We learn about Angela's guilty pleasure and Brent's life-changing news!
LINKS:
LINKS:
- McDonald's Bagel Breakfast Sandwiches Commercial (1999) - YouTube
- Steak and egg bagels
- Man accused of stealing, swallowing $800K diamond earrings previously stole from Tiffany & Co. - YouTube
- Suspect steals and swallows $700k worth of jewellery
- Solid gold toilet stolen from Blenheim Palace - YouTube
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This is The Lodge, episode lucky 13 for March 11th, 2025. 25. Well, streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, we greet you all a good morning, a good evening, whenever your timeline may fall. time-appropriate greetings indeed to one and all. This is The Launch. My name is Chris. And I'm Angela. We got a Brent here, too. Hello, Brent Lee. So much to get into today. But we have a few things everyone needs to know before we get airborne. This show is live. Thanks for including me on the countdown. It's a whole other experience. With a mumble room, 1130 a.m. Pacific, 2.30 p.m.
Eastern time. I like that. And 7.30 p.m. UTC at jblive.tv or in your podcast in 2.0 app of choice. We'll be live right in there. Then this here show releases for download on a Wednesday morning. Come on in here and chat with us in that there mumble room before and after the show and listen during the show. Ask your questions, suggest topics, direct line for our members as well. And we always have the launch chat room going, the Launch HQ, which is linked at the top of our website, weeklylaunch.rocks, as well as our back catalog and links to other things. It's a website with links, weeklylaunch.rocks. It's a weird URL, and you're probably a weird user of it. Weeklylaunch.rocks.
Andrews, it's been another week. Yeah. And one of the things we set out to talk about on this show is a very, very important topic, one of your guilty food pleasures. Yes. And this is a story that goes back to the 1990s. McDonald's first introduced this innovation in 1999. Oh, my gosh. Uh-huh. I did not realize that. Yep. When I worked there was the first time. It was. Okay. It was. The rest of the world was worried about Y2K bugs, and McDonald's was focused on the future. Introducing a whole new idea in breakfast. New breakfast bagel sandwiches. Only McDonald's brings you our tender, juicy steak egg and cheese bagel, our zesty Spanish omelet bagel with sausage, and the classic taste of our ham egg and cheese bagel.
Yeah. Three big breakfast sandwiches, all on a toasted bagel baked fresh daily at McDonald's. Three challengers, one remains strong. What do you think, Bren? You got any initial reactions there? Even I'm getting all nostalgic over here. Those kids. They're big now. Hmm. Hmm. But had anybody ever done steak, egg, cheese with a special zesty sauce? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So the thing is, this innovation, which had a steak patty, a folded egg, grilled onions, melty cheese, and a signature breakfast sauce on a toasted bagel, it wasn't always to be, was it? This is not a big deal.
Well, that's fun. But you discovered this love while you worked at McDonald's. Yes, yes. Yeah, well, you know, while I worked at McDonald's, we can almost literally see from the studio here, you always got a free meal. And I would load up this steak bagel with so much soy butter and sauce and onions. And it was so good. And then it just disappeared forever. And then I don't even know when, but sometime in the last year it came back. Oh, I looked it up. It's quite the story. So McDonald's began phasing out their beloved bagel steak sandwich in various regions. We don't really know the exact timeline. But based on reports, the steak bagel may have been removed from some menus as early as 2020.
It was largely unavailable by then. Got any secrets? And they said maybe it was supply chain challenges, limited use of steak and other menu items. You know, it wasn't very cost effective. But a campaign, this is real, was launched by the fans of the steak bagel, including a change.org petition that gained 25,000 signatures. And they launched social media groups to campaign McDonald's. And it worked. the fans of the sandwich successfully brought back the steak bagel in late 2022 in certain regions. I'm also headed to Spain. And by February of 2025, the steak, egg, and cheese bagel was officially available nationwide due to overwhelming demand.
It is so good. No, you don't have to because I'm right there with you. Good. It's got fans. It's got a half pound steak, thinly sliced or shaved, one and a half tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce Montreal steak seasoning garlic powder and pepper one white onion thinly sliced four tablespoons of butter four eggs four slices holy crap of American cheese a half cup of mayo tablespoon of yellow mustard a half teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce fresh dill salt and pepper to taste. So there's only two pieces of cheese on each bagel. Yeah.
And it's not four bagels. That you could put it back. I think this is a double one. This must be a double one. And it was like a small SUV. But mayonnaise grows. That's what I saw. Well, that's what they make the special sauce about. I know. I told myself that it wasn't mayonnaise. That's how I'm able to eat it. You're comfortable with it being like a soy sauce, but not a mayo sauce. It wasn't large, but neither am I. I bet you do. Oh, yeah. I 100%. This was the very first conference, tech conference I'd ever been to. Oh.
And it was 100% for JB. And nowhere near where I lived. I guess it was the sauce and the onions. Because I lived in Northern Ontario at the time. The steak, too. Like, I've only had one bad bagel where the steak had. Like, something. But my brother lived out here. There you go. Only one bad one and all bad. On the western side of Canada. I'm not even close to the coast. But, like, much, much, much, much, much closer. And, I mean, Chris sold the show. I'd rather have a real egg. This is the JB event. But I'm getting older in age. I've got to go to that at some point. And, you know, I have to say a huge name to my brother.
He's like, no, you're out here. Just make this happen. Rent a car. Figure it out. Just get out there. So I ended up renting a car and driving like crazy and sleeping in weird. Random places. Because I didn't have tons of money back then. And I just made it work. And, you know, it's pretty life-changing. It kind of would limit him from enjoying something like this. But I'm curious if you ever just throw caution to the wind or maybe it's a totally dietary compatible guilty pleasure that you have a big like for me, I used to don't make it anymore.
But my fast food guilty pleasure was the Jack in the Box bacon burger. Remember the one that had the bacon bits and the bacon strips? Love that thing. Not there anymore. And then now. So my guilty fast food. And this is this is kind of bad. I admit it. it's the really horrible tacos that's true. Okay I was going to say if you don't say the tacos the stupid tacos they are so bad sometimes I get the curly fries and they taste like tacos or a hash brown it tastes like the tacos and it's so gross I don't know how I know I don't know how sometimes. I do extra cheese too.
Yeah side note well those are a couple big topics I think I'll start with the weather because you know you say it's big weather but on holidays like I mean it was exciting there was a little tiny. Bit of snow No, but our definitions of winter are going to be a little different. We still managed to do it. So it's just really funny. Because for me, this is like a sunny holiday. I don't do it as often anymore. But I'm curious if you have one, Brent. That's been nice for you then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, mild. Definitely mild in comparison.
Oh, God, yeah. He dips them in mayo. Okay. Why is it that every time I come, the news is crazy nonstop? The last time I was here, if you remember, the then soon-to-be-president got shot. Oh, yeah, when we were doing our Spokane meeting. So it was a little crazy, and then I come back, and all this crazy stuff. We should probably underscore the fry thing. So he will eat fries, and then he will save the onion fries. He'll incorporate those fries into some sort of ad hoc meal that he made. Cuisine. Yeah. And they'll have like just fries and it'll be like eggs with fries or something. In comparison. And so I come here just this constant influx of craziness.
I've never seen anybody treat fries as precious as you do. At least that's my perspective and I'm having a hard time making sense of it. The adversaries in the chat room says, they're just crunchy potatoes. What's the big deal? They're just crunchy potatoes. They're greasy, crunchy potatoes. What's that? All right. Boost in. We want to hear your guilty food pleasure. It doesn't have to be fast food, but you know we want to hear about it. Could be anything. Maybe it's not even a food. Maybe it's like a drink. I guess Red Bull would probably be another one of mine. Sugar-free Red Bull.
But let us know. You can use the Fountain app to make it easy or go grab Breeze, B-R-E-E-Z mobile. And then you just need to grab a few stats with something like Strike or River. I need to go back home just for like a news holiday. Support the show and we'll read it on the show. It'll be a fun one. So what is your guilty pleasure? Don't you dare. Tell us all about it. Your food guilty of pleasure. Yeah, we'll stick to food for now. For now. All right. So while we were in California, we had one day where the conference had begun to wrap up and we had about a half day of free time.
And Hadiyah and I were brainstorming because the boys were still in bed and we were brainstorming. What do we want to do today? And we kept coming up with all the kind of not bad, but sort of tourist kind of ideas. Yeah. And the serious challenge is, it's not just a cliche, traffic is horrible. And so anywhere you go, you got to add, and I'm not kidding, if it's a 12-mile drive, it's a 30, 35-minute drive to get there. So about 30 minutes to get 12 miles. And so, you know, if you're going to go somewhere that's an hour away, could be two hours of driving, it's like, we just don't have time for that.
I wanted to do something that would be really memorable, that would actually genuinely be fun. because we had worked hard. The conferences started very early. And then the one day where we didn't have to start early, we were very grateful to have a very special breakfast meeting, but that started at 7. So like every day was a really early day, and then we're up late. And so we were kind of worn out. I just wanted to do something that would kind of get us going, maybe get us outside. And at first we were trying to come up with something that would just be really torture for producer Jeff.
because that would make it fun that would make it fun yeah we could take him somewhere that he just hates to go you know but we really couldn't come up with him because he's you know he's pretty easy going like we couldn't really come up with anything that would drive him crazy. Yeah, right. Just being in California. So then we started thinking, well, what else could we do? And then we thought, well, what if we kidnapped Brent and Wes and we didn't tell them where we were going? And Jeff's mom's house is 40 minutes away. It's one of the quickest, maybe it was even less than that.
