Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention,
please? The show starts in 10... 9... 8... 7...
6... 5... 4... Three, two, one, go. All right.
So do you go by Stephen or Steve? I go by a lot
of things. Stephen or Steve, or my middle name's
Alex. That family calls me Alex, so I'm good
for you. Call me whatever. That's kind of like
my family. If anybody calls me Kurt, They either
grew up with me or they're from my family because
It's Curtis now and everybody if I hear that
I know there's somebody from my past Yeah, actually
so the family called me Alex and when I started
years ago with the company I worked for us There
was already an Alex and they said well, you want
to scholarly and I said well you got an Alex
little comsteep And it's stuck yeah, it's stuck
so here I am All right, let me see. I'm gonna
pull up some comments here. I see you've already
been in the comments. There you go. I'm there,
I'm with you. And Victor's here. Thank you, David.
Well, one of the things I like to ask people
because I'm kind of surprised at... the number
of people that have kind of just stumbled in
to HVAC or HVAC in refrigeration because I've
said this many times, we, at least when I went
through school, they were pushing college, college,
college, college. And I mean, and I was in these
college prep classes. I was making good grades
and I thought that was the way to go and it just
didn't work out for me. So. It was late in life
that I came into HVAC and I am loving it. It
challenges me mentally. I like being able to
do something with my hands and see that I have
fixed something or look for a problem, find it
and fix it. I love the whole challenge of all
of that. It's just... In fact, I like that so
much if I have to do a preventive maintenance
I really don't like it because it's just monotonous
kind of work, you know, but um So, um, what do
you have a similar story? Did you just did you
try to start something else or did you go right
into HVAC? No, I started straight out of high
school and just kind of stumbled into like you
said I had a friend of mine that owns his own
company now and we just we went the same company
and I didn't know what HVAC was. We were doing
grunt work. You know, we were doing commercial
install. So it was a lot of carrying duct upstairs
and going to get tools for people. I had no idea
what I wanted to do out of high school. It was
the same deal for me. It's pushing college and
you got to go to college and college. I wasn't
going to do the college thing. So. Well, I mean,
for some people, hey, that's great, but. I happen
to see where some of these college jobs, we've
been trying to teach kids how to code computers
for years now. And all these executives at Amazon
are being laid off because of AI. And AI ain't
coming for my job. I don't see that. There is
just no way. And so I am not worried about job
security when it comes to all this AI stuff.
That's the beauty of the trades. You're going
to get out there and get your hands on it. You
got to have boots on the ground, man. AI is not
climbing a roof or going in a crawl space or
an attic or something to fix them. You got that
exactly right. I briefly mentioned this before
we came on about that video you published. I
want to talk about that Kudland Tower that you
were working on. Because in my mind's eye, when
I think of a coolant tower, it's shaped like
a V. It's got a great big old fan on the top
of it. I've not seen one shaped like that. Is
that normal? Yeah. I mean, they're all different
shapes and sizes, right? Like everything else.
But that was a snippet from some testing I was
doing after a service call. Actually, there's
a full video on that building and kind of shows
the whole setup. That's an old building downtown.
There's about six floors of, I don't know, 16
or so water source heat pumps inside, and that
is the cooling tower that sits on the roof. It's
a little old and falling apart, but what I was
showing was the pump wasn't moving enough water,
or the amount of water that it should be, and
you could see that in the amp draw. And it was
actually a callback, so we had another guy out
there, and he said, It's working, you know, the
waters flowing everything looks normal But it
was working kind of just not to its full capacity.
Well, let me Didn't you try to do something to
prime that pump? I was trying to let the water
So I open the valve and it lets some water out
try to get start flow Seals were leaking on it.
So what happens is when a pump shuts off all
the water the head that it's got in the It leaks
out, and then it can't restart. Oh, so that's
a bigger problem now. Yeah, that pump got rebuilt.
That was a tricky one. That whole building was
a little bit of a nightmare. My guy Jason's in
the chat here. He kind of helped me with that
one. He's a smart dude. I had some questions
on how to get the air out of that system because
I had to replace a pump down in the basement
and It was one of those they sent me on a Friday
Handing me a pump said hey go put this pump in
and I went out there and I'm going Hey, wait
a minute. This is a bad idea. It's the old building
downtown. It's a bar and The pump had no isolation
valve. So I'm like I'm gonna drain six stories
of water if I take this pump out right now I
Think I'm not gonna do that And so I kept it
running through the weekend and we kind of backed
up and punted and came back Monday and got everything
done. I don't work on, speaking of priming pumps,
I don't work on fuel oil very much. But I had
to go change a filter in one of them. Change
a filter and the nozzle. Basically somebody else
diagnosed that I was working in another company
and I had to go do it. And I knew nothing about
priming those little pumps. I was clueless. I
tried to turn the thing back on and it won't
run. And I probably spent 30 minutes on the phone
trying to figure out how to prime it. And I get
oil all over me. I smelled like diesel by the
time I was done. Fuel oil is tricky. I don't
work on those very much. I mean, fuel oil down
here is rare. It's really rare. Yeah, I figured
that. We see some of it down here, so I worked
on some in the past. We have a lot of your automotive
shops that use waste oil, and that's even worse
because it's nasty oil a lot of times. Really?
They can burn that? You burn anything. Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of your automotive shops, if you
use your Jiffy Loobs and stuff like that, they'll
dump the oil in a tank and keep it warm and they
feed it to heaters. That must be a mess on like
those little nozzles and your filters and all
that stuff. Yeah, you got to keep everything
clean Well, is it a different setup than a fuel
oil setup or you have to modify it? I don't I
mean, I'm sure like the nozzles and stuff might
be a little different, but I think it's that's
the same idea I mean your same nozzle you blow
it in there and make a flame It burns like anything
else Once again, that's something that Jason
knows about. Jason knows a lot about a lot. I
have not worked on those. I remember when, about
the time I was 18, there was this craze that
people were using cooking oil from like Kentucky
Fried Chicken and burning it in their cars. That
seems like a bad idea. They were. If you got
behind one, it would smell like French fries
or something. They had to put some kind of heater
back there to keep it warm and a filter, and
it would burn like diesel. Interesting. Yeah,
I've seen multiples of those. I've never owned
a car that did anything like that, but that was
a fad back in the day. It must not be worth it
because they're not doing it anymore. Yeah, I
wouldn't think so. Other than the smell, it smells
like fried chicken and french fries. I can't
deal with that. It really did. It really did.
I remember because there was this one BMW that
would come through a BMW diesel and they would
pick up the oil. And then they would process
it themselves. But I remember being around his
vehicle when it was running and it smelled like
kind of like french fries. Nice. Yeah, that was
one of my first jobs. I worked at Kentucky Fried
Chicken. Man, I've worked at Roses, Kentucky
Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut. I had a bunch of like
high school jobs back in the day. In fact, the
Pizza Hut one was the best one because I got
into delivering pizzas. And for a high school
kid, that can be good money. Yeah. You get tips
too. Yeah. And you know, like the pizza places
around here now, they only go like five miles.
And if you're outside of that five miles, you
got to do grub hub or something like that. Where
I worked, we had a 30 mile radius and my store
was nothing but delivery. So I was delivering
all night. I would come home with a hundred dollars
in tips. That's good for a teenage kid. You're
talking about like in 1988, that was great. That
was fantastic. My first job, I worked on a farm.
