The Apex Podcast

Changing Traditions: Black Friday Memories, Gaming Evolution, and Tech Industry Adventures

• Apex Communications Network

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Remember the days when Black Friday was all about elbowing your way through crowded stores? Well, we've come a long way from that, and in this episode, we're taking a trip down memory lane to reminisce about the evolution of Black Friday and its undeniable impact on our holiday shopping and gaming culture. You might find it amusing to hear our tales of in-person shopping frenzies, epic waiting lines, and yes, even the use of military-grade microwaves. We'll also discuss LAN parties and the ever-evolving world of gaming consoles.

We're not stopping at gaming and traditions though; we're also dissecting the impact of the holiday season on the tech industry. If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at Amazon's warehouses during the holiday rush or how the new OLED Steam Deck stacks up in the gaming market, we've got you covered. And before we wrap things up, we even invite you to send in your questions for future episodes. 

So, buckle up and join us on this nostalgic journey filled with personal insights, tech industry tidbits, holiday traditions, and gaming evolution.

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Speaker 1:

Although at this point it's like Black Friday deals. Dude, I started seeing Black Friday deals.

Speaker 2:

It's Black Friday month, dude, yeah. I was gonna say I like the better one. Black Friday was just Black Friday and there are people getting trampled trying to get into Best Buy.

Speaker 1:

Actually, you know what? I was talking to somebody about that the other day. Who was I talking to about that? It was my younger. It was my younger cousin Because she, she's only grown up Like she, I mess with her all the time. She could help tell her that she's the first tablet baby in our family, right, yeah. So I'm like there's this whole world like before, like the internet was a thing, and I was like clip coupons, yeah, clip coupons, well that. But. But Black Friday was like a whole experience, right, like we didn't have cyber Monday, people weren't getting stuff shipped to their house, so that percentage of the population was still out and about and I was like it, what you would be texting all of your friends, like seeing if their parents were gonna be taking them out, because you're gonna run into them.

Speaker 1:

You know it was, yeah, crazy, ridiculous traffic. But everybody would bundle up, you would be hot cocoa, you could take pictures of Santa, you could go walk around. I mean it was like a whole, a whole experience.

Speaker 2:

The noodles and our other buddy, aiden, made it in, I think, the Kent repository One Black Friday because they went and they Waited outside of Best Buy. I don't remember if it was like they wanted a PlayStation or Xbox or they had like good deals on monitors or TVs or something like that, but they, they took a park bench.

Speaker 2:

I don't remember if they uprooted it or they just bought in, brought it, they bought they brought a full-on bench to the the sidewalk at the strip and just moved it all the way through the line, while they said they sat there for like a day and a half.

Speaker 1:

I'm weak, that sounds like it would be like a new PlayStation, that's probably like the ps3.

Speaker 2:

Some it was, it was something, it was something like that yeah, even on, now Is it PS5?

Speaker 1:

Yes, ps5, like the second rendition of it now.

Speaker 2:

Did? The PS5 has been out for since 20. What 20? Well, let me just look, I think it was 20 or 21, I have no idea, but during? It was, yeah, november 12th 2020, so it's been out for three years. You know how you know, so this is something that was approved.

Speaker 1:

Like how Disconnected I am from games in general. I mean the two games that I played in the last game. I mean the two games that I played in the last like three years, or God of War 4 and Diablo 4. Yeah, that's the extent of my gaming. I have the longest time. Sam was bagging on me for this like a month or two ago, because I was like oh yeah, like the latest Xbox is the 360, and he was like dude. He was like the Xbox 360 is ancient. I Don't even know.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know what it is now.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I don't know either. Is it what? Is it the Xbox one or something? Do they go back to zero?

Speaker 2:

Xbox release Xbox 960 720 all See, that would have been cool. Everybody was expecting the 720 and they pulled out one which was Also. It is the Xbox one I. That was one of them, but I don't think that all Xbox consoles in order.

Speaker 1:

I Remember the super hype with the Xbox because it had land and you could do for those of you that don't know what land stands for its local area network. And this is when everybody would get together over holiday break and set up like you had to show up with snacks, a 40-foot land, cable, an Xbox and your own TV screen and we would just set up in somebody's basement.

Speaker 2:

Do? We used to do that With our laptops when we played League of Legends in high school, before it became like the most popular game in the entire world ever Prior to fortnight, I guess and the legends was huge dude, the. I mean it's still huge, but we used to have like Five of us go over and play at our buddy Dan's house. It'd be like 102 degrees in his basement all those laptops running, all those computers running.