One of the shortest drives of all of our options was Jeff's mom's house. And at Jeff's mom's house was a van that has been parked since about 2019, a camper van. It's a 1990 Dodge Ram 250 with a nice, good-looking frame, good-running engine, but it's been parked for like six years. And in the California sun, getting beat down upon. So it has sort of degraded over time. But we knew it was likely that if we got there and spent an hour with this thing, we could probably get it running again. At the moment, it was not running. But we had a sense if we spent a little bit of time, we at least had a shot.
And then if we could get it running, we'd know if it was viable for Brent to potentially take this van off of Jeff's mom's hands because they've been trying to get rid of this van for a while. And so we hadn't told him. As we show up, we're like, Brent, look at this van. Isn't that interesting? And Brent's like, yep, sure is. Look at that. And then he's like, wait, why are we stopping? When did you realize that we had duped you? Yeah, yeah. No, no. Not a big deal that it's going to slow that down. He only wants to make sports cars, I think. Yeah, sports cars and...
No. Yeah, you're pretty easygoing, so I figured we wouldn't have to really twist your arm too much. I know we're not doing that thing. That's true. We're not doing that because we don't care about money. Yeah, we flipped a quick Yui. Yeah. yep, yeah so we step out and we start assessing the state of the van. Headlamp check yep we got well you gotta give me a warning we got bright bread the left the right one's out sorry i didn't mean to blast your crotch with light so chris what's this good all right if we had three words to describe the current state of the vehicle what would they be um hopeful dilapidation is two words yeah um it's surprisingly good condition potential project with highlights um that's four isn't it getting all dirty i'm not in the right mindset project you know my folks just got a new oven didn't even come with a paper manual really yeah they don't even bother anymore i feel displeased my father if i would have told brent where we were coming i could have brought ourselves some gloves I don't usually do.
So it's the one thing we don't have labeled is the very thing we have a question about. Get out of the way. That was the downside right there is Brent is a guy that likes to, you know, dress appropriately for working on mechanical stuff. Rightly so because it's very dirty work. Which I think he's doing all right at. No gloves. He's not making profit. And we're crawling around on the ground. Wes says in the live chat because he was with us obviously he says I figured something was up when Chris started kicking the tires and trying the doors of what I thought was a random stranger's van. So we're looking at this thing. Externally, it's rough, right?
It's been exposed to the elements for a while. The back tires are so flat that you can't roll. The rims are on the concrete. So we wanted to see what kind of shape the motor was in. And I think we were pretty pleasantly surprised. The first thing you checked was the oil, which was clean as if it had just gotten brand new oil. Then you checked the transmission fluid, slightly low, but perfectly clean. like, brand new, right out of the bottle. Then we took off the doghouse, because these engines, they come into the driver and passenger area, and there's like a little mound there, and you take that off, and it exposes the top of the engine, and we got a chance to look at the state of the air filter.
We dug in, and I think we were pretty surprised. Oh, dude, come on. No, no squirrels or anything. That's so clean. That's unbelievable. Look how clean it is in there. The carb looks a little, you know, needs some little cleanup, but it's actually really clean inside. Super impressive. We got the doghouse on. Here you go, Chris. Oh, my. Are you kidding me? Is that brand new off the shelf? Yeah. It's super clean in the carb. Wow. But it wouldn't start. Do we know how open XAI is? Fluids look great. Obviously, it had gotten service right as they parked it. Like, when does that happen? Yeah.
If you could get this thing running, you wouldn't need to do an oil change for 3,000 miles. That's just crazy for a 1990 vehicle like this. But we weren't sure why it wouldn't start. We brought out like the big guns. They had like this industrial car battery charger. It was obviously a dead battery. And we started to try to put some juice into that. What we do know is that we have a very dead battery. And we have been pumping about 40 amps into it every time we try to start it. And then even 200 amps on a couple occasions. But I think the battery is just pretty close to totally dead.
So Jeff is going to take a drone battery that he happens to have on him because, of course, he does. Even though he didn't know we were going. Well, it's for my soldering iron. Of course. What? So we're going to try to jump. You know, in case he went to the beach. Yeah. We're going to try to jump this 1990, almost 4,000-pound van with a, what is that, like a 10-ounce drone battery? It's a 1.5-amp-hour drone battery. With a tiny drone battery. But we don't have jumper cables for this because we didn't plan on this. So what Jeff is going to do is go ahead and take apart a household extension cord and convert that into jumping cables that we can then directly wire to the battery and attempt to start. This is going to trigger so many people.
Why did we need this to happen for the show to publish again? We knew that it wouldn't run long, and we knew it had six-year-old gas in it. But what we were trying to determine is, does the engine turn? Is it seized or does the engine actually turn? Because if the engine turns, it's worth working on. If the engine doesn't turn, we don't need to go any further. And so what we immediately honed in on is, let's just see, even though it's not going to run, we don't expect it to start. Let's just see if it sounds like it could give it a go. And we just needed a lot of voltage because this thing is a 1990 V8, small block, big engine, really powerful starter.
This is what we've been waiting for. Bubble, bubble, boys. Go ahead. Okay, turning on. Do it. Crank it. That's way more power. Crank it. There we go. It's smoking, but we got it. Okay, kill it, Brent. So we I think we're looking it's dead now Brent. I think we're looking at a voltage issue. Yes battery battery But it turned oh yeah, so the starters not get enough power. That's cool I think you can argue this smoking. Yeah He's gotten to where he is with the team of people that he has because he's constantly looking into the future. What we're using right now of their products, they've kind of moved on to something new.
So that's sort of, battery for this van that we don't know. 18 months down the road. So he's kind of stuck in future land. We've got a car here. We've got jumper cables. But that's also one of his strengths. Yeah, we had like a little four-cylinder Toyota. It just could not produce enough power. Yeah, I mean, it's got him this far. Yeah, it wasn't in great shape. The rental. Yeah, it wasn't in great shape. Yeah, I know. So we didn't want to push it too far. So when we realized that wasn't going to cut it, we just decided, let's go get a battery. And we went to O'Reilly's and picked up the cheapest battery we could possibly find, which is $180.
He got him a lot of money up to this point. And got it wired up. He's not in it for that. Though. You could immediately tell things were in better shape because, like, the dash lights came on properly and things like that. So we felt... Yeah, there was a bunch of relays clicking there. Yes. Yeah. The relays stopped clicking weird. Yeah. So we knew we were probably in better shape. If it was going to work, this would do it. What do I need? We're going to crank it. You ready? Yeah, crank it. What do you need me for? I'm just letting you know. It's a bit... Are you ready, Brent? It's a bit airy in here, Mike. Fuck off. Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of dirt. If it turns, it's gonna blow a lot.
The doghouse is open inside, so it's right at Brent's legs. Like, right at his knees. You can put it back on. Are we ready? Yeah, we're ready. Here we go. Sounds good. It's good, it's good, it's good, breathe it. I did get a little dirty because it blew all over me because like the engine's in the cab. Which makes no sense to me. Yeah, well that's why it's got a doghouse. I have not once used it. You can just touch it while you're driving down the road. Well yeah, you gotta be able to adjust to everything. Okay, we're starting to get a little belt squeak, but not bad.
Not yet. Yeah. Well yeah, right, like I mean Star Trek they got an engine room. You just got your engine room in your cab. Right there. It's easy to get to. Even the belt squeak worked itself out after a couple of minutes. Everyone should do this. After about five minutes, it just has to come like it had been driving all day. I feel like it would make the world a better place. It was amazing. After six years. And even with the bad gas. Right. Yeah, we smelled the gas, and it smelled like fuel. It didn't smell like varnish. Wow, that's a good idea.
Oh right yeah that we did, yeah, yeah, I mean I thought the oh yeah plugged. I thought the pump would be fried. I thought the filters would be, or the injectors would be clogged up. Yeah, that opened the floodgates for me. I didn't realize it was carb-rated at first. I think because mostly I browsed the internet to try to find knowledge. So the way that it presents knowledge for me really works for my intention of how to work with the outer internet world. It was using that really fresh, good fuel. I think that did help. Totally changed the way I looked at gaining knowledge. Then we started looking at the interior.
Figuring out what works electrically. What doesn't. Looking at the frame, which was in great shape. So I'm advocating even so I think the new battery was on the phone with my father It's quite yeah, I gotta give you a tutorial about this thing Actually. Yeah, I put the dino juice right down the gullet It's kind of amazing ate that up and then it just started running off the old gas like it was Like we just filled it up last week and it sounded amazing heard. Yep. Yep. Few projects a little bit of work But how you feel? I think we got ourselves. What do we call this thing an independent?
Yeah, yeah I think we're going to do it. And he made an offer. Only 100? He's blaming me now. Just working them, working them, working them. I have several different directions. The first one I think I'll take you in is why do you think the Apple stuff isn't being received very well? It was true to Jeff's word. The engine was in great shape. You know, I don't even think we said, but like 60,000 miles on the thing total. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the generator had like six hours on it. So the generator is brand new. And it's got, you know, propane furnace. It's got an air conditioner that still works.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay, so what is the plan? So, Brent, you bought it. Yeah, he's buying it. Well, we have to go down there and exchange money. I see. But there's a handshake. I wondered if it's as good as done. I see the handshake. An effect of trying to do AI mindfully. Yeah, that's the problem. Because it would take a little more time or be a bit more, you'd have to be more careful to implement things in a way that we're privacy respecting, et cetera. Yeah. We kind of made like a parts list. So obviously new tires. That's number one, right? Then we got to find out the state of the brakes.