Actually, it's funny, I'm from the city, but
I worked on a farm in the middle of the city
that we used to cut all the mint for the Kentucky
Derby. Years ago, that small farm in the middle
of Louisville, they wouldn't cut all the mint
for the Kentucky Derby, you know, make mint juleps
and stuff like that. on your hands and knees
in a field full of mint and you just grab and
slice and bundle them up, throw them in a bucket.
That's kind of... You did tell me you were from
Kentucky. What parts of Kentucky? I'm from Louisville,
so it's right on the river across from Indiana.
Okay. So we're right near the river. Louisville's
probably... It's the biggest city in Kentucky,
I guess. Is Louisville, is Louisville the home
of the University of Kentucky? No, Kentucky,
University of Louisville is in Louisville. Kentucky
is in Lexington. Oh, that's what you're talking
about. This is about 60 miles east of Louisville.
Okay. So Louisville, the ACC team, you know what
I'm talking about? That's where you're from.
Yep. I'm a Kentucky fan though, so. Well, that's
good. You know, as long as they're not playing
Georgia, I'll pull for any SEC team, you know?
Well, we've already switched to basketball season
now because of our football teams. So is Kentucky
more of a basketball school? Yeah, that's the
big thing. The football team's improved, but
we got a rough road with y 'all and, you know,
Texas now and Oklahoma and everybody else. It's
a hard road during the football season. Yeah,
you know, I thought it would be a little bit
different the way the SEC's lining up now because
there's not an East and a West and Kentucky ended
up in the West with these powerhouse schools
and now it's more mixed up. I felt like, you
know, schools like South Carolina and Kentucky
and Arkansas might get a better chance of having
a more even schedule. Yeah, it's just always
like, it's always a tough road, man. I mean,
you got, we played Texas last week. It's like,
we can't hardly compete with them and you're
still fighting for like, I mean, even second
place because we got 12 teams down to play off.
So like you got a shot, but you still got to
be pretty damn good to get through the Alabamas
and, you know, the Georges. And what's the deal
with Alabama? I feel like they got some kind
of black magic or they're doing roots on all
their other teams. Like I felt like whenever
playing Georgia, Georgia was a better team. But
Georgia just cannot seem to beat Alabama. I don't
know what the deal is. I pull my hair out every
time I watch them, I'm like, what's going on?
They got some big old boys, man. Either way,
that's a, you know, Georgia and Alabama get all
those, all those dudes and you got, uh, those
linemen fight it out, man. It's, it's hard. It's,
you know, Kentucky's got some linemen. lately
that have been able to compete in the SEC. But
for years, if you didn't have the big guys up
front, you could have receivers and everything
else all you wanted. But if you ain't got a line
to block for them, you ain't doing nothing. But
you know something, I don't know how we got off
on talking about football, but I was watching
the Texas A &M and the LSU game. And there was
this one defensive player who was playing like
on the end, who was physically fit, he was muscular.
And he was lined up against this like 350 pound
lineman. And this physically fit guy from Texas
A &M was just running around him. I mean, he
was making him look like a joke and that guy
was holding him the whole game. And I'm just
like, I don't see the advantage of being almost
400 pounds. If somebody can do that to you, I
mean if you're not fast I mean you get you get
up to NFL and some of those dudes are you know
Six seven three fifty and they can run a four
four Yeah, you're right All right, who's mr.
Bourbon Jason again, well the Kentucky's home
of bourbon we do we do bourbon and horses, man
Urban and horses. Urban horses and basketball.
Okay. I'll get in. I'm probably going to do a
whole another live just on CRM's, but we were
talking about CRM's just a second ago and I'm
starting to use Housecall Pro. I've been using
QuickBooks QuickBooks online forever. but the
CRMs offer some options that are helpful. Like
in the logistics, when you schedule a customer,
they're notified that they have been scheduled
and they know what time the schedule is and who's
coming out. And then when you hit on the way,
they know you're on the way and they can follow
your route. Little things like that that CRMs
do. That's nice and that's helpful. Especially
for the customers too. And it makes you look
more perfect. Somebody like me, just a one -man
show makes me look a little more professional.
So one of the reasons I didn't have a video today
is because I was in the office in Zoom calls
and all this other stuff trying to figure out
all the different things that I can do with this
CRM from hooking up my Google business account.
So when somebody with a Google... Gmail account
leaves a review, it shows up in Google. Just
little stuff like that to boost the number of
reviews. Yeah. And I went through a whole thing
with their bookkeeping theme that they're offering.
I'm not really sure what it is or what it's good
for, but it's not for me. That's... Yeah, I mean
they can do a lot of things so we've been looking
at something, you know to help Take the calls
that come in and the emails that come in and
kind of divert them to the right place to where
they need to go and we've been looking at some
different things not Similar to what you're talking
about. We're not quite the same but there's just
so many options and so many things that they
can do I mean the AI can take an email and read
it for you and go okay well you want this and
then it can go pull a document and say okay here's
this document look at this and try to answer
their question so we don't have to there's there's
a lot of different things that they can do that
would be really useful i'm gonna tell you probably
a a third of my calls come through email and
when i'm working i don't answer the phone i'm
not looking through email i'm not checking text
messages so if ai could book calls like they
can through the phone calls, by looking at my
email, that would be really helpful. There's
all kinds of things out there now, man. It's
an interesting world we live in. Oh, yes. Speaking
of interesting, have you seen, I got to talk
about this because it just came across like my
Instagram feed. This, what is it? AI Atlas thing
that's coming through or? I haven't seen that.
Solar system? I have not seen that. All right.
Some people are saying it's a comment and some
people are saying it's not a comment at all because
it's got lights all over it. And then Japan produced
a video of it today and it does look like it
has lights all over it. So I hadn't heard anything
about it until today. Well, actually I had, but
I just kind of blew it off. Like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, conspiracy stuff, but man. I don't know.
I saw the video that came from Japan and I'm
like, wow, I don't know what that is. We all
got cameras now, so it seems like it's easy to
catch something on camera that nobody can explain.
And now there's AI, so you can't tell what's
real and what's not real. Speaking of AI, okay.
My Instagram feeds and I don't get on TikTok
that much but Instagram is full of AI it's everywhere
like on 70 probably more than 70 % of the videos
that are showing up in my feed have something
to do with AI and I think it's because I See
it and it registers as something's a little bit
different. So I watch it And then once I watch
it, here comes another one and another one and
another one. The algorithms work, man. And it's
not that I'm super interested in the AI videos.
It's that they're kind of intriguing because
they're so good. Yeah. Well, it's that and it's
click bait. I mean, just like anything else,
you know, put a good thumbnail out there. It
didn't have anything to do with what you're doing,
but somebody would click on it. That's the idea.
The algorithm works. Once you click on something
and watch something, it's going to feed you more
of that. I've got to mention, I texted Ryan Hughes
about some of the AI stuff that he's doing, because
at first I thought it was just crazy. I mean,
come on. But it's funny. His stuff is funny.
So I just want to talk to him about it. And I
just thought it was funny. I don't know if it's
crazy or ingenious. I don't know. Some of it's
good. I've seen, I've seen a lot of hits too.
And I've been, I've not texted him yet, but I
thought the same thing. I want to know how he's
doing it. Like one of the last ones, he was like
welding on a soldering on a compressor, a line
blows. He grabs a hold of the compressor and
takes it off into space. I'm sorry. That's just
funny. That's funny. Yeah, there's some good
ones out there. I think you can just feed it.
