cons running? What's the.

Fran Blanche: Well, they, they don't actually, uh, they don't actually control the temperature enough for it to be climate controlled. So, uh, after I got the leases, they changed the policy because when it, they don't actually have the power because it's, it's like a 500 BTU, like, um, heat exchanger for like this, you know, 30,000 square foot floor or whatever. Right. So, um, so in the summertime, it gets up to like 90 degrees in there, even though it's supposed to be climate controlled in the wintertime. Let it get down to like 40 degrees and that's supposed to be climate controlled. Oh, what? And, uh, and so, you know, I was complaining about it so much that they changed the policy where they, they went in the elevators where it says climate controlled floors and they sharpied out the word controlled. And when you go to the front desk and complain to the manager, the manager says, no, it's not climate controlled. It's the climate floors. It's the climate floors. I said, what does that mean? Climate floors. So it's the climate floors. So explain to me how a floor can be climate. Oh, you know, I said, explain to me the definition of how a, the floor of a building can be climate. So that's what it is now. It's not climate floor because they, they legally couldn't say climate controlled anymore, but they're not, not saying climate controlled because they want people to move in there thinking it's climate controlled, but they say, no, it's the climate floor. I want to be clear on that. Oh my God.

Dave Jones: It's the climate floor.

Fran Blanche: Because it's, it's between 40 degrees Fahrenheit and a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It's like in, it's a climate in that range, but it's still costing me a fortune. I, you know, I'm, I'm, yeah, just the story.

Dave Jones: A hundred percent in the same play, the same building, the same building.

Fran Blanche: It's over a thousand dollars, just the vault, over a thousand dollars a month. It's like 12,000 a year. Yeah. The, the operating costs of Fran lab or. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's huge. Oh my God. I was lucky to get my storage units. It's like, you know, they're, they're, they're as climate controlled as you get because they're underground. They're like in a concrete underground vault, you know, so it really doesn't, you know, temperature doesn't change. In fact, I moved my storage array, hard drives down there because it's actually cooler than the lab here. Because the lab, if I don't turn my aircon on, gets up to 27 degrees in summertime. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but you know, it gets uncomfortably warm.

Fran Blanche: So before the place where the vault is now, I, I tried a lease. I did have a lease for like two weeks in a facility that, uh, was supposed to be, you know, nice and cool because it was in a sub, you know, floor basement. Uh, the problem was that it was a hundred percent humidity and full of mold. Oh, so I was in the process of setting up the shelves and I was like, it's like too fricking damp in here. And I, I, so I brought it, I bought like a humidistat and a, you know, thermometer humidistat, put it down there for a couple of days. And yeah, it was, it was ranging like 95, 98% humidity. And it, it, and, uh, uh, it was like, yeah, everything's going to be mildew damage and water. It's like, no, so I had to cancel the lease. I got out of the lease. It's like, you know, but you know, that's, that's the problem with Philadelphia is that virtually everywhere that you want to store. It's, it's either a damp basement or a really hot attic or there's, or there's no temperature control at all. So it's going to be like 120 degrees Fahrenheit, like 45 degrees Celsius in the summertime, like all like, and summertime in Philadelphia, we're talking May to November. Right.

Dave Jones: I didn't realize it got that hot in Philly.

Fran Blanche: Oh, it's, it's over 95 degrees every day. Oh, beginning in May and ending in October somewhere. 85 Fahrenheit. We're talking Fahrenheit. Yeah. Like, but every day it's like 95, 96, 97 every single day. Wow. That's no break. And this is the thing they say, well, it's not technically like a, that hot because it cools down to 85 at night. So it's an average temperature, like 91 degrees. That's not that hot. It's like, yeah, but it's, it's 95, 97 degrees every day for eight months.

Dave Jones: Oh God.

Fran Blanche: But yeah, Fran Lab, it's, it's, it's costing an everloving fortune just because the rents are unreasonably high. And then people are going to, you know, the next thing when people watch this is like, all right, Fran, you're stupid. You don't know. And blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, apparently you haven't tried to buy a property in the last five years. Oh, you know, it's worse now.

