Operators Are Standing By!

It's your turn. Well now the problem really is that

No one thought we would get to three digits

So now the problem of four digits is gonna be like why 2k for this show because if we hit

1000 I'm pretty sure the whole show will explode just like everything did on y2k

So you're saying we should have been doing two zeros at the front?

I think so before we reached 100 to account for that that would have been you know hindsight in all but that would have been

The correct move I think no, well, we're screwed. Here we are. Yeah, we're gonna have to hire a whole team of

Programmers to go in and change the date codes and so forth from you know, 108 to 0 108

It's gonna be a whole thing, but I think we know people so it should be okay

We get Ron Livingston on it and Samir. Yeah, I think they're available

So it should be fine now in a jar and maybe they could hook us up with that that penny scam, too

And then that solves all the funding issues. It's kind of like a you know, double dip like in Superman Superman - yeah

Hmm. Hmm. Let's try it

But you have to look up money money laundering in the dictionary

*music*

All right, I know a guy that has a dictionary and his name is Martin Feld

And it's the source. Yeah, I say one over there on the bookshelf

I bet he's one of the only people that probably has tried to correct his dictionary with a red pen

That just seems like the kind of guy Martin is. I don't apply pens to printed books. So I'm sorry to disappoint you there

Did you hear how I just oh wow. I felt that that was

Have you got a foot imprint on your head right now? I could feel it on my neck

I thought it was like having trouble like oh, wow. That was just I did my friend I did

He's swept the legs and then just pressed

It brings back to mind you remember that clip art you did a long time ago where we had

Feld and then the rest of us. That's what started it. Yeah crushed. I think it's time for that artwork to come back again

That's what started it that's what started the whole flip thing that was really pretty sure it was early on

Yeah, we should bring that back. I think it's and it's so long ago. It's probably like 320 by 240 or something

It's in my favorites album in my photos app. I look at it occasionally. That's pretty

Memory on his iPad screen. He's just like Albert. Yeah. Yeah

That's right on this day

But it's just every day the day that the insulting began, yeah

I'll bring it into pixel mater and do the the super ultra mega enhanced thing and blow it up for you

That would be good. That's just what I wanted

So you don't know was that a segue to our third topic?

I think so because I put this in the notes a little while ago and it's yeah, it's coming for episode 108

So yeah, I mean this doesn't have to go for too long because you know correcting gets painful

But well Jason you took this photo of a red sharpie. I think that you had written my name on yep

Basically symbolizing my character or personality Martin. You are the red pen. Yep. You're holding it right now

There you go, and you can check the show notes everyone for this. It's the Martin sharpie. Mm-hmm, and it made me think

Am I the only one who's correcting things in this way? Surely people are editing or critiquing their own work

I mean, what about you two? Do you edit things heavily? And if so, where did that kind of spirit or habit come from?

I just I want to say in regard to the pen. I don't actually remember

Why this came about I don't I don't recall the context. I just found this again

It resurfaced in my house recently. I was like, oh red sharpie, and I picked it up and

scrawled on the side in black sharpie is

Martin on I was like, oh, this is the Martin sharpie, of course

Hmm, I couldn't recall why I had it, but I bet it was hilarious when it happened

If anybody knows what episode it is

Let me know because I have no idea

I don't know if it ever came up in an episode

But before you answer the question, I'd like to think that within the Feld family who are known as being a little bit. Let's say

Mildly obsessed with spelling grammar punctuation all that stuff. I hope I kind of got that from my dad

Mildly, okay to very okay to varying degrees. All right, so from my dad's side

this is where this comes from and my mum was particularly good with

Reading and stuff when I was a kid. I remember we would read together. We're talking like primary school age stuff

So literacy was really encouraged from her side as well. But in the Feld family

It's really a matter of if you were writing an essay for university or something for high school or whatever

You'd print it out and my dad would do this and he would sit down with me after I'd written a draft and the red

Pen would come out and it would be a matter of highlighting

Printed on the page to let things jump out at you rather than relying on the screen where it could be kind of lost or ambiguous

Right actually crossing out and writing things Jason's adjusting stuff in the notes. What's going on here? Are you correcting now? No, no

I'm just keeping track of things

Yeah, but I suppose I learned this art or habit or whatever of correcting things and now working in communications

Generally, I kind of approach a lot of work like that

and I think that the red sharpie came out for you with my name on it because I was applying a similar kind of

Rigor or habit to things that we were writing or things in the show notes and look your show notes are wonderful

But if I spot a missing hyphen, I'm gonna put it in there. I I oh I hate you in your hyphens

I really do stylistically they look disgusting and they're gross doing my em dashes or hyphens

Hyphens, they're different. He hyphens everything and I think it looks terrible. I know

- and everything I - at compound modifiers and that's where they're useful. He's the - a -

Yeah, I'll take that term. That's better than foot. No, you will remain foot fo - ot

Back to the question

Do either of you have this kind of habit with anything that you write or maybe something else that you do in your work?