We don't know until we can actually get the thing to roll, but the brake pedal pumped. So, you know, it's probably going to be a few 600 bucks maybe-ish of tires. So I'm thinking the rough strategy would be we don't want to wait until it's unbelievably hot in California, especially in L.I., And because we're going to be working on the ground, right, on the cement. I think this AI hype's here to stay for a bit. So I'm thinking the strat is. I think past the new year for sure. When Brent comes back for Linux Fest. No, you said like you hope it ends by the end of this year. I think leading into 2026, it's still going to go strong.
A couple other parts that we research that fail frequently on this thing. And we put that in the back of the GTI. We do a barrel run down to Jeff. And then we get into. I think it needs a general improvement for people to keep. another eight hours using it but it's being implemented get. The van working hopefully in one. Day everywhere in ways that means that you can't stop that ball from rolling. Don't leave him behind yeah. You can't just like strip all this stuff there is yeah it's in he's got a bunch of storage it's in like every single commercial product out there he's got to start the process and there is a bit of a process to actually like bring the van into Canada officially and legally and we're just going to see it as another tool but I think it's going to be you know look at the amount of money that, that Europe is trying to spend on AI spend just today. And we saw, what, $800 billion?
It does say independent on the side of it. Last week, they're spending on... The road track independent. I don't even know what they're trying to do with it. But it certainly has an AI earmark on it. So I think... Yeah, it is the bang bus, isn't it? Yeah, it's true. That's got to be the bang bus, I think. That's pretty good. I'm really excited because it's a rare opportunity where there's definitely work because there's been some water damage, but Brent knows how to work with wood and he knows how to do those kinds of repairs. So it's kind of in his wheelhouse.
Like if I were to buy it, I would need Brent's help to fix it up, right? So it'd be like, Brent, come down here and fix this for me. I mean, just from that part, it makes a lot of sense. The thing also has potential to be a mobile recording studio. The back door opens up, and then there's seats right there. So you could actually open the back door, put a table there, microphones, and have a nice little recording spot. It could be really cool. But it's going to be a project. The nice thing is it's a minimum viable amount of effort to get it roadworthy.
And then it's everything you want to do on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and there's... Yeah, you probably would just to modernize it. Yeah. Yep, yep. But the car I... Body frame yeah, yeah, I think what you're looking at mechanically for this it's like probably some hoses are going to be old some seals are going to need to be replaced some of that will be some work to get to but the actual work itself is all within your wheelhouse that's exciting it's it's like you can see the work and it seems work that's addressable unless there's something we don't know yet but that's why we're going to do a chase on the return home yeah that's true it's going to be some fun stories all right let's take a break and feature a value for value track this is hocus pocus by trickster.
Pardon? Amazon. That's smart. It is and our baller booster this week is mr adversaries 17 with 56 000 sats, That might be the show's biggest boost yet. Thank you, adversaries. For the dumb time machine thought experiment, I would go back to the era of the early steam locomotives, so 1880s to early 1920s. I would love to be on a train crew armed with my current knowledge of how to run one already. Oh, I probably wouldn't need to learn too much in terms of being an engineer or even a fireman. Really, I'm learning something about you here. Plus, it was the Old West, which was one of my favorite.
Can I ask you how that is? Did your interaction felt? Did it feel actually more efficient than talking to a human? Because you didn't have to wait for them to figure out. I want to mention the questions that we ask on the show. You can answer them at any point. If you're in the back catalog. You're far behind, anything like that, boost them in. Because they will go to the third episode and we are happy to read them. Yeah. I go down. Now, if my family computer counts, and well, that was my first computer that I remember using. We asked, what was your first computer?
And it was a Dell Dimension 5000. Now, keep in mind, I'm only 10-ish years older than your oldest. Sorry to make you guys feel old. Oh. That's all right. The first computer that was actually mine was a custom-built machine centered around an 810-7890K because I was too poor for a dedicated video card at the time. We all have integrated graphics. It happens. This was during high school. So the money I did get from the job was saved up. And then I later bought a 1050 Ti. Ooh, nice, the Ti. he says regarding that CTO that got hired in the first story it sounds like someone had a bunch of Microsoft stock and wanted to pump the value up yeah yeah, that's very true thank you adversaries appreciate that support that was a great boost j cube 3 is here with 19,000 sats but isn't that because he says something they have so many reasons you need to return things and he says he's loving like.
Isn't that just a sign. Thank you j cube okay all right mr mayhem's here in our booth with 2,345 SATs. I don't know about this whole Microsoft thing, but my wife spends something like three hours a night in what they're calling pajama time in that clip. I'd never heard her use that term. So remember we were talking about the Microsoft AI and doctors going home and doing pajama time? Something absolutely has to change. She's a pediatric BCBA and already spends more time writing notes than with the kids. Can't imagine what it's like for a medical doctor. I just feel sick that the direction this is going is towards more data scraping and cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding is a good term for it. It was success. Also plus one for the Collins. Hopefully I can get my membership back going before then. Well, we'll have two lines. That's amazing. There's always more. If you become a member, then you get the bootleg of this show and you get a lot more. Side note on the data scraping. I finally utilized the wellness benefit at my work, which is a $50 reimbursement for self-care, right? I got a massage yesterday. And it was amazing. It was. And so I went to do the reimbursement process, and it's Benipas, I think. And then it uses Plaid, and Plaid wanted me to sign into my bank, like give my credentials.
And I'm like, right? I'm like, this is so gross. Like, so is my employer harvesting my financial? No, but Plaid is. They give everything. So I—, No, I looked up. Right. No, no. I was like, OK, I just I'm going to eat that fifty dollars then, you know. But no, I was able to just enter my routing number and account number for where the money needs to go. The trick there. Isn't it though? Like how many people are actually providing their credentials? I have once until I realized. Oh, yeah. And then now. So you probably did what I do now is like if you do other for the bank. So it asks you to name your bank.
And if you name a bank, it makes you do the online login. But if you say other, like it's not in your list dummy, then they just let you do the bank routing. Yeah, it was just at the bottom you had to scroll down to actually see it. It looks like the screen is complete. But you can scroll down and you can say, just use account number. Isn't it gross? I was like, I don't want this access. Database they have. Well, I have a little extra context for you if you need it. So Montreal, you know, that's your favorite for fishing. Chris, you've never been more wrong.
Not so long ago, there was a big problem with maple syrup theft. Anytime I went out on a walk, I had a few guys following me. Which actually was worth a heck of a lot more. One million here. I was wondering. I feel like maybe crows could be the exception of the rule. But like this, whatever these little small birds are. They're deploying poop warfare. Yeah, so there's something called the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. I can't stand it. And then, whenever birds are constantly fighting with the eagles and the hawks. They just need to knock it off. was stolen value at $18.7.
Million at the time. and the war starts back up again. I just, I can't tolerate it, Jasko. Yeah. When this clip first played, I was like, I'm just full of interesting stories. I don't care about olive oil. I took Abby on the Centennial Trail. If you're not touching our maple syrup, then you're fine. But I have a theory about this. And there's an eagle's nest right there. Oh, yeah. And there's an eagle in the tree. And on the way to the dock, I was like, oh. It looks like he has taken a crack. Right? The low-hanging fruit and you gotta go for those olives. You'll know.
So we get to the dock where we have a different angle and it starts making the weirdest sound. Not the freedom eagle sound. Yeah, it was weird. A cackle. And then there were two. It wasn't one the whole time. It was that weird perch. They were having a good time. They were. You'll know when they're pooping because you won't understand how much one animal can poop until you've seen an eagle poop. You could kind of guess an elephant poops a lot. There's probably a lot of poop because an elephant's big, so that makes sense there'd be a lot of poop. An eagle isn't as big as an elephant, but it poops as much as an elephant.
I mean, it's an unbelievable... But I suppose if you're eating an entire animal's whole, there's a lot to poop out. Why do we know about the consistency or the amount? Where are you guys going to get this? I grew up on a lake for a while, and I watched. Oh, sure. I watched. I watched the whole circle of life. Let me tell you what. Well, it sure did. We can move on from that. We'll move on from that. Jimmy V, the Value for Value Artist, comes in with 2001 sets. Thanks for playing my track and saying nice things. Waka, waka, waka. That's a totally West Coast track recorded in California.
Vancouver, BC. And Vancouver, BC. That's awesome. Thank you, Jimmy V for boosting. I love it when we hear from you. Seems like such a strange occurrence. I want to know a lot more. Bob the Hush here with 4,000 sats. That's just enough details here to make it kind of juicy. Thanks for the reminder on the value and value. That's kind of like the cheap old lot. The amount doesn't do much justice, but it's a start. Cheers. Nice. Yes, cheers to you. WotC, a.k.a. Ryan's here with a Jar Jar boost. Like in the new show, keep it up. And Sire's here with 2,000 sats. No accounts unless it's absolutely needed. I agree on that one.