So I was talking to a guy at work today and he
was showing me similar stuff and it's an app
that he has. And you feed it a picture and you
say, hey, make this, do this. And it makes a
video and it does it all. And it's like, that's
kind of crazy. Yeah, it is. But at the same time,
you've got to be able to have the imagination
to tell it what to do with the with the picture
come up with something funny. So I don't know.
It's different. It's different. And it seems
to be everywhere now. Everywhere. Even on YouTube.
YouTube's a little different. If you're going
to post a YouTube video, they ask you if it's
altered content or if it's AI. I think that's
on purpose to... Either discourage it or let
advertisers know that there might be some Altered
content in the video. Yeah, I just don't see
as much of the AI stuff on YouTube. I don't Yeah,
I think it's probably less. I mean you're getting
a lot of those quick, you know videos on Instagram
and Tik Tok and stuff like that. It's easier
to throw those out there YouTube's more of a
long form They've been trying to fight with their
shorts, but it's more of a long form It is and
for me I enjoy doing a long form So mark he's
asking critters. Are you using the online booking
from house call pro? Okay, um Actually, I just
signed up for their a AI answering service so
that they know y 'all might know that I used
to be on board with free to grow and they were
doing this AI answering and they would book calls
and all this other stuff. But I had a little
bit of difficulty with that. And part of it was
data entry into my customer base. They were unable
to do that. And I had another problem, but I
quit using them. So I'm trying this Housecall
Pro because they can identify if it's a new customer
or if it's an old customer they can put them
on my schedule and if it's a new customer they
can create the new customer and put in the information
name address and phone number which is a big
help that saves a little bit of time and in the
process I had to Create a link for the online
Booking which is basically something you can
embed in a website or somebody can book an appointment
through your website But I don't have a website
the website that I maintain is my YouTube page
and I used to maintain a website and Dude, I
read like a 700 page book on search engine optimization.
I really know how to do that, but it didn't do
me any good. It was a lot of work for nothing.
I get more benefit out of maintaining my YouTube
page and putting the effort into that. So like
on my business page on Google, when it says your
website, my link is to my YouTube page. That's
really the only link between my YouTube and my
business is that. So people go to my website.
They're gonna go to my YouTube page and they're
gonna get to see my work So it works out. Yeah,
I mean if you're doing good honest work, man
That's really all you need these days. There's
too many people out there. Just trying to sell
something I know but you know We still have on
some customers who get lured in by the low prices
of some kind of jack leg doing something. And
I'm still having to fight against that even with
customers that I've had for years and years.
Like they might disappear for six months and
then they give me a call and go out to something
and I call them on the phone. I'm like, who's
been out here? This is some crappy ass work.
They were like, yeah, yeah, I tried somebody
on. I hope you're not mad at me. You know what
I mean? They always come back, but I still have
to fight that. I ain't mad at you. I'm willing
to fix it. Yeah. I have one where this property
manager used somebody. For a thousand dollars
to install like a little one ton mini split one
head one ton mini split And um like a month later
at what I'm working and he calls me to go out
there And I and I drug my feet and like the first
day he asked me to go out there. I was like no
I'm sorry. I'm busy And and I was I really was
busy and um I don't know who he got to fix it,
but kind of Kind of pisses me off a little bit.
Yeah, I mean if it's just put in you got customers
that are that need you like the hell with you
man Like call your buddy back. That's what I
you know, and then they call back and they never
get hold of it Yeah, kind of what you get. I've
seen some crazy things on the commercial side,
man You go behind some people and it's like oh
my what are you doing? Mark that's a good idea.
He's saying embed that online link in your YouTube
description and social media outlets Yeah, no,
I think I will Let me see what Jason says Yeah,
you gotta be done twice And that particular that
particular customer um Yeah, he's doubly on my
naughty list right now You know what I mean you
got customers that get on that list sometimes
and I've had some where the, the managers, you
know, we took care of a restaurant for a long
time years ago. The managers had the managers
took care of the service calls and stuff. So
they would, they started with a handyman company.
And then when it didn't work and it was problematic,
they would call us. And I went down and talked
to one of the managers one time. I said, next
time you call me and I come out here and your
handyman's been here first. I'm not touching.
And I took pictures of everything. And I'm like,
look, this is what you paid for. I don't know
what you paid the guy. but you paid too much
and I basically told them to stop. I worked for
a big company here in town and I got a call to
a hotel and it was about an Aon unit. They had
this great big Aon unit that was actually, it
looked like it was on another building, but it
was ducted to the hotel and it provided air for
the hallways. Okay. I was called over there for
that. And while I'm on the roof, I'm walking
around and I'm seeing like for the kitchen, one
of these exhaust vents just laying over on its
side. I walked past a condenser for something
else and the panel's off. And I get over to the
Aon unit and I spent an hour tracing down wires
trying to figure out why this compressor won't
come on. And I find where the maintenance man
has cut the wires on the pressure switch. to
test them and they had spade connectors on them.
All I had to do was pull them off. I went right
down to their manager and said, this guy is going
to cost you money. He's making my job twice as
hard. He's leaving stuff exposed up on the roof.
He told me he leaves it exposed like that to
remind him that he's got to go back and do something
I Was just like I went back and told my boss
I said um Y 'all might want to think twice before
you take calls from these people Yeah, because
of their maintenance man you get a lot of that
commercial That's a lot of the maintenance guys
are always the first ones there and some of them
are good Some of them are not and they're all
willing to get in there Especially you're talking
to industrial maintenance guys. They're they're
willing to get their hands in there and do some
stuff even when they don't know what they're
doing. That's on the job training right there.
Yep. Speaking of maintenance, I just picked up
a new apartment complex and they've got these
crazy apartment style air handlers where the
motor's behind the evaporator coil and there's
really no good way to get it out. They called
me to one of these apartments and didn't tell
me anything. I walk in the apartment and there's
a new blower motor sitting on the floor. So I
immediately asked the people living there, I
was like, well, how long has your air conditioner
been out? It's been out for like seven weeks.
They've tried to fix it three different times
and they couldn't. So I pulled this cover because
these air handlers, basically they have the filter
right there on the wall and they have a metal
cover over them. I pulled the cover off and this
thing is completely disassembled. They were trying
to change the blower motor and disconnected the
coil where they could and yanked it down and
then they boogered up the shaft on this blower
motor and they were trying to pound it through
on top of this coil. So the coil's damaged. And
the air handler's in pieces. And I was just like,
man, this is gonna take me forever to try to
fix this. And then I got to talking to the customers
and they said, well, last time somebody came
out, they added some freon to it and it worked
fine. And that was it. I was like, you know what?
I'm out. It's replace or nothing. You know what
I mean? It was that bad. It was terrible. Some
of those are hard to access. I've worked on some
hotel units that are similar. They shove them
in this tight closet. Once it's in there, you
almost got to pull it out to do any work on it.