And where did it come from? Because I can't be the only one who likes to correct something. I

Find if I print something out and then get a pen I will discover so many more errors and

Items needing correction than I would if I just proof something on the screen as a document if I'm reading it, right?

Usually it's something that I myself have written and I want to proof my own work. I

Find that if I print it get a pen, I'm not too fussy about the color

Sometimes I don't like using red because I feel like I'm being too hard on myself

You know, so I will go a blue usually because usually it's printed in black and a blue provides a contrast point

But I don't feel like I'm being punished by my own self. It's more like a suggestive edit

Hey, Andrew, have you thought about doing this and I'll scribble and not we're not finished

Usually I'll look at it and go wow, I made so many mistakes in that original draft

But when I've read on the page, it seemed fine. So I am really strongly in favor of

Pen editing and I don't know if that's an age thing as well. I didn't grow up in a pure digital era

I grew up in in a handwritten era learning how to

Do proper cursive at school. So maybe that's an age thing

Well, it's funny you say that because I learned cursive or running writing at school

And even though I just said that my dad did this with the red pen

I don't print anything or ever use a red pen. I do everything on the screen. You should try printing

You should try I would like to say this is an experiment for you now next time you write something right it then

I don't have a printer. I was gonna say I bet he doesn't even have a printer. I

hate them

You need to get the the hemisphere reviews authorized printer endorsed printer

It's the brother HL

3120 is that 30 20 and then there's like some letters at the end. I think like CW

Something that's the one the old men in the chat

Believe he doesn't have a printer

Not even a dumb not even an inkjet. I grew up with one, but they're shit

They're rickety they break the ink is just way too expensive and then you get a printer at work

Surely you've got a big about I have only ever printed something at work once and it was because I was asked to and when they

Asked me to I said I don't have printer access and I said is there a problem and I said no I just don't need it

So Wow, so if I'm just to give out the model number here, it's the brother HL

- L

3290

CDW CDW. Yeah, there's even a hyphen in there. So Martin will love that printer

I'm encouraged by its presence. It was the HLL but then somebody like Martin came along in marketing. It was like no

No, it's HL - L and they're like fine. Was it a - or - oh Christ

I've actually changed my tune. I used to be a I used to be a editor to a fault

To where I would get almost nothing out on the page

Because I was constantly fussing with like every single sentence to make sure it was perfect and I've now switched my tune

for better or worse to just like get shit on the page and

Then deal with it later. Just get stuff on there. That's good. Get it out write it. It could be utter crap

It doesn't make any sense riddled with typos, but get it out there and

That's what I do now, and I think it's sometimes to a fault

Because I feel like it like a blog post I will hit publish and then immediately find

900 things that I need to fix the best autocorrect or that yeah the best like spelling

Correction is not the squiggly line. It's pressing publish on a blog post

Really give you all of these like, you know, do you you know use vision OS all you want? I don't need it

I just have my eyes and I just see millions of red squiggles after I push publish

But yeah, I do that and then I even do it like from a work thing

They're like I'll put something into like a slack message just to get it out and then go ah

And immediately hit up arrow and correct like 50 things and then it's basically every message I send is edited which maybe that's good

Maybe that's bad, but in the long run, I feel like it's better to just get the thoughts out and then correct them later

So that's where I'm at now. I'm a very big corrector slash editor

Nowadays because I'll get at the end of the day. I think a better result or at least a better representation of my thoughts

Because more of the thoughts hit the page

Then we're spent cycles trying to correct like the first intro sentence forever

Cool. All right. I like I like printed document. I feel it feels more official. I like it once it's on paper

I lose it. Oh, I thought I don't keep paper. I just like printing it looking at it and then throwing it away

Oh, it's good. It sounds good environmental impact

Wow that presents really nicely on the page. We have we done an environmental impact report for this

organization recently

Andrews behavior. I'm not sure we did what a 2023 but I think I might approach the board to request a

Environmental impact report for this podcast. So I'm just gonna throw this out there despite being the quote-unquote foot

I may have the smallest footprint. Oh

Hmm. What size shoe do you wear?

