Modern cars are crammed with sensors, even for things any idiot could figure out. Mine broke, so instead of replacing it, I hacked my car to shut it up.
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This is The Launch, Lucky Episode 33 for August 26, 2025. 5. 5. 6. Streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, or whatever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings, indeed, to one and all. This is The Launch. My name is Chris. And I'm Angela. Hello, Angela. Hello. We've got a few things to mention before we get into today's show. It's a big show. We'd love it if you called us. Leave us a voicemail, call us during the show, whatever your speed is. It is 774-462-5667. 667.
That's 774-462-5667. You can join us live. It's a vibe at 1130 a.m. Pacific, 2.30 p.m. Eastern and 7.30 p.m. UTC at jblive.tv or in your podcasting 2.0 app of choice. We release on Wednesday mornings when the scheduler feature works. Of course, we have a mumble room going. We have a chat room linked at the top of our website, and our website is weeklylaunch.rocks. Well, it is that time of year. School is just around the corner for our young ones. We had the last hot blast of summer, and it's also fair season. It's a fair day for the fair, wasn't it, Andrews?
It was. Yesterday was. Yeah, yesterday. And today really would be too, probably. Yeah. Yeah. So every year the Evergreen State Fair comes for about two weeks, and then they put a day off and be like halfway through so that they can clean and maintain or whatever. It's basically a family tradition. My grandma started it. I've been taking the kids since they were newborns barely able to walk yeah or not even sometimes not even able to walk yeah dylan was just brand new right three months old or wait no four four months old anyway and then she passed away you know seven or eight years ago and and i continued the tradition and i prefer to go on her birthday right which happens to land in that time frame every year tomorrow yes however tomorrow is the day that they are shutting down to clean everything yeah and maintain so i wasn't able to do that.
And then based on all the other back to school activities and the launch being today, yesterday was the best day that I could choose to bring the kids. Now they've always been really excited, but they are 12, 14 and 16 and they are getting more difficult to get to do anything. Yeah. Like, and you know this because you've been taking them on road trips and, and it's like pulling teeth sometimes. So even though, you know, we, we, you know, they're going to have a good time. They're going to get some great snacks. They love the rides. Going to spend cash money yeah you know like so i have been checking with each of the kids do you want to do this still right because i don't want to spend the money if they if they're not going to go right and they all said yes well first dylan said no right he did say no because he didn't want to be with his sisters and i said well i will be there right because we've got this sibling rivalry that is alive and well so i waited to buy the discounted wristbands until the last minute right which was like Like, I mean, I did it the day before the deadline on the 19th, but it came down to it and Dylan didn't want to go. So we left like an hour late.
I did get him to go, but we left an hour late. We normally spend the whole day there. We close it. Hot. They were done after three hours. It got pretty hot. I got sunburned. Oh, yeah, you did. Whoa. I am very sunburned. And so I was a little disappointed, right? Three hours doesn't seem like worth it because the wristbands were like 150. And how long did it take you to get there? About 40 minutes. 40 minutes each way. Yeah. Well, it was 20 minutes on the way back. Oh, that's good. And then $60 to get in the door, right? The admission, right? Because there's a lot of non-ride things that you can do there.
So they get some money there, too. I didn't realize those were sold discount ahead. I would have done that, too. But then food and I got a giant button. Anyway, it was still fun. But I said, well, leave your wristbands on because we can go back. And so we did. We returned. Me and the girls returned last night once that like literally aimed for sunset 802. And we got there and it was great. Aside from a lot of people smoking when they're not supposed to. Like, I didn't smell any cigarettes the first round, but at night, I guess people just want to light up.
They're smoking cigarettes, not weed? Yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't smell any weed there. Was it busier or less busy at sunset? It was less busy, in my opinion. Really? There were a lot more, yeah. It seems like people would optimize. That's when I would like to go. So they theme the days, right? So yesterday's theme was, not elderly. That'd be hilarious. Not retired. What is it? Old people. Old people had discounted admission yesterday. So there were a lot of older with grandkids and stuff earlier in the day. Yeah, okay. So a little calmer crowd probably.
Yeah. And then in the evening it was teenagers and other people. But anyway, it was really nice. So we did the Ferris wheel first to catch the sunset and then just did any of the rides that we didn't get a chance to do earlier. And I basically said, like, yeah, let's just go there for as long as you want. Like no, no, no pressure because I'm just glad that we're getting our money's worth here because we really did. We got some more food. The girls got boba in light bulbs. Like it was it was cool. I got another button with the girls because I so I have one with me and Dylan and now one with me and the girls.
However, so the very last ride we did was the chaos. Oh, that sounds kind of rough. Yeah. Well, and by we, I mean the girls, right? Because I cannot do it. It's a pendulum. And it spins. And it spins. And there's six sets of seats, and they're all facing inward towards each other, like in a circle. So it's a puke inducer. Absolutely. And so my kids, our kids, were very good about handing me their phones on these rides. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Don't like where this is going. No, no, no, no, no. I just replaced a phone. So.
No, no, no, no. My question. No. Boosted. What is the best way that you have lost a phone? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. So the girls, this is literally the last ride. They get off. Oh, no, no, no. There was a casualty. Who lost their phone? Who do you think? Abby. Oh, no. It flew out of this ride. Wow, it's really destroyed. Front and back. And she was devastated. And in fact, when I got home and I said, hey, Dill, we went back to the fair. Yeah. But there was a casualty. He was like, no. And he looked and he was devastated. And I was like, yeah, of course you're devastated for her on her behalf because you've always intentionally ruined your phone.
He's never accidentally ruined his phone. He's always had an anger fit or something that has caused it. So I just replaced Dylan's phone. And then because it was Bella's birthday, I just replaced Bella's phone. And then this was Abby's birthday phone, January. And it was a new phone. Yeah. So I felt so bad for her. It just sucks. It sucks so bad. But I need your help to get her a replacement. I don't know how best to find a replacement. Yeah, I wonder. Some of the phones have insurance. Not all of them. Okay. You might be able to move the insurance.
Yeah, yeah. And then wait a day or two. I smell what you're putting down. Not that I would ever do that. Yeah. But at this point, a guy is desperate. I'll tell you what. Yeah. So, yeah, boost in with what's the most creative way that you have lost a phone? Yes. Did it fly off on a ride? Did you drop it in the toilet? Oh, my gosh. I dropped my car keys, electronic car keys, in a toilet at college. Oh, my gosh. And I've never stuck my hand in a toilet so fast. A public toilet. So fast. And it still worked after that. Yeah, good, good.
But gross. Yeah, it is gross. I've never dropped a phone in a toilet. A toilet. I have dropped it in a pool, but that was intentional. I'm pretty good with my phones. But, you know, also, I have guy pockets. Well, so she was wearing super baggy pants. So Bella hadn't handed me her phone either, but she had tighter pockets at the top. But yeah, no, I literally have pictures of me holding all three phones and the three kids in the background about to get on the drop, right? You know, like they were very good about handing them to me. I got to cry now. Boosta and tell us the best and worst way you've ever destroyed a phone.
Oh, my goodness. We got to move on. All right. I did something kind of unexpected this week. I have had a really nagging problem with my car, and I decided I would finally set a little time aside and take care of it. So there is a device, and there's a couple different things out there, and of course there's a whole series of these you can buy commercially. And they connect to your car's diagnostic port called your OBD2 port. Every car since like 96, 98-ish has one of these. And the device I used is called the OBD11. And it'll diagnose faults, but more importantly, it can adjust a lot of things inside your car you might not have known have existed.
Now, this particular device is only optimized for a range of cars like Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Mini, Toyota, Lamborghini, Bentley, Lexus, Rolls-Royce, and Ford. But their new V3 hardware, they're adding new brands, and you can just reflash the hardware to support new brands. So you plug this sucker into your port, And you create, you know, you get the app, you create an account because you got to do that. Launch the app. It detects the little puck that's plugged into your diagnostics port and then you connect to it on this app. And in there, so if you had like a, you know, a check engine light or an air light on your dash, you could pull that information and it'll give you a list of all the problems that's detected and all of the air codes.
and you can tap on them and it formats it nicely for you to read, but also gives you just a little button to go Google search it and kind of gives you some nice preloaded Google search queries to get some good results for what this error is. That's cool. Yeah, so if you get a check engine light and you want to know what it is, you can just do that. Yeah. It also will pull codes that don't actually show up on your dash. Oh, for sure. When I was doing this on my car, I had this error, but it turned out I also had several other problems that were just not critical enough to trigger an error light.
like I actually and some of them you can clear like they can be like your key fob battery is low and that's from six months ago okay clear that one and you can do that with this tool and then some of them like the one that I discovered is real is the control module for my sunroof isn't working and I thought maybe I was being dumb like not operating it right because it was like I would tell it to do one thing and it would do another thing and I would tell it to close and it would open and I'm like, did I forget how this works over the winter? Am I confusing it with another car? Do any of your other cars have a sunroof?
They both do. Oh okay. So I really thought it was me. So I used this app, and oh, no, actually, your control module for your son was busted. I'm like, is that true, or is that just because I was messing around with it a lot? So I cleared it, and it comes back. The app's gaslighting you. Yeah, right? Supporting the gaslighting. And when it comes back, oh, no, that's a real problem. And so this tool is nice in the sense that you can do a lot of these types of things, but if you're willing, and that's all for free, but if you're willing to pay, you can actually do a lot more.
Like if, for example, this is a small one, but if you're ever working on your brakes and you end up accidentally or because you're flushing or something, you get air in your brake line. You can't have a bubble in your brake line. And you have to bleed that. Does it explode? No, but you won't be able to brake. Oh, it just won't work. Yeah, you can have like your brakes can go flat. Oh, mushy. Yeah, or mushy. Scary. Yeah, not good. And so you want to get this air out. And there's a lot of ways. There's tools to do this. Brent did it once by he took a spray bottle for hair.
Yeah. He took the top off and he plugged it into the brake line and just used the handle to pump it. Oh, for sure. There's a lot of ways you can do this, but a lot of modern cars actually have something that the dealership uses that you as the customer don't get access to. And there's a mode in the computer to pump the brake lines and bleed them. And the car can auto bleed the brake lines, but you have to be able to get access to this. So there's a lot of little maintenance things that this unlocks for you and lets you do that maybe you couldn't do without it. It also lets you back up parts of your ECU, so if you ever had to, you could restore default factory settings or change things or just have backups of it.