Well, I did one the other day. I had access to
the back of the air handler. I just cut it open,
pulled it out the back. That was the easiest
way to do it. And the reason I did that, I could
have reached over the coil and changed them like
that, put some cardboard down and drop the squirrel
cage and try to pull the blower out. I've done
it many times. But I looked at the shaft and
the shaft had a lot of rust on it. And I was
afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah. So
that's why I pulled it out the back. Because
in that situation, if you got to put a wheel
puller on it, you can't do it. You're going to
have to pull the coil out. That was the beauty
of a lot of the hotels and those tight spots
is they would keep a spare. So when they had
one go down, they would take it out and they
had a place in their shop where you could wire
it up and run it to test it and figure out what's
going on. You fix it. And then they've got another
spare. So when something goes bad, they take
that and put it in, take the other one out. And
that kind of works well. I worked for, there
was a, it was like apartments, but it was like
a dormitory for our little college we have here,
Albany State, actually it was a different campus
for a different school, but now it's all Albany
State. But they had these, what are called vertical
P -tacks. You know what those are? Yeah. Basically
they got duct work coming out the top of them.
Yeah. And I convinced them to buy an extra. So
that I could take one that had failed take it
to the shop fix it while the extras keeping the
apartment cool and Then when I get the one fixed
they just put it in storage until that happens
again. That's the best way to do it. I Just Made
sense to me. Yeah Oh Victor's talking about those
rain that is a really stupid design. Rheem does
make those. And I'll be honest, that is the first
apartment style air handler, that's what I call
them, that I had ever seen. And I got in touch
with my rude supplier and I said, are these things
supposed to be disposable? I mean, that's the
first thought you get. I mean, you got to remove
the coil to change the boiler motor. That don't
make any sense. There's a lot of bad designs
out there, man, on all kinds of equipment. They
don't think about the guy that has to service
it or work on it. They put it together and they
ship it out the door. That's their job is build
it, ship it out. You make money if you don't
ship stuff. You know, I got into like almost
like an argument with an engineer on some of
my comments one time because I was complaining
about the engineers designing stuff. He basically
said that if they designed an air conditioner
that was easy to work on, it would be so big
and so expensive, nobody would buy it. And he
said his hands were tied by the accountants.
There was only so much they could do. So I called
him out on that because if you remember not too
long ago, Riem used to make two style condensers.
They would have the rectangles and the cubes.
The cubes were cheaper, but they were harder
to work on. And I almost always bought the rectangles.
And I know a lot of contractors that did the
same thing because they were easy to work on.
So I told him about that. And I'm like, you know,
that's not true. If you make it easy to work
on, people will buy it. And let's do that in
the end. Yeah. So they can design some stuff
that's easy to work on and that's just a case
example where they should Yeah, no, I've kind
of I've seen it from the other side now So it's
a lot of hoops to jump through to change stuff
and it doesn't get always well thought out in
the beginning You know, they just put it together
and they're trying to Everybody's kind of trying
to compete with the other guys. So they're trying
to put it in the same size box and everything
gets shoved in a smaller and smaller cabinet
harder to work on. Yeah. Speaking of same size
box, you know, carrier has basically had a monopoly
on commercial rooftop units for years. I mean,
there's been others, but like 80 % of them have
been carriers. And now companies like Linux and
Rheem are making rooftop units in the exact same
shape as the carriers and similar layout, similar
design, but they're made to fit on the curb and
just, you know what I mean? So they're using
the same shape. The old carrier weathermakers
worked well, man. Yeah. They don't build them
quite the same anymore, but I've worked on a
lot of carrier here. Yeah. We see a lot of their
humidifiers up here. local gas state station
chain that they would To keep the refrigeration
doors from condensate may use to minimizers,
which is same carrier package in it It's just
got a reheat coil in it and a sub cooling coil.
So they they D home really well D home is definitely
something a lot of restaurants around here could
use I feel like sometimes there was one in particular
that was a Mexican restaurant that had tile floors
and the tile would start to sweat. And I knew
the company that was caring for that restaurant
and everything seemed to be working fine, but
they could have used some de -home capabilities
in that particular place right there. Because
we're not trying, I've seen, There's a couple
of YouTubers that work out with us and do rooftop
stuff. And they might have a regular air conditioner
on one side of the building. And then on the
other side of the building, they got a swamp
cooler. I'm like, you're humidifying a space
and then removing humidity in the same space.
That doesn't make any sense. Down here, there's
so much humidity, you could never, ever dream
of doing something like that. Yeah, we get we
get humidity here too. It's uh, it's it's Tricky
because a lot of those don't get you know thought
out well enough that you're not you know, especially
restaurants You got to have that makeup there
too. So a lot of them a lot of the makeup areas
are turning into You have an air conditioner
on them too to be able to remove some of that
moisture as you're bringing in, you know outside
there I've treated if you're bringing it in.
Yeah, that's where I was initiated into the Aon
units Initially is the makeup air units with
compressors in them and stuff. Yeah, so Basically
the ones that I remember they were taken outside
air filtering it Cooling it and then blowing
it in as your makeup air Yeah, there's a couple
different configuration. I mean, that's what
I work on now. It's like a dough as unit So it's
a there's different configurations in different
ways you can do it, but there's there's a lot
of them out there And they are expensive. They
are. They are three to four times more expensive
than a regular package unit. Let's put it that
way. Yep. They're hot. It's doing a lot of work.
A lot of times they're built better too than
your basic package unit. These aren't on an assembly
line that you're building the same thing every
day and just shoving it out the door. Ours are
engineered to order so you can order somebody
some engineer comes in and designs it the building
and airflow and all this other stuff and You
can add all the bells and whistles you want Yeah,
and and when you open up a control panel, it
can look crazy It can be intimidating The commercial
stuff that I have worked on like rooftop units,
you know, I'm more familiar with a row of contactors
and stuff like that. And now you might have a
communicating board with, I don't know, some
kind of 5G device being controlled in another
state. Yeah. That's a UC 600. So that's our control
board. And everything, the program and everything
resides in here. You got IMC communications,
so it'll have expansion modules and they can
do different things. I think something like 20
inputs and outputs on this and you get analog
inputs, binary outputs. You can basically program
them to do anything you want. It sounds confusing.
I worked on top of a, it was that cosmetic store
ultra and they had this fancy new Linux and they
had on sensors all throughout the building and
they had like four different package units. But
the sensors. were feeding input to these control
modules that were being controlled from Pennsylvania.
And they basically had to tell me what was wrong,
because I couldn't read their sensors and tell
them what temperature it's supposed to be reading.
They told me that this number one sensor was
reading like 80 degrees. And actually, it was
reading too cold, and the air condition wouldn't
blow in that area. So I had to go change a sensor.
I had to actually change it twice. But those
things, yeah, they can be intimidating. There's
a lot going on there. It's like everything else.
You got to understand it. Understand the sequence
of operations, what's supposed to happen, what's
not happening. All of them have different ways
and good ways of getting to a diagnosis. A little
bit of understanding goes a long way. Jason are
you talking about on off -site management? That's
yeah Similar to what you were saying they they
do a lot on especially on chain stores around
here whatever it is, you know Lowe's and hobby
lobby and all those places they have a third
party that monitors and Controls everything so
they set the temperatures and you know A lot
of it's verifying your sensors. So even, you
know, with the DOES unit or whatever it is, chillers,
they're all the same. If you've got a sensor
that's just like a thermostat, right? If you
got a sensor that's controlling something and
the sensor is not reading right, well, whatever
is controlling is not going to do the right thing
because it's not reading right. Exactly. I worked,
well, when I worked for a bigger company before
I went out on my own, I went to a call at a school
system. and the problem was the thermostat. Thermostat
just wouldn't call for the system to come on.