Generally, it's around a nine to ten nine and a half. Yeah, whatever we use in Australia. Is it equivalent to us?

Yes, I have no idea. I don't think we've talked about shoe sizes. That's I preferred. Okay

Well, I'm a nine nine and a half generally occasionally a ten if it's a weird shoe

Okay, okay, and then I'm eleven and a half and I think Andrews probably like a twenty eight or something. I'm a fourteen

Us hmm. So technically you do have the smallest footprint wide

14 e e gotta get the wide foot. What is e? Yeah, this is with e is width. Yeah

Okay, I don't know why it's a but it is so this nickname of mine is looking more and more inappropriate all the time

It is yeah

Can we get a photo of that

No, everyone smile

Three I don't want my face next to that

Too bad it already is check the shine. That's right

Jeez I call him the foot

We had a discussion

Hmm, I wouldn't say recently recently feels like too soon

But it was a while back now where we're I think it was kind of the theme was

IT kind of horror stories or like data that you deleted on

Accident or on purpose at work things related to data being just gone

In a very bad way in a working environment where the data technically wasn't yours

so you're kind of on the hook now and

binary digit did us a solid and

Didn't just put a text thread in there. There was a lovely audio

Clip of the story and we wanted to share that so that everyone could could have a word of caution when it comes

to data in the workplace

Hey, it's binary digit. I was going to record my really quick story on

The crazy situation that happened in my old job

where Johnny decimal said

Posted or didn't happen. So here goes. I used to be a systems engineer for an IT company

it was a managed services provider in New York and

We had many clients

One of my jobs was to check the backups of many of the clients one in particular

I checked almost every day

but of course we had about five engineers on the team managing all these customers and

This was near the very end of this job where I was there for about six or seven years

I was already hitting burnout. It was really really scary actually

How crazy burnout can be so anyway, this was one of the very last memories that I had with my boss before he left

He was the director of the managed services department really cool guy

We both worked as a team and he was amazing. And so and he had kind of no fear because he was ex-military

He was a ex-marine

Anyway, so and I was associate systems engineer technically so I was doing all this work

When really it should have been more someone more senior

But anyway story is I had to check backups one of the customers there was many servers one in particular was their file server

Of course

This was the day was the days before everything was in the cloud and we had just local servers on site

And we had to check tape backups or digital backups, whatever systems they had. So I thought everything was good

We got a call in saying hey, we have an emergency at this customer for some reason

We feel like they got some ransomware and I was like, oh god ransomware. I've dealt with this before

But no, I did it. I thought I did but this was on another level

so I

Logged into the servers sure enough

I checked the backups to see if they were running and every single server was in the backup system except their file server

Which was the most important one for some reason it didn't run for a few days

And of course, that's the one that got hit the worst

So panic mini panic told my boss. My boss is like, oh shit. Are you serious? And I said yes, and so

I had to look into all of our options

It was very nerve-wracking. But anyway, luckily me being a nerd

I knew how to log into the as they say dark web, which really it could be dark web, but not really

I logged into Tor I looked at I went on to the the onion site

It's like a dot onion a web address that the ransomware says, you know

You have to pay this ransom in Bitcoin or whatever and back then Bitcoin was whatever rate it was

It was obviously very different. I would say this was probably in 2015 when this happened. So

Or 2016 so I logged in and I was like, oh my god, okay

So here is how much the ransom was I think was for the company was like a thousand dollars

which is nothing but

the point is is of course is very embarrassing for an IT company did not check backups and fix this system when it could have

Been resolved with for storing some backups. So what we had to do I

Had to use a different network at work, which wasn't under our firewall, which is kind of like an outside wireless connection

Download the Tor browser log into the site see the ransom message and I asked my boss like hey, what do you want to do?