Speaker 2:

Did it was? It was nuts, a dead of Winter. There's just steam rolling out of Dan's bedroom window because we're down there with shitty hardware that's just pumping out heat. Yeah you can hear the fans kick up Me, dude.

Speaker 1:

I wonder if you ever like, if FBI was ever watching the power grid at Jackson and being like what's going on. What's going on?

Speaker 2:

If it wasn't that it was, if it wasn't our computers, it was Dan's frit, it was Dan's microwave. So I don't know where they got it from, but Dan's parents had Drill strength microwaves. No, it was. It was a military grade. It cut out the Wi-Fi when you ran it. What? Ha ha ha, you go heat some up in the fucking like EMP the house.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah. Yeah, I was like Dan, you should be standing that close Dude that I was going to say that can't be healthy. Oh, it was it was.

Speaker 2:

It was a huge microwave, like solid metal, like hinge door. On it the buttons look too small for like the size of it. I'm like I have never seen a microwave like this. And he's just like yeah, I have no clue where my, where my parents got it from or my mom got it from, but that thing it would start. You click it on and start buzzing. The lights would go, you wouldn't be able to get on the internet and it was like I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what? Oh my gosh. I think, it was coming home and be like you never guessed what I found at the surplus store. Maggie, yeah.

Speaker 2:

The him and him and noodles are the ones that lived in Alaska together, so I do think there is a correlation to their poor decision making, because they spent a lot of time over there together.

Speaker 1:

You think they're just they're staring at their.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that thing melted a forward portion of their brain.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, oh my God.

Speaker 2:

And for and for reference Xbox, then Xbox 360, then Xbox one and then in that third generation they had the Xbox one S and the Xbox one X.

Speaker 1:

And so last time they came out with a new system, if the PS5 came out in 2000, what did you say, 2020?

Speaker 2:

So yeah, November, November 2020, and Xbox put out a console November 2020, and that is called the Xbox series S and Xbox series X.

Speaker 1:

Aw, they got boring.

Speaker 2:

Not to be confused with the Xbox one S or the Xbox one X. This is why I didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Do better with the new Microsoft.

Speaker 2:

So the series series is the current one.

Speaker 1:

The series series.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's Xbox series, so you have either series S or series X, and that's the fourth gen of Xbox.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Which I always propose. If you're thinking about getting an Xbox, you just build a PC.

Speaker 1:

Fair, fair. I didn't really like PC gaming until I started getting into it more with Sam.

Speaker 2:

Well, the thing is is they both run Windows? If you get Xbox Game Pass, it works on your computer as well, because it's owned by Microsoft. So anything that you could play or wanna get or do on an Xbox, you can just do on a computer as well as work from it. Get on the internet, can you play, watch movies Can?

Speaker 1:

you make a baller for the computer.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, they now most as soon as you plug in and actually any controller, I think the new PlayStation ones and the Xbox ones as soon as you plug them into your computer it downloads the drivers and registers it and it shows up. I know a lot of. I'm pretty like yeah, joey, joey and his buddies, they're playing Call of Duty on PC now, but they strictly only use controller for Call of Duty because the aim assist helps so much.

Speaker 2:

And that's Iceman right, yeah, so I mean, he played Rainbow Six professionally and he was using a keyboard and a mouse, but he chooses to play controller on his PC for. Call of Duty because it's way better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it was wild to me when you were explaining to me like all the different playbooks and sequences and character attributes and everything that he had memorized or written down for oh, it was nuts Seeing his team's playbook, or whatever.

Speaker 2:

it was crazy.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I guess it makes sense, Like if you're playing it professionally, you have to take it to a whole another level, which is like strategy, right, like professional. The difference between a professional player and someone that's just good at the game is probably strategy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, at that point.

Speaker 1:

So do you have anything? I mean, speaking of Black Friday and Thanksgiving week and stuff, I figure we could hit. You know, a couple of family traditions and stuff which I have a hunch might be close, because it seems like every, whether we talk about weddings or birthdays or anything, because of your like Polish background and my Slovak background, they always seem to be kind of close, so I'm kind of curious about that, and then also like if there's anything that you're looking out for on your Black Friday list of stuff that you're gonna be trying to get. We don't need to spoil Christmas presents or anything like that, though, so we can keep that on the hush-hush.