So I go to replace this thermostat and it's got
these two extra wires on it that I didn't really
know what they were for. So I just kind of pushed
them to the side. I replaced the thermostat going
about my business. By the time I get back to
the shop, I have shut the whole school's air
conditioning system down because that one thermostat
can't communicate with their offsite management
system. And I was like, well, it was a thermostat.
What am I supposed to do? It was like, well,
we got to order one specifically from them for
that. And so I had to go back and put the one
that was not working back on the wall. Yeah,
you got to be careful. Communication is a big
thing in those, too, because like I said, if
you've got that controller and then expansion
modules, they all have to talk to each other,
so they're doing the right thing. Yeah. And those
were controlling those, I know you've seen them,
those barred systems that hang on the outside
of the wall. Yep. At that particular job, I worked
on plenty of those. They're a pain to work on,
too. Tight space. Yeah. Changing blower motors
in them can be a pain. Jason says zone stat.
Yeah, I mean it's a zone sensor. I don't work
on a water commercial anymore. Most of the commercial
I work on now that I'm on my own is normally
light commercial. Maybe seven and a half tons
or smaller. That's not too bad. That keeps you
right. I mean, that's probably good work for
you too, rather than some of the residential
stuff. Yeah, stuff like that. If it's seven and
a half tons or smaller, normally everything I
can do by myself. I don't need any help lifting
a compressor or anything like that. Although
I did work on a seven and a half ton compressor
and it was, oh man, I've forgotten what it's
called, but it's... It's all put together with
bolts and sideways and it's got pistons on the
sides of it. Semi -hermetic. Semi -hermetic.
Okay. Yeah. And I had to get a crane to lift
that up on the roof. That thing was heavy. I
played with a few of those myself. They are heavy.
I got to have a crane. And first of all, when
I diagnosed it, I was like, it's just a seven
and a half ton. I might be able to pull. No.
You better get you a crane those things are that's
got to be 350 pounds or more. I don't know. It's
heavy Yeah, there's I've done some 40 ton and
they'll send me hermetics in there I mean, it's
like a it's like the um engine in your car I
know and you can't even if sometimes you can't
get them all directly in place And I thought
some that you know, you get it set to where the
crane can reach And then you've got to get that
thing. It might just be six inches to the left,
but trying to get that on a bolt six inches to
the left of the pry bar and, you know, leaning
leaning into it. That's a man. You can kill yourself
for that. I was working for a company one time
and we were working on a church and this condenser
was on the ground. It was a 10 ton condenser.
And if you remember these. the compressor had
a breaker of itself inside the condenser. You
know what I'm talking about? I've seen something
like that. It sounds like a carrier. Yes, it
was a carrier and it tripped the breaker and
it had burned one of the lugs on the compressor
and my boss asked me to get the compressor in
the back of my van. And I'm looking at this thing
and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. There's
no way. It was in a fenced enclosure and I was
able to pry it up and then roll it a little bit
at a time and get it out of the fenced enclosure,
but there was no way in the hell I could have
picked it up. I just could not do it. So I left
it there sitting on the ground. It didn't go
nowhere. Ain't no way else to pick it up either.
Oh man. I've seen some in some bad spots. Those
old carriers, depending on which one you're talking
about, they were 06D compressors, I think. That
sounds right. They were massive and heavy. Very
heavy. I've seen some tricky places, man. My
discharge line was a seven -eighths. Probably
an inch and an eighth or something. An inch and
an eighth. That's big for the stuff that I normally
work on. That's big. Yeah. No, that's, that's
the fun stuff to work on though. And then, and
then now we had to use two by fours to get the
new compressor in place. You know, it's sitting
on little springs. So you got to lift it up just
a little bit and get it over those springs. And
every time you lift it up, one of the springs
pops out. I said, just moving those things a
couple inches ain't easy, man. No, it's not.
Like the one I had to do on the roof with the
crane, I had like a little roller dolly. The
crane could just lift it over the edge of the
building and we had to roll it over there to
the condenser and then manhandle it in there.
Yeah. But that was a seven and a half. That was
the lighter of that type of compressor. Yeah.
If you're going to do that in A frame and come
along. works well. Set an A -frame up over wherever
you need and be able to lift that compressor
up and get it out. Makes it a little bit easier.
Good advice. Yeah. Let's see, what are they talking
about in the chats here? Jason, what are you
talking about? Just a bigger version of whatever
works. Yeah, he's talking about your semi -hermetics
and... Jason works on some big stuff. I've seen.
It's the same idea. The refrigeration process
doesn't change, man. The cycle's the same. The
cycle's the same, the compressors can be huge.
I remember about the time I quit the last company
I was working for, I went to a class on a new
type of chiller that was coming out. And instead
of one big compressor on this chiller, it had
like eight, seven and a half ton compressors
on it. It's redundancy. If you lose one, you're
not dead in the water. It works, I guess. Yeah,
but I kind of felt like if one of your, and it's
all using the same refrigeration circuit. So
if you have one compressor burn out, it kind
of contaminates all the others. It can. Yeah,
that's your trick with tandem circuits like that
is when one dies, if you got acid, the other
one, you know, if you don't replace both, a lot
of times though, you'll kill the other one. Isn't
that the same case in like the refrigeration
racks, like in grocery stores and stuff like
that? Aren't they all tied in together? I think
a lot of them are. I haven't done a whole lot
of grocery store work on racks and things, but...
You can isolate those from the system, which
is something you can't do in your typical package
unit. If you've got a tandem pack compressors
in a package unit, you can't isolate them. So
a lot of that, all that refrigeration stuff,
when you get deep into the supermarkets, you
can isolate that compressor and not have to recover,
just recover out what's in the compressor, pull
the compressor out, put a new one in. And there's
filters and all kinds of stuff to help clean
stuff like that. Yeah. I've seen some of that
in Ricks. Some of Rick's radios that I mean they
have isolation valves which is really nice. But
you're talking four or five six hundred pounds
of refrigerant not a you know a package unit
with you know 50 or 100 pounds. Yeah exactly.
But yeah always good to do both if we see if
we get acid in the system if you test positive
for acid we do both compressors period no questions
asked if with one dies the other one's going.
Good policy Makes sense So, um, you were talking
about the stuff that you're working on what what
company are you working at now? And what are
you doing? Well, I work for KCC It's Kentucky
in a comfort center We manufacture a train branded
dough as you know, so just kind of like what
we're talking about your aeons one of our big
competitors So I'm I manage the field support
team So I'm directly dealing with the customers,
technicians, service managers, stuff like that,
that are in the field. So we support our units
in the field. If you got a problem with one of
our units, call me, reach out to our tech support
guys. Well, you are tech support. I am trying
not to answer the phones. Not really my thing,
but yes, I'm field support. We go out in the
field with them sometimes. Well, that's been
the one interesting part of the new gig is I
have been able to get out. So I've traveled the
last two weeks. I was in Massachusetts and Oklahoma
city, um, and getting on site with guys and helping,
helping them through problems. So that's been,
you know, I like doing that. So it's, you know,
some of my job is in the office. We do the training
on our units too, so I'm involved in some of
that. So I'm kind of doing a lot of things, trying
to keep my head above water half the time. You
know, that kind of reminds me, one time I was
working at a hotel and they had this huge air
conditioner dehumidifier combo piece of equipment
that was custom made for their pool room. Mm
-hmm. Pool pack and... I mean, the thing had
like three different condensers in different
places, held a ton of refrigerant. In fact, it
had like a... It's kind of like an accumulator
with a sight glass on it where you can see the
level of refrigerant in there and you can charge
it up by the level. They've got all kinds of...
stuff out there like that, especially for your
pool rooms. That's something a lot of people
don't think about, but you know, you got to keep
the humidity and the dew points right in there,
everything will condense. But if I called tech
support on that thing, I would actually speak
to the people who came down and installed it.