He's like, alright looks like we're gonna have to pay this ransom and I was like, wow. Okay, this is gonna be experience

So I said he's like, how do I get the Bitcoin? I said well and

Remember, we're in New York Long Island. I said well

There's an ATM in Brooklyn, which was like the closest one that was kind of obtainable because he had a car

I said there's an ATM in Brooklyn that you could literally

Get a wallet put money into the ATM with cash and get some Bitcoin in your Bitcoin wallet

He's like, okay, so I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's go. Let's do it. I'll do it

So I stayed in the office

of course

He went out to Brooklyn to go to the ATM and literally put money with a check from the company

He cashed he put the cash in the ATM and did the whole thing

And of course, he was nervous trying to get the Bitcoin wallet. That was a separate day

I helped him with his ID and all this other stuff and I saw him physically nervous

Which I was like shocked because he's not a nervous guy. He's just like, you know, whatever so

But yeah, I remember the day he went he said okay

I'm here you should see the line of people doing this same thing and people were telling him stories and he told me the stories

of how people were putting money into this ATM to get Bitcoin to pay the ransom because

They had tons of pictures of family members that were precious to them and they had to go pay the ransom and it was insane

so

That happened. Luckily. I went online. I paid it with the Bitcoin wallet that he provided me

We got the extraction key and we decrypted all the files and miraculously it worked. It was legit. So

that wasn't a crazy experience and

I'll never forget it. And now I have three to him backups all the time, and I hope everyone else does too

Thanks for listening. I like when people submit clips. I'll just say that right now if you want to submit audio of any kind well

Mostly any kind I will say

But it can be almost about anything

We just like hearing from people in their in their own lives their own worlds and what's going on with them

So if you ever have like a fun story or something even better something related to something we talked about like we talked about

hamburgers for like 50 minutes last time got a good hamburger story or you want to tell us why

HJ's are better than BK's. Let us know record that audio submitted to discord email, whatever and

It may

pending, you know legal review

Make it on the show

Right there, do you see that what is it that is the zike?

zike

Zike Ziki, we don't know who knows

smart card made by

Zike Ziki tech LLC so a name you can trust everyone knows Zikul

Zikul tech LLC everyone knows them. Yeah

So what it is is a okay, you know air tags, right? Hmm, you know your friend air tag

Oh with everyone's favorite button batteries. Yep. Yeah, a little dollop of air tag will do you they're great

They go on your stuff help you find it if you lose it

However, there's a few places where an air tag just doesn't really fit, you know

One of those being oh, I don't know Oh wallet. Oh it fits

Can't put an air tag in there unless you want your issue can wallet to be four meters thick

I do it. Oh, do you have a purse? No, just stick it in the money bit of the wallet

I've just solved your problem with the the ZK

smart card

Locate with Apple find my it is a credit card sized device

that

supports find my and you shove it in your wallet because it's the size of a credit card and then you have find my in

Your wallet and the extra cool thing

Air tags air tag dies. What do you do? How do you how do you get an air tag going again?

Anybody get it going again. Yeah, let's say it dies

How do you how do you get your air tag working again change the battery?

Will you twist it open you take the button battery out you put the new one in the air if you have to reset it

There's like a five press

Exactly. That's it taken out a battery and you're throwing it in the ocean and you're ruining the environment. That's exactly what's going on

That's what Andrew would do. Yeah, I print the instruction. Well, he puts it into the printer paper and then just lights it on fire

I'm pretty sure that's how that yes, but these little doodads

You just attach to a magsafe

Charger and it charges the card. That's cool

And you only have to charge it like once every it says once a year, but like even if it's once every six months

Big whoop Oh magsafe. Okay. Yeah, not the Apple watch. Sorry. I was thinking the Apple watch thing

Yeah, it like the little you know, the little puck thing you just stick it on there at magnets to it

It has a little light it charges turns green when it's done and that's cool. That's it and it works with find my yeah

It's really pretty pretty sweet little deal

IP x7 water resistant. So is there a hyphen in there or a - oh

No, no there isn't I didn't think that was I just wanted to waste your time

Built-in battery

Charges for a half an hour can last about one year. So there you go. Is it an Apple store purchase?

It's oh, no, these are these are not I don't believe these are sanctioned in any conceivable way

Okay, but they work and they show up and find my so good enough for me

Do they show up in the Chinese government as well? I mean what doesn't

So you're gonna turn up on the front page of I don't know what the Oregon Observer with man's pocket explodes with

Unsanctioned wallet explosive or something. I'll take the risk. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, mr

Black and if you look on the front it has helpful pictures for things you can attach the card to oh

some of which include a wallet also the card is

Comically miss size to what the thing is it's on

So the wallet is about the size of a house compared to the card

So that's helpful a backpack a suitcase your medical doctor bag

So if you're a doctor you're carrying your doctor bag around you go. Oh shit. Where's my doctor tools?