Dave Jones: It was bad enough, like three, two, three years ago, like, uh, uh, actually, like before COVID. Now it's, now it's just nuts.

Fran Blanche: Oh, it's, it's not, uh, it's worse than people understand because unless you're actually actively in the market buying real estate, you have no clue of how weird it is. Uh, there was a story where, um, in the suburbs now, uh, traditional, they consider traditional first, like first home, you know, homes, you know, like they used to be like, you know, a hundred and like 130,000 to $200,000. Right. You know, single family dwellings, you know, first home, uh, there are whole areas, whole towns where, uh, 80, 90% of all the homes being bought up by, uh, these, uh, speculation firms, like corporations. Uh, so, and they're out buying families with cash paying like above market, like 20%, 30% above market paying cash just to take the property from like an actual like person or family. Yeah. And creating whole neighborhoods of rental properties. Oh. So, you know, so that you don't have a choice. Yeah. You can't, you literally can't buy even with money in hand, because unless you have like a quarter million dollars in actual like cash. Right. And you're willing to pay 30% above market. You're not, there's no chance of you even getting that property. And that's the reality just about everywhere in the United States. It's like every town, every state. Yeah. Uh, you, if you think you're going to get a property with a mortgage and you don't have like immense amounts of capital, forget it. You're not, you're not getting that property. That that's, it's being bought with cash by a company that's gonna, you know, keep, keep the equity and rent it out to a family or to you.

Fran Blanche: And so you can't, you literally cannot get out of the rental market in the U S once you're in it, unless you have millions, you have to have millions of dollars in cash, you know? Uh, so yeah, there's, there's, there's no way I, Fran lab takes up like 3000 square feet and it's not like house space. It's like, you know, it's more. Yeah. Uh, so if I, if I were going to move the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel, I'd need like 3000 square feet. Uh, and you know, and I'd have to buy it in cash and there's just no way it's like, I'd have to do this for another 30, 40 years to get enough money. Save up the cash.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just nuts. It's going mad here too. And there, you know, there's always talk about, well, in fact, I think they are letting people dip into their, uh, superannuation savings or their 401k to you. Yanks. Um, yeah, they'll let people actually for their deposits. So they, they allow you to dip into that, to get your deposit for the house.

Fran Blanche: Cause it doesn't make a difference at all because you're, you're going to be outbid. Yeah, exactly. With a cash buyer. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes, exactly. Yeah. The Chinese cash buyers here are.

Fran Blanche: Yep. Pile on as much as well. Yeah. I would imagine over there too, with, uh, the Asian market, but you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just an impossible game to crack unless you've got just immense amounts of money. And, you know, we're talking millions of dollars and liquid assets, you know, it's, uh, it's just not too, but I, you know, I'm my, my best scenario plan is to keep funding up for at least the next two years until I can get, uh, you know, the next thing going. I'm just trying to try to, try to limp it along.

Dave Jones: Well, hopefully they have to move Fran lab again. Did, does the, uh, rent in your current building? Does the, does the lease seem solid at the moment? Although I guess you thought that the last three times, right?

Fran Blanche: Yeah. The harsh reality is it's never solid. It's never solid. Yeah. Unbelievable. You know, there's no, every property is always for sale. And, uh, the building I'm in now, they, they, they, they came through like buying. They came through like buyers came through like six months ago. They did like a whole building inspection. I thought for sure they were going to flip the building. Right. Turned out that, uh, they didn't sell the building, but they did sell the, the people who own this building, they did sell a building that they had across the street. So they did, they did sell a building. So I think it's just a matter of time, you know, it's just a matter of time. And when a building gets sold, you're gone, you know, everyone's like, Oh, you know, you got a lease, you got rights. It's no, look, that they, they on purpose, the lease is only 12 months. They'll know, you know, when it's out, they, they don't renew it. You're out. Yeah. And that's the game. So, yeah, I mean, I, my best hope is another two years, keep it going. Uh, try to find the financing, you know, try to keep the support up for another 24 months. And, uh, but that's about the best hope. I think after that, it's like wishful thinking, you know, but I do think, you know, uh, if, if I have to move again, it's just, there's, it's going to be a huge chop. I'm just, I'm not going to Fran lab the way it is right now. It's just, it's not going to continue. It just, it's too big. I wouldn't want to move at all. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I am not moving. No, I'm not doing the move thing again. Screw that. I'm just, no, no, too old.