I really hate creating accounts at different places. I encourage everyone to browse their password managers and delete accounts they don't need anymore. I've deleted 40 of them in 2024. What was the question that was being answered? I think your tech pet peeves. Oh, yes. Perfect. That's a good one. You know i that's why i don't love having a bunch of stuff through google but i sometimes decide just to sign in through your passengers don't want another freaking logging out there. Yeah you know what happened to me is uh you know subscriptions yeah and i don't do them through my apple id because it'll charge you right and so i i love how jeep is like the website you know back to roots. There's no way an app to do that.
And even an app if you put your account on hold. It goes places other vehicles. It still charges you. So now when you It told me that I had to cancel in iTunes and I'm like how would I even do that? And so I finally logged in on the desktop and canceled that. But now I just have access for the next three months even though I'm not using it. You probably save a little money doing the subscription outside of the iTunes store because a lot of times I tack 30% on because of Apple's fees. Yeah. Thank you sir. Good to hear from you in a good one. Tomato comes in with a Spaceballs boost. That's one, two, three, four, five sats.
Enjoying the show so far, and it's nice to hear from Angela again. Awesome. Thank you, Tomato. It's nice to hear from you. Faraday Fedora came in below the cutoff, but I wanted to cover it because he's a long-time listener. He says, live mini-boost. Sorry, not a whole lot of lightning stats on my node right now. But AI is the tech that I hate. I can see its use once it's more fleshed out, but current products are hot garbage. It's more of an overarching question. Also, Angela, it'd be pretty funny if you get your hand re-aligned to more Christian. When has advertising ever made a product better?
Are you working toward that? Slowly I'm about a year behind it's one thing I want to do but I just keep I got diverted by like our ads and windows making windows you know you know I had an interesting realization is just about everybody I spoke to when I asked them at Planet Nixon scale so they're using an LLM daily yeah so there's something there like a chat GPT you know or they're using like Claude you know or, Grok Claude was the big one where we were at I think a lot of people using claude but yeah okay every day every day people are so how did the conversation go at some kind of adoption happening i don't think we're there yet i don't think we've hit mass market appeal yet but something's there.
Investigate the of the like only every other stuff, I don't think so oh that would be oh my goodness non-negotiable. Yeah. You stopped it at shit. They're trying to tell you. That little... That little geo we saw is starting to look sweeter and sweeter all the time. I agree. The thing that they're doing more and more now with linking to sources that you can quickly check to verify that it's getting it accurate is really helpful. But also it's just helpful in collating those sources because, you know, it's stuff you'd had to go find anyways. Yeah. I recently saw – so for those of us that do care about our privacy but still did 23andMe.
That's a funny – yeah. You can download your data as a raw export, and then you can bring it to other things like Genetic Genie, and it will tell you what – I'm forgetting. Like markers and stuff like that. Yeah, different potential problems that you might have or encounter. And somebody took the genetic genie data and put it through AI for an idea of how they can assist those different markers. Can you say more about the word permanent in this context? Here's my results. Help me come up with a plan. Interesting. And so it was like natural remedies and such.
Talk about personalized healthcare, right? Right. To your particular DNA profile. But are there enough sources backing up this recommendation? But you know what it did have in it? First of all, it used emojis to, like, make it very visually appealing. But then it also said, if you experience this, stop. If you, you know, notice this, do this. And, you know, like. It was surprisingly humanized. Yeah, that is nice. These are the things to watch out for, too, because sometimes you don't get that stuff. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how medical care, I guess, is just sort of both from how the doctors use it, but also how we as patients use it.
I've definitely used it to look up a few things. And I don't treat it as like, you know, doctor's advice, but I think it does help me actually understand the language and communicate better. So it's useful in that way. That's a great set of boosts. I think one of our better sets of boosts, everybody. Thank you so much. We could still use a few more of you out there streaming sats as you listen. We had nine total sat streamers. So our sat streamers brought in 4,333 sats. But our boosters, they made up the bulk of it this week with 19 unique senders. we stacked 112,324 sats which pretty good for a brand new baby show we really appreciate it there's lots of easy ways to get started I'm picturing maybe like a multi-package you can sign up for for like potential deaths as you get further and further details at jupiterbroadcaster.com slash boost, and then we'll read them on a future episode and we do love them you can answer previous questions as well we're happy to revisit old topics keeps the conversation going it's just logical thank you everybody, So check this out. I wanted to wrap up with this entrepreneur, absolute entrepreneur, a businessman in his own right for the modern times.
A man who is committed to a life problem. I think he could probably add like a taxi ride in New York with a taxi driver who has ads in the cab. He happens to look a bit like a professional athlete. He's in good shape, big guy. And he thought, I could go in and tell these people I'm a high roller professional athlete and they'll probably just believe me and show me the good stuff. And then maybe I can swipe. I want to investigate this permanent thing. So does it mean once you go down. You're permanently down there. And you don't get to come back up?
I think it all would have worked out just perfectly fine if it wasn't for the guy's beard. Oh, so like they're going to sink it and leave it there forever. It's his darn beard that got him in trouble. Well, and the fact that there was cameras, and the way he tried to hide the jewelry was a bit ridiculous. What about this story? A man tries to make off with nearly $800,000 in jewelry by swallowing it. So instead of going to Mars. He allegedly stole the pricey earrings from the Tiffany store at the Mall at Millennium. Fox 35's Hannah McKenzie is joining us live tonight.
So, Hannah, this suspect has an extensive criminal history. He sure does, Luann and John. He has been arrested multiple times. His criminal history for theft alone going back at least 13 years. One of the crimes out of Houston, pretty interesting. Detectives were able to pin him to the crime because a mask he used during a jewelry heist there was left behind at the scene. and inside, detectives found one single facial hair and were able to connect his DNA. I'm just picturing, like, what is the structure that would keep that pressure off our delicate humans?
So it's an image on the screen of his stomach in which gold jewelry is just sitting there chilling inside his gut. Well, you'll be safe on the lobes. And I didn't take it. I didn't take it. Well, as he was getting busted, he realized he didn't want to give up the price. Inside jathan gilder's stomach that's probably like that's almost 800 000 so it's just gonna reverberate like crazy video shows the 32 year old checking out the tiffany at the mall of millennia wednesday before snatching two pairs of earrings and booking it this employee was reportedly injured trying to stop him from leaving the store opd says he made it to a car and was headed for Texas when FHP arrested him in Washington County.
That's when troopers say he swallowed the stolen goods. So he swallows it and tries to get away. And, you know, earrings, too. So they got like pokey parts on them. I don't think so. I don't think so. And so I was looking at like these jewelry capers are always so crazy. Like we often think of like these big movie style. But they're always much, much crazier in real life. And I thought, okay, it doesn't get any crazier than trying to steal earrings and swallow them when you're caught, right? Think about when we were kind of, you invited me to be here today. And then like a day goes by.
I said, hey, what are we going to get into? And you said, I have no idea. And you go to the bathroom. You've got to check the results. You've got to go through the results to find the goods. And you don't really know if that's the right batch because sometimes it takes a while for things to make all the way through their system. So you may have to go through multiple bathroom batches before you actually find the earring. I mean, just think about, like, the actual implementation here. So I thought it can't get any crazier than this, right? Oh, no. Oh, no. It can. In fact, not too long ago, there was an even larger caper.
I think the best place to find me would be Linux Unplugged. A 60-year-old man stole a solid gold toilet. A solid gold toilet has been stolen from the birthplace of the former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. Yes, the $1.82 million 18-carat art installation was taken from Blenheim Palace. Blenheim Palace is normally packed with visitors at weekends, but it was shut to the public, effectively a crime scene, while police investigated one of the strangest burglaries they've ever come across. I love how the police have to play this straight, because it's an official robbery at a historic place, a Ballyham place.
And so they have to treat it like it. But you know behind the scenes they're laughing their butts off about a golden throne getting stolen, right? And this is what the intruders were after. An 18-carat gold toilet made by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Catalan. Police have confirmed that it's still missing. There will be an increased police presence in the local area, whilst officers and staff carry out inquiries into the circumstances. There is a thorough investigation in the process of being carried out. Visitors were still allowed access to the grounds of Blenheim, and many voiced their surprise at the theft.
I'm really shocked. I can't believe there's a million pound toilet that's been stolen, all gold. I wanted to go on it. I can't believe they managed to get into the palace as well. like i thought security here would be tight locked so yeah it's amazing that someone's been able to access it and be able to take it and it's not small is it that is quite shocking i'll have to admit i'll go back it'll be the highlight we were there the crime scene someone stole a million pound toilet that's this amazing story i think well. If you happen to know where the golden toilet is boost in and we'll relay it to the authorities it's real, Well, that just about does it for this week's episode. Brent, thanks for joining us.
Going to have to keep us up to date on how the Bang Bus adventures go. I don't know about you, Andrews, but I think it's time to go get a steak bagel sandwich. Well, it's already past the time, but I will get a loaded breakfast sandwich from Jack in the Box, I'm pretty sure. I'm glad you're covered. I'm glad you're covered. Links to what we talked about today, weeklylaunch.rocks. That's the website we have for you that you can get previous episodes. and also it posts there when we're about to go live. Yeah, live. That'll be next Tuesday. You can catch us in your podcast app and then get the download Wednesday morning if you like or plug in jblive.tv and tune in via the web.