No problem found it find my

Your car your bike your baby stroller thing. No, it's terrible when you lose your baby like that

I know but now you can find them so it's not an issue anymore

Keys your badge your computer or your trophy

Trophy so if you're constantly misplacing your trophy

Got you covered. Yeah, you don't you hate when you lose your trophy. Jeez

You don't want to you don't want to be having people over for a big dinner party

and

you know you have your you have your friend like subtly drop the hint about the trophy to try to

Bring it up naturally and then you go. Oh this old thing and it's not on the shelf

You go. Oh

Shit, where is my trophy? Hold on you pull out your phone and you go poop poop poop poop poop

Oh, there it is in the laundry basket again

You know the Stanley Cup in the the ice hockey league. I've heard of it

The traditionally the the victors get to take that on a tour. So it all goes back to the players their their homes

You know, they take it back to where they started from it's kind of tradition

But it turns out that the Stanley Cup was also being taken to some inappropriate locations

And so required the league to step in and say hey you can't do that with the Stanley Cup

Certain places certain things you shouldn't be doing with the cup if it fits it sits

This is actually the official sponsor of the NHL if you didn't know that already

So they sponsored the NHL and they sponsor us. So there you go

Do I have to still disclaim that like we don't actually nobody believes that we actually have sponsors, right?

I still do someone coming in might think that we're a serious business. I think it's act

Yeah, we we actually know we nothing is sponsored here, right and all the business chat that Andrew brings to this podcast

They're thinking this is hard-hitting business journalism hard-hitting. You know sort of deals that yeah, you know, they're doing subscriber

Only with it with a cutting-edge of podcast. Is this the harvester business review podcast?

That's what most people say when they have a business wishes it was elk

You imagine if they had this kind of content probably sell a copy or two. They're like keeping notes. Like how do you spell depreciation?

Do you know where I keep such notes Martin grains of rice in his kitchen?

This is unheard of I keep all my depreciation notes in my net note-taking app of choice

It's like a podcast player of choice, but for notes for notes. I've tried them all you would probably never guess that no

I've got a new favorite every time I see in the App Store where they have like a

Top notes list. I just assume it's like your editorial

when I look at those it just says like

Download download

Open or download cloud. Yeah

Yeah, look I'm not surprised by this and when I like in general that you would switch note-taking apps Andrew

But when I saw which one it was

Hmm

I just had a big you're kidding in my mind and how many people have you insulted on this podcast for using this app?

Like are you okay? Isn't that kind of the theme of the show though? I mean look it's

Anyway, go on I use this app many years ago in its first incarnation. I even subscribed to it for a year way back when and

Used it for a year and then thought why am I bothering with this?

I don't really need it and I went away from it and then it it didn't ever develop further and then

bear to emerged

And everybody raved about bear - I said great

I liked bear one, but it didn't really do much and bear - he doesn't seem that much different

So I ignored it and I belittled those who chose to accept it

Until my voyages through log seek and obsidian and agenda and Devon think and Apple Notes

and tot and drafts

Me and did my way through

Until I was looking at bear

- the other day

Maybe just maybe there's something to this app

Maybe I should give it a try and I downloaded it and it was gorgeous and it was fast

And it was sink. The sink was reliable and it worked on all my machines and it didn't look like a DOS app from

1987

and I thought

It could be something to this. I might be willing to put some cold hard cash behind this and

I click the subscribe button and

At that point I knew this app was for me because it remembered my loyalty from bear one

It remembered that I was a buyer of bear one. I

Think that's why I did what it did, but he gave me a discounted subscription price

slash save I was like

How could I not this app knows me it just responded to my

Fiscal care and

I'm buying it and I bought it and I have it everywhere and I love it and it's in my dock and it's beautiful

Please

The journey is over my friends for this week bear

Is it no more no more fapping around? Yeah, right. I know where everything is. Everything's in bear. Everything looks nice

Everything sinks across except to my work PC, but that's okay

I'm sure there's some web app coming in the future

Bear I forgot to mention I use strata for a while speaking of web app web note-taking apps

It's a micro blog micro dot blogs. Yeah thing. Yeah. Oh and fast mile notes

That's another one

But bear is where it's at everybody jump on it

Look I feel before we go on, you know, obviously I'm not gonna go into the fact that you say it's the final note-taking app ever because

I've never believed a statement less than that

I think you owe all of the listeners. You've insulted some form of at least a minor apology

Sorry

That was a very minor apology

Listeners, you know where to find us our complaints department is titled NBL pocket podcast

If you have any issues with the apology that was just given please let them know it's hello at NBL pocket podcast

Calm below Andrew. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for the next

Seven to eight weeks of your note-taking bliss before you find out that it can't do something and you move somewhere else