You can change individual car behavior, like activate different comfort features, change lighting. What? I can, in some cars, a lot of cars that have sport mode, you can even change the way the exhaust sounds because they have baffles in the exhaust and you can go in and you can adjust how loud or quiet your exhaust is. This is crazy. It's really wild. The stupid one is on my car, you can turn on a needle sweep. So when you turn it on, the needles go, you know, they sweep the, which just looks cool, but also shows you everything's working. You can change the colors of the cab lighting. You can make the turn.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. like actual different colors. Or like. Soft light or. White light or yeah not all cars have a lot of cars have yeah oh. My gosh did you though. Yeah what color i made mine blue so it's really cool looking nice um and then stupid things like the turn signals instead of a blink blink it's a building like yeah light it can you can change that tweak that kind of stuff oh my gosh it's neat so the device itself costs 127 it's not super cheap okay but a lot of these that can do bi-directional programming, start around $200, $300 for a decent one.
They might be able to do more cars, but they're also more technical. And then if you really want to unlock all the cool, fancy features I was just talking about, you got to buy like an $80 in-app credit at some point. How do you know if your car would even have some of those fancy settings? Or is it just a standard that they do all cars after a certain year or something? They'll have different levels of it. So some of them might not have a color adjusting lights, but they'll have the ability to adjust different parameters. And so they have a compatibility checker on their website.
Ooh. Yeah. Ooh, I want to check this out. You should. There's a couple of different competitors too, and I'd love to know if anybody else has tried another one. I bought my unit for $90 on eBay in 2023, and then it was just this week that I finally did the in-app purchase. So you can get pretty far on the free plan. Wow. So I spent $85, and that to me seems pretty good for bi-directional programming and what they've done and why they only support a limited range of cars is they have sort of curated what you can do in the app. So it detects, oh, you've got a Volkswagen. Okay, I'll load these capabilities.
Right. Here's some basic ones that we classified, right? So probably each car that they do support has all three levels to get you to pay. Yeah, generally so. Yeah. And they try to also get the licensing they need from the car manufacturer and all that kind of stuff. So with mine, you know, it's really stupid because modern cars are loaded with these different sensors and sometimes the sensor is for something that any idiot could figure out. And sometimes those sensors break. And that's what happened to me. So instead of replacing the sensor, I did the right thing and I just disabled it.
And for me, it was a no brainer for $85. So my washer fluid sensor that detects the level of my washer fluid stopped working. Okay. It's a piece of crap, cheap piece of crap from the factory. Did it stop you from being able to use it? No. Oh, that error did not. No. Okay. No, but it didn't matter if the tank was full. But you had a light on the dash. Oh, okay. And a stupid chime every time I turn the car on. Oh, yeah, right. By the way, there's still a problem. And like, there's no way you could know unless I chimed in, left a persistent air light on your dashboard, which by the way, hope there's no other errors because the light's always on now. So you're just going to ignore it. So stupid.
Right. It just becomes noise. And there's no way I would know. No way. Like I couldn't just like use it and have water come out and then know it was empty. so and volkswagen i like i like this car a lot but you would not believe so this thing is just like a little stupid metal thing and it gets corroded probably because i put something too strong in there so to get this sensor my best case scenario i have to jack the car up i have to remove the front passenger tire that has to come completely off i have to remove the underbelly cover that's under the engine yeah i have to disconnect the pump line and the sensor wires I then have to drop the tank from the car and then I can remove the sensor and then I have to reverse all the steps to put it back.
Wow. But some cars of my year have a slightly different configuration. If that's the case, I also have to remove the front grill. I also have to remove the front bumper cover and then do all the other stuff I mentioned and then reverse that entire process. So there's literally, oh, oh, oh, I forgot one step. The one where you have to remove the bumper, you have to also have to remove the passenger headlight. So you remove the bumper, the headlight, the grill, the tire, the belly pan cover, all of it just to get to the sensor. Wow.
That's got to be like $2,000 minimum of shop work. Right. Not to mention like it would take me forever. Just to clear a light from the dash. So $85, get the pro plan, I go in there and they have all these different modules. That's how these cars are designed is like, you know, air conditioning module, your drivetrain module, your suspension module, and your electronics control module, module number nine for me. So I go in there and everything's in English and they got pretty pictures. So I type into that menu and I tap into the next sub menu. And Ange... Everything was in German. I fell into the land. Yeah. Everything was in German.
You found where they left off in the translation. Yes. So I'm sitting here doing translations on my browser while I'm doing the thing on my phone. And I got it. I got there. But thankfully, the app also has search. So once I figured out the translation for what I needed to search for. That's funny. Windshield in German. Yeah. And so I found the area where I could get inside the car's computer and just tell it. it was sort of funny because I couldn't say there's no air. I couldn't tell it there's no problem. Right.
But I could tell it. And you could clear the code. Yeah, I could clear it. But it'll just return as soon as you turn it back on. But I could also tell it you don't have a sensor. And I could tell for like all the different, like you don't have an oil sensor. You don't have an air sensor. Don't worry what that sensor says because you don't have one. That's crazy. It's great. And I didn't have to do anything else. Like within probably less than a minute the air cleared on the dash. okay were you worried. Were you worried that your car wasn't going to start after that. Well only because i took forever to get it going because i had to get the app and get the account and they have another app i had to get and log into that one and then i had to pair twice and then i had to like do the translations and so i'm sitting there for probably 45 minutes you know with my stereo going and the car basically on because the ignition needs to be on but not necessarily running so you know with that first click or whatever where you just turn on the accessories but i've been sitting there for like 45 minutes and i'm looking over and i have a little uh a little gauge on my dc splitter that tells me my battery level let's get down to 11.8 volts 11.6 volts i'm like oh god this thing might not start just because i might train the battery before i get this damn thing oh no uh.
Question for a friend could you plug that sensor into someone else's car. And the plan yeah yeah and it even and so it does have a range of things that were does for all cars like it'll pull the air codes for all cars and there is, some live data you can pull some metrics from your engine you can pull in real time like check your fuel trim check your voltage check that kind of stuff and it'll do that for all cars but like the reprogramming stuff is limited to certain cars and they're okay yeah but i mean it's not a bad list of cars it's just and not all of them i'd love to see more on there i'd love to see like i'd love to see honda on there toyota is on there i don't see subaru on there be nice of Subarus on there, but you could still at least get the air codes and clear air codes.
Okay, so... You bought the device, the hardware, for $90,000. Yeah, on eBay. But I knew it's $127,000. And then you paid $80,000 for the upgraded in-app purchase price. Yeah, their pro plan. Yeah, and that pro plan is not per vehicle. No, I don't think so. I think it's just, it's like a batch of essentially credits that you get, and it's a yearly thing. But I don't know if it auto-renews. Very cool. Yeah, it seemed worth it. And now I'm going to try to use it when I can for the other stuff. Yeah. Hediyah's got a Ford, so if I can use it on her car, that'd be great. Well, are you itching to investigate a problem?
Because Remy's car keeps throwing the oil light and he keeps putting in oil, but he doesn't like burn oil or drip oil. I mean, like there's some, the oil is going somewhere and he hasn't figured it out yet. Try it. See if it pulls an air code. I think it's a 2007 though. So it's kind of old. It might still be. But it's a Honda. Yeah, I think it might still be in the range. So it's pretty, yeah. The other thing I want to try is there's a lot more customization. I can do a lot of little stupid things. My car has a blue light inside. I wonder if I could make it green. Maybe. Sometimes they're a fixed LED. Sometimes they make a multicolor, but they just have it set to one color.
Right. Which is weird. Yeah. Let me play with it. Right. So anyways, I had a lot of fun. And I would be very much interested in hearing something like the O2B11 that's worked for you. That maybe works for more cars. Because I think the only downside is like I have a Volvo. Doesn't support that. but Ange has a Subaru, it doesn't support that. Oh. It does with the free stuff, like getting the air codes, but changing the settings and stuff. So when I drove my car off the lot, brand new, and it did the engine shutter, there was a piston misfire.
You would have been able to read that code and Google it and get your own research going. Yeah, they had to plug in their computer and then they saw it, but nothing showed up on my dash or anything. There's nothing for the stupid user. There's a surprising amount of codes that don't show up on the dash. Yeah. And the car knows about all kinds of stuff going on that it doesn't, I guess they figure it's a distraction or something. But they're fascinating and it's pretty interesting also when you're driving around to get the live dashboard and get live information about the engine too. It's a lot to learn.
Alright, our song of the week is Free Fall by Husband Wife. Well, we do have a big batch of voicemails, but before we get to the voicemail bag, let's take a live call from a Collider in Florida. Collider, are you there? Hello, Collider. Hey. Hey, hey. Who are we talking to? I'm here. It is Hybrid Sarcasm. Good afternoon. Hello, Mr. Sarcasm. How are you? I'm doing quite well. I wanted to give you guys a call and say, I think it's interesting that you guys brought up the phone disasters, because I was already going to call you guys and ask for your help. I need the indestructible phone case, and it sounds like you guys do too.
Jeez, really? Would any case survive to fall like that, though, I wonder? Yeah, she was going at fast speeds. I know Otter makes some strong ones, but they're so bulky. Way too bulky. You know, she's got little girl pants. My goodness. And these things are like $700, $800 now, and you can't get the basic ones anymore. You can't do it because they don't do the Facebooks, the camera's not great, and we're stuck, it sounds like. We just have to replace the phones, right? Yeah. Or get them repaired. I guess. You know, I've been using Swappa.com to buy some of these because the problem is I've had a few bad go-arounds on eBay.
Mm-hmm. And I'm wondering if we should wait until next week. Oh, right. You mentioned about the iEvent next week. Oh, my God, what a horrible time to break. This is historically a bad time to break your phone. Is it? Because... No, what I mean is because the new 17 still won't ship for like a few weeks. But you're right. The moment it ships, the price on all these phones is coming down. All the old phones is coming down. Everything shifts one. Maybe the strat is have her use her sister's phone for a couple of weeks, and then when the 17 is shipping, we see what the price drops are, unlike the 15.
Because the 15 is probably going to come down a nice price when the 17 is out. Yeah, what's this one? This might have been the XR. Yes, okay, because it's the same one I have, but I got it originally. Wow, that is really busted. It's amazing it works at all. I know. It really is incredible that you could actually still kind of use the screen. You'd get glass in your finger if you did. All right, Mr. Sarcasm, what do you need help with, just finding a durable case? It's so disappointing, hybrid. Yeah, well, it's the wife's phone, and you've got the three young kids, and she's always whipping it out for photos and YouTube.