Don't forget, we also have that live chat room that we're hanging out in all week and during the live stream. That's on our Matrix server. It is the Launch HQ, which you can find linked at Jupiter Broadcasting and our website as well. Thank you, everybody. From the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thanks for listening. and we'll see you right back here next week.
This is The Lodge, episode lucky 13 for March 11th, 2025. 25. Well, streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, we greet you all a good morning, a good evening, whenever your timeline may fall. time-appropriate greetings indeed to one and all. This is The Launch. My name is Chris. And I'm Angela. We got a Brent here, too. Hello, Brent Lee. So much to get into today. But we have a few things everyone needs to know before we get airborne. This show is live. Thanks for including me on the countdown. It's a whole other experience. With a mumble room, 1130 a.m. Pacific, 2.30 p.m.
Eastern time. I like that. And 7.30 p.m. UTC at jblive.tv or in your podcast in 2.0 app of choice. We'll be live right in there. Then this here show releases for download on a Wednesday morning. Come on in here and chat with us in that there mumble room before and after the show and listen during the show. Ask your questions, suggest topics, direct line for our members as well. And we always have the launch chat room going, the Launch HQ, which is linked at the top of our website, weeklylaunch.rocks, as well as our back catalog and links to other things. It's a website with links, weeklylaunch.rocks. It's a weird URL, and you're probably a weird user of it. Weeklylaunch.rocks.
Andrews, it's been another week. Yeah. And one of the things we set out to talk about on this show is a very, very important topic, one of your guilty food pleasures. Yes. And this is a story that goes back to the 1990s. McDonald's first introduced this innovation in 1999. Oh, my gosh. Uh-huh. I did not realize that. Yep. When I worked there was the first time. It was. Okay. It was. The rest of the world was worried about Y2K bugs, and McDonald's was focused on the future. Introducing a whole new idea in breakfast. New breakfast bagel sandwiches. Only McDonald's brings you our tender, juicy steak egg and cheese bagel, our zesty Spanish omelet bagel with sausage, and the classic taste of our ham egg and cheese bagel.
Yeah. Three big breakfast sandwiches, all on a toasted bagel baked fresh daily at McDonald's. Three challengers, one remains strong. What do you think, Bren? You got any initial reactions there? Even I'm getting all nostalgic over here. Those kids. They're big now. Hmm. Hmm. But had anybody ever done steak, egg, cheese with a special zesty sauce? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So the thing is, this innovation, which had a steak patty, a folded egg, grilled onions, melty cheese, and a signature breakfast sauce on a toasted bagel, it wasn't always to be, was it? This is not a big deal.
Well, that's fun. But you discovered this love while you worked at McDonald's. Yes, yes. Yeah, well, you know, while I worked at McDonald's, we can almost literally see from the studio here, you always got a free meal. And I would load up this steak bagel with so much soy butter and sauce and onions. And it was so good. And then it just disappeared forever. And then I don't even know when, but sometime in the last year it came back. Oh, I looked it up. It's quite the story. So McDonald's began phasing out their beloved bagel steak sandwich in various regions. We don't really know the exact timeline. But based on reports, the steak bagel may have been removed from some menus as early as 2020.
It was largely unavailable by then. Got any secrets? And they said maybe it was supply chain challenges, limited use of steak and other menu items. You know, it wasn't very cost effective. But a campaign, this is real, was launched by the fans of the steak bagel, including a change.org petition that gained 25,000 signatures. And they launched social media groups to campaign McDonald's. And it worked. the fans of the sandwich successfully brought back the steak bagel in late 2022 in certain regions. I'm also headed to Spain. And by February of 2025, the steak, egg, and cheese bagel was officially available nationwide due to overwhelming demand.
It is so good. No, you don't have to because I'm right there with you. Good. It's got fans. It's got a half pound steak, thinly sliced or shaved, one and a half tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce Montreal steak seasoning garlic powder and pepper one white onion thinly sliced four tablespoons of butter four eggs four slices holy crap of American cheese a half cup of mayo tablespoon of yellow mustard a half teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce fresh dill salt and pepper to taste. So there's only two pieces of cheese on each bagel. Yeah.
And it's not four bagels. That you could put it back. I think this is a double one. This must be a double one. And it was like a small SUV. But mayonnaise grows. That's what I saw. Well, that's what they make the special sauce about. I know. I told myself that it wasn't mayonnaise. That's how I'm able to eat it. You're comfortable with it being like a soy sauce, but not a mayo sauce. It wasn't large, but neither am I. I bet you do. Oh, yeah. I 100%. This was the very first conference, tech conference I'd ever been to. Oh.
And it was 100% for JB. And nowhere near where I lived. I guess it was the sauce and the onions. Because I lived in Northern Ontario at the time. The steak, too. Like, I've only had one bad bagel where the steak had. Like, something. But my brother lived out here. There you go. Only one bad one and all bad. On the western side of Canada. I'm not even close to the coast. But, like, much, much, much, much, much closer. And, I mean, Chris sold the show. I'd rather have a real egg. This is the JB event. But I'm getting older in age. I've got to go to that at some point. And, you know, I have to say a huge name to my brother.
He's like, no, you're out here. Just make this happen. Rent a car. Figure it out. Just get out there. So I ended up renting a car and driving like crazy and sleeping in weird. Random places. Because I didn't have tons of money back then. And I just made it work. And, you know, it's pretty life-changing. It kind of would limit him from enjoying something like this. But I'm curious if you ever just throw caution to the wind or maybe it's a totally dietary compatible guilty pleasure that you have a big like for me, I used to don't make it anymore.
But my fast food guilty pleasure was the Jack in the Box bacon burger. Remember the one that had the bacon bits and the bacon strips? Love that thing. Not there anymore. And then now. So my guilty fast food. And this is this is kind of bad. I admit it. it's the really horrible tacos that's true. Okay I was going to say if you don't say the tacos the stupid tacos they are so bad sometimes I get the curly fries and they taste like tacos or a hash brown it tastes like the tacos and it's so gross I don't know how I know I don't know how sometimes. I do extra cheese too.
Yeah side note well those are a couple big topics I think I'll start with the weather because you know you say it's big weather but on holidays like I mean it was exciting there was a little tiny. Bit of snow No, but our definitions of winter are going to be a little different. We still managed to do it. So it's just really funny. Because for me, this is like a sunny holiday. I don't do it as often anymore. But I'm curious if you have one, Brent. That's been nice for you then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, mild. Definitely mild in comparison.
Oh, God, yeah. He dips them in mayo. Okay. Why is it that every time I come, the news is crazy nonstop? The last time I was here, if you remember, the then soon-to-be-president got shot. Oh, yeah, when we were doing our Spokane meeting. So it was a little crazy, and then I come back, and all this crazy stuff. We should probably underscore the fry thing. So he will eat fries, and then he will save the onion fries. He'll incorporate those fries into some sort of ad hoc meal that he made. Cuisine. Yeah. And they'll have like just fries and it'll be like eggs with fries or something. In comparison. And so I come here just this constant influx of craziness.
I've never seen anybody treat fries as precious as you do. At least that's my perspective and I'm having a hard time making sense of it. The adversaries in the chat room says, they're just crunchy potatoes. What's the big deal? They're just crunchy potatoes. They're greasy, crunchy potatoes. What's that? All right. Boost in. We want to hear your guilty food pleasure. It doesn't have to be fast food, but you know we want to hear about it. Could be anything. Maybe it's not even a food. Maybe it's like a drink. I guess Red Bull would probably be another one of mine. Sugar-free Red Bull.
But let us know. You can use the Fountain app to make it easy or go grab Breeze, B-R-E-E-Z mobile. And then you just need to grab a few stats with something like Strike or River. I need to go back home just for like a news holiday. Support the show and we'll read it on the show. It'll be a fun one. So what is your guilty pleasure? Don't you dare. Tell us all about it. Your food guilty of pleasure. Yeah, we'll stick to food for now. For now. All right. So while we were in California, we had one day where the conference had begun to wrap up and we had about a half day of free time.
And Hadiyah and I were brainstorming because the boys were still in bed and we were brainstorming. What do we want to do today? And we kept coming up with all the kind of not bad, but sort of tourist kind of ideas. Yeah. And the serious challenge is, it's not just a cliche, traffic is horrible. And so anywhere you go, you got to add, and I'm not kidding, if it's a 12-mile drive, it's a 30, 35-minute drive to get there. So about 30 minutes to get 12 miles. And so, you know, if you're going to go somewhere that's an hour away, could be two hours of driving, it's like, we just don't have time for that.
I wanted to do something that would be really memorable, that would actually genuinely be fun. because we had worked hard. The conferences started very early. And then the one day where we didn't have to start early, we were very grateful to have a very special breakfast meeting, but that started at 7. So like every day was a really early day, and then we're up late. And so we were kind of worn out. I just wanted to do something that would kind of get us going, maybe get us outside. And at first we were trying to come up with something that would just be really torture for producer Jeff.
because that would make it fun that would make it fun yeah we could take him somewhere that he just hates to go you know but we really couldn't come up with him because he's you know he's pretty easy going like we couldn't really come up with anything that would drive him crazy. Yeah, right. Just being in California. So then we started thinking, well, what else could we do? And then we thought, well, what if we kidnapped Brent and Wes and we didn't tell them where we were going? And Jeff's mom's house is 40 minutes away. It's one of the quickest, maybe it was even less than that.
