Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Nate? We are smoking
a Punch, Rare Kuroho, and Mike was saying this is the magnum size for his or her pleasure.
It is, which means that it's a Robusto. Which we like, I think. Sorry, Nate. It's alright,
as long as you don't get those in my coffee. We are in person together, together forever.
We are in person today, it's very nice. More drinking coffee and Johnny Walker Black. There
you go. Alright, we're gonna light up on here. There was no weird flavors on the cap or anything
of that nature. Nice and, did we decide creamy wasn't the word we were supposed to use? It works
though. Yeah. Yeah, milky's not the right word. No, it's got that smoothness. Buttery isn't the
right word. No, not quite. Smooth for sure. And boy, do we have a doozy of a topic today. Yes,
we do. So, it's the holiday season and we all are, you know, buying crap that we don't need and
buying crap for other people they don't need. But if you don't buy it, then you're on their shit list.
That's right. And you could be like Uncle Mike and just give 50 bucks, you know, but then nobody
wants to do that anymore. No. Of course, with the rate of inflation, it might have to go up
50 bucks. I don't want to admit that. My grandmother gave me 50 bucks. That's why I give my nieces and
nephews 50 bucks. Yeah. 50 bucks in like 1995 was a hell of a lot more money than it is now. Now you gotta do the
crazy inflation calculator. Okay, so my grandma gave me 50 bucks in 1995. What is 50 bucks in 1995
worth in 2023 dollars? That's right. That's right. I still get 50 bucks for my birthday. So whatever.
There you go. So anyway, we're gonna go over devices. It's not truly just devices, though. It's kind
of like devices, appliances, things you use about the house. Yep. Tools, you know, gadgets, all those
sorts of things. Yeah. I think we should make it clear right away right up front that we don't have
any affiliate marketing with any of these products. Nobody's paid us to. No. Mention these products
or talk about these products. These are just things that Mike and I have found throughout the
course of our lives and internet sleuthing to fix problems we have or to do things more efficiently
than the old things we're doing, I guess. Right. Yes. And unfortunately, it's coming out after
Black Friday. So many of these companies are gonna have had sales that you're not gonna get
anymore. But you know, sales like 25% off happen a couple times a year. We all know that it's gonna
be like every freaking holiday. Yeah, they do like a last minute, you know, hey, it's the two weeks
before Christmas or one week before Christmas. You know, absolutely. Come get your shit. Last
minute. I can remember one company, they do like a first of the year sale. Okay. Where it's like
that they called it the hangover sale. So it's like right away in the morning till like noon on
the very first of the year. So yeah. Well, if you got family at distance, you know, you can always
say, oh, yeah, it's in the mail. And then, you know, go out after Christmas and get the sales and ship
it. Right. Nobody's the wiser. And we're gonna have a little bit of overlap and possibly.
Probably. I mean, how do you want to do this? I didn't really organize them. I just kind of
stream of conscious listed them. I stream unconscious. And then I tried to break them up a little.
Okay, we can just stream a conscious talk. It's not like it matters if we talk about a ratchet and
talk about an air fryer. It's no big deal. Yeah. I mean, this is so that's my list. I don't really
have that much. Oh, I have. Well, as usual, Mike, a lot of notes. Yes. All right. Well, I don't know,
I guess the first one that kind of prompted this. I don't know that it really prompted the episode,
but we were talking about mostly the instant pot. Yes. At some point. So that's the first one on my
list here is the instant pot. And when they were big, I don't know how many years ago they're kind
of like the big thing to have like five years ago, maybe. Oh, it had to be more than that. Probably
10 years ago. Okay. I don't think it was quite 10 years. I remember this was pre pandemic and
pre kids for us. And we were in the office and everybody was kind of talking about like, oh,
the instant pot, the instant pot, it can cook a chicken breast from frozen in like an hour or
something. The reason why I say 10 is because my old travel partner was a huge instant pot guy.
Okay. He would bring his instant pot and I would bring a Vitamix and gas grill. Okay. And we would
travel and then that's every meal that we ate was cooked in there. You know what I mean? And then we
had a coffee pot too. But I always brought, we're going to talk about the coffee pot. Okay. I brought
it. And that had to have been 10 years ago. Okay. I mean, I feel like they probably came out 10
years ago and I don't know if they really caught on with the, what you would call it, like the
Stepford wives or the class females in the office type. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like it didn't trend
or what you would put the, everyone would say now is like, it wasn't trending. Yeah. We were like
traveling industrial electricians who wanted to be able to have home cooked food every day. Yeah.
And that was like his secret weapon. Yeah. Well, we, we used to have a rice cooker and it was just
as big, if not a little bigger than the instant pot, but all it would do would be rice. Then it
made great rice. Like it was fantastic, but we were gifted an instant pot and I was kind of like,
okay, cause everybody at work was like, wow, the instant pot can cook these frozen chicken breasts
in this amount of time. And I'm like, yeah, so can my oven, you know, like that's not that special,
but the instant pot also does rice. Yeah. And that's primarily what we use ours for is rice,
but there are some really good, like one pot instant pot meals that you can cook in the instant
pot. And it's got a saute feature. So in this stainless steel bowl, you can put your, your ground
beef or whatever down in the bottom and saute it, and then put all the liquids and stuff in and,
and pressure cook that thing and let it go, you know, and there's a lot of really good recipes
out there. If you can get through all the blog stories on the recipe, recipe sites, but we use
that fairly frequently just to make big batches of rice and yep. And it's a slow cooker as well,
which is awesome. So you can do the sear function and then turn it into a slow cooker and let us
sit for how many of our hours you're at work. And that's a lot of times what we did, cause we'd cook
in the morning and then I'd make like smoothies for us and then coffee and then he'd like rip up
dinner or whatever. And then, yeah, anyway. Yep. So it's, we still, we kept our slow cooker,
just, I don't know. I don't know why. Sarah and I have several slow cookers, but we keep them for
various other things. Yeah. It's always good to have. But we were able to replace the rice cooker with the instant pot because it does
rice cooking and more. So if you've got a small, small kitchen, we've got a smaller kitchen, you know,
kind of maximizing your, your appliances and theirs. Right. And I still have my rice cooker. Okay. When
my rice cooker goes bad, I'm not buying another one. I'll just use my instant pot. Yeah. But I had the rice
cooker before the instant pot. Yeah. Which I got as a gift from my old travel partner. So next one,
and a lot of people have these. And I was, I was skeptical until I bought one, but we got an air fryer
and I fucking love my air fryer, man. You can cook vegetables in it, frozen vegetables in it. And you
can do all your like shitty junk food you buy from the frozen section that nobody should really eat.
But, and then you can cook like pork chops in it. You can cook chicken breast in it. You can pretty
much cook anything you want in it. Yeah. And it's fantastic. I like to do drummies, like chicken legs.
And then I have like a basically like a fried chicken leg with hot sauce. Okay. But it's kind
of a game changer for us. Okay. Because it's fast and you can just put it in, drop it, and then you
can let it run and then do something else. We have a big kitchen. Yeah. So anything that allows me to
multitask and shorten my time is good. Yes. So, and I know that a lot of people have them already,
but if you don't have an air fryer, get a big ass one. Get the bigger the better. Can you do the
pizza rolls in there? Yeah. Oh yeah. You can do pizza rolls in there. You can do damn near anything
that isn't going to kind of fly apart. So you can't do like a grilled cheese in it because of that
convection. Yep. And yeah, I like it. Yeah. I think it's worth every penny. Well, I guess as long as
we're on like the kitchen gadgets here, and I think I put this one on here too. Oh yeah, I did. Toaster
oven. We don't have a toaster at our house. And for I think three or four years, we ran without a
microwave and we just use the toaster oven or the oven or the stove top. And the toaster oven we
have has the toast feature. It's got the oven bake feature. It's got the broil feature. So it's a
fairly large one and the shelf can go in two different places. You could fit a 12 inch pizza
in there and cook a pizza in there. Oh, nice. You can do probably, depending on the loaf, you could
probably do six pieces of toast at a time in it. So you can do, well, we did actually three bagels,
you know, split open in there. So we like that. It's quick. It's easy. You don't have to wait for
the big oven to preheat. If you're just warming up something small, it's great for leftovers that
would get soggy in the microwave. Right. You know? So yeah. Yeah. And well, since we're in kitchens,
I got a lot of kitchen stuff because I like to cook and I've always been a home cook.