Okay. So they were very familiar with it. And
one time they did have to come down and do a
specific repair and I was able to meet them on
site and they showed me around the piece of equipment
and how it works. It was really interesting.
It goes a long way. I found that just getting
on site with guys and being able to go through
the sequence with them and go, look, this is
how that works. And, you know, I'm looking at
it as a tech, so I'm like, you know, use this
as a diagnostic tool. You can use this here.
Look at this here. If this is happening, you
might want to look at this and we can go through
some of that stuff. It really helps. Yeah, that
was a that was a service call that I'm glad I
went to because. It's not every day you get to
meet somebody who's involved with making the
equipment and knows everything about it. Yeah.
No, and it's cool that they were able to help
you too. I mean, you know, some people don't
answer the phone. I don't want to point out other
actors out there, but ain't everybody answering
the phone for you when you come. Oh, I know.
Trust me. There's some complicated... Goodman
air handlers that I have called about, they have
a variable speed blower motor on them, and this
funky board on it, and it's real hard to tell
what that board's telling the motor, and I called
tech support on them one time, and it took them
about 20 minutes, but they did call me back,
and basically what he told me was, if that thing's
sitting there rocking like a X13 motor, Replace
the motor. I'm like, thank you Needed a little
guidance that's all you need Yeah, that's right.
So But yeah took about 20 minutes for them to
call me back and I was doing that. That's pretty
good I mean hell you can't like I said, some
of them aren't answering the phone I mean, it's
you know, some of the bigger manufacturers will
I mean lever has got good tech support. They've
got great tech support Captivator is not bad.
They they'll answer the phone help you out. We've
got good tech support Yeah, so it's uh It's not
all gone. It's just hard for some of the smaller
companies and like, you know Goodman and stuff
like how many tech support guys can they keep?
Hanging out like you can't just hire a bunch
of guys to hang out and pay them to wait for
somebody to call I have the gonna have the calls
coming in I think of the ECM motors, Victor,
those are some of the worst ones out there. They
are terrible. And somebody who happens to be
doing a lot of marketing in the United States
right now, German company producing inverter
driven systems is putting broad ocean motors
in their air handlers. I've never dealt with
one exactly, but I've heard those before. Those
are the ones that kept dying and had all the
problems, right? Well, yeah, they're easily identifiable
because most of them have a pigtail on them.
They're like the only ones that have that pigtail.
And Bosch likes to put them in their air handlers.
Don't know why, but they do. Yeah, you think
you just... I don't know. I think that sometimes
they're over complicated. You've got everything
else variable and stuff. It's like, uh, I mean,
I'm not so much residential, so we use three
phase motors and a VFD. So it's a little bit,
you know, it's pretty easy to diagnose. There's
nothing that complicated about it. Well, um,
I try to look at these on inverter driven systems.
I try to look at them like a ECM motor. The electronics
for this three phase compressor are basically
the module And it can get a signal to tell the
thing to come on if the modules fried It's not
gonna run if the compressor is just slightly
just slightly shorted It's gonna trip out that
module. It's not gonna run Yeah, it's an inverter
is a VFD, right? So we're just controlling the
you know you bring AC voltage in and it cleans
up the voltage and you put a clean DC voltage
out to the motor and drive the motor. Well, you
know, when people say DC voltage to the motor,
that's a little bit misleading for most people
because it is a varying DC signal. Basically
the arc the voltage never goes below zero so
it's still a DC signal but it's going up and
down the frequency is varying and like an AC
signal yeah yeah like an AC signal but it is
technically DC but it's all inputs and outputs
so like you know we use digital scrolls and a
lot of ours and it's a you got the Copeland digital
scroll module and you put this you give it a
command basically like closing y1 to r and you
send it an analog signal so you ours is like
two to five volts so we send two to five volts
dc to it and it varies the it loads and unloads
the digital compressor based on that speed signal
so at five volts it's at 100 percent It's not
unloaded at three volts. It's at 50 % say. So
is that something that a field technician can
test and see? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with, I mean,
with, as long as you know what you're looking
for, that's the trick is like, you know, Copeland's
really good about putting, so you could pull
up a Copeland digital scroll module. I've got
one on the computer here in front of me that
it's, uh, it's easy to find that stuff. If you
want Copeland spoiling stuff, go find their AE
bulletins. Just type in AE bulletin for whatever
thing that you're looking for. And there's all
kinds of information. It tells you how to diagnose
it, what to expect, what to look for. It's not
that complicated. It's just being able to find
the information sometimes can be difficult. Yeah,
I have noticed that a lot of manufacturers, at
least with residential equipment, that are making
these inverter systems. They kind of keep all
that stuff a secret. They don't want you to know.
Even the terminals for the compressor are hidden
because they don't really want you to put an
amp meter around them. They don't want you testing
the voltage on them. Well, you got to be careful.
So like with a variable speed compressor, you're
not, yes, with a true variable compressor, like
if you put a mega meter on it, you can damage
the compressor. When you're talking a residential
market, there's a lot of guys running around
trying to kill stuff. They're doing dumb stuff
on easy things, much less something they don't
understand. I think they try to keep them out
of tearing something up worse than it already
is. I see that, but I'm curious. I want to know
what frequency it's running at. I want that to
be... It should be like in the owner's manual.
Okay. Is it running at top frequency or is it
not? But they don't, they don't public that.
Yeah. Uh, I haven't dealt with a whole lot of
the residential ones, but I would, they should,
if they, if they're not publishing it or if you
can't go find it somewhere, that's just wrong.
Like a smart guy should be able to go read the
manual and figure out what signal is looking
forward and be able to put it at 100%. That's
the trick with your variable speed stuff. If
you're going to test it or something, you got
to test it at 100 % or you're in error. I know
it. And a lot of them, you got to go like on
this Bosch, it does have a button that you can
put it in charge mode or something like that.
And there's some other ones like from carrier
and train with their user interface, you have
to put it in. 100 % or charge mode, similar thing.
So it runs at 100 % so you can test it or charge
it at 100%. Yeah, that's the idea. Let me see.
Ewok's here. He must have just got off work.
What's up, Ewok? I've seen him out there a lot
lately too. Yeah, he's putting out a lot of content.
A lot of young dudes coming in here. I like to
see it. Yeah, me too. You know, I feel like this
complaint that we all make that nobody's getting
into the trades, we're a dying breed and stuff
like that. I think we've been saying that all
along, you know, forever. Yeah, before us, before
us. The generations before us, we're talking
the same way about the kids coming up. I don't
want to work. They, you know, blah, blah, blah,
this and that. It's a bunch of people. So we
just do the same thing over and over again. They're
there. They're there. They just... They're coming
in. Well, I think a lot of this helps it. A lot
of those young dudes out there putting content
out. Yeah. You know, part of... One of the reasons
I'm doing what I do, I want to show that it's
doable and let people realize that not going
to college is a real option. It really is. Yeah.
