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S3 Ep203: Talkcast - April 2022
72 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about ISPs, food, subscription services, and more in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Internet Problems and ISP Woes
00:00:22
Speaker
Check it out!
00:00:48
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Serpstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, who's always Dave. How's it going today, Dave?
00:00:56
Speaker
You tell me. Well, it's going all right, I guess, because you have internet. But I would say less all right because you didn't have internet.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to try and briefly recap the conversation I had with Jake a little bit ago. So I didn't have internet this morning and we were planning to record and I was like, oh, there's a Verizon outage. I called it and they said there's an outage and it'll be done around like two. Cool. Let me dick around, buy some time and then I'll check back around two.
00:01:28
Speaker
And then I did, and they're like, hey, the outage will be going until, uh, seven. So I was like, Hey, can I speak to representative please? Because I would like some information of why it jumped five fucking hours and why it's still an issue. And then when they looked into it, they're like, Oh, Hey, uh, you don't have internet. We've discontinued your service. I'm like, gee, why is that?
00:01:50
Speaker
So I called earlier in the week to plan to discontinue service because I'm going to be moving in about a month and I gave them the date of when I was going to be moving. They fucked up or I fucked up considerably or maybe there's some miscommunication, but they turned off my fucking Internet, didn't tell me, told me as a part of an outage, which apparently there was, but also they didn't
00:02:17
Speaker
Too many hoops and barrels. Yeah. So now I'm just seething from the tits and railing into ISPs being a whole bunch of shit and their business practices being predatory, et cetera, et cetera.
Positive vs Negative ISP Experiences
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah. We haven't had an ISP episode. That was why we figured like, okay, we got to start recording. We got to get this where all this is raw emotion. There's like a couple of things in the story that are weird to me. Like one, I've very, very infrequently had
00:02:47
Speaker
outages with Verizon that lasted anywhere near that long. Yeah. It's usually like an hour. It's at tops. Yeah. Like two hours is really outside of like the average range. Usually it's just like a blip. And most of the time I didn't even have those issues. I actually had a pretty good overall experience with Verizon compared to other ISPs. Um, but of course I was also spending a lot of money on it and it was literally fiber and you know, a lot of things were in our favor.
00:03:16
Speaker
Um, but yeah,
Predatory Practices Across Industries
00:03:19
Speaker
absolutely. Like calling in the morning and having an outage go until that night. It sounds like.
00:03:25
Speaker
somebody was just trying to be like, ah, get them off the line, right? One customer reported technical issues in your area. So, site-wide outage, I guess. Five hours from when you called. That's when it'll be done. Okay, bye. Have a good day. I mean, that literally seems to be what the automated system was doing. But I mean, I gave them information to verify my account
00:03:49
Speaker
Like, it wasn't just, hey, what's your zip code? Here's what it is, fucko. They said, who are you? And I said, I am this person. And they're like, this is what it is. Right. Yeah. And that's the thing that's upsetting is they in general, they don't have visibility. So I have to just eat the shitty end of the stick that's covered in shit because you're taking a stick and poking it and shit. And then you're hitting me with the stick. My mouth's open because I'm saying, please stop hitting me with the stick.
00:04:18
Speaker
Right. I don't think I've ever heard that specific analogy for ISPs, but some very close to it. It works for a lot of different scenarios. You should try using it. Honestly.
00:04:31
Speaker
I know you have Comcast where you're at and when I'm going to be moving, I will also be subjected to Comcast. I don't think there's a good ISP. Not like public ISPs. I know that some cities and towns actually go private with it and they just provide it for their own service.
00:04:53
Speaker
Lancaster, for instance, in Pennsylvania, like did start rolling out fiber and they were contracting the company to do it. But like the initiative died at some point during the pandemic and I was like, okay.
00:05:07
Speaker
I wouldn't have gotten it anyways where we ended up, but, uh, I was a little disappointed at the time because that close this close to greatness. Yeah. That would have been pretty good. Pretty nice. I know those local providers can be better with it. Um, but mom and pop string and cup businesses. They like, they, they dropped the, uh, the internet off in the morning and like a milk carton. And you're just like, all right, here you go. Good for the day. You wave.
00:05:36
Speaker
I think that guy's fucking my wife. Yeah. The other thing I want to just get off my chest is like Red Forest started recording with. It was around how if you try to like cancel service or do something else, that would save you money, regardless of what it is. They put so many hurdles in the way.
00:06:03
Speaker
whether it be like, oh, it's a mail-in rebate. OK, why didn't you just make it cheaper in the first place? Right. Oh, hey, I have to order some medication for my eyes again. And I stopped it temporarily because I'm like, this is expensive. The eye doctor forgot about me. Fuck them. I don't need it. And then when I went in, he's like, you're going to go blind. It's like, all right, I'll do it. So the brand name medication from this company is fairly expensive.
00:06:30
Speaker
Oh, but don't worry. You can call in and get a coupon code to use for their products. Okay. Do you see the issue? Yeah. It's, hey, why isn't it cheaper in the first place? Because not everybody's going to call in. Because they don't make this information publicly available. Because they want your money. They don't give a fuck about you.
00:06:49
Speaker
and ISPs operate the same way, and so it is like the gym. I tried to cancel my gym membership, and I was like, hey, I'm going to be moving. They're like, oh, you're going to have to come in and talk to somebody. I'm like, I will just cancel the charges. I don't give a shit. I'm not paying you any more money. And they're like, oh, okay, we can cancel it for you. I'm like, interesting how your tune changed magically on the phone when I told you I wasn't going to do the thing you asked me to do.
00:07:12
Speaker
And it's stuff like that where they put these imaginary things in the way because people are non-confrontational. Not me, as you can tell from the sound of my voice. No, very passive. And then people get subjected to it and then it just sucks, but they just assume that's just, oh, that's how it is.
00:07:30
Speaker
Non-confrontation. Always yell at your local businesses. Also known as submissive and bread bowl, I think. Bread bowl? Is that what's supposed to be said? Yeah. But yeah, no. I mean, it's a crappy industry. It does seem like everything's basically going the way of this subscription service. And what you're describing falls into it, I think, like introductory rates.
00:07:58
Speaker
I mean, those have been around for forever, like literally since cars, right? Zero down for 30 months or whatever. Yeah. And then do this. Yeah. It's like, it's an extension of capitalism, but I mean, it's, it's, there isn't a, there is a bit of, um, anti-consumer maliciousness attached to like everything you're describing. They want to keep you there with that recurring payment, increase it if they can only keep it down if you're, you know,
00:08:28
Speaker
raising a fuss about it. Yeah.