Fran Blanche: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm too old. Yep. Exactly.

Fran Blanche: I'm older than all you lot. I don't have all the e-youtubers. Is anyone older than me? I think I'm the oldest one. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Mike is your age. I think. I think Mike's pretty, Mike's, Mike's a bit older than me. I think you're a bit older. Yeah. I think I'm the oldest. Possibly. Okay.

Fran Blanche: I think I'm the oldest. I, I, I, if not in years, definitely I've got more miles. Right. Definitely got more miles. Project years or something we'll call it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not the years, it's the mileage. Mileage. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I use that term all the time with Mrs. EEV blog. It's not the years, it's the mileage. Yep.

Fran Blanche: So let me ask you, Dave, do you, have you imagined a future, like we're talking like two, three years in the future when, when YouTube is all shorts. Yeah. We said it's all shorts, right. I mean, imagine a world where all entertainment is 60 seconds. It's 60 second entertainment.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I get. Is that the future?

Fran Blanche: Is, is the future where all entertainment is where we, there's no more future films. There's no more movies and all TV shows are 60 seconds. All movies are sick. You go to the theater, it's 60 seconds. Boom. That's it. Boom. That's it.

Dave Jones: Nah. Well, I look that no, no, I don't think so. There's hope. Um, you know, uh, Tom Scott, the, you know, he makes these short, you know, he goes visits locations and he makes these short little excellent videos about all these different places. He goes, you've seen Tom Scott surely. I'm sure.

Fran Blanche: Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Uh, yeah, he normally does like, you know, he got, like he travels all over the world, goes to these fantastic, unusual locations and stuff. And, um, he went to Chile to visit, I think it's Chile, to visit the world's largest radio, not radio, uh, world's largest optical, uh, telescope. Right? I can't remember. What is it? The very large telescope or something like that? And normally, normally he goes there for five minutes. It really bugs me. He goes there for five, travels around the world and he shoots five minutes worth of video and that's it. This time he shot like 30, like his video was like 25, 30 minutes long and it was awesome. And, and it was like everyone in the comments was going, this is great. Please do these longer videos, you know? And unfortunately he's actually retiring soon. He's been in at 10 years. He's been making a video every week for 10 years and he's had enough. So he's given it up just as, just as his fan base were moving over from, he built his fan base based on these short little five minute videos. And now he's, you know, he was doing these fantastic long form ones. And everyone said it was great. Please do more. And he's going to quit. So, oops, but no, I've got hope that long form content is still the thing.

Fran Blanche: Well, let's talk a little about video equity because you and I, we've made a few videos over the years and it seems to me that this happens a lot. I'm sure it happens to you too. I'm sure it happens to all the content creators have been making videos for like a decade is that you'll make a video about something. And then there'll be a comment. And then there'll be a comment like, what about this other thing that's related to this? You know, you should do that. And it's like, well, no, I already did that video. I did that video like eight years ago. And I'll link it in here.

Fran Blanche: But YouTube won't bring that old video back. We've gone and asked for that subject, you know. So there was some like, you know, YouTube gives you those helpful hints in the studio, like, you know, try doing a community post about an old video. Yeah, right. You might bring it back. Well, I tried doing that.

Dave Jones: Nudge, nudge.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. And I thought that's what I do. I thought, well, you know, Monday people don't really watch videos. So maybe I'll go through and every Monday I'll do like a flashback, like a highlight of video. So I was doing this for a few weeks and like four people like watch is like four views.