Seven you're giving it seven to eight weeks. I paid for a year subscription. That's a long time

I locked myself in no seven to eight weeks given that he's just told us, you know

that he's got his annual subscription of him genuinely liking it and using it and then

You know slightly but still a little bit. Hmm

The web app isn't there or there's something wrong with the Windows PC support, but then he'll continue to limping along with this sort of gangrenous

Vestigial subscription that he'll want to keep a hold of but kind of be looking with like yearning and just

Longing at some other alternative and then he'll move to that and use it

Concurrently, it'll be doing both and then he'll splinter everything and I get fragmented

But he'll find some way to justify it because the money is there, you know, it's just ridiculous. So it'll be something like that

He's big on sunk cost

If you need some bear tips, I'm happy to give them to you over time. Oh if that would it be helpful

I don't know if I need them. It's so straightforward. It's just such a beautiful app

We'll call them bear hacks

In Australia in the 80s maybe

90s long time ago when TV ads were still really a big thing and they were sort of part of the zeitgeist

Is that B BMF? Huh before Martin Feld? Well, this is where I'm going. You don't preempt me

okay, because yeah, we had these TVs and we'd have TV commercial selling products and

There was a period where there's a couple of guys that became

larger than life in the TV ad sales world and

They became just personas in their own right and they would start doing guest appearances on other shows and they'll do crossovers with other

products they just were so

Massively popular and known I'll give you two examples, but where I'm going with this is

Was there such a similar thing in the US?

Or was this kind of a distinctly Australian thing?

I'm I assume not I assume it was all ripped off from somewhere else

But the two that spring to mind immediately in Australia were

Big Kev big Kev was big Queensland guy, I think and he sold cleaning products and

He would drape himself in a shiny satin shirt of the Australian flag

Yeah, because that was that one of the big selling products as it was all local as Australian

And he would talk about his cleaning products really enthusiastically and then he would finish off with

I'm excited

And

Everybody like I remember walking around and it became a catch-cry across the entire nation. You just say I'm excited

When something great happened big Kev became part of the zeitgeist

Then there was another guy. I can't remember. I think this other guy might be before big Kev

I think it probably was actually so I've probably got my timing wrong

this is probably the original guy and that is Tim Shaw from dem tell and

He got big selling knives

Hmm. The cut was amazing chop through anything switch between

Bread to tomatoes to meat and the ads are sensational. I had fun the other day looking through YouTube

Watching some of him. They always had to have a catchphrase and Tim Shores was

But there's more

now viewers

I've already offering you these these knives for just 49 95, but I know you want more

So we're gonna give you these steak knives normally valued at 39 95 for just 19 95 such a deal

But I know you want more

And he would go on it was but there's more that became his huge catch-cry and again Tim short dem tell beloved across the nation

So what I'm wondering is two questions actually

Jason how many questions two questions? Thank you

Martin were you around is this even in your zone of knowledge? Do you have any?

experience of this at all and

secondly Jason

Were there American salesmen like this where a catchphrase just took over the nation and became a big thing and they were they were more

popular than anything you could imagine

So Martin first you familiar answering question one

Tim sure, I don't have any memory of him, but the whole but there's more catchphrase or slogan

Sounds very familiar. So I don't know if I ever heard his voice carried on or featuring another kind of

Infomercials on TV, but I feel like I'm familiar with that kind of

Let's say

Capitalist broadcast vocabulary. Let's call it that. All right

But big Kev

Absolutely when I was a kid, he was on TV constantly giving thumbs up to everything

He was shinier than you could believe with those satin shirts and he was quite gray

Yes, I was a time that I saw him on TV, but I remember him fondly he would just

Randomly pop up on commercial television. You've just been watching some, you know

Pretty interesting drama on television and then suddenly big Kev's yelling at you to buy some sort of multi-purpose spray

It was pretty exciting so I can see why he was so g'd up

Okay, and do you have fun to a fondness for them or are they just like a thing that existed at a time?

nostalgically, yes

Because when I was a kid

I don't think I knew much better or I was growing up in that kind of environment of watching commercial TV

Like I'd watch shows on ABC and SBS and like ABC kids talking like when I was really young

So I knew what commercial free television was but it was just kind of an accepted thing

like I don't think kids now particularly would

Appreciate it so much if they're just watching a lot of YouTube or walking away from the TV with their phones or something in families

nowadays

but when broadcast TV was on like you of course both would know this and a lot of people listening that

ads came on and then you would just kind of

Have to watch them or cop it or walk away or go to the toilet or get a snack or something