And so it's really, you can't just be careful with that thing, right? It is a life device, and so you just sort of have to take your lumps, I guess. Phones are for using. Oh, no kidding, right? Also, though, Andrews, wanted to tell you a shout-out to you and your employer, right? I mentioned before that I used Pluralsight, and I passed my AWS test today. Awesome. Indirect thank you to you. Yeah. Congratulations. Isn't that nice? Yeah. Yeah. Professionally, it's not been the greatest year, so it's nice to chalk up a win and to close up a bunch of browser tabs.
Absolutely. Oh, yeah, right. That's exactly how I study, too. Do you post your certifications to LinkedIn or anything like that? Yeah. I literally passed it a couple hours ago, so I don't even know what my score was. All I know is I passed, so I'm sure I'll get the badge and other things from AWS in a couple of days. So, yeah, I'll do that. Fantastic. That whole public celebration thing. Yeah. Congratulations. So thank you very much i wanted to share that with you guys but um yeah as far as the phone case is concerned um i'll just piggyback on uh well actually i'll tell you my quick story you wanted to know what the the odd disasters were i don't know how odd it is but it's odd for us my wife not once but twice left it on the top of the car and we found out you know mile or so down the road go back big old crack right through the oh and it had you know so that that's as uh that's as disastrous as it got for disastrous as it got for us.
Okay well i don't think there's a phone case for that no but you know what i would do uh if like my i wouldn't do an otterbox because it is way too bulky but i would do a thick screen protector with a um just a out a side and back hard case not silicone. That's that's what I do yeah. I'm gonna also I'm gonna also look at like the AppleCare do they have some new AppleCare. Program I. Don't know it's so everything's so damn expensive it's like you just and then you get to get the insurance and of course then it doesn't break although in this. Case it seems.
Like they always break. Or it doesn't cover your scenario yeah. I'm kidding well yeah we'll see what the audience comes up with throughout the week about their disaster stories and maybe you know what they've done to recover, that kind of thing. Sorry, I don't mean to sort of piggyback off of your boost request. No, you're doubling down and we like it. All right, thank you for calling. Thanks, sir. Good to talk to you guys. Good to talk to you, and congratulations one more time. That's great to hear. Thank you. All right, Andrews, we also got some voicemails.
Let's do it. You ready for the first one? The first one comes from Crashmaster. Hi, Chris and Ange. This is Crashmaster from Connecticut. Yes, you absolutely can use cheese in a shepherd's pie recipe. Absolutely. A nice option that I've done is in the brown beef mixture, you can add some nice ground Ramona cheese along with some nice ground Parmesan. And then on top of the whole mixture, in with your light breadcrumbs and paprika, you can also do the same. And I've also done shredded cheese on top. And really, it's your preference. Any shredded cheese that you like can be really cool on top of Shepherd's Pie.
Thanks so much for the show. And I think for this show, you really should consider a pick each week, a recipe pick. Thanks, guys. All right. You know, I've been thinking maybe like Pacific Northwest flavored food could be our angle. See, the things you come on, though, and you say things about shepherd's pie like this, and you're going to provoke a response, like from Faraday Fedora. Hey, guys. It's Faraday Fedora again. I have a bit of problem with Crashmaster. We're there with the shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie never has ground beef. It's ground lamb. Ground beef makes cottage pie, which there's nothing wrong with, just a bit of formality there.
And then for the mashed potatoes, for the love of God, never use a food processor or a blender. Always hand mash, otherwise you're halfway to making bread. And what I would recommend is throw in some roasted garlic into that when you're mashing it up, and then when you put it on top of the mix, do a little kind of scrape with a fork making a bit of a lattice pattern and sprinkle that with a bit of smoked paprika. All right. And if you can, drizzle a bit of butter on top of that when you bake it in the oven. It'll make it nice and nice and crispy. I'll talk to you guys later. Long live the lunch.
Okay. How did we legit find an expert on the internet? No kidding. That sounds so great. These guys know their food. Now, there's other topics on the show that are controversial. The fact that I fight the rats is one that seems to have resonated with people. people actually call into the show and defend these rats. Hey guys, it's CB from Ontario, Canada. I wanted to call in about a conversation from Mitrice's chat of pets from two shows ago, specifically about rats. I've had a couple of ratless pets. Names were Potter and Pepper. Pepper was White D-Red Brown and Otter after Beatrice Otter.
They were hands down the best pets i have ever had and i've had cats dogs just about every kind of hamster fish snake turtle anything you can think of i've even had a gator and for the record i am canadian living in canada you can train rats way better than dogs they are incredibly affectionate and despite their reputation they're also super clean animals you know obviously get get a rat from a pet store, not, you know, like a street rat. The only two big downsides is they only live a few years, and they still have their instincts as rats.
Shortly after our first rat, Potter, died, we were moving apartments, and when we picked up the couch that hadn't been moved in years, a massive, huge pile of nuts and dried food fell out from inside of the arm. I mean, a massive pile, enough to pile up on a dinner plate. It turned out that so many of the treats we had been giving her over the years, she was just squirreling away inside the couch. So it was a bittersweet moment, but hilarious. Another thing they like to do is chew on cables and baseboards when you're not watching. All rodents do this because their front teeth never stopped growing.
So they had this constant urge to chew on things. So we just give them lots of toys to chew on and it's manageable. I also wanted to mention this incredibly amazing open source project have found recently it has completely changed the way i manage my system and all my self-hosted stuff like this is seriously a huge huge deal uh this this project might actually finally usher in the year of the linux desktop that'd. Be great uh okay so you just needed to befriend the rats, all 400 of them that are living in that house. Wild animals.
And give them toys to chew on. I like that we get to hear from Mark when he's on his drive home from work. I hope he's put us in his contacts and he just hits the launch when he's driving. Hey, Chris and Ange, Mark, and Darther Mission Calling. Yeah, I might drive home from work again. It's becoming a common situation, but it's a good situation. A couple things to comment on this whole going from the launch of lunch. How are you going to work that in with time-appropriate meetings? Because you need to have time-appropriate meetings. And everybody is listening to the show during lunch.
Right. Maybe you need to, Len or, I don't know, just thinking out loud there. Hope you guys have a great week out there in the Pacific Northwest. And maybe I'll call him again next to me. Thank you, Mark. Time-appropriate eatings. That's good. Fantastic. We need to sort these things out. The pivot to the lunch has been delayed. We're jammed up in legal with negotiations with Brent. He drives a hard deal. And so the lawyers are sorting that out. But in the meantime, before we can make the pivot, keep sending your ideas in and we'll just come. We'll start stronger than ever when we can finally resolve these issues with the brunch. Appreciate the call, Mark. And Master Reboot called in, too.
Hey, Chris and Angie. This is Master Reboot. I love the launch. I wish I had called sooner. Actually, I like the idea of maybe a segment, maybe lunch, you know, like keep the launch like it is. right? Talk a little bit about everything, but maybe just make a small section for, for food. I think that would be like the sweet spot. Everybody loves to eat. I do. So, um, yeah, hopefully I am not too late for this. So, uh, great show guys. I've started listening since 2020. Actually, uh, the self-hosted show was the first one that got me hooked and then I discovered luck and it was just JB from there.
So, thanks again. I love the different shows, and I hope you guys have a wonderful day. Thanks. Well, thank you, Master Reboot. Nice to hear from you. Magnolia's back. Hey, it's Magnolia again. And, you know, I've got to rescind one of the suggestions I made. I think it was the last episode, maybe the one before that. I was talking about how Warp Terminal is just a great thing, this AI terminal or something like that. Anyway, so I was using it. And I ran out of free tokens, and I was like, well, that's fine. I'll just wait for it to renew. And days later, I look.
Turns out you get a free trial, and then you never get to use it again. That's okay. I'll just switch accounts. So I log out of that Google account and log into the other Google account, and I got permanently banned for life for trying to ban evade. So rescinding my suggestion of Warped Criminal, that's pretty much it. Oh. Good follow-up there. Sorry to hear about the trouble. Yeah, once you run out of those free tokens, it really stinks because the cost can add up quick. Now, last week I talked about the Zen Browser, which I've been continuing to use, and we got a little bit of insight from a rando newbie who wanted to mention that they also use the Zen Browser.
Hello. I'm just a random new listener. Started listening back in June and quite enjoyed the show. I just wanted to say that I've been using the Zen browser for probably eight months now, and it has been pretty awesome. The only comments I have is that you didn't mention the... Oh, I forget what they're called. Zen has their own add-ons. Instead of just the Firefox ones, we'll do little teeny-tiny changes to the browser, which is pretty nice. But also, don't sleep on the split tab feature. You can split more than two. I've gone up to four and it is so useful.
Yeah, just figured it out that out. See you. Thanks, Rando. It is really useful, especially when you're trying to, like, get information. I'm building, probably I'll talk about it on the show at some point, but I'm building, like, a custom plumbing system for the RV at our spot at the farm, and I need some stuff that nobody makes, and I'm putting it all together. I'll tell you, it's really nice having all these different panes when you're trying to compare, like, the sizes and the dimensions and all this and just have it all up on one wide, ultra-wide screen with multiple panes in one window.
The thing you were trying to remember that Zen does that I forgot to mention is Zen mods. They're like a form of Zen-specific extensions that do add nice, small functionality, you know, make it maybe highlight which tab is active a little bit more obviously or make the mute button on the tab a little bit bigger or change something about the look. And then, of course, you also have Firefox extensions as well. You can go too far with it and overdo things. I kind of went too far, but I've pulled back, and I think I found where I really like it and how I really like to use it, which is a lot with dedicated standalone web apps.
Like for X, I think you'd really like it for X or social media apps. Stuff like that. Thank you, everybody, who did call into the show. Should we wrap it with one live call? Oh, yeah. Let's pull him in. Bring him in here right now. Come on. Come on in the air. Who do we got on the line right now? Are you there, caller? Hello. Hey, it's Magnolia Mayhem. Hello, Magnolia! Hello! I feel really bad. I was considering calling in over like three or four things and seeing it kind of pushing me over the edge. I feel so bad. It was that last caller. So I switched back to then around the time that you started talking about it in the last show.
And it absolutely did import all my Firefox add-ons. Like it was a one-to-one thing. I just like, it lets you sign into your Firefox account. Right. And then it pulls it back in. So I, God, I feel so bad because I feel like I'm like calling in and correcting another listener. I don't know, it feels like a butthole kind of thing to do. But yeah, I just had that experience like two days ago. so i unless i misunderstood it he did say that um that it the firefox add-ons are different or it doesn't support the same add-ons as firefox or am i completely off he means. There's uh firefox extensions which work and then there's zen mods which are zen only the zen mod.