Dave Jones: Right. This doesn't work. It isn't even worth your time to do that post to actually make that post.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. So channels like ours that have all this video equity. Yes. Thousands of videos. Yes. In the tank, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've got 3000 or something. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: How do you bring any of that to the forefront for searches? It's like, it's like someone makes a video about a Nemo tube. Let's say someone finds a Nemo tube, make a, you know, does my video from way back, does it, does it even come up? I don't know. You know, does someone does something about driving a Nixie tube? Well, does my video that I did a tutorial about that years ago, does that, does that get brought up? Probably no. So it's like, you know, it's just like, it's just based on the algorithm.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got like a handful of videos that will always keep popping up and they will actually do probably half of my views per month is like a couple, like a handful of old videos out of like 3000 videos or whatever. They will do the bulk of my monthly or, you know, half of my monthly views. Cause the algorithm just keeps feeding those. But the other ones just vanish into obscurity.

Fran Blanche: So you would have to like, you'd have to literally re upload the video as a new video. Yeah. Like a redundant copy. Yeah. To get it to be seen again.

Dave Jones: To get it to be seen again. Yes. Yep. It's, it's nuts.

Fran Blanche: I don't know how the algorithm do if we started doing that. I mean, what would the algorithm do if we started uploading old videos? Yeah, exactly. Again, back on the map. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I've, I've been re uploading old videos onto X. I was, I was going to do it like every day, like every day I was going to like post a new video on X and not a link to the, the, the actual YouTube video, but a, an actual video file. I was going to upload it to X slash, uh, Twitter. And, um, that was reasonably popular, but I, I just, they don't support, uh, 1080p 60 though. They, it's like. Not 60. No, they will do 1080p, but it's heavily compressed.

Fran Blanche: And it's there. They're using them like, these are like 10 or 12 year old compression algorithms. Yeah. Yeah. For that platform. So it's like, it's, it's not a new platform. No, it's not. You know, so if it's, if it's not, if it's not 1080p. Yep. 60 with a modern codec. Why are people going to, who's going to, I guess they're expecting people to watch it on their phone. Like a tiny little, a little thumbnail on the phone.

Dave Jones: And, and especially our type of content where, you know, you're doing teardowns and you have to see detail or, or I'm doing a tutorial screenshot and every pixel has to map. Otherwise it looks like crap because I'm showing a, you know, a data sheet or a webpage or something. And, you know, like you've got to, you can't just view it on your shoe phone. It doesn't work.

Fran Blanche: Well, even on, even YouTube, even the YouTube, the authorities at YouTube, they seem to think that everybody wants to watch videos on their phone where, I mean, I, I, I don't watch videos on the phone. I always watch it on my, on my main PC. You know, I've got a rig and I guess they think people don't own rigs anymore. That they do. I watch most of my, yeah.

Dave Jones: I watch most of my content on the, on the PC. And I think 70% of my audience watch it on a, on a rig on an actual PC. I think it's only 30% mobile or something.

Fran Blanche: So this is, this is what worries me about e-You tubing. You know, it is, is there, what is the future of e-Tubing? And, you know, is YouTube even going to support the idea of, you know, people watching on their PCs, long form videos in high definition? Is, is it even going to be a part of the mysterious algorithm? You know, is the whole, is the whole area of e-Tubing, is it just going to be relegated to its own, to the little kitty table? In the back, in the back room.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Do they need some radical change in, in sort of how they display things, how they present things, how they search things? Do they like, how they, uh, curate content? But I don't, I feel as though it's needed, but I don't know what form it would take. I don't know.

Fran Blanche: Well, the problem is that the algorithm, the algorithm is a catch all be all for that. It's a global, like you said about your misgivings about Starship, about it being like a universal tool.

Dave Jones: Jack of all trades, yeah.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. Like the, the, the, the, the, the combination hammer, screwdriver, soldering iron, calculator. Yeah. It's weirdly not the go-to tool. You're right. But YouTube is trying to do that with the algorithm. It's taking this global audience of how many billions of users now? It's like billions of users and trying to have one way of everybody finding everything. Yeah. And the world's not built like that.

Dave Jones: It's not built like that. Each, each one of each one, each or almost each genre, I'm not going to say each individual creator, but at least you could break it down to genres like us. Yeah.

Fran Blanche: Our little, our little niche, right? There's clearly, there's clearly genres on YouTube.