Managing Subscriptions and Smart Home Devices
00:08:32
Speaker
Are you familiar with auto renew subscriptions? Yeah. That's where they just take your money because you forgot to set a reminder to cancel something. Yeah. Cool. You now have another year of charges from OK Cupid. Yeah. I mean, like I actually have, so I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of my monthly bills and I have a section for all of the recurring subscriptions just so I can keep track of them.
00:08:58
Speaker
So much feeds into it now. I've got Patreon on there for two people. When I was playing Final Fantasy, I had that. Those are recurring $15. We had the Adobe Family Plan, so we can use Photoshop, and that's like 13 bucks or something like that. Obviously, there's phone bills or whatever. All of this stuff just
00:09:22
Speaker
adds up and it's really easy to add just one more thing to it. It's like, oh, do you want PSN? Do you want to like play with other people when you're on the PlayStation? Like sometimes, mostly no, but sometimes. And so occasionally I got a card for that one actually, rather than doing the subscription. But then there's Nintendo, right? And Nintendo's is basically free though. It's close. It's very cheap. It's likely, I mean, it's probably going to go well, actually it has gone up, but it's gone up.
00:09:52
Speaker
for the expanded service, right? If you wanna like have access to their virtual catalog.
00:09:57
Speaker
Um, which makes sense because like that is then games as a service. They are providing like a library of content, but just for like the online services, it's like, I get an email once a year. It's like, Hey, are you always like 12 bucks? I was like, Oh, you can have that. I don't know. It's 12 bucks. It's very cheap comparatively. And then Xbox is like, Hey, you want to play games with friends?
00:10:22
Speaker
For our shitty new Halo, that's going to be at least $15 a month. And you're like, what? How is it that expensive? Right. It's a Nintendo shitty netcode. Yeah, it saves them so much money, actually. It's just PlayStation and Microsoft are so expensive because their online is going to be expensive. Oh, because the netcode's perfect, yeah. Never had an issue with a Halo 2 host.
00:10:49
Speaker
But it's, it's something like I found, I wasn't paying attention to, and then I needed to start paying more attention to because that really, I mean, we're a non-financial information podcast, but that does impact your take home, right? You know, at the end of the month, you're making this much money compared to this is how much you're spending. And if you've got like 50 recurring subscriptions, that is the real avocado toast of our generation is like the subscription services.
00:11:16
Speaker
I mean, just having the ability to recurringly order things. Well, yeah, I mean, ordering things I feel like is more concrete though, because I used subscribe and save for a long time. We canceled it when we moved because we wanted to reevaluate what we were actually grabbing.
00:11:32
Speaker
A full like 12 pack case of 300 milligram energy drinks, like every month that we had so many excess of was too much. We're like, okay, maybe we would take a little bit of a break. Um, but you know, entertainment things, I think, um, other subscription things that you couldn't just normally fit under utilities umbrella, right? Cause you're like, obviously pay for electric, water, internet, things like that. But then there's like.
00:12:06
Speaker
I mean, convenience is like a really big selling point for our time and generation. There's just, there's a whole lot. You can be like, I'm going to click some buttons and done. I've transferred money for purchases of either goods or services. And I didn't really have to do much for it. Yeah. I just have to give away information and money. I think it's been literally at least a year since I've interacted with physical money in any way.
00:12:21
Speaker
everything else.
00:12:37
Speaker
Like, I just haven't touched paper, basically. Oh, paper? No, no, no. I'm doing the Scrooge McDuck style. Ah, OK. Coins. Just throw them at the RVs at 10, 10, 10, 2, drive by. I have steps up to my apartment. So it's like where you initially kick off the shoes and then like immediately steps. It's just hard to get up sometimes because of all the panties, you know? Yeah, right. But getting down to the mail, it's basically a slide. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
But I don't know, you're right though. A lot of it is convenient service stuff. Like we got a like Google Nest smart doorbell, cause there was no doorbell to the house. There was actually like,
00:13:23
Speaker
a battery powered one that they hadn't installed and like it wasn't configured yet. And I was like, it was like an old style, just literally a chime. And I'm like, that's cool. And I just like took the screws out of the wall and I'm like removing the mounting bracket and stuff. Um, and like smart doorbells freaking great. Like I, I don't know.
00:13:46
Speaker
The novelty of it has not worn off on me yet. I get a phone notification when it detects somebody in front of the home. It'll tell me if there's a package there, if they literally was just like, a person with a package is approaching, a package was left at the door. They tell me if the package is removed from the frame and then
00:14:06
Speaker
it will actually jump in the history to where events happen. So it's not constantly a recording, but if it detects motion, then it like records that little section. So you can just be like, okay, this event and then that event and then that event. Interesting. It's so cool. I wonder how this would translate to like a modern day equivalent of like, hey, I got your sausage pizza right here. Yeah. Oh, he's left. Okay.
00:14:34
Speaker
The other cool thing is you can just activate the, so I have a Wi-Fi mesh throughout the house, so it's all on Wi-Fi, and I can just look through the camera whenever I want. Just be like, okay, what's at the front door? What's the weather look like outside? Boom. I don't have to go to a window anymore. That was a decade ago, or two decades ago. The windows are now uninstalled. Goodbye, son. But really, it's back to that subscription service, because Google's like, hey, if you pay $6 a month,
00:15:04
Speaker
Rather than just like three hours, being able to go back in time and view events for the last three hours, it's like 30 days. So if you really want to track all of that stuff or you want to do more alerting and more stuff in their ecosystem, easy. $6 a month, not that expensive, but it adds to every other subscription, right? This is just a number that's continually growing higher.
00:15:29
Speaker
Uh, I'd say do it. Honestly, like it'll give us podcast content ideas. Sort of this package. Yeah. And then you walk some steps. Okay. Right. Then you walk back down to his car. Oh, classic. I do get two events whenever a package is dropped off at least. Cause there's a person who drops it off and then it's like this super wide angle lens. So even if the package is right next to the door, um, it does the register an event. When I go out to grab the package, it's like, Hey, person detected.