Okay well i just called in for no reason then no. I shouldn't be curious to know why you went back to zen after leaving it what brought you back. Uh so i went to zen a while ago i don't even remember where i first heard about it um but it's been it's been a minute i don't exactly remember when but um, yeah i played around with it and i ended up uh they say when you use linux for long enough you kind of kind of settle on one distro but i've been distro hopping for the last decade and uh And I just did real hot really bad, and last time I switched back to Manjaro, I just kind of went with the default Firefox, and I didn't think to switch back to Xen until you started talking about it on that last episode.
I see. I see. I got you. Yeah. I see. But it just fired right back off and went straight back to what it had. I'd be curious to know what you think in a week or two, if you stick with it. Sure. All right. Thank you, sir. Good to hear from you. All right. You too. Okay, Ange, you know what that means. It is time for our boost, and our first booster is Mr. Turd Ferguson. And Turd is also technically our baller this week. 25,300 sats. He says, you kids, you're way off the mark with this pivot to the lunch. I can't believe I have to be the one to point this out. Rockets are the future. You want to talk about budget-friendly, you've got everything you need. Just change the topics.
That's true. Maybe we should have pivoted to a rocket show. But you can see we've got an audience full of cooking experts. Yes. And I don't know. Nobody's cracked the cooking niche in podcasting. It's only video producers. So what if we could make an audio podcast? Maybe we have an ASMR segment. I don't know. No, sorry. No, stop. No. It's all she can take. No, I have misophonia. That's it. In fact, I just skip. As soon as I hear that bag crinkle, I'm like, next. And don't chew it right in front of me. Why? Why do you have to chew it under the bike? Not a fan of the unboxing stuff either.
Oh, yeah, I bet. Yeah, just speed it up. Like, we don't need to see you try to get, you know, the cheese soup out of the can. Just. I know. We've heard all this, too. It's crazy. Like, we don't have. Wasting my time. Or the pouring. Okay, anyways. Thank you, turd. But reject it. The food pivot continues. Paul comes in with 5,000 sats. Felt a bit called out when you talked about that there were no sourdough podcasts. I'm a listener of a German sourdough podcast from a former geologist. Have fun spelling the podcast name. It's Paul Schombacher. Okay, that was actually pretty good.
I don't know about that. Better than some of your English pronunciations, I promise. Is there a way for non-U.S. residents to send you voice recordings as MP3 files? I don't really want to have to pay for an international phone call. You know, I actually think, and I will have to check on this because we're in the call session right now. but I actually think there's a way for me to generate a WebRTC link and you get like a little web app and you just do it through your browser. If I can figure that out, I'll try to put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Thank you, Paul. Stay tuned. It's a fair question. Something I need to look at. Yes, thank you. See, I'm going to say, oh, yeah, it's Shaft and Spanner. That's right. They come up with 4,444 sats. That's a big old duck. Greetings from the UK. Sorry, but I have to take issue with last week's shepherd pie recipe. Shepherd pie is made with ground lamb. Okay, so that's two corrections. Yep, yep. I don't know. The pivot to the lunch might be a little difficult. Controversial. I know. I mean, we're already stuck in a legal fight with the brunch, and now with brunch or whatever that. I don't even know what that guy calls it.
And then we got these riffs in the community over shepherd's pie. We are playing with fire here, Ange. I like the – I've never heard of cottage pie. I've always heard it called shepherd's pie. In fact, Costco has a shepherd's pie with beef in it. I think I might prefer it with beef. Well, for sure. In Miami. I like cottage pie, the name, better, too. I do, too. I do, too. Yeah. It invokes like a homey cottage. It's got a nice kitchen. Shepherd sounds like there's human in it. Yeah. I'm just kidding. No, it's gross. I guess the shepherd of the lambs.
Yeah. Is that what it is? That guy's dirty, dude. He's out in the mud. He hasn't shaved in six days. I don't know if I want his pie. I'll tell you that. I don't think so. All right, that's it. Wait, did you read Long Live the Lunch? Oh, ha ha! Come on! You can't leave that part out. He says he ends it with a big, hearty, long-lived lunch. So even though he's in the midst of a controversy, he still supports the launch being the lunch. All right, that's all the boosts. Thank you, everybody who streamed sats. You stacked 5,655 sats, and you combine that with our boosters. We stacked 40,432 sats.
Not a great week. The launch has had some stumbling. It had some stumbling, but sats are on sale, so if you want to boost in, now's the time. Send a message into the show above 2,000 sats, and we'll read them. Fountain FM probably makes that the easiest, so go ahead and grab that and then charge it up. Send in your boosts. We'd be happy, happy to read it, and it's a great way to support the show. so i came across a trend that i think is a fascinating idea and i want to get your take on it okay there is through an app a growing rent a grandma trend in japan sign me up and this youtuber documented he documented the process so.
I rented a japanese grandma for the day, Okay, so I'm doing something completely different in this video because I've hired a Japanese grandma. Yeah, you can actually do that. I was kind of surprised myself, but when I found the website and saw that you could actually do it, I decided to go for it. You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to have a Japanese grandma. You know my Japanese wife, Maiko, always speaks fondly about her grandma, so today I guess I get to experience the whole thing and I get to share it all with you. I do have a few things planned, but if you guys had the opportunity to do this yourself, let me know in the comments what you would do.
That said, she should be coming here shortly. So she shows up at the door. Here we go. She says, hello, it's been a while. So she starts pretending right away. How have you been? Been a while. I've been good. It's a beautiful day. Let's make a bento for a picnic. That's the oba-chan, a.k.a. grandma I rented for the day. In Japan, rental services for a girlfriend and boyfriend have been around. But this was the first time I noticed one for an oba-chan, and it piqued my interest. Apparently, you can even ask her to act like she's your grandma and do stuff together. Help out with house chores, attend family events, or simply ask for life advice.
Basically, anything within reason. So today, she's my grandma, and the first thing I asked her to do was to make me a traditional Japanese bento. So she's making the guy a meal. It's about 50 to 60 bucks an hour. Would you pay it? Would you rent a grandma on an app? Well, no, I will be a grandma for rent. Oh, yeah? You would do it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm like not quite the age. I mean, some women are grandmas by this age. But, yeah, I would love to do that. I kind of, I mean, could you imagine how great it would be to have a grandma here at the studio just like taking care of stuff while we're doing the show?
And 50, 60 bucks an hour seems kind of like a good deal. Bring in for three hours. I mean, like if you need a housekeeper, it's only two hours and cheaper than hiring a grandma. But she could cook and clean and pretend she's my grandma. Well, authentic, another, what is it? Ethnicity food. Yeah, food. Like, yeah, that's where it's at. Yeah, for sure. Turns out this kind of thing, kind of common in Japan. In fact, here's a clip from eight years ago. We end tonight in Japan, where a growing number of people are renting people to pose as family and friends. Adriana Diaz has the story.
Ruichi Ichinokawa runs something called a rental family company, and business has never been better. For a fee, he and his staff will impersonate your parents, your boss, even your spouse. Have you ever been discovered? Never. Never. Never? It might sound strange, but Ichinokawa's business was immortalized in a 2012 documentary called Renta Family Inc. He says his business helps clients navigate the tricky norms of Japanese society. Why is there so much demand for renting fake family members? The Japanese obsess over etiquette, manners, and appearances a lot more than Americans do, he said. For my clients, not violating protocol is extremely important.
He recently posed as a pregnant woman's father because her real dad disapproved of her engagement. She says he saved the marriage. I feel like there's got to be a business in here for me, too. I could rent something. Rent a podcaster I feel like Chuck E. Cheese is not arrested in front of kids in Japan come on where's my bit you want it where's the sound clip okay. You go poor Chuck E. Cheese so you could rent a family in Japan but we have to move on because I have a winner of an investment idea sweet. You, You You You You.
We have one that's a real winner. It's a house on a hill near some streams. five acres of gorgeous Baltimore County land. How come I'm not seeing a link? Well, I didn't want you to necessarily look at it yet. Oh. Five acres of gorgeous Baltimore land. Okay. Currently listed for $300,000. Decent. Went on the market only a few days ago, so it's a hot commodity. Oh, okay. Also comes with a car on the lot. Okay. A Subaru. What? All right. Yeah. Interesting. Is it fully furnished? What? The car? No, the house. Yes. Is there a house? Did you mention that there's a house on a hill? Yep. It's definitely, I'd say, furnished, probably.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd say you could say that. There might also be an outhouse. So you could enjoy that, potentially, if it is there. They say, quote, in the listing, bring your vision and your money. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's a fixer-upper. But do not enter the house under any conditions. Quote, it is occupied by feral cats and raccoons. How do they get along? I don't know. Be careful going on the land. It's at your own risk. Well, I'm a crazy cat lady now, so. Also, the drinking water comes from a stream. Yeah. And so the raccoon peace dream or what? I mean, it probably has a little bit of that. This thing. I don't know. I'll have to.
Now I have to find the link so you can look at it because I don't have it super handy. But this thing also this Subaru, it looks like it probably hasn't ran for 20 years. I mean, it's in really, really rough shape. And the reason why they say there might be an outhouse is because the land is so overgrown that if there is an outhouse, it was consumed by nature many, many years ago. But if you look at the map, it is actually a very, very sweet location. It is next to a really famous trail and a creek and a popular highway. And it's, you know, a decent amount of land, too.
Oh, that's some lush green. It's pretty. I found it. Oh, you did? Okay, yeah. I was looking to see if I could find you the link. It's a beauty except for the whole house, the feral cats, and the raccoons. It's 609 BEE Tree Road. BEE Tree Road. And it's going to need a little bit of a weed whacker. But, I mean. I like it. 300,000. Let's do it. All right. There we go. We got it. There's a nice little bridge. Yep. It's got a crick. All right. Oh, that Subaru has seen some days. Yeah. I mean, maybe you could get it running. Maybe.
You could make a whole YouTube video out of it if you could. That'd be fun. Links to what we talked about today are at weeklylaunch.rocks. You can find the back catalog there. Of course, the pro move is to join us on a Tuesday where we do the show live. We do it at jblive.tv or .fm, .tuesday, jblive.tuesday. Is there .tuesday? We should get it if there is. Ooh. .tuesday would be cool. I don't know. Oh, we have so many renewals. They're investments. We should probably weed them out. All right, from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thank you for listening, and we will see you right back here next week on The Launch.