Dave Jones: And, and, and we, and we have a specific type of audience who want information presented in a specific way. Usually it's long form content and usually it's high definition and usually it's, you know, and, and, and we have like, you know, multi-part series as well, you know, and like, how do you sort of, or things that are grouped together? Yeah. There's playlists, but who the hell uses playlist? Like, no, I don't know. That's why I'm thinking there's got to be some radical change, but what that is, I don't know. I don't know. I guess it requires someone to come up with some really smart idea that works, but I don't know.

Fran Blanche: I think that whatever would need to be done will, will not be done because it would not, it wouldn't make YouTube more profitable. It would just make it easier to use and better. Right. You don't want that. You know, really the future of YouTube, if it were to work as a platform would be that YouTube would have to be smaller, you know, Right. You know, smaller, you know, microcosms, not like this panacea. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. It's almost as if like, I want to like flip the interface, like flip YouTube into being just for my little genre. You know, I want to be able to like flip a mode switch or something and like, have it, I dunno, optimize for the content that I want. You know, in, in terms of search, in terms of recommendations, in terms of, you know, the way the content's displayed, you know, shorts, I don't want go away. You know, I want sort of, yeah, but yeah, yeah, you're right.

Fran Blanche: It's not going to happen. The recommendation, like the video recommendations are comical, you know, that it's like, it's just, it's like, it's trying to get me to watch all kinds of bullshit content. And, you know, it's like, why doesn't the algorithm know that I don't want to watch this?

Speaker ?: No.

Fran Blanche: Uh, doesn't the algorithm know what I watch? It's like, no, you know, it's, it's like that whole thing about like Apple systems programming. Like, no, no, you don't want to do that. You're right. You know, it's like YouTube is like, no, you don't want to watch that.

Dave Jones: No, you want to do this way.

Fran Blanche: No, you don't want to watch that. You want to watch this.

Dave Jones: And it changes every couple of months. Like, like just when you think, oh, it's, it's working. God, like I'm getting good recommendations today. And I'm, you know, it's sort of, and then all of a sudden you're not, and it's just, you know, and, and it's, and it still displays my own videos from my own second channel or the first channel. Like it, no, they're under the same login and it recommends my own videos. Like, come on.

Fran Blanche: It peeves me to no end that when I'm watching my own video to proof it or whatever, that there's five of my videos. Yeah. On the sidebar. Yeah. I know. It's like, oh, I forgot how much I love those videos that I made. Right. I, it's like, yes, it knows that those are my videos. But the reason is, this is the thing about the catch all. The reason is, uh, the algorithm is set up like that because 99.999% of all the people who are using YouTube do not have a big YouTube channel. Yep. And if you're a person with, you know, five followers and you make family videos, the idea of seeing your videos in the recommended, that's like that people, they think that people want to see their own videos recommended. Yep. Somehow someone said, no, that because 99% of people, they want to see their videos. They want to see their videos because that means that they think that everybody who sees their videos seeing these, you know, is going to see all these other videos from them. Uh, it's got to have something to do with the idea that it's, it's for the vast majority of people watching videos on YouTube. It's not for like big content creators, you know? You know, so, you know, we fall into these little, uh, algorithmic, you know, potholes that are made for other people that we would prefer to opt out of. But that's the thing. It's like the, I remember when YouTube had all these, like it was tailor-made, like for what you wanted to see. And, and, you know, we kind of all became e-Youtubers at a time when, you know, I remember like, like, wind it back to, you know, 2013, 14. You know, if I uploaded a video, all the recommended videos, it's you, big Clive and all, all the other, you know, is like, it was, it, the algorithm, it made these little communities. And that's kind of what made the e-Youtubers was back in those days, even before, you know, we had the idea that we were all gonna like know each other. Yeah. But YouTube kind of did that for us. And it won't do that anymore.