I mean, we're recording this the day after Thanksgiving. So we've got food on the mind,
right? Exactly. So Sarah, a couple of years ago for my birthday, got me a great gift and it was
a Lodge brand, which is made in USA. Cast iron wok. OK. And I like stir fry. It's quick and easy
to make. And once you get that fucker up hot, you have to get it like maximum hotness, like
eight out of ten hot. Yeah. But it is so quick and you can make a meal for yourself in 10 minutes.
And almost all of it is just heating up the wok and you can walk away. Ha ha ha. So and it's cast
iron. You got to make sure it's oiled and all that. And you got to use wooden utensils so you
don't melt your plastic utensils. But yeah, I like the Lodge stuff. We've got I don't know if they're
Lodge. We've got a couple cast iron fry pans that we'll put on our stove top. But I've got a Lodge
cast iron Dutch oven as do I to go camping with. And I use mine at home. OK, I do. I don't have the
feet on mine. Mine's flat. It's got a flat top. Yeah. And then it's got the lid that you can
put a little hooks on. Oh, yeah. Mine's the full on camping. You. Yeah. You put it on top of the
the charcoal briquettes. Yeah. And then you put briquettes on top and you just let that thing go.
My top and bottom separate and they can be used as pans. They don't have. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Cast iron is great. You just got to take care of it and clean it now with soap. I clean it
the right way and do all the right stuff with it. So but if you take care of it, it lasts for forever
and ever and nothing sticks on it. Yeah. Even if you get rusty, you can re cleaning, you can score
it out and then redo it like, yeah, do it outside. Yeah, it's a big process. But, you know, we've
we've reconditioned, I think is what it's called. Yeah. Yeah. I've done that a couple of times and
recondition them. One other thing, this is my last kitchen gadget. OK, I might as well just interject
it here. Absolutely. Well, we do like our quesadilla maker. So but sometimes I just make them on the
flat pan because the flat pan is easier to clean than the quesadilla maker, which was just a thrift
store. Like, hey, it was five bucks. Right. So but we were gifted an egg boiler and it's a little
round thing like this. It holds maybe six or eight eggs and it comes with a clear plastic measuring
cup kind of thing. And it tells you, you know, soft, medium or hard for boiled. And that's how much
water you put in it. And you dump that water in. You put your eggs on top, close the lid, plug it
into the wall, push the button and then it beeps when it's done. And you do your ice bath or
whatever. And the measuring cup has a little needle on the other end so you can pop the cap off and
score and crack your eggshells that way. So it's good for doing a bunch of eggs all at once and not
having to wait for stuff to boil. You know, it's closed little unit. Sure. So just set it. And when
it beeps, it's a horrendous sound. But, you know, it works. So that's topical because my
Sarah's making deviled eggs right now and I boiled 20 for her yesterday and she's doing probably
half a dozen more today. Yeah. Anyway, I got a lot of kitchen stuff because I love kitchen stuff.
Well, you go through your kitchen stuff and I'll ask questions if any arise. Perfect. I should mention,
now look at this, Mike, on the cigar here. Oh, you're gonna crack. That little leaf is cracked and
kind of pulling up on the wrapper. It doesn't really affect the taste and I've got some nice
ash going as does Mike. Interesting. But it is a little strange. That's the importance of letting
people know that these cigars came from my humidor and from Nate's. So they're going to have been
kept in probably slightly different conditions. Slightly different conditions. I just did go and
re-up all my humidor fluid in my humidor. I need to do mine. I don't let any of mine get too low.
You know, they're usually always around the 72 to 60, mid 60s percentage. So I use Bavada packs to
yeah, manage. I found a bottle of humidor juice on Amazon that is like, I think is rated for 72%.
Oh, really? So I guess you can get them pre-filled. I just use the regular humi juice. Yep. But yeah,
so I don't know what the difference is. I didn't look at the makeup of, you know, whatever. I think
it's supposed to be distilled water and propylene glycol. I know you can make your own, but I don't
know. It's not that expensive. No. I really want to be doing chemistry. No, it's not. So anyway,
I'm going to go through mine. I'll be fairly quick with some of them. I like the Vitamix blenders.
Okay. I love it. And I got little travel cups. I have an old 5200 machine and then I upgraded
here to like a 750 machine and it has like the different size cups and everything. Okay. And
it's got travel cups and everything. And I used to drink green smoothies a lot for breakfast.
Okay. And that's why when I was traveling, I was at a Vitamix because we would do a green smoothie
for breakfast, which once you convince a construction worker that it's okay, he can drink it, it gets got
so many vitamins and everything in it. It's got that boost in the morning that it's pretty easy
to convince people to continue to drink them. Now is that similar to a NutriBullet? So no. Well,
I have an attachment that makes it similar to a NutriBullet, but the Vitamix is like a two
horsepower full on blender with a stick that you can make ice in. Yeah. You can like freeze
bananas and turn it into ice cream. And then one of their tricks is that if you puree tomatoes in
it, you can actually cook it in there up to hot temperatures because it has so much power and
spinning force. The friction. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a NutriBullet and I didn't put it on my list
because we don't use it very frequently, but it's got the chopping blade and a blending blade. So
you can choose it, but it's the size of a cup. Basically it's a very small little blender, but
I've used it to make brown sugar when we've been out of brown sugar and it's molasses and regular
sugar. That's literally all that that is. But it blends it up really nicely. Better than you
could do with like a whisk or anything in a bowl. I like to make margaritas in the summer too.
Okay. And having a big powerful blender like that. Yep. Yep. It's a game changer. I mean,
making margaritas, because I had a KitchenAid blender before I bought my Vitamix and I burned
it out in six months. It's a hundred dollar blender. Yeah. I'm like, fuck that. So I went
and got the big daddy. Yeah. Yeah. We have a food processor that I like, but my Sarah does not like
it because it's too easy to, you know, if you toss an onion in there to chop it, if you don't really,
really watch what you're doing, then you have like onion juice. Yeah. So she doesn't like it as much
as I do. So it doesn't get used a whole lot and it's rather large. So it's kind of cumbersome to
pull out and use. And then it's a bitch to clean. Yeah, of course. So this is going to be an
interesting one because my coffee pots no longer made, but there's an association called the
specialty coffee association and they will certify coffee pots. These coffee pots have all of the
temperature sensors and everything else. So where your water is 198 degrees, it comes onto your
filter. And anyway, this, this specialty coffee associations exists to certify coffee equipment
for the quote unquote best cup of coffee. So if you're going to get a coffee pot at home and you
want extremely good coffee all the time, go onto their website. They have 20 coffee pots, probably
on there right now. I went there yesterday and checked it out and they're like OXO and KitchenAid
and you can find these in stores. Yeah. Like it's not impossible. I have a bun. Like I say,
they don't make the one that I have anymore. They probably will come out with one again,
because I like the bun. But yeah, and it makes a huge difference. The coffee that comes out of my
coffee pot is I don't go to Starbucks. Yeah. Like there's no reason. And I don't drink coffee at
gas stations either because it tastes like trash. Yeah. To go along with that, I have a Baratza
Encore grinder. It's a hopper grinder and you can do anything, any size coffee grounds for French
press or for your regular drip. And it's worth the money. It costs a lot. Is that, that's a burr
grinder then? It's a burr grinder with a hopper. Yeah. And it's a hundred and I think I spent 140
on mine. Okay. Which seems like a lot because it is not really for, I mean, not for burr grinders.