This is The Launch, Lucky Episode 33 for August 26, 2025. 5. 5. 6. Streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, or whatever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings, indeed, to one and all. This is The Launch. My name is Chris. And I'm Angela. Hello, Angela. Hello. We've got a few things to mention before we get into today's show. It's a big show. We'd love it if you called us. Leave us a voicemail, call us during the show, whatever your speed is. It is 774-462-5667. 667.
That's 774-462-5667. You can join us live. It's a vibe at 1130 a.m. Pacific, 2.30 p.m. Eastern and 7.30 p.m. UTC at jblive.tv or in your podcasting 2.0 app of choice. We release on Wednesday mornings when the scheduler feature works. Of course, we have a mumble room going. We have a chat room linked at the top of our website, and our website is weeklylaunch.rocks. Well, it is that time of year. School is just around the corner for our young ones. We had the last hot blast of summer, and it's also fair season. It's a fair day for the fair, wasn't it, Andrews?
It was. Yesterday was. Yeah, yesterday. And today really would be too, probably. Yeah. Yeah. So every year the Evergreen State Fair comes for about two weeks, and then they put a day off and be like halfway through so that they can clean and maintain or whatever. It's basically a family tradition. My grandma started it. I've been taking the kids since they were newborns barely able to walk yeah or not even sometimes not even able to walk yeah dylan was just brand new right three months old or wait no four four months old anyway and then she passed away you know seven or eight years ago and and i continued the tradition and i prefer to go on her birthday right which happens to land in that time frame every year tomorrow yes however tomorrow is the day that they are shutting down to clean everything yeah and maintain so i wasn't able to do that.
And then based on all the other back to school activities and the launch being today, yesterday was the best day that I could choose to bring the kids. Now they've always been really excited, but they are 12, 14 and 16 and they are getting more difficult to get to do anything. Yeah. Like, and you know this because you've been taking them on road trips and, and it's like pulling teeth sometimes. So even though, you know, we, we, you know, they're going to have a good time. They're going to get some great snacks. They love the rides. Going to spend cash money yeah you know like so i have been checking with each of the kids do you want to do this still right because i don't want to spend the money if they if they're not going to go right and they all said yes well first dylan said no right he did say no because he didn't want to be with his sisters and i said well i will be there right because we've got this sibling rivalry that is alive and well so i waited to buy the discounted wristbands until the last minute right which was like Like, I mean, I did it the day before the deadline on the 19th, but it came down to it and Dylan didn't want to go. So we left like an hour late.
I did get him to go, but we left an hour late. We normally spend the whole day there. We close it. Hot. They were done after three hours. It got pretty hot. I got sunburned. Oh, yeah, you did. Whoa. I am very sunburned. And so I was a little disappointed, right? Three hours doesn't seem like worth it because the wristbands were like 150. And how long did it take you to get there? About 40 minutes. 40 minutes each way. Yeah. Well, it was 20 minutes on the way back. Oh, that's good. And then $60 to get in the door, right? The admission, right? Because there's a lot of non-ride things that you can do there.
So they get some money there, too. I didn't realize those were sold discount ahead. I would have done that, too. But then food and I got a giant button. Anyway, it was still fun. But I said, well, leave your wristbands on because we can go back. And so we did. We returned. Me and the girls returned last night once that like literally aimed for sunset 802. And we got there and it was great. Aside from a lot of people smoking when they're not supposed to. Like, I didn't smell any cigarettes the first round, but at night, I guess people just want to light up.
They're smoking cigarettes, not weed? Yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't smell any weed there. Was it busier or less busy at sunset? It was less busy, in my opinion. Really? There were a lot more, yeah. It seems like people would optimize. That's when I would like to go. So they theme the days, right? So yesterday's theme was, not elderly. That'd be hilarious. Not retired. What is it? Old people. Old people had discounted admission yesterday. So there were a lot of older with grandkids and stuff earlier in the day. Yeah, okay. So a little calmer crowd probably.
Yeah. And then in the evening it was teenagers and other people. But anyway, it was really nice. So we did the Ferris wheel first to catch the sunset and then just did any of the rides that we didn't get a chance to do earlier. And I basically said, like, yeah, let's just go there for as long as you want. Like no, no, no pressure because I'm just glad that we're getting our money's worth here because we really did. We got some more food. The girls got boba in light bulbs. Like it was it was cool. I got another button with the girls because I so I have one with me and Dylan and now one with me and the girls.
However, so the very last ride we did was the chaos. Oh, that sounds kind of rough. Yeah. Well, and by we, I mean the girls, right? Because I cannot do it. It's a pendulum. And it spins. And it spins. And there's six sets of seats, and they're all facing inward towards each other, like in a circle. So it's a puke inducer. Absolutely. And so my kids, our kids, were very good about handing me their phones on these rides. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Don't like where this is going. No, no, no, no, no. I just replaced a phone. So.
No, no, no, no. My question. No. Boosted. What is the best way that you have lost a phone? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. So the girls, this is literally the last ride. They get off. Oh, no, no, no. There was a casualty. Who lost their phone? Who do you think? Abby. Oh, no. It flew out of this ride. Wow, it's really destroyed. Front and back. And she was devastated. And in fact, when I got home and I said, hey, Dill, we went back to the fair. Yeah. But there was a casualty. He was like, no. And he looked and he was devastated. And I was like, yeah, of course you're devastated for her on her behalf because you've always intentionally ruined your phone.
He's never accidentally ruined his phone. He's always had an anger fit or something that has caused it. So I just replaced Dylan's phone. And then because it was Bella's birthday, I just replaced Bella's phone. And then this was Abby's birthday phone, January. And it was a new phone. Yeah. So I felt so bad for her. It just sucks. It sucks so bad. But I need your help to get her a replacement. I don't know how best to find a replacement. Yeah, I wonder. Some of the phones have insurance. Not all of them. Okay. You might be able to move the insurance.
Yeah, yeah. And then wait a day or two. I smell what you're putting down. Not that I would ever do that. Yeah. But at this point, a guy is desperate. I'll tell you what. Yeah. So, yeah, boost in with what's the most creative way that you have lost a phone? Yes. Did it fly off on a ride? Did you drop it in the toilet? Oh, my gosh. I dropped my car keys, electronic car keys, in a toilet at college. Oh, my gosh. And I've never stuck my hand in a toilet so fast. A public toilet. So fast. And it still worked after that. Yeah, good, good.
But gross. Yeah, it is gross. I've never dropped a phone in a toilet. A toilet. I have dropped it in a pool, but that was intentional. I'm pretty good with my phones. But, you know, also, I have guy pockets. Well, so she was wearing super baggy pants. So Bella hadn't handed me her phone either, but she had tighter pockets at the top. But yeah, no, I literally have pictures of me holding all three phones and the three kids in the background about to get on the drop, right? You know, like they were very good about handing them to me. I got to cry now. Boosta and tell us the best and worst way you've ever destroyed a phone.
Oh, my goodness. We got to move on. All right. I did something kind of unexpected this week. I have had a really nagging problem with my car, and I decided I would finally set a little time aside and take care of it. So there is a device, and there's a couple different things out there, and of course there's a whole series of these you can buy commercially. And they connect to your car's diagnostic port called your OBD2 port. Every car since like 96, 98-ish has one of these. And the device I used is called the OBD11. And it'll diagnose faults, but more importantly, it can adjust a lot of things inside your car you might not have known have existed.
Now, this particular device is only optimized for a range of cars like Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Mini, Toyota, Lamborghini, Bentley, Lexus, Rolls-Royce, and Ford. But their new V3 hardware, they're adding new brands, and you can just reflash the hardware to support new brands. So you plug this sucker into your port, And you create, you know, you get the app, you create an account because you got to do that. Launch the app. It detects the little puck that's plugged into your diagnostics port and then you connect to it on this app. And in there, so if you had like a, you know, a check engine light or an air light on your dash, you could pull that information and it'll give you a list of all the problems that's detected and all of the air codes.
and you can tap on them and it formats it nicely for you to read, but also gives you just a little button to go Google search it and kind of gives you some nice preloaded Google search queries to get some good results for what this error is. That's cool. Yeah, so if you get a check engine light and you want to know what it is, you can just do that. Yeah. It also will pull codes that don't actually show up on your dash. Oh, for sure. When I was doing this on my car, I had this error, but it turned out I also had several other problems that were just not critical enough to trigger an error light.
like I actually and some of them you can clear like they can be like your key fob battery is low and that's from six months ago okay clear that one and you can do that with this tool and then some of them like the one that I discovered is real is the control module for my sunroof isn't working and I thought maybe I was being dumb like not operating it right because it was like I would tell it to do one thing and it would do another thing and I would tell it to close and it would open and I'm like, did I forget how this works over the winter? Am I confusing it with another car? Do any of your other cars have a sunroof?
They both do. Oh okay. So I really thought it was me. So I used this app, and oh, no, actually, your control module for your son was busted. I'm like, is that true, or is that just because I was messing around with it a lot? So I cleared it, and it comes back. The app's gaslighting you. Yeah, right? Supporting the gaslighting. And when it comes back, oh, no, that's a real problem. And so this tool is nice in the sense that you can do a lot of these types of things, but if you're willing, and that's all for free, but if you're willing to pay, you can actually do a lot more.
Like if, for example, this is a small one, but if you're ever working on your brakes and you end up accidentally or because you're flushing or something, you get air in your brake line. You can't have a bubble in your brake line. And you have to bleed that. Does it explode? No, but you won't be able to brake. Oh, it just won't work. Yeah, you can have like your brakes can go flat. Oh, mushy. Yeah, or mushy. Scary. Yeah, not good. And so you want to get this air out. And there's a lot of ways. There's tools to do this. Brent did it once by he took a spray bottle for hair.
Yeah. He took the top off and he plugged it into the brake line and just used the handle to pump it. Oh, for sure. There's a lot of ways you can do this, but a lot of modern cars actually have something that the dealership uses that you as the customer don't get access to. And there's a mode in the computer to pump the brake lines and bleed them. And the car can auto bleed the brake lines, but you have to be able to get access to this. So there's a lot of little maintenance things that this unlocks for you and lets you do that maybe you couldn't do without it. It also lets you back up parts of your ECU, so if you ever had to, you could restore default factory settings or change things or just have backups of it.