Dave Jones: Although there is glimmers of hope. I do post, I do tweet occasionally, um, that it, like the, the, the recommendation will pop up with a little channel that might have like, you know, a hundred subscribers or something like that. And, and he's made like, you know, 30 highly polished tutorial videos on like designing, you know, designing computers or something like that. And it's fantastic content. He's only got a couple of hundred subs. So I post that and it, it occasionally pops up with a gem like that, but I don't know how it works. Like, you know, it's just very occasionally it'll pop up with a gem. So I still, I still have hope, but there's, there's glimmers of hope occasionally, but, uh, there's, there's glimmers of hope occasionally. But, uh, that it just, you know, this new great channel, you know, fantastic, but they couldn't get a foothold obviously that like, and they've been making videos for like a year. You know, they've got 30, 50 highly polished videos. They've been uploading for a year and they've got a couple of hundred subs, you know?

Fran Blanche: And like, honestly, there, Dave, there's no way that you or I could start a YouTube channel today. Start now.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. There's just, there's no way that there's no way you'd be seen.

Dave Jones: No, you would have to get a shout out from all the big channels, you know? And yeah, I dunno.

Fran Blanche: But you know, and I, I don't know if it's related to all this other stuff that we're talking about, but recent weeks I am being deluged. I mean, deluged with, uh, partnership offers. It's just, it's comical. Oh yeah. I still get five, six a day, every day. Five, six a day.

Dave Jones: Oh geez. You're getting a flood. Yeah. Yep.

Fran Blanche: That's, that's happened to me, but not, it's like, like, like, uh, heart, like software developers, manufacturers, not even, not like the bullshit, you know, Chinese, you know, we, we've got this new internet toaster. We want you to try. Exactly. Yeah. I still get those daily. Yeah. You know, like, uh, you know, black magic and stuff. And like, it's like, why are you emailing me? It's like, it's like, I, I'm not like the one to do a review of like a major product. It's like, that's, it's gotta be a scam. It's gotta be a big switch. It is.

Dave Jones: Yes, it is. I've done a video on that. And I tweet about that quite often. Is that, yeah, this new scam. Yes. It'll be a black magic and there's all spelling mistakes in it. And it's not the black magic website that the email came from. And it's like, you know, come on.

Fran Blanche: Yeah. It's like this, there's this, uh, prince that needs to move a million dollars.

Dave Jones: Exactly. No, they're, they're, they're actually channel, uh, hijack scams. So what they'll do is that they'll send you a document or they'll send you an executable if you show interest. And then if you run that it hijacks your YouTube channel and boom, you're gone. Um, they take full control and then they put the crypto spam on there. That's how, uh, Linus, um, got his channel just absolutely hacked. Like for, for days, like he's, his channels, what the 10 million subs or something. Linus, uh, tech tips. And yeah, he's, his channel got busted with one of those scams and oops. Yeah. Gotta be so careful. Yeah, I know.

Fran Blanche: I've got, I've got crazy, crazy security on my systems. It's just, uh, it's crazy. It bypasses your 2FA.

Dave Jones: It, like I've got, you know, hardware, physical hardware dongle keys that you can't log into my account unless you've got the physical hardware dongle key. But it bypasses all that because it uses the cookies on your machine. So once they get the, once your machine's infected, they can actually, um, change your, yeah. They can hijack your channel, even bypassing all your 2FA, two factor authentication. Stuff, it's scary. It's like, yep, the whole thing could just go. So, yeah, anyway, I w I want to show you something scary. I don't know if you've seen this, please. I, I, you may have nightmares. Okay. I'm gonna warning, trigger warning for Fran. She, here we go. It's fine. It's a technical difference. Share screen.

Fran Blanche: Get up the horrible picture. We're going to see the picture of R any second. There it is.

Dave Jones: There it is. There it is. Oh no. Oh. Oh no. Is that a 1B? Is that a 1B? Yeah. I think that's a Saturn 1B at the Huntsville, Alabama. Yep. For those not watching. It's a nap. They're trying, they're using a crane. They're taking down the Saturn 1B booster. Yeah. Oh God. And the chain snaps and it falls on the ground. I'm sorry. That is. I'm sorry. You're going to have nightmares.

Fran Blanche: I'm sure. That is. No excuse for that. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Sorry.

Dave Jones: I don't know why they took it down. Like. Don't know. But they. Yeah. Well, it's going.

Fran Blanche: It's not going to go back on display probably now. No. Crunch.