Speaker 2:

For Thanksgiving wise, my family doesn't do anything too crazy. We used to all do it at my grandma's house before she passed away, and that was like everybody. That was my family, and then that was my grandma and my mom's side, so my mom's four sisters and her brother, plus all of those sisters and brother's kids, so it was like 35 of us.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

After my grandma kind of passed away it was around the same time that, like the older sisters in my mom's family, their kids were having kids. So now it's like my Chuchy, my oldest aunt, her family and her two daughters and their grandkids kind of do their own thing. Part of the family now lives down in Alabama, so they're not around. My uncle John, he lives, him and his family are all kind of they're hard to wrangle in one place but they live down by Tappin Lake.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha.

Speaker 2:

So they kind of do their own thing. So now it's pretty much me, my family, my grandpa on that side that's still alive, with our one aunt who takes care of him. He lives with her. So we usually because we're right down the street we usually throw Thanksgiving for us and they come over to our house. Now, and now that my grandpa on my dad's side lives a little bit closer, he also usually comes for Thanksgiving as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, kind of. As long as it's early enough, as long as it's early enough.

Speaker 2:

Well, he night driving is not a forte of his.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was gonna say what time is bedtime.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly like six when the sun goes down. So actual dinner, thanksgiving dinner time, not so much happening.

Speaker 1:

What kind of food do you guys normally do? It's like a turkey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we always do it like we always have a turkey. If my aunt cooks, she always does two turkeys, so she usually bakes one, but then the last couple of years she's been deep frying them or smoking them in a smoker.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we usually have, I've had a smoked turkey.

Speaker 2:

I've had a deep fried turkey. It was pretty good. She has one of those blacks. I think they're called Blackstone. Yeah, like the high-density rural smokers. Yeah, and it's also got like a pizza attachment thing, that goes on top. Yeah, it was pretty good, I liked it. She uses that thing a ton for pork chicken turkey, but then we usually go. It's always a staple. They get the Honey Bay Tam.

Speaker 1:

Ooh.

Speaker 2:

Have a little secondary protein option outside of poultry.

Speaker 1:

That's a huge thing. I wonder if that's a huge thing outside of the Midwest.

Speaker 2:

Honey Bay Tam. Yeah, I don't know all I know is the Honey Bay Tam, the one over by Jersey's off of Dressler. That place sells out of shit around this time of year constantly and they have lines that go out and wrap around the building waiting for turkeys and ham and whatever else they say in there. They are definitely a company that makes their summertime bank in the winter and then rides out the month people aren't buying turkey and ham.

Speaker 1:

The Honey Bay Tam Company I'm about to look this up because I'm curious founded in Detroit, Michigan, 66 years ago, Originally was founded as the Honey Bay Tam Company and Cafe in 1957. After selling Honey Glazed Hams to deli counters and drugstores in Detroit, he taught lunch counter clerks the proper procedure of slicing ham for sandwiches with a knife. He later bought a few of the delis at a drug store in Detroit and started serving ham sandwiches, and then the company basically turned into a franchise and now they have as of 2020, they have 490 locations across the US. They ain't nothing wild and it's literally just ham.

Speaker 2:

Dude, he was out here slaying the ham sammies.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, can you imagine you start as like immigrant, just cutting up like individual spiral slice hams?

Speaker 2:

Yeah to this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's where they're at now. Yeah, that's good. So we usually get that, and then it's normal stuff, normal turkey day stuff. Stuffing all that? Yeah, nothing there In our Thanksgiving, nothing inherently Polish really, really baked into it, just as far as I've ever known.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's more Christmas stuff for us More Christmas things is where all the like the ethnic food really comes out. Trying to think, I think so. We typically have Thanksgiving down at my aunt's house in Columbus and I think it's been that way since probably going on 25 years, something like that. So I mean, since I can remember right, I think I remember one Thanksgiving that wasn't down there prior to her getting that place, but that's it. So when we were growing up, we used to go down and like we'd stay at my aunt's house and then as we started to get like into our like I don't know, 10s, tweens, what's is that? The stage between like double digits in teenager?

Speaker 2:

I think so yeah.

Speaker 1:

And we would get hotel rooms at, like you know, easton and Polaris, which, for those of you that are not familiar with Ohio, easton and Polaris are down in Columbus or like big shopping areas on the North side Huge shopping areas.

Speaker 1:

And there would always be like a pool and so like we'd get to swim and hang out. And you know, for us it was a big deal to have like a continental breakfast with waffles at the hotel, stuff like that. And then we'd go black Friday shopping and cause we would stay like right there so that you could literally just walk out of the hotel and then walk towards the shopping centers. So that was a blast growing up. Food-wise, we same thing like turkey stuffing. I think one thing that we do that's like more OG farmer stuff is gizzards, which is like digestive portions of turkey digestive tracts or chicken digestive tracts are super tender but weird name. I would definitely recommend, if you had gizzards on a table, to give them a try. A lot of beets like pickled stuff, which I'm not a huge fan of. And then my aunt makes these like sour green beans, which the old folks, with all the love for you guys, I ain't touching them, but they go crazy for these green beans. I don't know if it's like an acquired flavor or what, but that's really all there. It's kind of cool this year or last year and this year it's kind of switched.