You can make six figures out there and more.
Now's the time, man. Go get your money. If you're
young and you ain't in the trades, I mean, you
go to college and you want. I spoke with Jake,
you know, Jake in a blue collar. And he said,
three years in working as a technician, he was
already making six figures. It depends on location,
but yeah. That wasn't the case for me. I live
in a rural place. I didn't make my six figures
until I started my own business. And I'll be
honest, I haven't met an engineer that makes
more money than I do. And that's what I went
into school for. That's what I went into school
for initially. And I'm like, I'm happier doing
what I do and I'm making more money. Yeah. I
mean, I hear you. You're only limited by what
you can actually physically do, right? Like it's
all you. So it's kind of the beauty of it too
is you can, you know, take and leave things.
Yeah. And the hours in the day, I got to get
home at a certain time. I got to eat, clean myself
up and I got to be able to do that. If it weren't
for that, I could be out there working all day
and all night. But I did that when I worked for
other companies. They had me working until eight,
nine o 'clock at night. And I very quickly got
away from that. Let's put it that way. I couldn't
live like that for months on end. That was just
terrible. It's tough. That's part of the tough
part of the trade. And I think a lot of people
get in and they're in that. you know, first stage
of their career and they are, they're getting
run to death. Especially residential, it's harder
to do that. I mean, supermarket guys get beat
up too, because it's just nonstop. I got to imagine
guys that are doing restaurants too, like if
a walk -in cooler or freezer goes down, you got
to get out there right away. I quickly got to,
well, In my business anyway, at first I was doing
24 -7 emergency calls. You call, if you pay the
money, I'll come out. And not anymore. A few
years ago, I changed my Yellow Pages listing
to by appointment only. And now I'm not even
in the Yellow Pages anymore. I quit paying for
it, it's worthless. Wait a minute. There's a
story that comes with that. Okay, Yellow Pages
is a prepay thing. You pay in advance to be in
the Yellow Pages. And I had been doing it for
years and years and years. So I finally decided,
you know what? I'll keep that thousand dollars
because it ain't doing me any good. So I just
didn't pay to renew it. That kept putting you
in there, didn't it? And they started sending
collection agencies after me for not paying in
advance for a service that I didn't want. I had
a lawyer call me one time about it, and I was
like, buddy, good luck. You're trying to collect
on a paid in advance thing for something I don't
want. I was like, good luck. I ain't paying you
a dime. You got a bad deal anyways, the yellow
pages ain't gonna be around. Like I said, ain't
nobody get yellow pages. That's why I was dropping
it. It was worthless. I got these things in our
hands, you know, those, those calculators. They
told us we'd never have in our pockets at school,
you know, never calculator in your pocket. You
better learn how to do this. Write it out. Tis
true. That's right. But yeah, they own. They
didn't they said they were trying to collect
because I didn't cancel Something I mean That
was yellow that was yellow pages last ditch effort
to just try to stay alive That's what it is.
I know it they were bought by some kind of advertising
company that's Building websites and doing other
kinds of advertising. I forget what it was was
Thrive. That's what it was. Yellow Pages were
bought by Thrive, T -H -R -Y -V. So if you ever
get a email wanting to market your business by
Thrive, part of that portfolio is the Yellow
Pages. The Yellow Pages. I think they've probably
thrown that one away by now. They're not advertising.
Even when I did advertise in the yellow pages,
I just had like a little one inch ad under air
conditioning and another one under heating contractors.
And it's very simplistic. I saw everybody else
had something there I felt like I had to too.
And over the time, I probably kept them for like
12 years. Maybe a dozen calls from that. I mean,
that's not worth it. No, it's not. But I mean,
you know, guys of a certain only guys of a certain
age remember that stuff. Like now it's getting
to the point where you said Yellow Pages, there's
people in chat right now that probably don't
know what Yellow Pages is. I can remember, you
know, before when you wanted to look something
up, if you wanted to call and order a damn pizza,
you would go to the Yellow Pages and find the
number. That's just what you had to do. You know
something? I was having a conversation with my
wife the other day, talk about showing our age.
One of my first jobs I had was at a Rose's. And
I worked the floor just like all the other young
kids out there. And back in the day, there were
no video cameras. The way they kept track of
people and the people perusing the aisles in
their store, they had little peep holes. Even
where there was a second floor capability in
the store, like in the layaway section and all
that stuff, it's like a warehouse. There were
little sections where there was a peephole where
they can look out over everybody. It's crazy
how far we've come. That's just one of those
things from back in the day. I remember the peephole,
the manager was always telling me I was talking
to the girls too much or something. Let me see.
Well, Timmy, how old are you, Timmy? Let us know.
I think you skipped ahead. He said 62. 62. Oh,
there he is. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm 54. I'm one
of these Gen Xers that was raised with no car
seats, no internet. You basically, you get home
from school and you get on your bicycle and you
just run the neighborhood. Nobody, I mean, we
were last key kids. We were last key kids. Just
come home alone. That's the way it is. That's
kind of, we didn't say, I'm 40. So I'm like right
on that borderline jet Xer. But I mean, it was,
you left in the morning there, you go figure
something out to do. And when the street lights
are on, you come back. I just remember some of
the stuff we did was crazy. We would get in bottle
rocket fights. We would stuff a firecracker into
a pine cone and throw it like a hand grenade.
And I had this go -kart. It's like my sister
had a moped and I had a go -kart and I would
try to jump this go -kart. I kept breaking the
frame on it. Now the go -karts today, they have
like almost like a racing car seat with buckles
on it and stuff like that. This was a bench seat
for two people, no seat belts or anything like
that. And we're jumping at probably four or five
feet in the air. We were bike kids. We rode our
bikes around, but we did some crazy stuff on
some bikes. Timmy says dirt club fights. Yeah,
they're on dirt clubs with each other. Rock fights.
You live by the railroad tracks, you ever had
a rock fight? Oh, don't get hit in the head with
a green pine cone. That's one of the worst. He's
right. You knew where everybody hit you. Hold
on a second, I gotta click on this one. You knew
where everyone was by how many bikes for everyone.
That's where you knew where your kids were hanging
out by looking where the bikes were. Now you
attract the phone. You don't have to worry about
what your kids are doing online. In fact, the
first computers, I remember, I was in high school.
We had a computer class where we were being taught
how to do... I think it was DOS from Commodore
64. It couldn't communicate with anything, but
you could write a little bit of code and make
a little program or something and later you could
hook up a printer to it. Yeah, the early control
systems, I worked on a few of those early control
systems that were, the train was DOS back, way
back. And yeah, it was their BAS system was awesome.
You would have to go in and you had to know the
buttons, the correct buttons to push, because
you would have to control all blah, blah, blah,
whatever you have to have the correct buttons.
And it would take you to the next page. But it
was like, I can remember the first time I saw,
because a little before my time, I'm like, I
don't, I was like, I could halfway navigate it.
But one of our old guys came in one time and
he was like. She's just typing away. I'm like,
what the hell, man? But that's what he knew.
Like I could plug my computer in. I'm like, I
need my computer to plug in this damn thing.
Oh, well. And then we got people talking about
Atari Space Invaders. Oh, that's a good one.
Excite Byte, your play Punch Out. Oh, wait a
minute. I got to click on this one by Rudy here.
Not too long ago. All the service techs had a
GPS hanging right there by their rear view mirror.