One of the shortest drives of all of our options was Jeff's mom's house. And at Jeff's mom's house was a van that has been parked since about 2019, a camper van. It's a 1990 Dodge Ram 250 with a nice, good-looking frame, good-running engine, but it's been parked for like six years. And in the California sun, getting beat down upon. So it has sort of degraded over time. But we knew it was likely that if we got there and spent an hour with this thing, we could probably get it running again. At the moment, it was not running. But we had a sense if we spent a little bit of time, we at least had a shot.
And then if we could get it running, we'd know if it was viable for Brent to potentially take this van off of Jeff's mom's hands because they've been trying to get rid of this van for a while. And so we hadn't told him. As we show up, we're like, Brent, look at this van. Isn't that interesting? And Brent's like, yep, sure is. Look at that. And then he's like, wait, why are we stopping? When did you realize that we had duped you? Yeah, yeah. No, no. Not a big deal that it's going to slow that down. He only wants to make sports cars, I think. Yeah, sports cars and...
No. Yeah, you're pretty easygoing, so I figured we wouldn't have to really twist your arm too much. I know we're not doing that thing. That's true. We're not doing that because we don't care about money. Yeah, we flipped a quick Yui. Yeah. yep, yeah so we step out and we start assessing the state of the van. Headlamp check yep we got well you gotta give me a warning we got bright bread the left the right one's out sorry i didn't mean to blast your crotch with light so chris what's this good all right if we had three words to describe the current state of the vehicle what would they be um hopeful dilapidation is two words yeah um it's surprisingly good condition potential project with highlights um that's four isn't it getting all dirty i'm not in the right mindset project you know my folks just got a new oven didn't even come with a paper manual really yeah they don't even bother anymore i feel displeased my father if i would have told brent where we were coming i could have brought ourselves some gloves I don't usually do.
So it's the one thing we don't have labeled is the very thing we have a question about. Get out of the way. That was the downside right there is Brent is a guy that likes to, you know, dress appropriately for working on mechanical stuff. Rightly so because it's very dirty work. Which I think he's doing all right at. No gloves. He's not making profit. And we're crawling around on the ground. Wes says in the live chat because he was with us obviously he says I figured something was up when Chris started kicking the tires and trying the doors of what I thought was a random stranger's van. So we're looking at this thing. Externally, it's rough, right?
It's been exposed to the elements for a while. The back tires are so flat that you can't roll. The rims are on the concrete. So we wanted to see what kind of shape the motor was in. And I think we were pretty pleasantly surprised. The first thing you checked was the oil, which was clean as if it had just gotten brand new oil. Then you checked the transmission fluid, slightly low, but perfectly clean. like, brand new, right out of the bottle. Then we took off the doghouse, because these engines, they come into the driver and passenger area, and there's like a little mound there, and you take that off, and it exposes the top of the engine, and we got a chance to look at the state of the air filter.
We dug in, and I think we were pretty surprised. Oh, dude, come on. No, no squirrels or anything. That's so clean. That's unbelievable. Look how clean it is in there. The carb looks a little, you know, needs some little cleanup, but it's actually really clean inside. Super impressive. We got the doghouse on. Here you go, Chris. Oh, my. Are you kidding me? Is that brand new off the shelf? Yeah. It's super clean in the carb. Wow. But it wouldn't start. Do we know how open XAI is? Fluids look great. Obviously, it had gotten service right as they parked it. Like, when does that happen? Yeah.
If you could get this thing running, you wouldn't need to do an oil change for 3,000 miles. That's just crazy for a 1990 vehicle like this. But we weren't sure why it wouldn't start. We brought out like the big guns. They had like this industrial car battery charger. It was obviously a dead battery. And we started to try to put some juice into that. What we do know is that we have a very dead battery. And we have been pumping about 40 amps into it every time we try to start it. And then even 200 amps on a couple occasions. But I think the battery is just pretty close to totally dead.
So Jeff is going to take a drone battery that he happens to have on him because, of course, he does. Even though he didn't know we were going. Well, it's for my soldering iron. Of course. What? So we're going to try to jump. You know, in case he went to the beach. Yeah. We're going to try to jump this 1990, almost 4,000-pound van with a, what is that, like a 10-ounce drone battery? It's a 1.5-amp-hour drone battery. With a tiny drone battery. But we don't have jumper cables for this because we didn't plan on this. So what Jeff is going to do is go ahead and take apart a household extension cord and convert that into jumping cables that we can then directly wire to the battery and attempt to start. This is going to trigger so many people.
Why did we need this to happen for the show to publish again? We knew that it wouldn't run long, and we knew it had six-year-old gas in it. But what we were trying to determine is, does the engine turn? Is it seized or does the engine actually turn? Because if the engine turns, it's worth working on. If the engine doesn't turn, we don't need to go any further. And so what we immediately honed in on is, let's just see, even though it's not going to run, we don't expect it to start. Let's just see if it sounds like it could give it a go. And we just needed a lot of voltage because this thing is a 1990 V8, small block, big engine, really powerful starter.
This is what we've been waiting for. Bubble, bubble, boys. Go ahead. Okay, turning on. Do it. Crank it. That's way more power. Crank it. There we go. It's smoking, but we got it. Okay, kill it, Brent. So we I think we're looking it's dead now Brent. I think we're looking at a voltage issue. Yes battery battery But it turned oh yeah, so the starters not get enough power. That's cool I think you can argue this smoking. Yeah He's gotten to where he is with the team of people that he has because he's constantly looking into the future. What we're using right now of their products, they've kind of moved on to something new.
So that's sort of, battery for this van that we don't know. 18 months down the road. So he's kind of stuck in future land. We've got a car here. We've got jumper cables. But that's also one of his strengths. Yeah, we had like a little four-cylinder Toyota. It just could not produce enough power. Yeah, I mean, it's got him this far. Yeah, it wasn't in great shape. The rental. Yeah, it wasn't in great shape. Yeah, I know. So we didn't want to push it too far. So when we realized that wasn't going to cut it, we just decided, let's go get a battery. And we went to O'Reilly's and picked up the cheapest battery we could possibly find, which is $180.
He got him a lot of money up to this point. And got it wired up. He's not in it for that. Though. You could immediately tell things were in better shape because, like, the dash lights came on properly and things like that. So we felt... Yeah, there was a bunch of relays clicking there. Yes. Yeah. The relays stopped clicking weird. Yeah. So we knew we were probably in better shape. If it was going to work, this would do it. What do I need? We're going to crank it. You ready? Yeah, crank it. What do you need me for? I'm just letting you know. It's a bit... Are you ready, Brent? It's a bit airy in here, Mike. Fuck off. Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of dirt. If it turns, it's gonna blow a lot.
The doghouse is open inside, so it's right at Brent's legs. Like, right at his knees. You can put it back on. Are we ready? Yeah, we're ready. Here we go. Sounds good. It's good, it's good, it's good, breathe it. I did get a little dirty because it blew all over me because like the engine's in the cab. Which makes no sense to me. Yeah, well that's why it's got a doghouse. I have not once used it. You can just touch it while you're driving down the road. Well yeah, you gotta be able to adjust to everything. Okay, we're starting to get a little belt squeak, but not bad.
Not yet. Yeah. Well yeah, right, like I mean Star Trek they got an engine room. You just got your engine room in your cab. Right there. It's easy to get to. Even the belt squeak worked itself out after a couple of minutes. Everyone should do this. After about five minutes, it just has to come like it had been driving all day. I feel like it would make the world a better place. It was amazing. After six years. And even with the bad gas. Right. Yeah, we smelled the gas, and it smelled like fuel. It didn't smell like varnish. Wow, that's a good idea.
Oh right yeah that we did, yeah, yeah, I mean I thought the oh yeah plugged. I thought the pump would be fried. I thought the filters would be, or the injectors would be clogged up. Yeah, that opened the floodgates for me. I didn't realize it was carb-rated at first. I think because mostly I browsed the internet to try to find knowledge. So the way that it presents knowledge for me really works for my intention of how to work with the outer internet world. It was using that really fresh, good fuel. I think that did help. Totally changed the way I looked at gaining knowledge. Then we started looking at the interior.
Figuring out what works electrically. What doesn't. Looking at the frame, which was in great shape. So I'm advocating even so I think the new battery was on the phone with my father It's quite yeah, I gotta give you a tutorial about this thing Actually. Yeah, I put the dino juice right down the gullet It's kind of amazing ate that up and then it just started running off the old gas like it was Like we just filled it up last week and it sounded amazing heard. Yep. Yep. Few projects a little bit of work But how you feel? I think we got ourselves. What do we call this thing an independent?
Yeah, yeah I think we're going to do it. And he made an offer. Only 100? He's blaming me now. Just working them, working them, working them. I have several different directions. The first one I think I'll take you in is why do you think the Apple stuff isn't being received very well? It was true to Jeff's word. The engine was in great shape. You know, I don't even think we said, but like 60,000 miles on the thing total. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the generator had like six hours on it. So the generator is brand new. And it's got, you know, propane furnace. It's got an air conditioner that still works.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay, so what is the plan? So, Brent, you bought it. Yeah, he's buying it. Well, we have to go down there and exchange money. I see. But there's a handshake. I wondered if it's as good as done. I see the handshake. An effect of trying to do AI mindfully. Yeah, that's the problem. Because it would take a little more time or be a bit more, you'd have to be more careful to implement things in a way that we're privacy respecting, et cetera. Yeah. We kind of made like a parts list. So obviously new tires. That's number one, right? Then we got to find out the state of the brakes.