You can change individual car behavior, like activate different comfort features, change lighting. What? I can, in some cars, a lot of cars that have sport mode, you can even change the way the exhaust sounds because they have baffles in the exhaust and you can go in and you can adjust how loud or quiet your exhaust is. This is crazy. It's really wild. The stupid one is on my car, you can turn on a needle sweep. So when you turn it on, the needles go, you know, they sweep the, which just looks cool, but also shows you everything's working. You can change the colors of the cab lighting. You can make the turn.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. like actual different colors. Or like. Soft light or. White light or yeah not all cars have a lot of cars have yeah oh. My gosh did you though. Yeah what color i made mine blue so it's really cool looking nice um and then stupid things like the turn signals instead of a blink blink it's a building like yeah light it can you can change that tweak that kind of stuff oh my gosh it's neat so the device itself costs 127 it's not super cheap okay but a lot of these that can do bi-directional programming, start around $200, $300 for a decent one.
They might be able to do more cars, but they're also more technical. And then if you really want to unlock all the cool, fancy features I was just talking about, you got to buy like an $80 in-app credit at some point. How do you know if your car would even have some of those fancy settings? Or is it just a standard that they do all cars after a certain year or something? They'll have different levels of it. So some of them might not have a color adjusting lights, but they'll have the ability to adjust different parameters. And so they have a compatibility checker on their website.
Ooh. Yeah. Ooh, I want to check this out. You should. There's a couple of different competitors too, and I'd love to know if anybody else has tried another one. I bought my unit for $90 on eBay in 2023, and then it was just this week that I finally did the in-app purchase. So you can get pretty far on the free plan. Wow. So I spent $85, and that to me seems pretty good for bi-directional programming and what they've done and why they only support a limited range of cars is they have sort of curated what you can do in the app. So it detects, oh, you've got a Volkswagen. Okay, I'll load these capabilities.
Right. Here's some basic ones that we classified, right? So probably each car that they do support has all three levels to get you to pay. Yeah, generally so. Yeah. And they try to also get the licensing they need from the car manufacturer and all that kind of stuff. So with mine, you know, it's really stupid because modern cars are loaded with these different sensors and sometimes the sensor is for something that any idiot could figure out. And sometimes those sensors break. And that's what happened to me. So instead of replacing the sensor, I did the right thing and I just disabled it.
And for me, it was a no brainer for $85. So my washer fluid sensor that detects the level of my washer fluid stopped working. Okay. It's a piece of crap, cheap piece of crap from the factory. Did it stop you from being able to use it? No. Oh, that error did not. No. Okay. No, but it didn't matter if the tank was full. But you had a light on the dash. Oh, okay. And a stupid chime every time I turn the car on. Oh, yeah, right. By the way, there's still a problem. And like, there's no way you could know unless I chimed in, left a persistent air light on your dashboard, which by the way, hope there's no other errors because the light's always on now. So you're just going to ignore it. So stupid.
Right. It just becomes noise. And there's no way I would know. No way. Like I couldn't just like use it and have water come out and then know it was empty. so and volkswagen i like i like this car a lot but you would not believe so this thing is just like a little stupid metal thing and it gets corroded probably because i put something too strong in there so to get this sensor my best case scenario i have to jack the car up i have to remove the front passenger tire that has to come completely off i have to remove the underbelly cover that's under the engine yeah i have to disconnect the pump line and the sensor wires I then have to drop the tank from the car and then I can remove the sensor and then I have to reverse all the steps to put it back.
Wow. But some cars of my year have a slightly different configuration. If that's the case, I also have to remove the front grill. I also have to remove the front bumper cover and then do all the other stuff I mentioned and then reverse that entire process. So there's literally, oh, oh, oh, I forgot one step. The one where you have to remove the bumper, you have to also have to remove the passenger headlight. So you remove the bumper, the headlight, the grill, the tire, the belly pan cover, all of it just to get to the sensor. Wow.
That's got to be like $2,000 minimum of shop work. Right. Not to mention like it would take me forever. Just to clear a light from the dash. So $85, get the pro plan, I go in there and they have all these different modules. That's how these cars are designed is like, you know, air conditioning module, your drivetrain module, your suspension module, and your electronics control module, module number nine for me. So I go in there and everything's in English and they got pretty pictures. So I type into that menu and I tap into the next sub menu. And Ange... Everything was in German. I fell into the land. Yeah. Everything was in German.
You found where they left off in the translation. Yes. So I'm sitting here doing translations on my browser while I'm doing the thing on my phone. And I got it. I got there. But thankfully, the app also has search. So once I figured out the translation for what I needed to search for. That's funny. Windshield in German. Yeah. And so I found the area where I could get inside the car's computer and just tell it. it was sort of funny because I couldn't say there's no air. I couldn't tell it there's no problem. Right.
But I could tell it. And you could clear the code. Yeah, I could clear it. But it'll just return as soon as you turn it back on. But I could also tell it you don't have a sensor. And I could tell for like all the different, like you don't have an oil sensor. You don't have an air sensor. Don't worry what that sensor says because you don't have one. That's crazy. It's great. And I didn't have to do anything else. Like within probably less than a minute the air cleared on the dash. okay were you worried. Were you worried that your car wasn't going to start after that. Well only because i took forever to get it going because i had to get the app and get the account and they have another app i had to get and log into that one and then i had to pair twice and then i had to like do the translations and so i'm sitting there for probably 45 minutes you know with my stereo going and the car basically on because the ignition needs to be on but not necessarily running so you know with that first click or whatever where you just turn on the accessories but i've been sitting there for like 45 minutes and i'm looking over and i have a little uh a little gauge on my dc splitter that tells me my battery level let's get down to 11.8 volts 11.6 volts i'm like oh god this thing might not start just because i might train the battery before i get this damn thing oh no uh.
Question for a friend could you plug that sensor into someone else's car. And the plan yeah yeah and it even and so it does have a range of things that were does for all cars like it'll pull the air codes for all cars and there is, some live data you can pull some metrics from your engine you can pull in real time like check your fuel trim check your voltage check that kind of stuff and it'll do that for all cars but like the reprogramming stuff is limited to certain cars and they're okay yeah but i mean it's not a bad list of cars it's just and not all of them i'd love to see more on there i'd love to see like i'd love to see honda on there toyota is on there i don't see subaru on there be nice of Subarus on there, but you could still at least get the air codes and clear air codes.
Okay, so... You bought the device, the hardware, for $90,000. Yeah, on eBay. But I knew it's $127,000. And then you paid $80,000 for the upgraded in-app purchase price. Yeah, their pro plan. Yeah, and that pro plan is not per vehicle. No, I don't think so. I think it's just, it's like a batch of essentially credits that you get, and it's a yearly thing. But I don't know if it auto-renews. Very cool. Yeah, it seemed worth it. And now I'm going to try to use it when I can for the other stuff. Yeah. Hediyah's got a Ford, so if I can use it on her car, that'd be great. Well, are you itching to investigate a problem?
Because Remy's car keeps throwing the oil light and he keeps putting in oil, but he doesn't like burn oil or drip oil. I mean, like there's some, the oil is going somewhere and he hasn't figured it out yet. Try it. See if it pulls an air code. I think it's a 2007 though. So it's kind of old. It might still be. But it's a Honda. Yeah, I think it might still be in the range. So it's pretty, yeah. The other thing I want to try is there's a lot more customization. I can do a lot of little stupid things. My car has a blue light inside. I wonder if I could make it green. Maybe. Sometimes they're a fixed LED. Sometimes they make a multicolor, but they just have it set to one color.
Right. Which is weird. Yeah. Let me play with it. Right. So anyways, I had a lot of fun. And I would be very much interested in hearing something like the O2B11 that's worked for you. That maybe works for more cars. Because I think the only downside is like I have a Volvo. Doesn't support that. but Ange has a Subaru, it doesn't support that. Oh. It does with the free stuff, like getting the air codes, but changing the settings and stuff. So when I drove my car off the lot, brand new, and it did the engine shutter, there was a piston misfire.
You would have been able to read that code and Google it and get your own research going. Yeah, they had to plug in their computer and then they saw it, but nothing showed up on my dash or anything. There's nothing for the stupid user. There's a surprising amount of codes that don't show up on the dash. Yeah. And the car knows about all kinds of stuff going on that it doesn't, I guess they figure it's a distraction or something. But they're fascinating and it's pretty interesting also when you're driving around to get the live dashboard and get live information about the engine too. It's a lot to learn.
Alright, our song of the week is Free Fall by Husband Wife. Well, we do have a big batch of voicemails, but before we get to the voicemail bag, let's take a live call from a Collider in Florida. Collider, are you there? Hello, Collider. Hey. Hey, hey. Who are we talking to? I'm here. It is Hybrid Sarcasm. Good afternoon. Hello, Mr. Sarcasm. How are you? I'm doing quite well. I wanted to give you guys a call and say, I think it's interesting that you guys brought up the phone disasters, because I was already going to call you guys and ask for your help. I need the indestructible phone case, and it sounds like you guys do too.
Jeez, really? Would any case survive to fall like that, though, I wonder? Yeah, she was going at fast speeds. I know Otter makes some strong ones, but they're so bulky. Way too bulky. You know, she's got little girl pants. My goodness. And these things are like $700, $800 now, and you can't get the basic ones anymore. You can't do it because they don't do the Facebooks, the camera's not great, and we're stuck, it sounds like. We just have to replace the phones, right? Yeah. Or get them repaired. I guess. You know, I've been using Swappa.com to buy some of these because the problem is I've had a few bad go-arounds on eBay.
Mm-hmm. And I'm wondering if we should wait until next week. Oh, right. You mentioned about the iEvent next week. Oh, my God, what a horrible time to break. This is historically a bad time to break your phone. Is it? Because... No, what I mean is because the new 17 still won't ship for like a few weeks. But you're right. The moment it ships, the price on all these phones is coming down. All the old phones is coming down. Everything shifts one. Maybe the strat is have her use her sister's phone for a couple of weeks, and then when the 17 is shipping, we see what the price drops are, unlike the 15.
Because the 15 is probably going to come down a nice price when the 17 is out. Yeah, what's this one? This might have been the XR. Yes, okay, because it's the same one I have, but I got it originally. Wow, that is really busted. It's amazing it works at all. I know. It really is incredible that you could actually still kind of use the screen. You'd get glass in your finger if you did. All right, Mr. Sarcasm, what do you need help with, just finding a durable case? It's so disappointing, hybrid. Yeah, well, it's the wife's phone, and you've got the three young kids, and she's always whipping it out for photos and YouTube.