So to have entertaining people like that who broke up that monotony was quite fun

But nowadays I would find it obnoxious or like that's why you know

We argued with Jason about the presence of the mute button on that new Siri remote or newer Siri remote

If you do have to watch something in a stream where you know, you don't you can't stop it or you don't want to stop it

You want to mute it? So I hate it. Yeah, sorry hemispheric views listeners. That was your first answer

You heard there from Martin Feld a great answer, wasn't it? But I know I know you want more

So let's flip it over to Jason over in the United States and see what he's got to say

Jason what do you think? Thank you Andrew. Thank you for that question

I had to wait for the satellite feed to kick in so I could hear what you're asking for

It was pretty fast. I would think infomercials were probably I don't want to say invented here

But boy, do we have a lot of them like infomercials were just such a thing 80s 90s

Probably still I would say to some degree but not as much

The one you mentioned there are digital channels he devoted to yeah. Oh, wow, really? Geez, that's crazy

the knives were always like knives forever have been a thing of

we had one that was

It was called the Ginsu knife

And it was the same kind of crap where it was like you could chop a tomato

You could chop some lettuce you could chop a house in half and it's still sharp and it's like really

Okay, I don't believe you but sure and the catchphrases were always it was always call now. Mm-hmm and

Operators are standing by like there are just people

Just waiting for your call to get you this

amazing knife today for

1995 if you call in the next 34 minutes

There's always a time limit

Did you already have the really unsafe practice when they were demoing knives particularly with tomatoes where they would hurl?

Tomatoes into the air and just chop it in the air. Yeah, cuz that's how you make a salad

You just huck shit in the air and like slice it right through the air. It was like it was like fruit ninja

Yeah, the guy exactly like you like you Nick your uncle's artery next to you in the kitchen, but at least the salad's good

But I watched the dem till had the other day and it's like here's here's the lettuce. Here's the tomato. Here's the shoe

Here's the meat and you're yeah

Shoe. Yeah

They're like

Block and you're like well who's cutting a cinder block in their kitchen first, but okay, it's construction rated

Yeah, it's granted for those and there's always the important but wait, there's more

Mmm, which always kind of like thinking back on it now

You're trying to sell me this knife that can tell can do

Literally anything in my it'll solve all of my problems that I've ever had. It's only $20

Yet somehow that's still not good enough and you're telling me I have to have more to make this 20 bucks seem worth it

That seems a little sketch but okay, the other ones that you were talking about this. I'm just they're flooding into my mind

mmm Ron Popeil

He was hawking crap left and right there was the Ron Popeil pocket fisherman

Which was like a fishing rod that like collapsed that you'd put in your pocket, I guess

So if you were, you know out for a walk and said, oh, there's a pond. I

Would love to catch a fish

You could just pull that thing out and you know cast your line and grab dinner, I guess

Do you have a catch cry? Yeah, he well, I don't know for that one, but he had like another like rotisserie

Cooker thing, I guess I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was this set it and forget it

Was like the big thing. It was always like you just turn this magic dial

Leave for a weekend come back and you'd have like roast ready for Sunday dinner or something. It's just magic

The George Foreman grill. That's a that was a big one. Yep the the oxy clean guy. That was later

That was a big one. Did you have ever doers? No, I don't think so

Oh, it's just one of those stupid ad machines where you know, you fold it. Oh, yeah for sure

We had that was that was yeah

That was a different kind of set and forget because you set it under there and then forget that you ever had what's her name?

With the with the leg thing. Oh

She was very

Jane Fonda probably it was like a big spring

You would like squeeze your legs together or something and I was supposed to like fix your life I guess I don't know

The other one was flow B that came to mind. That was the

It was like a haircut thing that attached to your vacuum

So you'd like cut your hair with it and it would like it suck the hair suck his scalp off

that was another one and then the last one that that flooded to me was

Miss Cleo

was on

one of these infomercial things forever and she was a psychic and

She was a pay-per-minute

psychic which sounds

highly illegal

But okay

and

she would always say like call me now and she had like she had this I'll pop to put a YouTube video and like you

Can't reproduce it. But once you hear it, you just know like oh, that's that's miss Cleo

But it was this it was one of those ones where they would do the whole spiel and then there would be like the fine print

That you couldn't read on a CRT TV that was you know that big back in the day

But you knew that there was a lot of like we're not responsible for any of the crap that you're about to waste your money on