00:15:58
Speaker
I like that it does a wide shot in the case of like the packages of the bait to get you outside and there's someone, you know, baseball bat. Just, just outside of frame. The other thing they offer actually is, um, uh, face face detection on the six. I almost said facial detection. I was like, that's probably different, um, for the $6 a month subscription.
Cultural Differences and Moving Plans
00:16:22
Speaker
So it'll say like, uh, Jake's at the front door.
00:16:27
Speaker
or like Dave's at the friend or, or whatever. And you can like literally hook it into their event system. So do you, I assume you have to register the phase. Uh, yeah. Okay. Be like a known, um, known person, but yeah, I can make a different face every time. I should wear a mask only detected. It's a demon.
00:16:52
Speaker
That is cool, though. Like, I really did enjoy facial recognition back in the days of... What was it? The Android tablet?
00:17:02
Speaker
back in college and then I never use it again. I even took it off my phone. I was like, nah. In the off chance I took a nap and somebody just put my phone up to my face. You can see the dumb photos I've taken. You're just sitting there drooling and they're just like, alright, line it up. Blocks out the drool briefly like, yeah, that's him.
00:17:23
Speaker
But I do want to circle back briefly just to say like there is a difference between Opting into a subscription service where it's not dinner like hey, there'd be more convenient for you is something you want versus something that's Either I can pose upon you trickily
00:17:39
Speaker
being all shady, or if they try and paygate something where it's, hey, here's barely anything that's functional. Do you want to pay money? Then we'll allow you to actually do some stuff. Then any type of online dating is usually a good example of that. Hey, you can see pictures, swipe left to right. Do you want to know who swiped on you? Give us money.
00:18:03
Speaker
Do you want to swipe more than 10 times? Give us money. Yeah. And stuff like that where they'll find ways to nickel and dime. Yeah. I'm kind of imagining that is like, I wonder if they could have had that as like an industry in some city, some sort of service, which is just like, Hey, ladies, I'll pay each of you $15 if you like line up in a row and you say who you're interested in. And then like guys have to come through and they're like, okay, they make it through the list.
00:18:32
Speaker
And then you're just like, all right, guys, now that you've made it through this line, do you want to know who was interested in you? Because if you also pay us $15, we'll tell you. Like, you know, you literally heard this person. That's basically what these dating apps are. But it's funny to think about that in a physical space, what that would represent.
00:18:53
Speaker
be like super speed dating, but there's no, there's no talking. There's, there's no interaction. It's as the guys are going by, they have to be in like different poses for the pictures. Pass me the fish. They have one fish. It gets passed down the line. It's literally like a theater stage. Something they just like put their face through. And like, there was the fish there, like the cardboard cutouts of something like that.
00:19:19
Speaker
That'd be funny. This reminds me of the James a caster pit. Do you know what that's called? I don't think so. Nobody does. That was part of his joke. He's like, you know that thing? It's like a whole bot, but it doesn't have a face. Yeah. The thing that you put your head in. Do you know what that is? I don't have a name for it either, but they have to have a name. He goes on about it for like a good bit and then ties it into the story for the purpose of the joke. But yeah, I have no idea.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know either. I think everybody, probably the reason the name doesn't seem important is everyone knows what they are once you describe it. You're like, oh yeah, the cardboard cutout where you put your face in it. You're like, okay, yeah, I got you. I wonder, I mean, that has to be one of those things that's probably not all countries. Right. Well, hopefully that'd be weird. It's just like indigenous tribe and ain't dark to cut. You're like, yeah, yeah, the cardboard cutout with the face thing. I know what you're talking about.
00:20:16
Speaker
I'm just curious what other things exist in other countries or just even areas like in the United States where it's like, oh yeah, this is super normal for us. And then because you've never been exposed to it, you're like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. The word soda, for instance. Oh. Is that local to us?
00:20:37
Speaker
Well, there's an entire map, um, for what different states and regions of the United States call soda or pop soda pop. Yeah. Like soda pop. That's a little, little excessive. Right. But that is the normal one in some locations. So.
00:20:56
Speaker
It's a little weird. Some people also say cola regardless of whether it's actually like cola or not because cola is a distinct thing. It is a distinct thing. Like it is a distinct type of beverage. Um, but you can't use that one as a catch. That's the only one that's explicitly wrong. Soda is most correct. Pop is incorrect. Cola is very incorrect. I guess there's soda water too. Yeah.
00:21:24
Speaker
Which is like a weird cousin of Seltzer. Yeah, I guess soda is kind of a catch-all for something with carbonation. Yeah. Is a beer a soda?
00:21:35
Speaker
I don't think so. I hope not. Cause that's going to lead to some confusion. Yeah. Toss me a soda. Did you want a mixed drink? Um, cause here we've just given you a whole bunch of carbonation and some alcohol. You figured it out. Uh, it's a little bit more. Uh, but yeah, you're looking forward to moving. What are you going to miss without, without literally telling the listeners where you live? What are you going to miss?
00:22:04
Speaker
Um, there's some friends nearby, friends of the show, Justin or Rachel. Uh, they're the closest. Nobody else lives here anymore. So having them in closer proximity, I will definitely miss. Um, there's some one or two food plays in the area, but it's not going to be like a make or break. Like we did mama Wong's the other day.
00:22:24
Speaker
And that's for good food. I even had some leftovers for lunch, but I'm sure I'll replace it. Or if I come down to visit here, I'll have it again. It'll be like a nice treat. Oh yeah. There's not like a major standout because I feel like
00:22:39
Speaker
I moved here for the sake of being close to a job. And then as things went remote, it's just kind of here, right? Very much in between cities. So there's not like a go to hang out spot. It's just I'm
Exploring Local Cuisine and Cooking
00:22:53
Speaker
here. I can drive to stuff.
00:22:56
Speaker
That's the way it was with my apartment. Prior to moving is it was like, all right, incredibly close to the office. No one's going into the office. The office is literally being closed. Okay, that's not a factor anymore. What about the friends? The friends have all moved. They actually moved before the office closed. I'm like, oh crap, we should have been paying attention to that. Hey, hey, you have a brunch place that you can walk to. That is true. And I don't think I ever went there when you weren't there. So like, I think I probably went there like three times.
00:23:23
Speaker
For any listeners, I knew the owner, so I would let Jake in. Yeah. It's a very exclusive club, this brunch club. I don't know who all those other fuckers were, but... Yeah. But yeah, I mean, same situation, I think. I think with where you're moving, where I moved even, there's plenty of good food options around. Now, the problem is, in my case, the close by food options are things that I do eat
00:23:53
Speaker
But there are things I should eat a lot. Like the very closest things are literally Domino's Pizza, which I do eat, but I shouldn't eat it a lot. A Chinese place, which I actually am kind of glad for that. That's nice.