And so it's really, you can't just be careful with that thing, right? It is a life device, and so you just sort of have to take your lumps, I guess. Phones are for using. Oh, no kidding, right? Also, though, Andrews, wanted to tell you a shout-out to you and your employer, right? I mentioned before that I used Pluralsight, and I passed my AWS test today. Awesome. Indirect thank you to you. Yeah. Congratulations. Isn't that nice? Yeah. Yeah. Professionally, it's not been the greatest year, so it's nice to chalk up a win and to close up a bunch of browser tabs.
Absolutely. Oh, yeah, right. That's exactly how I study, too. Do you post your certifications to LinkedIn or anything like that? Yeah. I literally passed it a couple hours ago, so I don't even know what my score was. All I know is I passed, so I'm sure I'll get the badge and other things from AWS in a couple of days. So, yeah, I'll do that. Fantastic. That whole public celebration thing. Yeah. Congratulations. So thank you very much i wanted to share that with you guys but um yeah as far as the phone case is concerned um i'll just piggyback on uh well actually i'll tell you my quick story you wanted to know what the the odd disasters were i don't know how odd it is but it's odd for us my wife not once but twice left it on the top of the car and we found out you know mile or so down the road go back big old crack right through the oh and it had you know so that that's as uh that's as disastrous as it got for disastrous as it got for us.
Okay well i don't think there's a phone case for that no but you know what i would do uh if like my i wouldn't do an otterbox because it is way too bulky but i would do a thick screen protector with a um just a out a side and back hard case not silicone. That's that's what I do yeah. I'm gonna also I'm gonna also look at like the AppleCare do they have some new AppleCare. Program I. Don't know it's so everything's so damn expensive it's like you just and then you get to get the insurance and of course then it doesn't break although in this. Case it seems.
Like they always break. Or it doesn't cover your scenario yeah. I'm kidding well yeah we'll see what the audience comes up with throughout the week about their disaster stories and maybe you know what they've done to recover, that kind of thing. Sorry, I don't mean to sort of piggyback off of your boost request. No, you're doubling down and we like it. All right, thank you for calling. Thanks, sir. Good to talk to you guys. Good to talk to you, and congratulations one more time. That's great to hear. Thank you. All right, Andrews, we also got some voicemails.
Let's do it. You ready for the first one? The first one comes from Crashmaster. Hi, Chris and Ange. This is Crashmaster from Connecticut. Yes, you absolutely can use cheese in a shepherd's pie recipe. Absolutely. A nice option that I've done is in the brown beef mixture, you can add some nice ground Ramona cheese along with some nice ground Parmesan. And then on top of the whole mixture, in with your light breadcrumbs and paprika, you can also do the same. And I've also done shredded cheese on top. And really, it's your preference. Any shredded cheese that you like can be really cool on top of Shepherd's Pie.
Thanks so much for the show. And I think for this show, you really should consider a pick each week, a recipe pick. Thanks, guys. All right. You know, I've been thinking maybe like Pacific Northwest flavored food could be our angle. See, the things you come on, though, and you say things about shepherd's pie like this, and you're going to provoke a response, like from Faraday Fedora. Hey, guys. It's Faraday Fedora again. I have a bit of problem with Crashmaster. We're there with the shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie never has ground beef. It's ground lamb. Ground beef makes cottage pie, which there's nothing wrong with, just a bit of formality there.
And then for the mashed potatoes, for the love of God, never use a food processor or a blender. Always hand mash, otherwise you're halfway to making bread. And what I would recommend is throw in some roasted garlic into that when you're mashing it up, and then when you put it on top of the mix, do a little kind of scrape with a fork making a bit of a lattice pattern and sprinkle that with a bit of smoked paprika. All right. And if you can, drizzle a bit of butter on top of that when you bake it in the oven. It'll make it nice and nice and crispy. I'll talk to you guys later. Long live the lunch.
Okay. How did we legit find an expert on the internet? No kidding. That sounds so great. These guys know their food. Now, there's other topics on the show that are controversial. The fact that I fight the rats is one that seems to have resonated with people. people actually call into the show and defend these rats. Hey guys, it's CB from Ontario, Canada. I wanted to call in about a conversation from Mitrice's chat of pets from two shows ago, specifically about rats. I've had a couple of ratless pets. Names were Potter and Pepper. Pepper was White D-Red Brown and Otter after Beatrice Otter.
They were hands down the best pets i have ever had and i've had cats dogs just about every kind of hamster fish snake turtle anything you can think of i've even had a gator and for the record i am canadian living in canada you can train rats way better than dogs they are incredibly affectionate and despite their reputation they're also super clean animals you know obviously get get a rat from a pet store, not, you know, like a street rat. The only two big downsides is they only live a few years, and they still have their instincts as rats.
Shortly after our first rat, Potter, died, we were moving apartments, and when we picked up the couch that hadn't been moved in years, a massive, huge pile of nuts and dried food fell out from inside of the arm. I mean, a massive pile, enough to pile up on a dinner plate. It turned out that so many of the treats we had been giving her over the years, she was just squirreling away inside the couch. So it was a bittersweet moment, but hilarious. Another thing they like to do is chew on cables and baseboards when you're not watching. All rodents do this because their front teeth never stopped growing.
So they had this constant urge to chew on things. So we just give them lots of toys to chew on and it's manageable. I also wanted to mention this incredibly amazing open source project have found recently it has completely changed the way i manage my system and all my self-hosted stuff like this is seriously a huge huge deal uh this this project might actually finally usher in the year of the linux desktop that'd. Be great uh okay so you just needed to befriend the rats, all 400 of them that are living in that house. Wild animals.
And give them toys to chew on. I like that we get to hear from Mark when he's on his drive home from work. I hope he's put us in his contacts and he just hits the launch when he's driving. Hey, Chris and Ange, Mark, and Darther Mission Calling. Yeah, I might drive home from work again. It's becoming a common situation, but it's a good situation. A couple things to comment on this whole going from the launch of lunch. How are you going to work that in with time-appropriate meetings? Because you need to have time-appropriate meetings. And everybody is listening to the show during lunch.
Right. Maybe you need to, Len or, I don't know, just thinking out loud there. Hope you guys have a great week out there in the Pacific Northwest. And maybe I'll call him again next to me. Thank you, Mark. Time-appropriate eatings. That's good. Fantastic. We need to sort these things out. The pivot to the lunch has been delayed. We're jammed up in legal with negotiations with Brent. He drives a hard deal. And so the lawyers are sorting that out. But in the meantime, before we can make the pivot, keep sending your ideas in and we'll just come. We'll start stronger than ever when we can finally resolve these issues with the brunch. Appreciate the call, Mark. And Master Reboot called in, too.
Hey, Chris and Angie. This is Master Reboot. I love the launch. I wish I had called sooner. Actually, I like the idea of maybe a segment, maybe lunch, you know, like keep the launch like it is. right? Talk a little bit about everything, but maybe just make a small section for, for food. I think that would be like the sweet spot. Everybody loves to eat. I do. So, um, yeah, hopefully I am not too late for this. So, uh, great show guys. I've started listening since 2020. Actually, uh, the self-hosted show was the first one that got me hooked and then I discovered luck and it was just JB from there.
So, thanks again. I love the different shows, and I hope you guys have a wonderful day. Thanks. Well, thank you, Master Reboot. Nice to hear from you. Magnolia's back. Hey, it's Magnolia again. And, you know, I've got to rescind one of the suggestions I made. I think it was the last episode, maybe the one before that. I was talking about how Warp Terminal is just a great thing, this AI terminal or something like that. Anyway, so I was using it. And I ran out of free tokens, and I was like, well, that's fine. I'll just wait for it to renew. And days later, I look.
Turns out you get a free trial, and then you never get to use it again. That's okay. I'll just switch accounts. So I log out of that Google account and log into the other Google account, and I got permanently banned for life for trying to ban evade. So rescinding my suggestion of Warped Criminal, that's pretty much it. Oh. Good follow-up there. Sorry to hear about the trouble. Yeah, once you run out of those free tokens, it really stinks because the cost can add up quick. Now, last week I talked about the Zen Browser, which I've been continuing to use, and we got a little bit of insight from a rando newbie who wanted to mention that they also use the Zen Browser.
Hello. I'm just a random new listener. Started listening back in June and quite enjoyed the show. I just wanted to say that I've been using the Zen browser for probably eight months now, and it has been pretty awesome. The only comments I have is that you didn't mention the... Oh, I forget what they're called. Zen has their own add-ons. Instead of just the Firefox ones, we'll do little teeny-tiny changes to the browser, which is pretty nice. But also, don't sleep on the split tab feature. You can split more than two. I've gone up to four and it is so useful.
Yeah, just figured it out that out. See you. Thanks, Rando. It is really useful, especially when you're trying to, like, get information. I'm building, probably I'll talk about it on the show at some point, but I'm building, like, a custom plumbing system for the RV at our spot at the farm, and I need some stuff that nobody makes, and I'm putting it all together. I'll tell you, it's really nice having all these different panes when you're trying to compare, like, the sizes and the dimensions and all this and just have it all up on one wide, ultra-wide screen with multiple panes in one window.
The thing you were trying to remember that Zen does that I forgot to mention is Zen mods. They're like a form of Zen-specific extensions that do add nice, small functionality, you know, make it maybe highlight which tab is active a little bit more obviously or make the mute button on the tab a little bit bigger or change something about the look. And then, of course, you also have Firefox extensions as well. You can go too far with it and overdo things. I kind of went too far, but I've pulled back, and I think I found where I really like it and how I really like to use it, which is a lot with dedicated standalone web apps.
Like for X, I think you'd really like it for X or social media apps. Stuff like that. Thank you, everybody, who did call into the show. Should we wrap it with one live call? Oh, yeah. Let's pull him in. Bring him in here right now. Come on. Come on in the air. Who do we got on the line right now? Are you there, caller? Hello. Hey, it's Magnolia Mayhem. Hello, Magnolia! Hello! I feel really bad. I was considering calling in over like three or four things and seeing it kind of pushing me over the edge. I feel so bad. It was that last caller. So I switched back to then around the time that you started talking about it in the last show.
And it absolutely did import all my Firefox add-ons. Like it was a one-to-one thing. I just like, it lets you sign into your Firefox account. Right. And then it pulls it back in. So I, God, I feel so bad because I feel like I'm like calling in and correcting another listener. I don't know, it feels like a butthole kind of thing to do. But yeah, I just had that experience like two days ago. so i unless i misunderstood it he did say that um that it the firefox add-ons are different or it doesn't support the same add-ons as firefox or am i completely off he means. There's uh firefox extensions which work and then there's zen mods which are zen only the zen mod.