We don't know until we can actually get the thing to roll, but the brake pedal pumped. So, you know, it's probably going to be a few 600 bucks maybe-ish of tires. So I'm thinking the rough strategy would be we don't want to wait until it's unbelievably hot in California, especially in L.I., And because we're going to be working on the ground, right, on the cement. I think this AI hype's here to stay for a bit. So I'm thinking the strat is. I think past the new year for sure. When Brent comes back for Linux Fest. No, you said like you hope it ends by the end of this year. I think leading into 2026, it's still going to go strong.
A couple other parts that we research that fail frequently on this thing. And we put that in the back of the GTI. We do a barrel run down to Jeff. And then we get into. I think it needs a general improvement for people to keep. another eight hours using it but it's being implemented get. The van working hopefully in one. Day everywhere in ways that means that you can't stop that ball from rolling. Don't leave him behind yeah. You can't just like strip all this stuff there is yeah it's in he's got a bunch of storage it's in like every single commercial product out there he's got to start the process and there is a bit of a process to actually like bring the van into Canada officially and legally and we're just going to see it as another tool but I think it's going to be you know look at the amount of money that, that Europe is trying to spend on AI spend just today. And we saw, what, $800 billion?
It does say independent on the side of it. Last week, they're spending on... The road track independent. I don't even know what they're trying to do with it. But it certainly has an AI earmark on it. So I think... Yeah, it is the bang bus, isn't it? Yeah, it's true. That's got to be the bang bus, I think. That's pretty good. I'm really excited because it's a rare opportunity where there's definitely work because there's been some water damage, but Brent knows how to work with wood and he knows how to do those kinds of repairs. So it's kind of in his wheelhouse.
Like if I were to buy it, I would need Brent's help to fix it up, right? So it'd be like, Brent, come down here and fix this for me. I mean, just from that part, it makes a lot of sense. The thing also has potential to be a mobile recording studio. The back door opens up, and then there's seats right there. So you could actually open the back door, put a table there, microphones, and have a nice little recording spot. It could be really cool. But it's going to be a project. The nice thing is it's a minimum viable amount of effort to get it roadworthy.
And then it's everything you want to do on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and there's... Yeah, you probably would just to modernize it. Yeah. Yep, yep. But the car I... Body frame yeah, yeah, I think what you're looking at mechanically for this it's like probably some hoses are going to be old some seals are going to need to be replaced some of that will be some work to get to but the actual work itself is all within your wheelhouse that's exciting it's it's like you can see the work and it seems work that's addressable unless there's something we don't know yet but that's why we're going to do a chase on the return home yeah that's true it's going to be some fun stories all right let's take a break and feature a value for value track this is hocus pocus by trickster.
Pardon? Amazon. That's smart. It is and our baller booster this week is mr adversaries 17 with 56 000 sats, That might be the show's biggest boost yet. Thank you, adversaries. For the dumb time machine thought experiment, I would go back to the era of the early steam locomotives, so 1880s to early 1920s. I would love to be on a train crew armed with my current knowledge of how to run one already. Oh, I probably wouldn't need to learn too much in terms of being an engineer or even a fireman. Really, I'm learning something about you here. Plus, it was the Old West, which was one of my favorite.
Can I ask you how that is? Did your interaction felt? Did it feel actually more efficient than talking to a human? Because you didn't have to wait for them to figure out. I want to mention the questions that we ask on the show. You can answer them at any point. If you're in the back catalog. You're far behind, anything like that, boost them in. Because they will go to the third episode and we are happy to read them. Yeah. I go down. Now, if my family computer counts, and well, that was my first computer that I remember using. We asked, what was your first computer?
And it was a Dell Dimension 5000. Now, keep in mind, I'm only 10-ish years older than your oldest. Sorry to make you guys feel old. Oh. That's all right. The first computer that was actually mine was a custom-built machine centered around an 810-7890K because I was too poor for a dedicated video card at the time. We all have integrated graphics. It happens. This was during high school. So the money I did get from the job was saved up. And then I later bought a 1050 Ti. Ooh, nice, the Ti. he says regarding that CTO that got hired in the first story it sounds like someone had a bunch of Microsoft stock and wanted to pump the value up yeah yeah, that's very true thank you adversaries appreciate that support that was a great boost j cube 3 is here with 19,000 sats but isn't that because he says something they have so many reasons you need to return things and he says he's loving like.
Isn't that just a sign. Thank you j cube okay all right mr mayhem's here in our booth with 2,345 SATs. I don't know about this whole Microsoft thing, but my wife spends something like three hours a night in what they're calling pajama time in that clip. I'd never heard her use that term. So remember we were talking about the Microsoft AI and doctors going home and doing pajama time? Something absolutely has to change. She's a pediatric BCBA and already spends more time writing notes than with the kids. Can't imagine what it's like for a medical doctor. I just feel sick that the direction this is going is towards more data scraping and cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding is a good term for it. It was success. Also plus one for the Collins. Hopefully I can get my membership back going before then. Well, we'll have two lines. That's amazing. There's always more. If you become a member, then you get the bootleg of this show and you get a lot more. Side note on the data scraping. I finally utilized the wellness benefit at my work, which is a $50 reimbursement for self-care, right? I got a massage yesterday. And it was amazing. It was. And so I went to do the reimbursement process, and it's Benipas, I think. And then it uses Plaid, and Plaid wanted me to sign into my bank, like give my credentials.
And I'm like, right? I'm like, this is so gross. Like, so is my employer harvesting my financial? No, but Plaid is. They give everything. So I—, No, I looked up. Right. No, no. I was like, OK, I just I'm going to eat that fifty dollars then, you know. But no, I was able to just enter my routing number and account number for where the money needs to go. The trick there. Isn't it though? Like how many people are actually providing their credentials? I have once until I realized. Oh, yeah. And then now. So you probably did what I do now is like if you do other for the bank. So it asks you to name your bank.
And if you name a bank, it makes you do the online login. But if you say other, like it's not in your list dummy, then they just let you do the bank routing. Yeah, it was just at the bottom you had to scroll down to actually see it. It looks like the screen is complete. But you can scroll down and you can say, just use account number. Isn't it gross? I was like, I don't want this access. Database they have. Well, I have a little extra context for you if you need it. So Montreal, you know, that's your favorite for fishing. Chris, you've never been more wrong.
Not so long ago, there was a big problem with maple syrup theft. Anytime I went out on a walk, I had a few guys following me. Which actually was worth a heck of a lot more. One million here. I was wondering. I feel like maybe crows could be the exception of the rule. But like this, whatever these little small birds are. They're deploying poop warfare. Yeah, so there's something called the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. I can't stand it. And then, whenever birds are constantly fighting with the eagles and the hawks. They just need to knock it off. was stolen value at $18.7.
Million at the time. and the war starts back up again. I just, I can't tolerate it, Jasko. Yeah. When this clip first played, I was like, I'm just full of interesting stories. I don't care about olive oil. I took Abby on the Centennial Trail. If you're not touching our maple syrup, then you're fine. But I have a theory about this. And there's an eagle's nest right there. Oh, yeah. And there's an eagle in the tree. And on the way to the dock, I was like, oh. It looks like he has taken a crack. Right? The low-hanging fruit and you gotta go for those olives. You'll know.
So we get to the dock where we have a different angle and it starts making the weirdest sound. Not the freedom eagle sound. Yeah, it was weird. A cackle. And then there were two. It wasn't one the whole time. It was that weird perch. They were having a good time. They were. You'll know when they're pooping because you won't understand how much one animal can poop until you've seen an eagle poop. You could kind of guess an elephant poops a lot. There's probably a lot of poop because an elephant's big, so that makes sense there'd be a lot of poop. An eagle isn't as big as an elephant, but it poops as much as an elephant.
I mean, it's an unbelievable... But I suppose if you're eating an entire animal's whole, there's a lot to poop out. Why do we know about the consistency or the amount? Where are you guys going to get this? I grew up on a lake for a while, and I watched. Oh, sure. I watched. I watched the whole circle of life. Let me tell you what. Well, it sure did. We can move on from that. We'll move on from that. Jimmy V, the Value for Value Artist, comes in with 2001 sets. Thanks for playing my track and saying nice things. Waka, waka, waka. That's a totally West Coast track recorded in California.
Vancouver, BC. And Vancouver, BC. That's awesome. Thank you, Jimmy V for boosting. I love it when we hear from you. Seems like such a strange occurrence. I want to know a lot more. Bob the Hush here with 4,000 sats. That's just enough details here to make it kind of juicy. Thanks for the reminder on the value and value. That's kind of like the cheap old lot. The amount doesn't do much justice, but it's a start. Cheers. Nice. Yes, cheers to you. WotC, a.k.a. Ryan's here with a Jar Jar boost. Like in the new show, keep it up. And Sire's here with 2,000 sats. No accounts unless it's absolutely needed. I agree on that one.