00:24:10
Speaker
a Mexican place, but it was like, I'm going to come back to the Mexican place. That's the next 20 minutes of the podcast. Um, and then literally like a local, um, regional convenience gas station combo sheets. And it doesn't care. I don't know why I wasn't mentioning it. Sheets is not going to tell you where I live. Um, and again, I shouldn't eat there that often. I mean, those are,
00:24:37
Speaker
crazy selling points for me. But I'm sure the restaurants are further. You got to go a little further. These are just stuff that you found nearby as you've been getting settled and exploring a little bit. Yeah, they're like trying to find like a restaurant. You're like, this is the spot. Like when people come to visit, you're like, we're going to take you to tiny Tina's over there or something like that. Or maybe it is a Domino's. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, probably occasionally Domino's, but I do want to try some of the restaurants.
00:25:06
Speaker
I need like one good authentic Mexican place, breaking into the 20 minute rant. The reason for that is because we tried this local place and I went in and there was a white person there. I was like, oh geez, this again. No, I'm just kidding. Hear me out. I don't like to racially profile, but if it's a Mexican restaurant,
00:25:27
Speaker
I do immediately feel better if it's like Mexican people working there. Yeah. And if I can smell beans out the gate, if I walk in and smell food, we're in a much better spot. Yeah. Two, if I hear like black people commentating Smash Brothers, I feel much better. Right. You're you've you've lived. You live here. Like this is not my home. Exactly. Certain things I'm accustomed to. I'm like, oh, this is going to be good. Right. I just realized you meant like if you were watching Smash Bros.
00:25:56
Speaker
and there's some black guys commentating it, then you're like, this is an authentic cast. For some reason, I still thought you were entering the Mexican restaurant and you heard black guys commentating Smash Bros. I was like, this is an interesting restaurant. Yeah, my local Mexican place is very authentic. Uh-huh. You're right, though. You're right, though. Like some of the most hyped casts I've listened to are related to that.
00:26:20
Speaker
Back to the story, it doesn't actually qualify when I walked in the door. This is more for humor. But there were white people working there. It didn't impact anything at the time. But now looking back on it, the food wasn't seasoned well. And that was basically it.
00:26:41
Speaker
They were all fresh ingredients because I got like, um, some sort of, uh, burrito bowl thing with like carnitas and a bunch of things. And like, I like carneas. I really like carneas, but I've never been in a situation where people like just didn't put any seasoning on it. And it's just like strips of chicken. Um, and it doesn't taste nearly as good and like nothing else in the bowl tasted nearly as good.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, you gotta season the meat to have that flavor be a part of it. Yeah. Like I recently made.
00:27:14
Speaker
Oh, my AC kicks in. I was like, what the fuck is that noise? Yeah, I didn't hear it. I recently made some ground beef. And I was like, oh, I'll probably just use it later in the week or something. But I didn't season it. I just cooked it, and that's it. Yeah. It's the worst meat I've ever had. It's really rough. I prefer ground turkey with something. But yeah, you really need it to be a part of the process versus just showing up later like, hey, I'm the sauce. I'm like, nah.
00:27:43
Speaker
I was talking to Jenny, I was literally like, I think they just need MSG. Like they just got to add MSG or something to this and it'll probably be way better. But it just, you know, I don't know. I'm not used to that type of experience because I have gone to more authentic Mexican restaurants, which we love. And like, you know what you're getting into and there's going to be some seasoning in there. I guess this is this is the lesson. I don't usually think of such things as I don't really cook.
00:28:10
Speaker
In fact, saying, I don't really cook is still misrepresenting. I don't cook. Um, but that's probably the most I've ever thought of seasoning. And that is a sign of a failure for that local, local joint, even Jake's literally that though. Yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
I, one, I think, I know I've been like saying it for years. I would like you to cook something for me. Please cook for me. Um, but I'll make a cheese quesadilla. Is that a quesadilla or is this in place of the tortilla? It's just all cheese. Oh, right. Well, there's one slice of cheese and then you surround it with a, uh, multiple layers of cheese and then you cook it and then you're good.
00:29:01
Speaker
I imagine like Jake just opens the like the shredded Mexican cheese puts in the thing and it's using a spatula like four bit into a half a half moon. That's more effort though. But at some point I would still like to cook with you. But this is a dream I have. It's not a make or break type thing. Well, I just want to redeem myself from the ones on my burnt steak. I mean,
00:29:27
Speaker
I still thought it tasted good. I mean, the thing in the back on the deck, we actually have like a very old style grill and I don't know if I trust it. I don't know if I trust the propane tank and I'll probably just.
00:29:42
Speaker
get rid of both of those, but it's very next to you. It's like dining room adjacent, and then also it's going to be nice out there. At some point, I'm going to try actually getting a grill there and seeing if it works.
00:29:58
Speaker
So when you say the one you have now is old style, does that mean it's charcoal or does that mean it's just old? It is gas, but it's like a prototype of the first gas grill, I think. But it is using propane. It is using propane.
00:30:17
Speaker
But it's like, I don't even know how to freaking describe it. You know, like those like cheap kind of Weber charcoal circular grills with like the legs, the classic. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that. But instead of being like metal and aluminum and things like that, it's literally stone, I think. And I don't know how it's going to work. Like I actually sold grills for a while at
00:30:46
Speaker
Sears and none of that has prepared me to know what this thing is because it looks so completely different. I'm curious about what it is because I don't remember seeing it when I was there. Yeah. But I would say if it does function or just verify to see if it does function. Yeah. If there is some gas in the propane tank, just try cooking like a chicken breast and see how it goes. Yeah. But cooking with propane is like super easy.
00:31:15
Speaker
Because you just have to turn on the knob to allow gas to flow. And then you have a pile of light. Boom. Fire. Done. Versus trying to manage charcoal and have it be an even cook is a fucking nightmare. And I don't have the patience for it. Also, King of the Hill. All episodes of King of the Hill. I can't hear propane and grilling and not immediately think about it.