Okay well i just called in for no reason then no. I shouldn't be curious to know why you went back to zen after leaving it what brought you back. Uh so i went to zen a while ago i don't even remember where i first heard about it um but it's been it's been a minute i don't exactly remember when but um, yeah i played around with it and i ended up uh they say when you use linux for long enough you kind of kind of settle on one distro but i've been distro hopping for the last decade and uh And I just did real hot really bad, and last time I switched back to Manjaro, I just kind of went with the default Firefox, and I didn't think to switch back to Xen until you started talking about it on that last episode.
I see. I see. I got you. Yeah. I see. But it just fired right back off and went straight back to what it had. I'd be curious to know what you think in a week or two, if you stick with it. Sure. All right. Thank you, sir. Good to hear from you. All right. You too. Okay, Ange, you know what that means. It is time for our boost, and our first booster is Mr. Turd Ferguson. And Turd is also technically our baller this week. 25,300 sats. He says, you kids, you're way off the mark with this pivot to the lunch. I can't believe I have to be the one to point this out. Rockets are the future. You want to talk about budget-friendly, you've got everything you need. Just change the topics.
That's true. Maybe we should have pivoted to a rocket show. But you can see we've got an audience full of cooking experts. Yes. And I don't know. Nobody's cracked the cooking niche in podcasting. It's only video producers. So what if we could make an audio podcast? Maybe we have an ASMR segment. I don't know. No, sorry. No, stop. No. It's all she can take. No, I have misophonia. That's it. In fact, I just skip. As soon as I hear that bag crinkle, I'm like, next. And don't chew it right in front of me. Why? Why do you have to chew it under the bike? Not a fan of the unboxing stuff either.
Oh, yeah, I bet. Yeah, just speed it up. Like, we don't need to see you try to get, you know, the cheese soup out of the can. Just. I know. We've heard all this, too. It's crazy. Like, we don't have. Wasting my time. Or the pouring. Okay, anyways. Thank you, turd. But reject it. The food pivot continues. Paul comes in with 5,000 sats. Felt a bit called out when you talked about that there were no sourdough podcasts. I'm a listener of a German sourdough podcast from a former geologist. Have fun spelling the podcast name. It's Paul Schombacher. Okay, that was actually pretty good.
I don't know about that. Better than some of your English pronunciations, I promise. Is there a way for non-U.S. residents to send you voice recordings as MP3 files? I don't really want to have to pay for an international phone call. You know, I actually think, and I will have to check on this because we're in the call session right now. but I actually think there's a way for me to generate a WebRTC link and you get like a little web app and you just do it through your browser. If I can figure that out, I'll try to put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Thank you, Paul. Stay tuned. It's a fair question. Something I need to look at. Yes, thank you. See, I'm going to say, oh, yeah, it's Shaft and Spanner. That's right. They come up with 4,444 sats. That's a big old duck. Greetings from the UK. Sorry, but I have to take issue with last week's shepherd pie recipe. Shepherd pie is made with ground lamb. Okay, so that's two corrections. Yep, yep. I don't know. The pivot to the lunch might be a little difficult. Controversial. I know. I mean, we're already stuck in a legal fight with the brunch, and now with brunch or whatever that. I don't even know what that guy calls it.
And then we got these riffs in the community over shepherd's pie. We are playing with fire here, Ange. I like the – I've never heard of cottage pie. I've always heard it called shepherd's pie. In fact, Costco has a shepherd's pie with beef in it. I think I might prefer it with beef. Well, for sure. In Miami. I like cottage pie, the name, better, too. I do, too. I do, too. Yeah. It invokes like a homey cottage. It's got a nice kitchen. Shepherd sounds like there's human in it. Yeah. I'm just kidding. No, it's gross. I guess the shepherd of the lambs.
Yeah. Is that what it is? That guy's dirty, dude. He's out in the mud. He hasn't shaved in six days. I don't know if I want his pie. I'll tell you that. I don't think so. All right, that's it. Wait, did you read Long Live the Lunch? Oh, ha ha! Come on! You can't leave that part out. He says he ends it with a big, hearty, long-lived lunch. So even though he's in the midst of a controversy, he still supports the launch being the lunch. All right, that's all the boosts. Thank you, everybody who streamed sats. You stacked 5,655 sats, and you combine that with our boosters. We stacked 40,432 sats.
Not a great week. The launch has had some stumbling. It had some stumbling, but sats are on sale, so if you want to boost in, now's the time. Send a message into the show above 2,000 sats, and we'll read them. Fountain FM probably makes that the easiest, so go ahead and grab that and then charge it up. Send in your boosts. We'd be happy, happy to read it, and it's a great way to support the show. so i came across a trend that i think is a fascinating idea and i want to get your take on it okay there is through an app a growing rent a grandma trend in japan sign me up and this youtuber documented he documented the process so.
I rented a japanese grandma for the day, Okay, so I'm doing something completely different in this video because I've hired a Japanese grandma. Yeah, you can actually do that. I was kind of surprised myself, but when I found the website and saw that you could actually do it, I decided to go for it. You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to have a Japanese grandma. You know my Japanese wife, Maiko, always speaks fondly about her grandma, so today I guess I get to experience the whole thing and I get to share it all with you. I do have a few things planned, but if you guys had the opportunity to do this yourself, let me know in the comments what you would do.
That said, she should be coming here shortly. So she shows up at the door. Here we go. She says, hello, it's been a while. So she starts pretending right away. How have you been? Been a while. I've been good. It's a beautiful day. Let's make a bento for a picnic. That's the oba-chan, a.k.a. grandma I rented for the day. In Japan, rental services for a girlfriend and boyfriend have been around. But this was the first time I noticed one for an oba-chan, and it piqued my interest. Apparently, you can even ask her to act like she's your grandma and do stuff together. Help out with house chores, attend family events, or simply ask for life advice.
Basically, anything within reason. So today, she's my grandma, and the first thing I asked her to do was to make me a traditional Japanese bento. So she's making the guy a meal. It's about 50 to 60 bucks an hour. Would you pay it? Would you rent a grandma on an app? Well, no, I will be a grandma for rent. Oh, yeah? You would do it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm like not quite the age. I mean, some women are grandmas by this age. But, yeah, I would love to do that. I kind of, I mean, could you imagine how great it would be to have a grandma here at the studio just like taking care of stuff while we're doing the show?
And 50, 60 bucks an hour seems kind of like a good deal. Bring in for three hours. I mean, like if you need a housekeeper, it's only two hours and cheaper than hiring a grandma. But she could cook and clean and pretend she's my grandma. Well, authentic, another, what is it? Ethnicity food. Yeah, food. Like, yeah, that's where it's at. Yeah, for sure. Turns out this kind of thing, kind of common in Japan. In fact, here's a clip from eight years ago. We end tonight in Japan, where a growing number of people are renting people to pose as family and friends. Adriana Diaz has the story.
Ruichi Ichinokawa runs something called a rental family company, and business has never been better. For a fee, he and his staff will impersonate your parents, your boss, even your spouse. Have you ever been discovered? Never. Never. Never? It might sound strange, but Ichinokawa's business was immortalized in a 2012 documentary called Renta Family Inc. He says his business helps clients navigate the tricky norms of Japanese society. Why is there so much demand for renting fake family members? The Japanese obsess over etiquette, manners, and appearances a lot more than Americans do, he said. For my clients, not violating protocol is extremely important.
He recently posed as a pregnant woman's father because her real dad disapproved of her engagement. She says he saved the marriage. I feel like there's got to be a business in here for me, too. I could rent something. Rent a podcaster I feel like Chuck E. Cheese is not arrested in front of kids in Japan come on where's my bit you want it where's the sound clip okay. You go poor Chuck E. Cheese so you could rent a family in Japan but we have to move on because I have a winner of an investment idea sweet. You, You You You You.
We have one that's a real winner. It's a house on a hill near some streams. five acres of gorgeous Baltimore County land. How come I'm not seeing a link? Well, I didn't want you to necessarily look at it yet. Oh. Five acres of gorgeous Baltimore land. Okay. Currently listed for $300,000. Decent. Went on the market only a few days ago, so it's a hot commodity. Oh, okay. Also comes with a car on the lot. Okay. A Subaru. What? All right. Yeah. Interesting. Is it fully furnished? What? The car? No, the house. Yes. Is there a house? Did you mention that there's a house on a hill? Yep. It's definitely, I'd say, furnished, probably.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd say you could say that. There might also be an outhouse. So you could enjoy that, potentially, if it is there. They say, quote, in the listing, bring your vision and your money. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's a fixer-upper. But do not enter the house under any conditions. Quote, it is occupied by feral cats and raccoons. How do they get along? I don't know. Be careful going on the land. It's at your own risk. Well, I'm a crazy cat lady now, so. Also, the drinking water comes from a stream. Yeah. And so the raccoon peace dream or what? I mean, it probably has a little bit of that. This thing. I don't know. I'll have to.
Now I have to find the link so you can look at it because I don't have it super handy. But this thing also this Subaru, it looks like it probably hasn't ran for 20 years. I mean, it's in really, really rough shape. And the reason why they say there might be an outhouse is because the land is so overgrown that if there is an outhouse, it was consumed by nature many, many years ago. But if you look at the map, it is actually a very, very sweet location. It is next to a really famous trail and a creek and a popular highway. And it's, you know, a decent amount of land, too.
Oh, that's some lush green. It's pretty. I found it. Oh, you did? Okay, yeah. I was looking to see if I could find you the link. It's a beauty except for the whole house, the feral cats, and the raccoons. It's 609 BEE Tree Road. BEE Tree Road. And it's going to need a little bit of a weed whacker. But, I mean. I like it. 300,000. Let's do it. All right. There we go. We got it. There's a nice little bridge. Yep. It's got a crick. All right. Oh, that Subaru has seen some days. Yeah. I mean, maybe you could get it running. Maybe.
You could make a whole YouTube video out of it if you could. That'd be fun. Links to what we talked about today are at weeklylaunch.rocks. You can find the back catalog there. Of course, the pro move is to join us on a Tuesday where we do the show live. We do it at jblive.tv or .fm, .tuesday, jblive.tuesday. Is there .tuesday? We should get it if there is. Ooh. .tuesday would be cool. I don't know. Oh, we have so many renewals. They're investments. We should probably weed them out. All right, from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thank you for listening, and we will see you right back here next week on The Launch.