I really hate creating accounts at different places. I encourage everyone to browse their password managers and delete accounts they don't need anymore. I've deleted 40 of them in 2024. What was the question that was being answered? I think your tech pet peeves. Oh, yes. Perfect. That's a good one. You know i that's why i don't love having a bunch of stuff through google but i sometimes decide just to sign in through your passengers don't want another freaking logging out there. Yeah you know what happened to me is uh you know subscriptions yeah and i don't do them through my apple id because it'll charge you right and so i i love how jeep is like the website you know back to roots. There's no way an app to do that.
And even an app if you put your account on hold. It goes places other vehicles. It still charges you. So now when you It told me that I had to cancel in iTunes and I'm like how would I even do that? And so I finally logged in on the desktop and canceled that. But now I just have access for the next three months even though I'm not using it. You probably save a little money doing the subscription outside of the iTunes store because a lot of times I tack 30% on because of Apple's fees. Yeah. Thank you sir. Good to hear from you in a good one. Tomato comes in with a Spaceballs boost. That's one, two, three, four, five sats.
Enjoying the show so far, and it's nice to hear from Angela again. Awesome. Thank you, Tomato. It's nice to hear from you. Faraday Fedora came in below the cutoff, but I wanted to cover it because he's a long-time listener. He says, live mini-boost. Sorry, not a whole lot of lightning stats on my node right now. But AI is the tech that I hate. I can see its use once it's more fleshed out, but current products are hot garbage. It's more of an overarching question. Also, Angela, it'd be pretty funny if you get your hand re-aligned to more Christian. When has advertising ever made a product better?
Are you working toward that? Slowly I'm about a year behind it's one thing I want to do but I just keep I got diverted by like our ads and windows making windows you know you know I had an interesting realization is just about everybody I spoke to when I asked them at Planet Nixon scale so they're using an LLM daily yeah so there's something there like a chat GPT you know or they're using like Claude you know or, Grok Claude was the big one where we were at I think a lot of people using claude but yeah okay every day every day people are so how did the conversation go at some kind of adoption happening i don't think we're there yet i don't think we've hit mass market appeal yet but something's there.
Investigate the of the like only every other stuff, I don't think so oh that would be oh my goodness non-negotiable. Yeah. You stopped it at shit. They're trying to tell you. That little... That little geo we saw is starting to look sweeter and sweeter all the time. I agree. The thing that they're doing more and more now with linking to sources that you can quickly check to verify that it's getting it accurate is really helpful. But also it's just helpful in collating those sources because, you know, it's stuff you'd had to go find anyways. Yeah. I recently saw – so for those of us that do care about our privacy but still did 23andMe.
That's a funny – yeah. You can download your data as a raw export, and then you can bring it to other things like Genetic Genie, and it will tell you what – I'm forgetting. Like markers and stuff like that. Yeah, different potential problems that you might have or encounter. And somebody took the genetic genie data and put it through AI for an idea of how they can assist those different markers. Can you say more about the word permanent in this context? Here's my results. Help me come up with a plan. Interesting. And so it was like natural remedies and such.
Talk about personalized healthcare, right? Right. To your particular DNA profile. But are there enough sources backing up this recommendation? But you know what it did have in it? First of all, it used emojis to, like, make it very visually appealing. But then it also said, if you experience this, stop. If you, you know, notice this, do this. And, you know, like. It was surprisingly humanized. Yeah, that is nice. These are the things to watch out for, too, because sometimes you don't get that stuff. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how medical care, I guess, is just sort of both from how the doctors use it, but also how we as patients use it.
I've definitely used it to look up a few things. And I don't treat it as like, you know, doctor's advice, but I think it does help me actually understand the language and communicate better. So it's useful in that way. That's a great set of boosts. I think one of our better sets of boosts, everybody. Thank you so much. We could still use a few more of you out there streaming sats as you listen. We had nine total sat streamers. So our sat streamers brought in 4,333 sats. But our boosters, they made up the bulk of it this week with 19 unique senders. we stacked 112,324 sats which pretty good for a brand new baby show we really appreciate it there's lots of easy ways to get started I'm picturing maybe like a multi-package you can sign up for for like potential deaths as you get further and further details at jupiterbroadcaster.com slash boost, and then we'll read them on a future episode and we do love them you can answer previous questions as well we're happy to revisit old topics keeps the conversation going it's just logical thank you everybody, So check this out. I wanted to wrap up with this entrepreneur, absolute entrepreneur, a businessman in his own right for the modern times.
A man who is committed to a life problem. I think he could probably add like a taxi ride in New York with a taxi driver who has ads in the cab. He happens to look a bit like a professional athlete. He's in good shape, big guy. And he thought, I could go in and tell these people I'm a high roller professional athlete and they'll probably just believe me and show me the good stuff. And then maybe I can swipe. I want to investigate this permanent thing. So does it mean once you go down. You're permanently down there. And you don't get to come back up?
I think it all would have worked out just perfectly fine if it wasn't for the guy's beard. Oh, so like they're going to sink it and leave it there forever. It's his darn beard that got him in trouble. Well, and the fact that there was cameras, and the way he tried to hide the jewelry was a bit ridiculous. What about this story? A man tries to make off with nearly $800,000 in jewelry by swallowing it. So instead of going to Mars. He allegedly stole the pricey earrings from the Tiffany store at the Mall at Millennium. Fox 35's Hannah McKenzie is joining us live tonight.
So, Hannah, this suspect has an extensive criminal history. He sure does, Luann and John. He has been arrested multiple times. His criminal history for theft alone going back at least 13 years. One of the crimes out of Houston, pretty interesting. Detectives were able to pin him to the crime because a mask he used during a jewelry heist there was left behind at the scene. and inside, detectives found one single facial hair and were able to connect his DNA. I'm just picturing, like, what is the structure that would keep that pressure off our delicate humans?
So it's an image on the screen of his stomach in which gold jewelry is just sitting there chilling inside his gut. Well, you'll be safe on the lobes. And I didn't take it. I didn't take it. Well, as he was getting busted, he realized he didn't want to give up the price. Inside jathan gilder's stomach that's probably like that's almost 800 000 so it's just gonna reverberate like crazy video shows the 32 year old checking out the tiffany at the mall of millennia wednesday before snatching two pairs of earrings and booking it this employee was reportedly injured trying to stop him from leaving the store opd says he made it to a car and was headed for Texas when FHP arrested him in Washington County.
That's when troopers say he swallowed the stolen goods. So he swallows it and tries to get away. And, you know, earrings, too. So they got like pokey parts on them. I don't think so. I don't think so. And so I was looking at like these jewelry capers are always so crazy. Like we often think of like these big movie style. But they're always much, much crazier in real life. And I thought, okay, it doesn't get any crazier than trying to steal earrings and swallow them when you're caught, right? Think about when we were kind of, you invited me to be here today. And then like a day goes by.
I said, hey, what are we going to get into? And you said, I have no idea. And you go to the bathroom. You've got to check the results. You've got to go through the results to find the goods. And you don't really know if that's the right batch because sometimes it takes a while for things to make all the way through their system. So you may have to go through multiple bathroom batches before you actually find the earring. I mean, just think about, like, the actual implementation here. So I thought it can't get any crazier than this, right? Oh, no. Oh, no. It can. In fact, not too long ago, there was an even larger caper.
I think the best place to find me would be Linux Unplugged. A 60-year-old man stole a solid gold toilet. A solid gold toilet has been stolen from the birthplace of the former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. Yes, the $1.82 million 18-carat art installation was taken from Blenheim Palace. Blenheim Palace is normally packed with visitors at weekends, but it was shut to the public, effectively a crime scene, while police investigated one of the strangest burglaries they've ever come across. I love how the police have to play this straight, because it's an official robbery at a historic place, a Ballyham place.
And so they have to treat it like it. But you know behind the scenes they're laughing their butts off about a golden throne getting stolen, right? And this is what the intruders were after. An 18-carat gold toilet made by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Catalan. Police have confirmed that it's still missing. There will be an increased police presence in the local area, whilst officers and staff carry out inquiries into the circumstances. There is a thorough investigation in the process of being carried out. Visitors were still allowed access to the grounds of Blenheim, and many voiced their surprise at the theft.
I'm really shocked. I can't believe there's a million pound toilet that's been stolen, all gold. I wanted to go on it. I can't believe they managed to get into the palace as well. like i thought security here would be tight locked so yeah it's amazing that someone's been able to access it and be able to take it and it's not small is it that is quite shocking i'll have to admit i'll go back it'll be the highlight we were there the crime scene someone stole a million pound toilet that's this amazing story i think well. If you happen to know where the golden toilet is boost in and we'll relay it to the authorities it's real, Well, that just about does it for this week's episode. Brent, thanks for joining us.
Going to have to keep us up to date on how the Bang Bus adventures go. I don't know about you, Andrews, but I think it's time to go get a steak bagel sandwich. Well, it's already past the time, but I will get a loaded breakfast sandwich from Jack in the Box, I'm pretty sure. I'm glad you're covered. I'm glad you're covered. Links to what we talked about today, weeklylaunch.rocks. That's the website we have for you that you can get previous episodes. and also it posts there when we're about to go live. Yeah, live. That'll be next Tuesday. You can catch us in your podcast app and then get the download Wednesday morning if you like or plug in jblive.tv and tune in via the web.
Don't forget, we also have that live chat room that we're hanging out in all week and during the live stream. That's on our Matrix server. It is the Launch HQ, which you can find linked at Jupiter Broadcasting and our website as well. Thank you, everybody. From the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thanks for listening. and we'll see you right back here next week.