00:31:46
Speaker
But yeah, that's probably going to be coming up some point this summer, likely after you move. Maybe when we do the housewarming party, we'll try to have stuff set up for that. I also have to clean off the deck and the chairs and stuff back there, because a lot of it's been in disuse because the previous owners were elderly and not really doing a lot for a while. So getting the cobwebs off. You can just rinse or borrow power washer and just
00:32:14
Speaker
I'm gonna probably borrow one from, I can name one person, a friend of the show, Gennaro, who's been on here as a guest. And I'll mention Mel too, Gennaro and Mel. In case she ever comes on, there you go. First reference was now.
00:32:34
Speaker
also friend of the show for the record. Yes. Everyone has lots of friends of the shows. Did you ever consider the friend of the show merch? Oh my gosh. Like somebody mentioned it, I think it was for Rachel, friend of the show probably mentioned it jokingly, but at the same time, I feel like if we could cheaply print that, we could just give it out to people.
Creative Podcast Branding and Sound Effects
00:32:57
Speaker
And then if somebody like has two episodes,
00:33:00
Speaker
Maybe even just one, because they are kind of spaced out for when they would come back. Because we're a special friend to the show. Special friends. We have a special friendship. But I just want to be like a cute novel idea. No, I think it would be. I kind of like that. And then it'll be like an inside thing. And we can give them out at land. And people are like, why don't I have one? I'll be like, yeah. And then we'll move on from that point.
00:33:30
Speaker
But I think it just would be a fun thing for like a shits and giggles. Yeah. Maybe like a sticker shirt. Yeah, I think maybe I shouldn't express. My memory is not that great, but I'm pretty sure Rachel's the one that made the like frosted glass coasters. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, by the way, Rachel.
00:33:53
Speaker
And it's really cool. I like, I have it up there. It's on like the, uh, like IKEA calyx. Um, and I would love to have more stuff like that, you know? So we should definitely commission some stuff. We can have our own simple website and have some things of like, Hey, do you want this stuff in your house? Well, we don't. So please, please, here you go.
00:34:24
Speaker
Man What's the next topic I was gonna say how do you feel about Abusing cameo for dude dude intros on the discord server abusing cameo. What is cameo?
00:34:40
Speaker
So Cameo is a method of a famous celebrity or personality, getting them to record a video message for somebody else. Typically, it's like, hey, James, your friend Tim wanted me to say happy birthday. And my name is the voice actor for Voltron or something like that. The Fortnite guy is like in the three digits on the back.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Could do something like that. Like you just have them do a generic template type intro and then say a bunch of people's names and then I could cut up the audio and then you can have like, oh, you want to chef John template? And then, I mean, I just ripped it from YouTube for the sake of me testing this out. It's like, oh, I'm not going to do the thing, but
00:35:34
Speaker
I just think that would be entertaining, but it would have more upfront costs because you are essentially commissioning the voice. Yeah. I mean, you could do something like Fiverr or whatever. Just be like, hey.
00:35:47
Speaker
Because I'm sure they have to be very short clips anyways, right? Like, because your upper bound is, you know, a couple seconds, because theoretically, any of these could be playing in the middle of whatever else people are saying. Also, the Subnautica ones, you got to check the volumes on those because those are like so much louder than everything else. It's really funny when Ian leaves and it's not reactor offline, it's the
00:36:16
Speaker
Ah, crap. Cyclops, the Cyclops, um, Captain powering down, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cyclops powering down. Um, and it's just like, if he just leaves and everyone else is kind of forgotten that we were there in discord, cause no one's been saying anything for a while.
00:36:34
Speaker
It is a shock back to reality. So I'm curious what the volume difference is, but those are so loud as an aside. I do like the idea, though. That would be cool. You could also get a soundalike for it, because there's a Keanu Reeves soundalike I know on Fiverr. OK. And other people like that. That'd be really cool. I'm tempted to open a tab and do this now.
00:37:03
Speaker
But I just think it'd be funny or entertaining because I really like the small moments of like, oh, that was a cool thing. I just wanted to brighten somebody's day. And I feel like novelty really makes that happen a lot. Yeah. The other, the other nice thing about the intros in general is like, I don't really have to say anything when I join a channel. Cause like.
00:37:29
Speaker
There's no such thing as the silent join anymore. Everyone hears your intro and you can just say like, hi, you know, like it's already the introductory thing. So people usually say hello boy after I joined them. Um, just pretty funny. Yeah. I definitely just want to build off of it. I need to remind me after this, I'll send you the one that Jenny's going to have for her new one.
00:37:58
Speaker
Nice. It's, it's been Jenny approved already. I just need to coordinate getting that back up. No, that sounds good. I think it's a good idea. I'm all for more branding. I'm going to, going to take this thing worldwide. And here's friend of the show.
00:38:19
Speaker
Right. We just have that for everybody. Remove all of the original. But we have somebody on Fiverr do it, not use our own voices. Yes. Okay. All right. That one is better. Well, I meant that initially as a joke, but one good reason for that is if I'm on Discord and you hear my voice introducing somebody else, it would be very confusing.
Gaming Experiences: Blizzard to Indie
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
Here's for another show. Dave, what do you say? Oh, oh, it's Ian's join noise. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the real Dave. It's a, it's a fake Dave. It's the imposter. You just have the vent sound for somebody and that's their, their intro and outro is they literally just vent. It's the vent sound from among us when you enter a leave event.
00:39:11
Speaker
Oh, I thought you meant like ventrilo and I'm like trying to remember those days. I'm like, I don't know what that was. That's a different idea is you have like a push to talk sound from a different application. That would be evil though. Anytime I watch a YouTube video or like a Twitch VOD and I hear Skype, Discord, a phone or like an instant message, I immediately get triggered because I go to check my notifications for something.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah, and then I'm like, oh, in the same way, you might watch a YouTube video and they'll have like a mouse on screen. And so you move your mouse, like, let me get that out of the way. Fuck. Right. Yeah. That's about as evil as maybe not quite as evil, but within the same vein of evil as.
00:39:52
Speaker
Uh, music that has police sirens in it. Yeah. Like, I don't know if they just don't think about it or they don't care, but I just instantly ate that nonsense. Unless it's just like the shortest thing and they immediately override it with another sound and it fades out or whatever. It's legitimately it's journey. Yeah. And I'm saying that merely being a white person was just listening to good music, but.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah. And also not currently driving that much, but true. That's true. I did want to ask, what have you been playing lately? If you've been playing anything, I don't want to assume that you've been playing video games. I haven't been playing as many video games. Um, although, well, now these aren't really new. I actually have plenty of unplayed games that I could start, but I just don't have the initiative after
00:40:48
Speaker
I've been working a little bit more, doing more home improvement stuff and not putting as much time on it, but basically Blizzard Suite. Overwatch a little bit more than usual, but still not as much as everyone else does. Also, do you intentionally sign on when I sign off?