If you're really going to get into the, and that's what that's something that I want is a burr grinder
because we've just got the blade grinder, which is fine for, we just have a drip pot, but we've got,
you know, that we've got the French press and we've got pour over stuff and it's, you can't really,
with ours, it's just, well, you hold the button down for a little less time and you get a coarser
grind. Yep. The Baratza Encore is pretty much considered the best. It's not the best, but it's
the most economical with it. It still does everything that you need. And then you can take
it all apart and all the parts are replaceable. Okay. So if you tear a gasket or something,
you can order a replacement part. As long as you don't burn the engine out, you're fine. Yeah. And
it's worth every penny. I had a black and Decker one before this one. Okay. And it worked pretty
good, but it didn't do fine grinds very well. Sure. So it would do drip and do like cold,
cold brew and press pot, but it, we couldn't get into an espresso type grind. And we have
an espresso maker and this, we will do an espresso grind. Yeah. I know for camping, I've got a,
I don't know, it's kind of like a little bit bigger in diameter than a paper towel tube,
you know, in the middle tube. And it's a hand crank coffee grinder. You can set your size on
there. And I believe it's a burr grinder and it's all stainless steel and you can do that. And then
I've got a stainless steel percolator that goes on a little cricket burner for camping. Yeah. So you
can make real nice coffee out in the woods, in the sticks, wherever you may be. Yeah. And we have a
percolator and I'll just pre grind all the coffee and bring it with me. Yeah. You can do that too.
Yeah. Theoretically, if I was in my truck, I have a inverter so I could run a grinder on it, but I
don't know if I can do that. Screw that. And then you might as well just stay home. Yeah, exactly.
You might as well. You might as well. And then I have other things like Americans don't usually
have electric kettles. Yep. And I didn't have one, but I like French press coffee and I have a
Bodum chain board pot, which again, a little more expensive, but every part is replaceable. So I've
had mine. I got mine my first year of college. Yeah. So it's old. And yeah, but yeah, I like my
electric kettle. I fought against it, but I like it. And then I usually, I have a digital scale too.
Okay. Yeah. I've got a digital scale. I haven't used it for much. I originally got it to do
my own CO2 for our aquarium, but I found a different method that just takes regular kitchen
measurements. And so I don't have to sit there and measure out, you know, 0.057 grams of yeast or
whatever. Right. So on the weekends, I like to make French press coffee. Okay. And I'll measure
the weight in grams. Okay. And I kind of fuck with it like a hobby. You know what I mean? For no
reason. Yeah. That's still good to have because sometimes you do come across recipes or things
where they do grams or whatever. So all the time. And they're not expensive. The little digital.
No, I have an Amazon branded one works great. Yeah. I think I've got an Amazon branded like package
scale, mailing scale. So I use that all the time because if I sell something online and you just
ship something out or ship something to relatives or whatever, I can weigh it. And I just go to
pirate ship. You get the corporate rates for the USPS and you can do a USP or UPS, I'm sorry. And
you can schedule the pickup. So you print off the label, slap it on the box, and then schedule the
pickup and the mail person comes and picks it up the next day. Nice. And you're good to go. Nice.
And we talked about this previous episode, but Pamper Chef makes a spritzer that you can put
your own olive oil in. That thing is awesome. I have two of them. Got so much. I like them
because I thought I lost it when I moved and I didn't. I found it later. And then a Soda Stream.
Man, I am obsessed with my Soda Stream. I know. I want to get one of those. Oh, dude. And they're
in hot water right now because they're made in Israel. Yeah. But come on, man. They're a
first world nation. Like who gives a shit? Yeah. Like the people working in that factory make
exactly what they make here. So, yeah, I mean, I get it that people are getting a little touchy
feely about things, but yeah, it's better than made in communist China. Yeah. I don't know. I'll
have to put it better to make your own carbonated stuff than get it from a plastic bottle from a
plastic bottling plant that will then just go back to the dump or whatever. Right. So
and mine has a, I have the one with glass bottles. Yeah. I like it a lot. We just got a whisk as a
gift and I don't know what the brand is called, but if you look at it, it's got metal balls on
the end of it. They're like straight tines. Okay. And if you're looking for a whisk for whatever
reason, get one of those. Okay. Yeah. They're like German made. So is it not like your standard like
egg beater? It doesn't come around in an egg beater. They come off all those little metal
tines from the handle. Okay. On the end of each metal tine, there's a metal ball. Okay. And then
we have two of them. We have one with metal and one with plastic. Yeah. And they are so much better.
Okay. So much better. I hate those egg beater ones because they don't really fit in drawers.
That they'll, this one doesn't fit in drawers very well either. Okay. But you also don't get all that
shit built up on the end of it. And like you can beat that piss out or whatever you're doing. Yeah.
And it works really well. Speaking about the Pamper Chef stuff. And I know we talked about this in a
previous one too, but I really like stoneware baking things like a stoneware pizza pan or pizza
stone, I guess is what you call it. And then a stoneware loaf pan. Oh, and those are great. And
they're similar to cast iron where you don't ever use soap on them, but they all come with a little
plastic like scraper thing, you know, and you just scrape them off under hot water and then they dry
out and they're good to go. But the pizza stone is crazy because you'll cook the pizza and it cooks
it really nice. And then you put it on top, you know, wherever on your counter. And then you come
back for like another piece of pizza and it's still hot. It's not like the aluminum pans where
they lose their heat right away. Yep. You come back and you're like, wow, this is still, it's
almost like as if it were under a heat lamp, but you know, from the pan from up above. So. Yep. I
really like the stoneware cooking things in addition to cast iron. Oh, hell yeah. I have a
piece of stone pizza pan as well. I didn't think about putting it on the list because I've always
had one, but yeah, you know, that's why you're going through your list. And if I think about it,
I think absolutely. Absolutely. You can't possibly think of everything you use or everything. Right.
Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm going to sit down and write down everything I use. Yep. And then I'm
going to skip a couple because it's like nonsense, but one thing that really helps out if you're a
hunter and you're going to do a lot of butchering is a electric knife sharpener. I have a chef mate,
but there's sharp makers. There's all kinds of brands. You can pick whatever we want,
but I can tell you what, man, that thing saved me so much time. Cause if you shoot a couple deer,
let's say, and you have to butcher and then you have to resharpen and blah, blah, blah. It is
so much better than trying to run it on a stone. Yeah. Or, you know what I mean? Like I don't want
to waste my time. I've got a sharpening kit that will let me do serrated blades and things.
Yep. But it's got the guides and the rods through the stones. So you can go. You have a Lansky
system. Yeah. Yeah. I also have one of those. Okay. And I like it for my pocket knives. Yeah.
I'll use it on our chef knives too, because you can get the angle right. But I think in the grand
scheme of life, if you get any kind of sharpening thing, you're a step ahead because you don't have
to go down to the knife sharpening store and get your knife sharpened and come back in a week and
pick it up. And sharp knives are safer than dull knives, especially with cooking or cleaning animals
or whatever. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody has their knife preferences. I was going to say,
just get a nice chef's knife, get a nice paring knife. Yeah. Possibly a nice filet knife,
and then you're good to go. You can go sharp and clean. Yep. Oh, speaking of knives,
because we have a small kitchen. I really, really like, it's an aluminum magnetic knife rack.
Oh yeah. It's a strip and you can mount it either horizontal or vertical. And so we have it mounted
vertically above our sink. And then you can just slap your chef knives up there because we don't
really have the room for a knife block on the countertop. And then it keeps it out of reach of
kids too, because it's high up. And this will make people laugh is that Nate has a very economical
and small kitchen. I have a very large kitchen and on our island, we have two knife blocks,
because I have a knife block and Sarah has a knife block and neither one of us want to put our knife
block away. But you also have your own knives. We also have our own knives. Yeah. So it's kind
of like, you know, if you, I don't know, and you work in the kitchen, so, you know, the chef brings
their own knives in there. They have their own like tools. Yeah. Like an auto mechanic or something.
I worked in kitchens for a long time. So I have a nice set of knives and Sarah's got a perfectly
adequate set of knives. They're not as nice as mine. That's it for kitchen gadgets. I think on
my part, I do have this. Oh, Sarah wanted to put a Houdini corkscrew for open wine bottles.
Yeah. Is that the electric one? No, no, no, no. It screws in and then it's got like a gripper handle.