So yeah big big

infomercial

Culture here in the 80s and 90s for sure

I remember you mentioning the you know, call call now operators standing by the sort of person that I was I remember

investing too many thinking hours as a kid into like how many operators do they have and is it like a

Call center environment and they just pant like panels of banks of phones and then when they say call within the next 30 minutes

I was like, how do they know when the ads been on like they just actually TV

What do they have like a like a chart that says we're gonna show you at it 12 32

I always thought I used to think about this stuff constantly. I was like who's watching the clock on this 30 minutes

Yeah, and then later on something it was I was much older and I was like, hang on that's probably just all bullshit

There's like one guy and you just like yeah, sure

It's good that you were thinking about it because they'd be adults who went. Oh my god. I've got half an hour

Yeah, not to mention the ad ran every 15 minutes

I

Always remember these fondly as a kid because on Good Morning, Australia, which had Burt Newton Australian listeners will know

I'm Newton was massive TV personality, but I don't know all the ins and outs of the politics of it

But Jason we're talking about someone who was one of the kings of Australian TV for a while

He kind of had his break with Graham Kennedy on his show and he was like the preceding I suppose king of television

It was always known as the Australian King of television

But Burt Newton had all of these kind of prime time kind of comedy

Compare and hosting positions and then he was kind of relegated to channel 10 morning TV

And I think he was quite shitty about it

but he

dressed up the whole thing kind of mocked the whole process on the show and Moira was the woman who ran all of the

infomercials on that and he would always

overly swanky introductions to it like and now to Moira and he just kind of gave it this whole kind of cheesy look and I

Was like this is a guy who was mocking the whole format on the show that includes it

So big respect to him at the time and it actually made morning TV fun

Nothing like that now thinking about that the the call bank

Did you all have like telethons where it was on TV and there'd be somebody like?

Trying to get money for something and they'd actually have the people like with all the little phones

Literally in Perth we still have that

It's still an annual tradition and it raises

Millions of dollars like no joke

It's like the biggest fundraising thing in in the state and it raises heaps for children's medical research

There's like eight people with phones like there's no way all these there are eight people are taking these calls that are presumably

Telethons in my memory are always a thing on American TV or in the Simpsons mocking the fact that they happened in the United States

I don't recall ever seeing one in New South Wales. I feel like that was that was a big thing here for a while

Still one here in Perth. It's it's you look you'll find the link in the show notes. Seriously

It raises so much money keeping the dream alive in WA. We have a telethon kids Institute here in Perth and that's no joke

Listeners if you bring in the next half hour in the following number Jason, what's the number that is?

4-0

5-5

Actual

And then I quickly had a thought that maybe that's not the best idea

Is it should I give my cell phone number on a public podcast? Is that a good idea or a bad idea?

No, that's a bad idea. Okay

Yeah, then. Yeah, don't call me call Andrew. It's a plus four zero

eight two nine

And then some other numbers X

Seven point something. Yeah -

Did you all have the

CD scam there in Australia where there was like the membership you would join and you'd pay

Something per month and you'd get like X discs and basically everybody got screwed at the end of the day

I'm gonna one way or another. Did you have that as well? I remember reading about the American scam

I know we had some here, but they never seemed quite as scammy. It wasn't like a full-on club

It was more like they were probably like just like legit pay for a service get a thing

More fun. It was cool now and get the entire

MASH DVD set, you know that kind of thing. It wasn't the

Music a month club, but that's a thing. That's a thing here in the Illawarra. You can ring the local station

It's like well, it's not just the station. It's called the wind network

It's like a huge regional network

But if you're in the local office

You can get Crawford's DVDs to get your full 20 volume DVD set of the Sullivan's the Sullivan's people ring up and get it

Yeah, if you practice like our wartime, Australia

Ah

Back when TV was good, it's it's classic, but that's not a scam

That's actually like octogenarians ringing up to get their favorite series from decades ago on

goodness knows how many

here like if you like like

What's a show like maybe like the the new Yankee workshop, which was like a woodworking show in the 80s 90s

Whatever at the end of the show

they'd always say like for a VHS copy of this show and instructions, please write to like whatever and then for like

$30 or something. They'd send you a VHS of what you just watched and then like instructions or something

It was yeah, that was like totally a thing Wow. That is cool. Brilliant. Honestly, Andrew your printer is looking pretty normal now

Don't know

I guess that's a that's a that's a wrap. That was great. It's a wrap on

108 0 1 0 8 insert title here extra zeros shit

3 count us down -

Yeah, okay good

Good 3 2 1