00:41:06
Speaker
because i will go to bed around like 11 11 30 and i like check discord notifications before i go to bed and then you're like oh jake's playing over interesting well i don't usually start playing like overwatch then but sometimes um i wrap up whatever else i'm doing like in the evening and then i i get back on the computer check stuff before heading to bed
00:41:26
Speaker
which is probably not the best way to do it. It's probably better to just sleep, but I like to check in. But yeah, a little bit of Overwatch clearing dailies and hots, which I can do because the game's basically dead.
00:41:45
Speaker
The I actually played so like we talked about Hearthstone a long time ago, but I played like six maybe Five or six hours of Hearthstone Like last night. Oh, well, not like Versus people never versus people. I'm not even using my own deck just the single-player adventure content. I
00:42:08
Speaker
But I don't know, it was like fun and they have some like find lethal puzzles where you have to like draw cards from your deck and trade and you know change the board state try to figure out how to solve it. And they've been putting like a lot of effort into them. There's like a whole campaign of one of these adventures for each character.
00:42:31
Speaker
um i don't know they're kind of just fun they keep giving me rewards like card backs and currency and sometimes like card unlocks i'm like you guys don't get it my collection doesn't matter i'm never gonna like use my cards for anything but i guess it's still a nice gesture
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's probably obviously more so for the people who are playing and they just want the additional cosmetics or free stuff to go along with the game. That'll branch off outside of the main PvE or PvP. That's not cool though.
00:43:07
Speaker
it is really funny like how absolutely tangential my line of interaction is to like what they want though because like when I launched up the game they're like hey here are these previous expansions they're all being uh rotated to wild and like cool I didn't have any cards from any of those but cool you know right it's literally so far behind or here's some card changes these cards are nerfed and these ones are buffed and like I don't have those cards
00:43:38
Speaker
Hey, did you read the patch notes? You're like, I don't play this game. Right. It's, it's literally just this curated single player experience. I really do. And I do like the roguelike stuff still. So I might, I might do that a little bit more. Um, and vampire survivors, vampire survivors is the other one, but, uh, I was putting a bit more time into, cause they, their development clip is not like super slow.
00:44:02
Speaker
No, it's like once every one to two weeks they'll have, hey, we added an upgrade for this new weapon. Here's new characters, new map. Here's some achievements you got to do. And I'll usually try and close them out once I see that they're available. But I know Mike also started playing some and he's been enjoying it. I don't know if he's still as rampant with it. And I'm still waiting for Jenny to play it.
00:44:30
Speaker
It's such a good, like casual game. Like I say casual in that it doesn't require that much depth. It's literally just do runs, get currency, spend currency, unlock things. Can you press Waz and occasionally enter? You'll be okay. Uh-huh. Yeah. They added the, an evil for the, um, the lightning bolt. Love that one. That one actually feels really good because I felt like
00:44:59
Speaker
The meta was solved the last time I was playing it. I was literally sending damage numbers to Dave. Dave can attest to this. I was like, here's the build, and these are the ones that are underperforming, and these ones are performing. And this is why you should use the empty.
00:45:14
Speaker
empty book or whatever it's called, empty tome, empty tome for cooldown reduction, even if you're not using the weapon it upgrades. But then they introduce these variables, they're like adding new weapons to it and new passives and stuff and new heroes and I'm like, okay, all right, a little harder to solve. Have you played around with Furegi at all? And then I'll get all vampire survivors because it's fair. I don't think I'm familiar with that one.
00:45:41
Speaker
So it's the upgrade of the guns? Where the guns go diagonally? Oh dang. Hmm. If the answer to those things is no, I'll leave it at that for now. Yeah, I know for now, but it sounds cool.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah. The upgrade for that is fucking silly. Also visually, visually challenging at times. There's like the, um, the cats. Uh, one of the, one of the new characters has like cats as their primary thing. And they just, she's like a witch and they go across the screen and like attack enemies and interact with items and things. And if they like interact with an item, they'll do this like cat fight animation.
00:46:23
Speaker
Um, which deals like a lot of damage, but it's also like very opaque and whatever is in that dust cloud is completely covered. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. The game does get incredibly busy with everything. Okay. From Jake's description and Jake seeing my face sour, I realized now there, there was more content added. Um, as far as I'm concerned, while we were recording the podcast, cause I could have sworn I checked the yesterday.
00:46:51
Speaker
It was pretty recent.
00:46:56
Speaker
And there's some other cool stuff, but they're implementing some like new features. I think there's, without spoiling it, there's like an unlock that, um, changes the UI. Um, which I thought was really cool. Um, and yeah, they're slowly building on it and making it more of a complete game. And it was like, what was it like $3 or something? It was incredibly inexpensive. So like still a good recommend.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah, and again, I will buy it for you because it's three bucks. Remember how I scoffed at 12 bucks earlier for a yearly purchase? I can afford three. Dude, there are over seven billion people in the world. If we get that many listeners, hopefully I can still afford it. Yeah, let's put one ad. Let's run one ad if we get seven billion listeners.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like that would be it within our budget. And the ad is your mom posting it on Facebook. That's fair. What have you been playing recently, though?
00:47:56
Speaker
Thank you for that cycle. Tunic. I'm playing Tunic. Remember Tunic, the game I talked about every episode for three years? You were very excited for it. How's it delivering? It's super cute. It's very much like a nice, fun, isometric Zelda-like. I'm really enjoying the theming of it.
00:48:17
Speaker
My only downside at this point right now is it's a little confusing as far as overall direction where they want you to go. Right. So like I had completed an area or two and one place that I went to very much seemed like I was underleveled or was missing an item for it. And so I was like, okay, I'll come back to it. I'll try again. I was exploring around again. Couldn't really find anything.
00:48:41
Speaker
And then I literally went to Google like, Hey, what do I do with and then someone's like, Oh, have you tried doing this? And like, Oh, I didn't know that that was an option because the game doesn't tell you things. Gotcha. You do pick up pieces of like a kind of like an old video game manual.