Oh, sure. Yeah. You can open a wine bottle with a tennis shoe. How do you do that? You, and I,
this is one that you probably need to practice a little bit before you whip it out at your next
wine party. But you take your shoe off and you put the punt end of the wine bottle into the heel of
your shoe, as if it were your limb, right? Your foot. And then you will bang it against a door frame
or a wall and the pressure will work the cork out of the end of the thing. So the trick is you need
to, when the cork is adequately out that you can grab it with your hand to pull the rest of the way
out. You stop the banging or else you're just going to bang and it'll pop out and all the wine
will spill on the floor. Interesting. So, but that's a way. I mean, you know, when you're in college,
not that we were drinking a lot of wine, but you have to find different ways to open beer bottles
and wine and other liquor things. So definitely a way to do it. There we go. That's it for my
kitchen gadgets. I've got a couple sound audio visual things that I like. So I've got a pair
of headphones, they're Bluetooth headphones and noise canceling. And honestly, I don't use the
noise canceling a whole lot because I'm not really on a plane and it works best for kind of the
continuous noise. It's not like if you have children screaming in the background, you'll
never hear them with noise canceling. It's more, you know, just noise removal basically, but they
are Bluetooth and they're comfortable and they have the 3.5 jack. So you can do them without that.
Okay. The battery, you can turn the noise canceling on and off. So you're not constantly
draining the battery. Battery life lasts a long, long time. And these are the headphones that I
usually use when we're doing our podcast. Although I've been doing the hard line in now recently,
just for no reason. They're Tautronics. So they're not like a big name brand. They're really
affordable, but they work just fine. I also have a pair of headphones on here. Mine are for work
and they're Isotune Pro-Aware. They have an NRR rating of 26. So they're certified hearing
protection. And then the aware port is that you can turn them on and you can hear outside noise
and it'll automatically block any sound that's over 76 decibels. Because they limit to 76.
And then of course you can hook them up to your phone and listen to your stuff and work. And then
they're hearing protection and also you can use them at the gun range if you wanted to or for
hunting or anything like that. And I like them a lot. I got two pairs. They last about a day.
Okay. Yeah. I used to DJ quite a bit for weddings and things. And I have on here downbeats. And they
are just silicone things that go in your ear. They come in a little carry case that goes on
your key chain if you're so inclined. And usually whenever I go to a concert, first Av or anywhere
where there's going to be loud noise for a long period of time, I toss the downbeats in and they
really do cut down that, I don't know what you would call it, like the post show headache or
whatever to the ear from that. And I think on their website, and they're like, I don't know,
$12, $16 on Amazon. You can get them any color you want. And they cut down I think 15 or 16 decibels.
And you can hear people close to you and conversation just fine. And honestly it doesn't
affect the audio quality from the concert at all. So Nate told me about these. And I bought myself
a Mice era them. And they are a game changer. They're way better than having earplugs in.
I'm so glad you did. I'm so glad.
They are way better. And if I forget them, I'm really bummed because then I got to put earplugs
in because I don't want that loud ringing all day long.
The earplugs muffle.
And they muffle. These do not muffle at all. So I don't know how they do it. I bought one for
Dev because we went to a show together and he was like, what are you sticking in your ears there?
And I'm like, oh, here you go, man. Just get your own pair.
So yeah, they're definitely worth it. And the black case is cheaper.
Everybody knows.
That's the one I have.
Yeah. I have black. Sarah has purple.
But yeah, I got purple for my reasons.
Yeah. For reasons. I think hers were like 18 bucks.
Even though we're married to these respective Sarah's,
I don't want her ear stuff in my ear.
No, not really.
So yeah. So that was that. I don't know. I guess I'll root some of mine off.
We've got two of these now because all modern phones have wireless charge capability.
Mm-hmm. Or most of them do. And I found this good one. It's a Utech,
Y-O-O-T-E-C-H. And they're just wireless charge pads. They're cheap. You can get them in any
color you want. So there's like, I got a minty green for Sarah and it's got a black one for me.
Yeah. But the nice thing about these is they have an LED. So it'll light up green when you,
when it senses the connection. Because there's been a couple of times when I had a different one,
when I put my phone down and I thought it was charging, but it wasn't lined up the right way
on the wireless pad and it was not charging. So I was pretty disappointed the next morning
when I was at like zero. But those, I like those.
I have an iPhone and I have a MakeSafe case. So I have MakeSafe stuff for my phone.
Yes.
And I pretty much always buy Anchor branded products.
The Anchor's good.
Consistently good. I got a battery bank. It's like 2,800 milliamps. I got a couple years ago
for my hunting and fishing trips.
Yep.
And yeah, Anchor, if you can get it at Anchor and it's on sale.
Yeah.
Probably a good investment because it's...
I want to talk about my battery bank. I almost brought it in here so you could see it, but it's
Inui. I-N-I-U. I don't know. It's got a little paw print that lights up blue and it'll tell you,
depending on how many paws or little toes are left, how, what the percentage is left.
It's got two USBs out, one USB-C in, and it's got a little flashlight too on it.
Oh, that's cool.
If you need it. I've never used a flashlight on it, but it charges quick and I don't know what
the capacity is, but it'll charge a phone at least twice.
Sure.
It's just a nice thing to have if you're out and about, if you're taking a bike ride or
Sarah's working in overnight once. And I'm like, here, take the battery pack so you're not out of
phone by the end of the night when you're coming home at like three in the morning or something.
So yeah.
Yeah. My Anchor is like the size of a checkbook,
but it'll charge your phone for a week every day. It's huge.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mine's a little more travel friendly, I believe.
Yeah.
Yours is a little bit bigger than maybe my phone, like a little thicker than a phone,
but it comes in a nice little corded pouch and it comes with the USB-C. And then I just shoved an
iPhone cable in there. So it's like, it's got both things so I can charge almost any device.
Absolutely. Yeah. I bring mine for like a Rockfest, which were there for four days.
Yeah.
And it'll charge my phone for four days. Easy. And Sarah's phone. It'll be, yeah. It's great.
As far as, uh, talking about phones, I bought and it's called UB size is the brand and it's a camera
tripod, but for your phone. Okay. It's a phone tripod. Super light. We take it on hiking trips
and I'll throw it in my pack. And that way we can actually set up a tripod with a timer and we can
have a proper photo of us or whatever we want. And it's steady. And we have two. I bought one
for Sarah as well. Yeah. Cause she wanted one for her adventures and things. Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, that'll be something I have to get is, yeah, it's pretty tall. It extends up.
And so I've got a little gorilla pod that I'll use for my GoPro sometimes. Oh, sure. Maybe there's
an attachment that you can just, you know, I'm sure there's a phone attachment for a gorilla pod,
little backpacking, you know, that's one with the little articulating things. You can wrap it around
a tree branch. Yeah. They look like they're spiders. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Um, keeping it like
the audio visual, I guess I'm just going to say like the Roku stick is nice. Sarah wanted to put
that on there too. She's a big Roku. I did a lot of research before, you know, getting whatever
the Amazon one is or the fire stick or the Roku or whatever. And, uh, the Roku will do the Amazon
video stuff and it just seems to work well. There's apps for both iPhone and Android that
you can control your Roku from. Yep. Um, there's a third party app for iPhone that you can cast
things from your iPhone to your Roku. Yep. So when we went during the pandemic, we virtually went to
the Mumford and Sons Red Rock performance. Oh, that's cool. But we had a link on the phone and
we were like, well, how are we going to get this up there? I'm like, well, we'll just, let's cast it
up there with this third party app. And it worked just fine. There was no lag and nice, you know,
we've got the, we've got the one that's got the Bluetooth remote. Okay. So there's no little
infrared sensor thing you have to do. And Sarah's parents have the infrared sensor thing. So it's
kind of like, you got to get it just right because they've got stuff piled on their TV.
I think ours is Bluetooth too, because I can point it. I can like, I don't need to point it anywhere.
I can just touch it. And then I know that it has a phone app that you can use your phone for.