Do you remember those? I just, I had, I was using
maps. I'd gotten really good at using maps. And
I just noticed everybody was using these GPS's
and they talked about how great they were. So
I went and got one and probably three or four
years later, I'm doing GPS on my iPad. So. Yeah.
You know what I mean? They, they went out of
style real quick. Uh, yeah, no, I mean, I can
remember driving, driving a service truck and
having to pull out your map. You had a map book
and you would go find where you're going and
you'd be following the roads. Like, I know you,
you would look up by driving. They talk about
driving distracted now. They're trying to drive
and read them. You would look up your road name.
It would give you a grid number. You find it
in the grid. In fact, if you ever see any videos
or pictures of my office, there's a map hanging
on the wall. That is a laminated map from the
times I was using a map to get around town. In
your local area. So you knew where you were going.
Yeah. You could go to like books a million or
something and buy a local map. And that's what
I did. These are dying things that you're never
gonna see again. Nobody's gonna look in a map
to figure out where they're going. Nobody's opening
Yellow Pages to call the pizza place down the
road. If they are, they probably got gray hair.
I was proud of the first time I saw my company's
name in the Yellow Pages. I was like, look at
there, I've made it. You had at the time, you
did make it. It was a struggle to begin with,
but everything's a struggle to begin with. Ain't
nothing easy is worth having. You made it all
the way here. You know. Part of me is kind of
looking forward to one day retiring, but I'm
not sure I'm going to be able to, because I just
love getting out there and doing it. If I have
a day where there's not much going on, I miss
it. It's like, I want to call a customer, hey,
can I come work on your air conditioner? I want
to get out there and do something. Yeah, no,
I feel that. I'm similar. I can't turn it off
sometimes. I like talking. BS and H faculty guys,
and I'd like to retire someday too. Luckily,
I think, but at this point I'll be able to retire
before I'm ready to retire. I think as long as
there's no major like health catastrophe or something
like that, you know, when I hit 60, 62 years
old, my intention is to try to go camping, you
know, get me on. an airstream, a nice new truck
and just travel around the country and get some
of these great campgrounds and parts of country.
I got an uncle that does that. He just kind of
roams the earth, man. He's got a camper and he
drives around, you know, stops and visits family
and, you know, just enjoys life. There ain't
nothing wrong with that. Yeah, that's. I think
my granddad kind of instilled the love of trying
to do something like that in me because he used
to go camping and take us camping. It's just
a nice way to spend your time. You get to go
to some great places. And I tell you what, it's
been, it's been the fun part about this is I've
been traveling and I've been able to go to these
places and not only meet the techs, but you meet
the people that are there and you start. to see
what's out there more. I never traveled before,
so that's been a really interesting part is just
talking to the people everywhere and talking
to the technicians, being able to get on the
roof with them has been pretty cool. Yeah, you
know, before I went to AHR in Orlando, I hadn't
really gotten out from my area in Georgia, South
Carolina, unless it was to go to a funeral or
something like that. So I really enjoyed getting
out there and seeing other people and talk to
other people. I went to Milwaukee recently for
their pipeline event and got to meet a lot of
great people up there and see what they do. That
was real fun. And I had never seen Lake Michigan,
so I made a trip over to Lake Michigan to take
a look at it. And it's very comparable to The
Gulf Coast when his calm waters clear water a
very kind of calm water Just pristine beaches.
It was it was real nice. There's beautiful land
everywhere I flew into Boston and drove up to
New Hampshire and It's just I mean, it's beautiful
lane. I stopped back in my way back. I stopped
in Boston I actually was trying to navigate through
the city get back to the airport and I saw Harbor
and I was like, oh, that looks cool. So I drove
down to the Harbor and I just got some pictures
and got the feel for the city and where everything
was. I was like, this is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.
That'd be nice. You going to HR this year? I
think I will. There's a big part of me that don't
want to go. I'm such a homebody, but. I heard
that. There's a big part of me that don't want
to go. I think for the awards show, they're going
to ask me to present an award. But I probably
will. I probably will. I just hadn't fully decided
to. I hadn't bought my plane tickets yet. Yeah.
I'm going to HR with work this year, so it'll
be interesting. I've never been to Vegas, so
it'll be fun. I don't think I'm gonna make the
award show. I wish I was, but... The Vegas part
of it, to me, was kind of a drawback. Well, it's
a longer flight for you, right? I mean, I'm not...
I mean, if you're, you're going for AHR, so like
you're not hanging out on the strip and doing
the Vegas thing. Like when I was in Orlando,
I would go to AHR. I'd get something to eat,
go to AHR, spend the whole day there, come back
to my hotel. I would do some Grubhub food, order
it to my hotel room and I'd stay there the whole
night. I didn't go out. I didn't go to none of
those after parties. It was almost like work
trying to walk around and see everything. It's
kind of taxing on you. It's it is it was it was
a lot. I mean, there's a lot there It's gonna
be interesting this year because I didn't go
I did the same thing because I drove when it
was in Chicago I drove and Actually, that's where
I met the the people that org was now actually
I met them for the first time when I I took like
three days off Drove to Chicago to go to HR and
paid for Chicago myself Just to go up there Yeah,
it's a lot of work and it's not, you know, you're
you're not making money if you're an AHR so I
get it I know it. Well, I drove to Orlando for
me that was Just over a four -hour drive People
don't I don't think people understand how close
I am to Florida. Yes So my family some of my
family's from Lexington, South Carolina, I don't
know where that is compared to where you're Dude,
my family literally for hundreds of years have
lived in the Columbia area and that includes
Lexington, South Carolina. I just went to a family
reunion in Lexington, South Carolina. Okay. I
got a lot of family there. I've got cousins and
uncles. People I don't even know that are my
family. This last family reunion I met, I guess
it was the children of my dad's cousins. So I
guess that makes them my cousins too. And they
all live around in that same area. And that was
interesting. Yeah. You know any Mastacolas? I
do. I do know them. That's fine. That's their
last name. Orlando was a lot. I mean, for a...
HR is a trade show like nothing. I imagine. If
you've never been there, it is bigger than you
imagine. You'll never see it all. Yeah, it's
a lot. What's going on? I would make a list of
who I wanted to go see. I'd find out where their
booth was and kind of navigate my way over there
and just look at stuff on my way over to where
I wanted to go. That's a good way to go. That's
just how I did it. I had very little time of
just meandering around and looking at stuff.
And there's just so much there. Yeah. I went
by myself and I just kind of wandered around.
I didn't really have anywhere to go. Actually,
I met up with Jake and Adrian and a bunch of
those guys and met them up there. Ryan and Rick
were up there too. That was the first time I
actually got to meet those guys in person, so
that was pretty cool. Really? I've talked to
them like you. I've talked to you here. I've
talked to a lot of these guys, but I've never
seen them. It was cool. They're like, hey, what's
up, man? Shake their hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, look, man, we have gone over schedule.
We've done like about an hour and a half. So
I'm going to go ahead and tell everybody, thank
you for showing up tonight. It turned out to
be a great show. I appreciate you coming on,
man. It was nice talking to you. I feel like
I know you much better now. Anytime, brother.
If, you know, next time you need a guest, you
let me know. I'm always happy to chat. Well,
it was really great. I'm glad you'll come on
again. I probably will ask you again. Maybe I'll
see you at AHR. Probably. Well, guys, thanks
for coming out. I appreciate it.