00:48:57
Speaker
But a lot of it is not written in English. It's written in like these hieroglyphics with like some pictures and you can kind of infer some stuff or might have an overworld map. This is some Jonathan, Jonathan Blow stuff. It's not that convoluted. I think it fits well with like the cute theming. Yeah. But there are definitely some points like at least the one I'm describing where I didn't know how to progress or that that one thing was an option. Yeah. Maybe I could have figured out from like that piece I picked up, but it wasn't super obvious to me.
Game Design and Player Guidance
00:49:27
Speaker
But then there's some other things on it where it'd be like, Hey, you're in this dungeon. Here's like a little map of it. And I'll have like some notes on it. Like somebody was like, I think plot wise that you're not the first person to come through this world. Okay. And like, I think they were like jotting down some notes of some stuff. You also find some chests are already opened. Hmm.
00:49:53
Speaker
So it's multiplayer. Got to catch up to it. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'm really enjoying it so far. Again, like visually, it's delightful. Oh, it's very if you like cute old Zelda type stuff, I would say check it out. Yeah, you should have suspected that there were going to be multiple characters involved when they actually mentioned when you're like, you're going to be playing as Nick. You're like, ah.
00:50:21
Speaker
Gotcha. As soon as you started the joke, I'm like, I know. Yeah, but that's really cute. Um, I really liked, um, links awakening, um, which I think was.
00:50:34
Speaker
Aesthetically, you know, pretty similar to this that it is important that these games are particularly like, um, I guess it's not open world adventure games that really does convey a different aspect to it, but adventure games with, um, nonlinear progression or options like that. Um, they have to be really intuitive with their mechanics. Um, cause otherwise it really sucks to like get all the way to where you need a key.
00:51:05
Speaker
And it was like a long track and you're like, I don't know if I have the key or if I missed something or where I should get the key. You have to be careful with that moment in games like this. It's better to have like, in my opinion, at least to go to game design for a second. It's better to have a gatekeeper.
00:51:24
Speaker
Like at the front of this, it's like, Hey, you got the bow and arrow. Cause if not, everything behind me is going to be bad. Um, rather than letting people go all the way through the forest, reaching the door that requires the bow and arrow and all that crap, I'd rather know more upfront, but that's maybe just me becoming more lazy in my old age. I mean, it could also be at least for some of the earlier Zelda games, maybe like on 64, they probably would have said like,
00:51:52
Speaker
It really would be convenient if we had some bombs to blow up these rocks and then bombs would be highlighted in a different color. You're like, oh, I need bombs. Yes. And I feel like stuff like that is fine versus.
00:52:06
Speaker
Depending on how many options you give a player, it sucks to go through like the King's quest of like, I'm going to combine the baloney and a stapler. Uh-huh. And you just keep trying things. You're like, oh, that wasn't it. That wasn't it. You want some degree of direction or intuitiveness to convey to the player. Oh, this is what it'd be. And so just they're banging their head. The N64, Zelda's like specifically Ocarina of Time. More people played Ocarina of Time than Majora's Mask because Majora's Mask was timed. I get it.
00:52:37
Speaker
But like, that's such a great example of it, right? There are hidden things where you could just like drop a bomb and uncover a hole in the ground for some extra stuff. Maybe a heart piece if you're lucky. Didn't the bomb create the hole in the ground? Yes. Did I say you drop a bomb into a hole?
00:52:55
Speaker
Well, you said, however you phrased it, I was like, oh, I'm going to pick on the semantics. It doesn't matter. I was a dumb joke anyway. Drop a bomb, create a hole, fall in the hole. Um, and like some of those things are like not the most obvious. Maybe it's just a circle of grass or something like that. But the key was none of those things were main progression. If you figure it out, awesome. Here's your little reward for figuring it out. But.
00:53:22
Speaker
We're going to have people that are roughly telling you where you should go unless you take like a one year break from the game and you just don't remember what the NPCs had said. We're going beneath the well. We're going to Hyrule Castle. We're going to all of the temples. Here's a literal like pause menu list of like all of the seals that you have. And so you know, roughly the remaining temples. Where should you go for water? Well,
00:53:51
Speaker
Maybe where the water people are. What about, what about like desert? That one's actually pretty obvious. That was the desert, you know, like they, they tried to make it like more intuitive so that people wouldn't fall off of that main path. And I find that I really appreciate that rather than guessing.
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah, sucks to guess. I remember there's the old story. I think it's like Castlevania 2 or 3. But there's one where to progress, you have to go to the leftmost side of the map and crouch and wait in the spot for like 10 seconds. Then a tornado will come and pick you up and transport you to the next area. And nothing in the game as far as I...
00:54:34
Speaker
Remember hearing the story about told you about it. I think you actually probably had like call in like a game hotline I hate that and again talking about paygating. It's fucking predatory. Yes But yeah, most things are not usually that obtuse but When things are it just never feels good because if you ever have to say like well, how would I have known that? Like with certain things like with spikes
00:55:01
Speaker
That's a good visual indicator of like, that stuff's bad. Right. You've been conditioned. Yeah. If you have some type of conditioning, that makes sense. And I like stuff with that of like, Hey, we kind of whispered this to you earlier. Do you remember what we said? That, that stuff's fine. Right. But if it's just a random puzzle and not knowing if you have the pieces for it or not is always weird. Cause like, why wouldn't you just move those further away? But.
00:55:30
Speaker
I feel like in Tunic there are definitely some things right now like there's some like hooks that are coming out of the ground and it seems to be like a couple of them like oh I can probably find something later to connect those two to use it as a method of transportation or interact with them in some way gotcha now because I've played games for a long time I'm like oh this isn't something I can do with right now because I have a sword a shield bombs and like a wand
00:55:57
Speaker
And those interact with it. So I'm going to come back later. So I have a mental note of that. But I could see somebody just come in and press like, oh, I'm going to check out video games for the first time. Tunic. And then it's just this random ass thing. And they bang their head against it. And they're like, meh. And they just ignore it.
00:56:13
Speaker
Maybe at some point they will find that piece and then be like, Oh, right. I can now do that thing. Oh, these were here. But yeah, usually like, I think the traditional example of how you present that is, um,
00:56:28
Speaker
You make the player do it once, at least. So like the destructible walls in Zelda, where it's just like, there's a crack on the wall. Hitting it with a sword doesn't do anything. You don't have bombs, but there is a very noticeable crack on that wall and it seems weird. And then later you get bombs, maybe in a room with a crack on the wall. And now, you know, now it's learned. So.