Yep. That's pretty convenient. Yep. So, uh, my old travel partner, and I'm not sure if you can get it
anymore, he had an Amazon fire stick that was a European fire stick. It was not an American one.
Yeah. So he had access for free to all of the European TV stations because they had a contract
with like the BBC and whatever Univision and all these other big European companies. So he could
get for free all of the European channels and movies and everything. And, uh, it was awesome.
And I'm not sure if you can even find, you probably can find something like that on eBay or something.
I'm sure you could. I think, I think with the, and you know, if you want to do third party stuff,
I think it's fairly easy to install your own stuff onto a Roku stick. Oh, sure. Probably a fire stick
as well, except I would imagine a fire sticks a little more locked down. Possibly. Quite possibly.
Let's see. What else do we got here? We're, I mean, we should do, I think we're a little beyond
halfway. We're around halfway. We're around halfway. It's still smooth, spicy. We're getting,
yeah, I'm getting a little spice. Yeah. It's very nice. Yeah. I relit a little bit because, um,
I've moved past that leaf flaking off part. So yeah, let's see. The other thing that I have next
to my bed, it's a PowRui, P-O-W-R-U-I, but it's an eight outlet, four USB, six foot flat plug power
strip block. Okay. So it's nice because it's got the four USBs. So I can, I plug my wireless
charge pad into that. And then I just keep a cord there for like my Kindle or whatever else I might
need to do. And then it's got enough plugs because we just got kind of the one plug behind our headboard
on our bed. So one goes over, Sarah's got a different one because she doesn't have as much
electronic stuff. But one goes over to her side and one comes to my side. And this one's nice
because I can plug in a lot of things to that. The other thing I really like is the Wyze security
cams. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I've got, I've got one on the driveway, um, cause it's ready for outdoors
and it makes it through the winter just fine. No problems. I've got a Wyze doorbell, uh, which
works just fine. And then I've got two in the house, just, you know, in case one of the outside ones
misses somebody breaking in, there's still two more in the house as a little surprise for, for
people. But it's nice to check on the cat too, you know, like, oh yeah, there's the cat or, and they've
got pretty nice, um, smart detection. So you can tell it to ignore pets or to trigger on pets. So
very nice, you know, trigger on vehicles and people. Yep. So, uh, on that note, we have
Casa switches and receptacles in the house and, uh, not all of them, but it is, you have no idea
guys, if you don't have any smart switches and smart receptacles in the house, God, it's nice.
You have timer on them. You can remotely turn it on and off with your phone. You can connect it to
your Alexa or Google box or whatever sort of home smart system you have. And, uh, on that note,
I have a smart thermostat and I know Nate does too. I have a Honeywell. Oh, Honeywell, I've got an
Echo B. Yep. Yeah. And, um, it's awesome. It saved a ton of money on my bill for, uh, heating and
air conditioning, uh, because you can set a wave pattern or not the wave pattern, but you can set
your schedule and your schedule. Like for me at night, I don't care if the house gets a little
cooler or hotter in the summer or whatever. Yeah. I have to go colder at night when we're sleeping.
Yep. See, and I have, I basically turn it off and then I have an away mode. So in a way setting. So
when I, when we're away from home, it keeps everything cooler or in the summer, warmer.
And then it's nice because before, before we leave, I'm going to fire up my phone app and tell it that
we're home and then it'll be warm when we're home. Yep. Yep. And we have, uh, what did like
curtains that are rated to keep temperatures in the like curtains. Yep. And, uh, in the winter
time you can put your hand back there and it's freezing cold behind them. So it really stabilizes
the temperature in the day. Yep. My heater does not turn on from six 30 in the morning until
three right before time off of work. Yep. And, uh, it's nice cause it saves so much money.
When I know if the Echo Bees, you can get a temperature sensors, you can put other places
in the house and then it will calculate the average temperature, you know, and then keep your
house averagely. Oh, that's nice. And it'll work with multiple stage or multiple zone
furnaces or HVAC systems and things. So that's nice. And I like that they give me a reminder to
change my furnace filter. Oh, sure. It'll pop up and say, change your furnace filter. And I'm like,
oh yeah, probably time. So then, you know, nice and easy to do. And we have some smart bulbs,
which I'm less thrilled about. I like them, but people come and then mess with the lamp
because they think they can turn the lamp on. But if they turn it off, then I have to re-sync
the smart bulb, which is a pain in the ass. But I do have one smart plug, but I should get some
more smart plugs for the lamps. So they're worried about people messing with my stuff. Yep. And that's
one nice thing about the Casa switch. The only difficulty is that if you have a three-way switch,
you have to put it on the load side of the first switch, which is something that an electrician
can do, but home users are, if you're not confident, don't do it because you could hurt yourself
or others. Yeah. I put my 3d printer on here because I use it quite a bit. Okay. I just have
an Ender 3. I've, I don't want to say severely modified and upgraded it, but that's kind of the
fun of these 3d printers is it's a cheap entry-level 3d printer and you can buy parts from
AliExpress or wherever. And it takes maybe four weeks to four months to get to you, but it's only
$16 instead of $97 for the American version or the Swiss made version. Right. But it does the same
thing and it works just as fine. So you can go and you can 3d print anything you want. I 3d printed
a DVD case holder for our child. So you can put one of the old school DVD players in the car and
it sits right on the back. I just took the measurements and designed something quick on
the computer. Nice printed it out. I print a bunch of board game stuff for that. Yeah. You printed me
off some Dune stuff. Yep. Some Dune stuff. So, and those are awesome. They look really good. Yeah. So
it's just, it's fun, fun to do a fun little hobby, but you can make lots of things that are also
useful to your life as well. If you're going to be getting a 3d printer as my one friend did and
asked me for my input, I said, get whatever you want, but make sure you get the biggest bed,
print bed you can afford. My print bed is smaller than his print bed. And I was trying to print
something and it wouldn't fit on my bed. No matter, no way, no house. I sent him the file.
It was like, Hey, can you print this out on yours? He's like, yeah, no problem. Cause I printed out
bunch of stuff for him before he ever got one. Oh, here's one you might think of, or you might know,
the little giant ladder. Yeah. Now I don't have one. I don't have one, but I borrowed one from a
friend. They loaned me it. Yes. During the Nate falls down the stairwell multiple times incident
year. But it's, it's great. It's awesome. It works on stairs. It folds up, folds down. Yep.
It's essentially, I'm going to get one very useful. I hated the idea of it because it's aluminum and
it's kind of gimmicky, but you can have a short straight ladder. You can have, you can send it out.
You can do more steady than the extension ladder thing that I have at home now. And it's more
sturdy than any of the letters my dad ever had. See in mines not, but I have like professional
grade ladder. I'm guessing if you go anywhere in my neighborhood and ask to see their ladder,
it's going to be some rickety piece of shit. Yeah. And so this is going to be better than those.
Right. Word to the wise, you have to wear a pair of boots that have a steel shank in them because
that little rung is sturdy, but it is small and you do not want to stand on it in a flip flop,
which I have done. Yes. Or a croc. Yeah. Or a croc or a Paris. Sarah was trying to do it with her
like old work sneakers. Okay. And I'm like, nah, nah, nah, go get your boots on. Yeah.
Cause you know, my feet hurt. I'm like, well, no shit. But yeah, it's a great home device as far
as that goes. And then if you guys have a dog, this is related to home tools. And then the
electronics, we got our dog, a halo collar. Okay. And they are expensive. What do they do?
It is a GPS tracking collar and you can create custom fencing zones. And then if you train your
dog on a shock collar, which we already did, they have buzz auditory and then the shock. Well,
this does the same thing. Yeah. So if you've already trained your dog on a shock collar,
and then you work with your progression, so buzz auditory, and then finally, you know,
this is the big zap. Yeah. The dog will natively know how to use this collar because it'll go to
the zone. It'll give it a little buzz or vibrate. And then it'll give an auditory sound. And then
it'll shock them if they go past the, the no-go zone. And it is great. You have 20 zones. Yeah.
So like my place I have on my parents' place, my brother's place, whatever. Yeah. And you can
bring the dog with you and you can make temporary zones. Okay. And you can both draw it on the map
or you can physically walk around and create GPS points for custom. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.