Dave Jones: It just falls to. It didn't fall that far. It fell maybe 10 meters or something, but. That's, that's far enough.

Fran Blanche: Yep. Yeah. Sorry.

Speaker ?: Well, and.

Fran Blanche: Well, somebody. Don't want to just. Put.

Dave Jones: You put that flat side against the wall.

Fran Blanche: No one's going to notice. Yeah. I'm sure you could display it somewhere. Oh, we got more. You got other ones there. Yep. There's that.

Speaker ?: The famous satellite that's fallen over in the.

Dave Jones: Oh. In the clean room.

Fran Blanche: Cause they forgot to put the bolts on it when they do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, in the air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air air me mad i do like me some mr t gotta have some tea pity the fool this van's faster than light fool first name mister your name period last name oh good stuff yeah yeah classic 80s but yeah that's just i like oh oh oh how many of those would be left other is is that the only one do you have any idea i really

Fran Blanche: don't know no idea yeah but it's it's gonski anyway well it's flat on one side it's flat on one side

Dave Jones: they get displayed in the corner in a museum something push that push that side up against the wall yeah no one will notice have you been to the um have you been to the kennedy space center where they have the saturn five hanging from the ceiling no i i can't go to florida why

Fran Blanche: well it's it's a it's actually a jailable offense for me to use a bathroom in the state of florida oh god

Dave Jones: yeah florida jailable offense jailable offense unbelievable yeah oh god yeah it's a shame anyway they've got a they've got a saturn five hanging from the roof so i i wanted to say you could probably do the same thing with this i'm thinking is that you know the flat side's up so you can't you can't you can't see it i'm sure oh boy how how big is a 1b compared to a five

Fran Blanche: well it's it's uh it's about the same it's a little taller i think it's about the same size as the s1c stage it's uh it's just it was totally different kind of design that the that you know multi-engine multi-tank sort of array that that's how they were going to do saturn i mean i i think i think the only reason that they have uh built the saturn five around the was because of the f1 it was the f1 came along yeah but they the early designs that von braun had for saturn had the clustered tanks you know and the multiple arrayed you know engines but yeah it was that it was that f1

Dave Jones: there we go i i i love the one in his office with all the models and stuff it's just it's just fantastic and yeah and the saturn five is sticking out of the ceiling

Fran Blanche: i've never seen any documents or read any books about uh the model builders at nasa like the people that made all of the models and you know for decades there's it's just i've never been able to learn anything about it it had really oh you've tried have you so you've tried to get in there uh you know i i i'm always looking especially in older books and everything but it's just not the kind of thing that's ever surfaced as like a point of research i've never i've never heard of any books published about it or uh even like photographs or write-ups about the art department you know because obviously you know there are whole staffs of people that you know all these scale models you know um the only thing i found and i have some uh films i've i've transferred a couple of them that show um the model uh building process for the wind tunnel testing which is you know yes where they cast their cast metal models for to put in you know supersonic wind tunnel testing and um but the actual like um you know plastic and balsa wood models that they made for you know inside the departments uh have absolutely no clue but wouldn't it be amazing to see uh to see where you know the department that made the models yes it'd be great

Dave Jones: how amazing would that have been oh yeah because they made some fantastic stuff and it's just all just lost in the annals of time it's all just gone it's gone gone ski so are we friend because our amp hours up unfortunately like as usual we waffled on about space youtube a little bit of electronics in there a little bit but it was all tubes you know it was tubes that's ancient history yep so is it is it tubes there or tubes tubes tubes tubes tubes it's not i'd say tubes right you know i've got the philly

Fran Blanche: accents so people complain about my pronunciation all the time right soldering is it soldering in philly is it soldering it's solder you know it's it's it's it's always been solder in america i don't know why the the british love to oh it's so funny it's solder yeah well you know it's not aluminium it's aluminum

Dave Jones: you know you're you're not saying the letters in there you know yep like uh the age-old argument

Fran Blanche: it's like i have yeah it's solder

Dave Jones: two dudes solder all right well thank you very much fran for filling in for the gambles who is away he'll he'll be back eventually all right thanks fran sure catch you next time bye

Speaker ?: you