00:56:57
Speaker
I think they actually forced, they even did more than that. That game's so freaking good. They literally forced you to use bomb plants first that would regrow.
00:57:09
Speaker
so that you always had a bomb to try to progress to actually like figure out that you had the inventory. Yeah. Yeah, literally. And it's just like, it was like, hold your hand tutorial style in retrospect. But by the time you actually got bombs, you're like, this is just a portable problem solver. And you already know the problems you can solve with it. So it was.
00:57:29
Speaker
I mean, the benefit of using something like a bomb flower is because it's time limited, because you're picking up a fucking explosive as a small child, you very much have that radius of time where it's viable. So if you have a bomb plan, you're like, oh, something within this radius can interact with the bomb.
00:57:49
Speaker
No, it was Ocarina of Time is very hot take Ocarina of Time. Very good game. That's not what I'm thinking. I think it's one of GameSpot's literal 100s and it's a lot of people's favorite game of all time.
Critique and Praise: Elden Ring
00:58:04
Speaker
Those people haven't played Elden Ring. Anyway. I actually was, um, I realized we're literally coming to time. So Michigan Elden Ring is dangerous at this point though, Dave. Every time I do it, it's always a bit, but, um,
00:58:20
Speaker
I was talking to people about things I didn't like about the game. Um, and concepts and things that I think could have been improved upon or things that could have used more time in development. All of these are with a caveat. It's still an absolutely amazing game. Um, blasphemy channel on discord, but it's, it's not perfect. And I do think that it is actually, it might be useful at some point to talk about it.
00:58:51
Speaker
A little bit more. I know we haven't had that many episodes on it for what we would have changed about it or what could have been different or what could have had more time in development, I think. I mean, we definitely covered some smaller items along the way, but nothing super major. Is there one that you want to at least call out now since you brought it up?
00:59:15
Speaker
I guess this is a preview as like the literal preview, uh, catacombs. Cause I think I also mentioned that one. So like that's the one thing that I feel like is very noticeably copy paste content throughout the game. Um, and
00:59:35
Speaker
Yeah, I, I understand completely why it's there, but I don't think it really adds that much to the game. And if they weren't in the game, the game would probably be better in my opinion, but it's also, I don't know. I could hedge around that a lot. I would disagree. I think if you took it all of like the catacombs and caves, it would feel a lot more empty.
01:00:01
Speaker
And it's kind of fun to like come across something. Why is your exploring like, Oh, thing. And you go open a door, what's this? And then you go check it out. Now I do think they should be fleshed out more to be a little bit more distinct.
01:00:14
Speaker
Because there were a couple of distinct ones. Yeah. But usually, if you're looking like early game area, a lot of them are like, OK, I get it. And then some of the later ones, I think, get a little bit more distinct because they're harder to find or more niche places or more themed. Maybe they just didn't need as many of them, and it would have had. Just take some of the more basic ones out. You could probably do that too.
01:00:38
Speaker
There's one I want to mention. I know we're literally coming to time. I'm going to speak vaguely slightly to not spoil anything because I'm not putting a spoiler disclaimer for two minutes of talking about. Um, but there's one that like straight up gaslights you as far as like reality is concerned with repeating patterns. And I kind of loved that. I was very confused at the time, but in retrospect, I kind of loved it.
01:01:07
Speaker
Um, that one keep in a hundred percent. Yeah. I like stuff like that. Cause it was very much breaking the mold. It's this same shit again. Like, wait a sec. I'm still in the same dungeon, right? Uh-huh. It's a cool unique twist. Yeah. Also does less imps. Also they suck. Yeah. Imps are pretty obnoxious enemy.
01:01:32
Speaker
Enemy type variety was actually another big gripe kind of, particularly for some of the repetitive bosses where it's like, do you know this guy's moveset yet? Time to prove yourself. And you're like, I've fought 17 of these. Yes, I actually do know the moveset at this point.
01:01:52
Speaker
Looking at you word trees, you know, whatever they're called. They're not like the trees themselves, but the, um, ulcerated tree roots.
Closing Thoughts and Gaming Grievances
01:02:00
Speaker
Yeah. Cause there's the guardians and then the tree spirits, I think are the two, but.
01:02:07
Speaker
Oh, you're talking about the, uh, the Knights. Well, there's the guys on the horses too, but like the, um, each time we're mentioning a different enemy. I know. Well, I'm talking about the big guys with like, they, it looks like they have like giant shovels or gavels or something like that. And they cast spells at you. They're around the ear trees. Do you know what I'm talking about? They have health bars, they're bosses. Big guys with shovels that cast spells. Well, it's not really like a shovel. It's more like, um,
01:02:38
Speaker
It's like I was going to say spade, which is another name for a shovel, but it's like a giant mallet looking thing. And they cast spells. They do cast spells usually if they jump in the air and then land on their butts. It's like, Hey, Holy, here we go. Oh, you're talking about like the base of the minor urge trees. Exactly. All of those. Yeah. Cause there's a bunch of those guys throughout the game too.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, it like once or twice is fine because we'd be like, oh, I can prove that I know it. And that very much is like the Dark Souls like, Hey, this is your first boss later. It's like, Hey, we're going to give you three of those because it's been 20 hours. You know how to do it, right? Yeah.
01:03:23
Speaker
But yeah, they're definitely felt to be more repetition in something like the dungeons or some of the other areas. You're like, oh, it's another cat sentry demon. Yeah. Hate those. Not a fan of those. Also, screw their resistances. Really high.
01:03:42
Speaker
I guess, uh, I'll save some, I'll save some, I'll save some of the discussion there though. Any closing thoughts or words of wisdom for our listeners on this fine day? Hopefully. If you are an ISP, not necessarily the people who work for ISPs, because I think any employees by default, innocence, except for the one who fucked up my internet, that person can burn in hell.
01:04:07
Speaker
And they will, don't worry about it, they will. ISPs can go suck a fat one.
01:04:15
Speaker
All right. Well, that's weird motivational advice, but, uh, we'll, we'll end on that. If you guys have any notes for things that you would have changed about Alden Ring, or maybe things you're dissatisfied in other games that you otherwise like, feel free to send those in to soapstone podcast, gmail.com. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook owned by meta at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.