So it works and it's really expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than putting an underground fence.
And it's certainly cheaper than building a real fence. Yeah. Yeah. We, speaking about pets and
things, we've got a cat and we used to have an automatic feeder and it was a big hopper style
and had this big conveyor belt thing that would go up and you, you know, you'd set it, you could
program it to what, how many servings per day, serving size per serving and whatnot. But it
finally went out and then I did some more research on them and that one was really expensive. It was
like a hundred dollars. And then you had to buy the separate, the separate AC backup. Yep. So it ran
off of like, it would run off the batteries first. And then if the batteries went out, it would run
off the AC. So it was a little backwards. And this new one I got, it has a big hopper, but it's got a
little spin dish at the bottom to kick it out. And it has batteries for backup and runs off the outlet.
And it's a lot easier to program and it's easier to see if it's full or not. And if you need to
fill it up and it's great because our cat has never been fed by us directly. We've only ever had it
feed off of an automatic feeder. So we don't really get the 3 a.m. wake up calls like meow, meow, meow,
feed me. I'm hungry. It's like, no, you just, and she knows if we don't see her for a bit, our cat,
I'll go downstairs to like do the laundry or something or check something downstairs. She's
like sitting right there by her food dish. So she's not bothering me. Yep. And then we can go away
for long weekends and she's got food. We have auto feeders for our cat as well. Yeah. And that we
have a spinner style and it's the AC power first battery backup second. And ours will run on battery
only if you want it to. Yeah. But yeah, it's great. It's better to have that. Yeah, it's awesome.
I wanted to do another shout out. I know we talked about this on one of the ones when I
was talking about my car repairs, but the the those if screw extractor set, T.H.O.S.A.F. saved
my butt again. So we had a kitchen drawer that had a critical malfunction failure and I had to put in
new side rails and cut some some stuff out with an oscillating tool, which I'm sure you're going to
talk about. Yes. And one of the screws, because it was so tight and cramped in there because you're
not really supposed to be putting these things in when the countertop is on. So you just kind of
have to make do with what you make do with. Well, one of these screws stripped out and it was in the
track path. So it was going to block the opening and closing of said said drawer. So I went and
grabbed my handy screw extractor set and it popped right out again. So this one, though, I did have
to I drilled with the smaller size and tried with that same as the reverse bits. They've got the
drill on one side and the extractor on the other side of the bit. So it's they're already sized.
Right. You know, you put one in drill, flip it around and extract. But I went up a size on the
extractor and that's what popped it right out of the wood. Oh, nice. I can't recommend that enough.
It was not expensive at all. But if you ever run into those things because you've got your torque
set too high on your on your power drill, let's raise our hands. That's me. And you strip screw
heads out a lot. But for like outdoor stuff, I use a lot of the Torx heads now instead of the Phillips
because they don't strip as easily. Yeah. Yeah. Torx is yeah. For a lot of stuff is a lot better.
Yeah. And then I we talked about this list before we started the show, obviously. And I didn't have
an oscillating saw until like two years ago. Maybe. OK. It was during Covid and they had a great sale
on a DeWalt on Amazon. OK. It was like an oscillator and two batteries and a thing in a bag. Yeah.
The charger for like ninety nine bucks or so. OK. And it doesn't matter what brand tools you have
at home. I like to keep every tool with the same battery. And I'm a big proponent of battery power
tools. Yeah. So if you don't have an oscillating saw, I can tell you if you're doing home projects,
things a lifesaver. Yeah. You can cut custom things into your cabinets if you have to put in
extra stuff. Yeah. They work great. Yeah. And you can get cheap blades. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You can get
this whole sets of them for like 20 bucks. Yeah. I think our oscillating tool because it's not it's
not a saw. It's a tool we got from Harbor Freight. So super cheap. Oh, yeah. It's corded. So it's not
battery power is corded. But then it comes with a big Allen key and you can put there's a big blade
for cutting wood. And then I bought a smaller blade about the size of my fingertip for cutting
wood. It comes with a sander. Yeah. And then it's just a standard oscillating tool head. So you can
go to Home Depot or whatever and just grab what you need for it. And, you know, you don't need it
every day. But I've used it multiple times. It's great for drywall cutting through drywall. I got
a dry. I have a special drywall blade so I can put in boxes, receptacle boxes. Yeah. I also
have a sanding pad. We used it on our deck a couple of times when we have to repaint. I got paint
scraper. Yeah. It's a great little tool to have around. Yeah. And like I say, if you own Milwaukee
Tools, the Milwaukee one's going to be your jam. They're all going to be the same. They're all going
to be great. If you want a Makita or a Ryobi or whatever. If you're on a budget homeowner, just go
to Harbor Freight and grab whatever their brand is. Yeah. The one I didn't put on here is my Dremel
tool. I use my Dremel tool all the time, but I'm going to fight you a little bit because you like
battery powered things. And for my tools, I like corded power. I like that consistent power. I love
the cordless drill. My battery powered drill. Yep. I only have one battery for each of my two drills.
If I know I'm doing a drill project, then I'll just use one drill and keep the other drill ready
with the battery back up charged and then I can swap and whatever. It's not a big deal. But for
Dremeling, Sarah has a rechargeable Dremel that just sucks. That's probably lame. It just sucks.
And for some of these tools, you kind of need... All right. So we're going to go on a little tangent
here. I have a Dremel. It's corded. I would never buy a battery powered Dremel because of the power
factor. The same thing with a grinder. If you're going to buy a grinder at home. I have at work
a Hilti branded $400 battery powered grinder. And I swear to fucking God, if I put a leather
glove on, I could stop that blade at full speed. It is the weakest, shittiest tool ever. Now I have
a battery powered chop saw and that maniac saw is powerful, dangerous. By the same token, I have this
on my list too. If you own a major power tool company branded thing and you have woods, buy
the battery powered chainsaw because I have a DeWalt one and literally 99.5% of all chainsaw needs,
including trimming, that's all you need. That's the only thing I have that battery powered
chainsaw and a battery powered, what the hell is it called? Like a limbing saw. It's got the
extensions on it. Between those two, I literally, you can cut down a tree that's 20 inches with a
12 inch blade. You know what I mean? Like it's great. We have a battery power weed whip and it's
fantastic. And so you can flip it and it'll also do edging. Yep. So you can get the all the crap
off the edge of your sidewalk. Yep. I do all my edging stuff. It's a huge battery pack and it's
never gone out mid whip or trim. Most modern batteries have the charge indicators on them too,
so you can kind of know before you go out. They do, which is nice. And then Weightly is a company
that makes like cologne batteries for power tools. And they're really reasonable, especially this
time of year. You can get like a double pack of five amp hour Weightly batteries for like 40 bucks.
And yeah, it's so much cheaper than buying the real stuff. And I'm not saying they're as good
as a DeWalt battery or a Milwaukee battery or a Makita battery, but they're close enough for,
they're close enough because you can get a shit ton of them. Yeah. And having multiple batteries
for one tool versus having one really good expensive battery for one tool is better to
have the multiple because you can swap to a full charge. Yeah. You know, I've only got two things
left on my list of things. One is I've got, and now this is one where I've got, it's a battery,
it's not corded. But sometimes I wish it was, but it's a little wall in a zipper pouch beard
trimming kit. Oh, sure. So it's got the fine little trimmer to do around your lips or catch
a little strays. And then it's got a regular kind of like the hair clip one. It's got a little
attachment so I can trim the whole thing. And then it's got like a foil, so I could do like a close
shave if you wanted to spend hours with this tiny little, you know. And then it's got a little wider
blade for any other body hair trimming, you know, when your buddy's over and they ask the bar your
razor, you're like, yeah, sure, go ahead. And they come back out and they still have a full beard.
So it only happened once. Yeah. But it's nice. It's a little like carry pouch and there's
absolutely zero LEDs on it. So you never know if it's fully charged. You just leave it on the outlet
and then come back the next morning or something and assume it's fully charged. I don't like to
leave things on charge for too long because it kind of wears down the batteries, but you know,
this was a cheap like beard trimmer and we've got a corded wall for haircuts and, you know,
things like that. But it doesn't have the same precision blades that the little wall
beard trimmer thing does. I have an Oster, was it Speedcut or something? It's one of the Made in
USA Osters and I did a lot of research on it because I got one, I inherited one from my dad.
For those who are listening and don't know, I have not had, since 2006, I've gone to the hair cutters
twice and both times they fucked me up. One of them cut my sideburns off and the other time I
had to go for a big wedding out of country. So I got the full like $75 everything done to make
myself look nice. So I've cut my own hair exclusively pretty much for 17 years, something like that. And
I have an Oster, I think it is a Speed Series. It's the Made in USA one and this is a theme for all
the shit I buy. You can buy parts and you can repair it at home. And that's what I wanted.
Yeah, we've got the wall, like I said, is corded. You know, you plug it in because that's, if you're
doing big haircuts, like full top of the head haircuts, you don't want a battery one. We had
one and Sarah was cutting my hair once and it was like running out of battery. So I was catching and
pulling hair instead of cutting hair. Just get the corded one. But yeah, I don't have much hair. So
I always toss on the 1-8th guide and just go zip, zip. So when I had short hair, I always cut it one
inch long because my hair sticks straight out and at one inch it'll actually lay flat. And then I
trim my beard and everything with it and do all my touch-ups and they last. If you take care of it,
I have Barbicide that I use to clean it out and I oil it and all that fancy stuff and they last a
really long time. Yeah, yeah. And most of them are self-sharpening blades or whatever they are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you get a good enough one, you can get a different blade if it ever
gets dull. And I like that stuff. What's your other one? My last one is Kindle Paperweight.
So this one is, it used to run on the 3G network as well and it came included with the purchase of
the device. So you could download things, but it's the paperweight. So it is only black and white.
It's that E Ink that doesn't take much battery power. The one that I have is, I don't know,
it's got to be five generations old by now. It was one of the first, not one of the first, but
relatively first paperweights. I know the new paperweights are like water resistant or waterproof
and things like that, but I do a lot of eBooks from the library. You can set up your library card with
the app called Libby and it will just deliver these Amazon eBooks to you for 30 days or 25
days or whatever it is. Sarah does that as well with hers. And I like the paperweight because
I just want to read the book. I don't want Facebook notifications. I don't want to also have the
option of watching movies on it. I don't want all that stuff on there. So it's a nice for me,
distraction-free reading, even though generally I prefer the physical book. But if I'm traveling,
I like the paperweight because I've got a bunch of books on there that I haven't read yet. And I can
borrow books from the library and read them on there too. And usually I try and borrow the books
from the library before getting them for like $2.50 on eBay, used books. But Sarah got me the
Kindle paperweight because she did not like how many books I have, but it hasn't, it's curbed
the buying of books, but it hasn't really reduced the amount of books that I still have.
Yeah, exactly. Interesting. So I have a bunch of other stuff.
Let's get it. Get on it.
So for those guys who work with their hands, I have started in the bedroom.
I have switched to All American Jean Company carpenter pants, and they are a 15 ounce weight,
100% cotton work pants. And I mentioned this because Sarah and I were looking for work clothes
the other day, maybe a couple of weeks ago now. And I noticed that all the work pants and shit
like that you can find in the stores are all blended. They're not 100% cotton anymore.
Yeah. And that's dangerous if you're going to be working with grinders and stuff because
I think I mentioned it to Nate, a couple of weeks ago, I was cutting down something with a maniac
saw and I lit myself on fire. And of course I had 100% cotton pants on.
Well, you look fine.
I look fine. It just smoldered. I didn't actually catch on flame, but I couldn't imagine trying to,
you know, if you were to catch these poly blend work pants with a grinder,
holy shit, that could be a big problem. And they're not cheap. I think they're 70 bucks a pair,
but like right now you can get them for 20% off. And they're made in America. And they're very
high quality pants. And who cares, man? If you get a good high quality pair of work pants,
it'll last you five, six years. And I recommend them to people. They're not generous sizing.
So you have to measure yourself and then get what the measurements are, not your standard
pants size. So my pants size, like two size bigger on the waist and the same length. But yeah,
they're really good. And then Carhartt came up with a new design for their vest. And I like wearing
a vest for work. And the new design is superior. It's got big pockets. So you can put a cell phone
or a checkbook wallet in any of the upper pockets. And then it's got a little holder in the hand
pocket for a pen. And I like it. It's kind of one of the first times in a long time that a company
has made an improvement on their design and had to be a genuine improvement. And it's still 100%
cotton on the shell. And I recommend it to people if you want to wear a vest. And then for those guys
who do have hand tools and you're looking for a new bag, I actually got my coworker to buy one,
Vito ProPak. They make some extremely high quality bags. That bag right there, which you can see in
the corner because I'm working on house projects. For all your listeners, that's our left.
That's our left. Yeah. But it's like 12 years old and it looks brand new. And granted, they're $300.
But you're putting $2,000 for the tools in it. So you buy quality and take care of things.
Generally, they will outlast you. And if it's worth the money, especially if you get your
hands on it and see what you need. I have an HVAC tech bag because I have meters and everything on
the one side. I don't like the electrician base because they're all open top. I like when to zip
close so you can throw in the back of a pickup. And yeah, they're worth the money. They're crazy
expensive, but they're worth the money. Speaking of tools, you recommended me to buy a voltometer.
Oh, voltmeter. Voltmeter. Yeah. And it's got the multiple settings and it's got the prongs
and everything. And I really enjoy that. And that has come in handy a lot of times. Yes. And we are
going to internet the show right now. The other thing I wanted to mention, and I don't think that
the brand of this matters too much, Mike might slap me afterwards. But my brother introduced me
to this thing. It's a little, like it's a little three prong plug with LEDs on it and it's real
tiny. And you put it in your outlets and it tells you if it's grounded, it tells you if there's
power there or if there's not. So you can't do as deep diagnosis as you can with this other tool,
but it will also tell you if the polarity is reversed. Oh yeah. Which you could do with the
tool that I have that you recommended me by and I did. If you know what you're doing and know how
to read these things. And I have very, very basic knowledge of these things. So I also picked up one
of those little plug LED checker things. And if you're not doing a lot of rewiring stuff and you
just want to check and make sure your stuff's grounded, just pick up one of the little LED
things. And then if you ever have a problem with an outlet, you can stick that thing in there and
it'll tell you if it's fine. We actually found out in my brother's house, his refrigerator was
reversed polarity. The outlet his fridge was plugged into. So which luckily hadn't caused any
issues, but over time it could have caused some serious issues for the fridge and potentially
fire hazards. So we were able to diagnose that and we checked the rest of it. That was in his house
and that was the only one that was reversed. But yes, now I'm having to find a, I'm trying to find
this thing thing, of course. And, uh, no, there we go. So the one that I recommended to Nate and I
recommended it to my cousin, uh, cause she bought a house and she wasn't sure about some of her
electric stuff. And it's the fluke one-oh-one multimeter, which fluke is the premium brand,
everybody, uh, for multimeters. Just if guys don't know that, I guess if you're not an electrician,
yeah, you wouldn't know that. And, uh, it's like 40 bucks and it's got every setting you could ever
possibly need as a home user. Uh, and some you don't in some you don't. Yeah. It's got, uh,
AC DC volts. It's got millivolts. It's got homes. Uh, you can check, uh, resistance. You can check
capacitors with it. I don't believe it has impacity. And as I told Nate, you don't want to check
impacity for the most part as a home user. Uh, that's really something if you need to check the
amps that you have on a circuit, you should probably start talking to an electrician because
the amps is the part that makes you not alive. And, uh, if you want a meter that has impacity,
you're looking at several hundred dollars, uh, for something that's going to be good and reliable
and all that stuff. Yes. So, but I can vouch for that one because it was great and we put up a
new light fixture, but the cord coming out the top that would be wired into the box, the two
wires were the same color and had no positive neutral indication on them whatsoever. So Mike
was able and gracious enough to walk me through the right setting on the meter to figure out which
one was the positive and which one was the neutral and make that happen. So any sort of home or any
sort of electrical work where you're trying to troubleshoot, you pretty much have to have a
volt meter. Yeah. Uh, and for reference, I have a fluke three 74, which is a $300 meter. Yeah. But
I am also, uh, an electrician who used to do a little voltage work and pretty much does everything
you need to do. Uh, it's clamp meter and all that fancy shit. So you can check your impacity. Yeah.
Uh, like I say, if you're, if you're looking at the amps that you have on your lines,
it's probably something you need to, uh, contact a professional with. Yeah. Uh, it's like what I tell
her, a three year old almost on a daily basis. If you don't know what this thing is, do not touch it,
please. So exactly something I use and pass any meters all the time. Yep. As far as my work, but
you really shouldn't be checking that. Yes. All right. How much more you got there, Mike?
Oh, I got all kinds of crap. I added, I had all kinds of unnecessary stuff. Uh, Sarah wanted me
to add, uh, there's foam pandings or there's, we have around, you know, a disc sander. Okay.
They have foam pads, like it's got sanding, but there's foam behind it and it'll mold into what
you're sanding. Okay. She says that they are worth the money. She wasn't sure if it was a gimmick or
not. Yeah. But apparently if you're doing some home refurbishing projects, uh, speaking of home
things and things that are nice, I have some that I haven't put down yet, but for in front of my
work bench. And I noticed, do you have some in your kitchen, the anti-fatigue mats? Yes. Are those on
your list? No, they're not. Okay. Sarah likes the anti-fatigue mats and they're good. Restaurants
have them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All sorts of things like that. Yeah. My buddy, uh, the woodworker gave
me a set after we built my work bench and he spends a lot of time standing at his work bench
and I have a stool for our podcasts when I am at my work bench. So I don't have them down right
now, but if I were to be doing a long project, I'd put those down and he says it makes all the
difference in your joints and stuff being, you know, standing along hours and basically the same
spot. Yep. I do have something for the truck owners out there for guys that own pickups who
is it the little balls that dangle from the no, if you do get truck nuts. And I know this because
I went to school with a guy who overheard our conversation and we were making fun of truck nuts.
Yeah. He turned around and said, if you ever buy truck nuts, make sure you get the ones that have
antifreeze on the inside. Otherwise they'll explode in the winter. Okay. So for those guys who want
truck nuts, make sure you get ones that have antifreeze on the inside. There you go. Good to
know. Right? Uh, no. So I have a tonneau cover for my truck and on the top of the truck on the rails,
they have the little drop-ins on the four corners of the trucks. And I bought a product a while ago
and I ended up getting them from my dad as well. It's called a bull ring and they're drop-in and
you can pull it up and they have a hook so you can, uh, put a ratchet strap on them and they're
rated for a thousand pounds. Okay. And, uh, if you're going to haul stuff and ratchet strap,
it is nice having four extra attachment points. So in my bed, I have four corners of the bed have
ratchet strap tie-ons on the bottom. And this is your truck bed, Mike, not your,
yeah, not my regular bed. Then I have four attachment points on the walls of the side of the
bed. And then I have four on top and those 12 attachment points make it very easy and convenient
to pretty much attempt like tie anything down in the bed. Yeah. And, uh, I think they're 20 bucks
for two over 40 bucks. You can have these drop-in bull rings. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, they're very
useful if you're going to haul like a something tall that you actually have to come down on. Yeah.
Pretty convenient. And then weather texts, everybody knows about weather tech, but you
should get weather texts in your vehicle. If you don't, if you have a nice vehicle and you don't
have weather tech mats, I have a weather tech bed mat in my truck that has a lip on it and you can
just empty it out and then you don't have crap going around the back. Yeah. Yeah. I've got,
I don't have weather tech in my car because obviously my car is my car. Yeah. And it's going
to be 20 years old soon. Boy, how they grow. Uh, but I've just got, I've got, I don't know, mats,
they're not weather tech mats, but any mat is better than what comes with the car. Yes. So
even if you're not going to spring for weather tech, right, you, you know, the other ones are
going to wear out a lot quicker, but it's still better than the carpet mats that you get with the
car. So yeah, I think there's a couple of brands that like copy the weather. Yeah. Yeah. But the
text are still, I'm not trying to poo poo on whether I'm just trying to say like some of this
stuff is like, yeah, it's just nice to have mats that are better than the, the mats from the
factory. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it definitely is worth it. I know Sarah's got weather texts in her car.
Yep. And, uh, my Sarah has weather text. My Sarah wants weather texts. So yeah, maybe they're
awesome because I got the lip and then he just kind of like dump them all and spray them down.
And, uh, my weather tech bed mat in my truck is that was great, way better than the standard
rubber, uh, device. And I, yeah, well, that's the thing. There's a lot of things that you get
where the thing itself is nice, but some of the little accessories and not just with cars,
but with other things too, you know, like some of the little accessories, they kind of skimped out
on those. So upgrading little tiny things makes a big, big difference. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like
having a, like my dad's got a Chevrolet pickup. He's got a little tiny car mirrors on it. I have
big tow mirrors on my truck. I'm like, yeah, you want the big tow mirror, obviously. Yeah. Yeah.
And you want one like mine are heated, the top and the bottom are heated. Like that's right there.
That's what you want. And, uh, even though I see these Dodges that have these massive like
extension mirrors on them and they have like little tiny car mirrors, I'm like, what's the
point of that? Just to make it look goofy. I guess I'm sure that the, anybody who's driving a Dodge,
like, oh, they're the best. Whatever. I'm pretty much done. Uh, I have a, a Venger as W E N G E R,
uh, which makes Swiss army knives. Okay. They make a fingernail clipper and it is awesome. Okay. Yeah.
It is if you need a fingernail clipper. I'll have to look that up. Cause I've got, uh, I've just got a little set,
but I'm not a huge, I like to keep my nails trimmed, but I don't like to trim them. Yeah. So
I'm kind of a weird thing. Uh, I was going to mention I've got, uh, and I didn't think about this,
but I do now because I'm staring at this bottle of Johnny Walker and I've got some whiskey stones
and they're, I think marble or something, some kind of marbled, they're squares and you keep them
in the freezer and I'll use those if I'm bringing whiskey. And then I also have two, I think they're
Oxo. I think I got them from Target probably, a sphere ice cube molds. Yeah. And those are cool.
And those are really nice. Um, they take a while to freeze. Of course, as you've got all that volume
there and you can't overfill them even by like a, like a milliliter because then it'll ooze out the
top and everything. So you really have to watch what you're putting in. But if you put in filtered
or distilled or boiled water, you know, to remove the impurities, you get a really nice clear sphere
of ice that then goes in and you can, it's not the same as going to like a ritzy place and they
hand shave the sphere because you're going to see the little seam or whatever, but it's like,
it's impressive enough for the people I have over, I guess. Right. And then I have one final product
and it's a Minnesota made product and it's a definitely a luxury item that not everybody
is going to go out and get, but there's a company called Itasca Leatherworks. Okay. That's based out
of St. George, Minnesota, which is by the park and they make moccasins and those are some kick ass
moccasins and they're not crazy expensive and they go on sale every now and again. And you can
get some pretty nice handmade moccasins right here in Minnesota. And they're definitely a luxury item,
but I like mine and I got a set for my niece and she likes hers and they're worth it, especially
this is something you buy what every 10 years. Yeah. So yeah, if that is so much aware of them,
right. Exactly. Yes. Yes. I know we always, every Christmas we get the rubber sold slippers like
I'm wearing right now, which are nice for, you know, running the garbage out in the winter and
coming over to Mike's smoking emporium where it's cooler than 70 degrees. Yes it is. But yeah. Well,
I think that's about it for the episode. Yeah. What do you think of this cigar? I think it's really
good. I like this one as well. Got spicier as it went on. It did. Nice progression and I would
recommend it. Yeah. Good start and an even better finish. All right. Thanks for listening. Be safe.
Have fun.