Speaker 1:

So I remember being that kid that was excited to go to the hotels and stuff like that and the last three years now, well, I guess it would be two years. No, this will be the third year in a row because COVID was the only one that I missed. So, yeah, this will be the third year in a row that I'm now that cousin that goes down and rents the hotel room. So, like I just booked, here's another little travel hack for everybody. Hotel Tonight is a great app.

Speaker 1:

If you're looking to book stuff. You got to be a little bit risky, willing to like not plan super far ahead, but if you're booking a hotel the same week or even the same day, it can get you like $50 off a room a night. So I booked a hotel at like a I don't know Crown Plaza or something down there that had like a hot tub and a pool and then like a little kiddie play area with like dump buckets and a little slide and all that other stuff. So probably going to have about a dozen of the little cousins all come to the hotel room and give their parents a break so that they can all hang out at the house for a little bit, which will be a good time. I'm excited for that. I'm excited for that, although I'm always I'm always appreciative when I get to give them back. I'll be the fun cousin for four hours and then you can deal with the aftermath.

Speaker 1:

I'll get a bowl of jazzed up on a candy. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I got yelled at for that last year because I sent them all home with sour patch kids and Kristen, one of the one of my I guess she'd be married in she married my cousin's engine. He was like do you know how hard it is to try to put kids to bed after you feed them sugar at 8 PM? Nope.

Speaker 2:

I was like no, I know, I don't, actually I don't have a problem, I was like.

Speaker 1:

But I know what it's like to be the cool older cousin. So yeah, I do. It's one time a year, Give them a break. All right, black Friday, I think. One thing that I'm super amped for this year Sam bought this like projector light thing that projects like the universe or like Astro, like space galaxy type designs onto a ceiling, and I was like our office has an all white ceiling. Oh, that'd be perfect. I'm here working a lot, so I'm like it would be sick to just have like the Andromeda galaxy on our ceiling. So I'm probably going to get one for the office.

Speaker 2:

Where do you get it from? Just Amazon.

Speaker 1:

Just Amazon. Yeah, you know how most companies will give you like a 10% discount or something like that, or like, like working at the place. Guess what Amazon's like perk quote unquote is for working at Amazon. What 10% up to $50 per year. Wait what you get 10% off $50 purchase or less per year. Working in their low halls and Sam was like that's five bucks.

Speaker 2:

That's what Dang them. You get $5 off a year. Yeah, on a bar, on a bar again.

Speaker 1:

It's not even like a straight up 10% off, whatever you buy, it's just like nah, it's five bucks.

Speaker 2:

That's crazy. I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I am not.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, oh yeah. They're Amazon's for sure, known for their like employee service and quality of work. Yeah, I'm getting murdered right now. Apparently, sam said that they were warning him that peak would be bad, but he was like it's terrible. And he was like I can't even imagine what it's going to be like between Black Friday and Christmas.

Speaker 2:

Just fulfilling shipments, or what?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Cause there's different provisions, I guess, in the warehouse. So he's right now what's called like a picker. So you have got people that take boxes off of the truck and then you have people that take items out of those boxes to check them into the warehouse yeah, and then you have people that pick those items out of the warehouse to be shipped out and then you have sort sorters or whatever the technical name is for them. I think you call them water spiders Actually, actually is like one of the names of a position but those people then take it though items that are being checked out of the warehouse and put them into a box and ship them Right. Watch, we're going to be talking about this on the Amazon warehouse set up and then you get structure, hey you're not allowed to know this.

Speaker 1:

How do you know? I didn't do it. He said that it's just like it's. It's asinine. They're moving like millions of packages.

Speaker 2:

And which which one he is, he at.

Speaker 1:

The one in Akron is the fulfillment center Gotcha, so I guess they're the one here is for like large products. So Sam was like I could either be scanning usb's all day or bridges using the forklift. And so Sam was like I'm just going to stick with the smaller items for now.

Speaker 2:

Is that the one? Is that the one that Bezos was like down in Canton for?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when we were living down there.

Speaker 2:

So that's that's, that's Bill and done. I, I, I believe so. No, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1:

Let me see here Amazon warehouse Canton yeah, 4747 rebar Avenue. When was that done? They opened the new fulfillment center May 15th.

Speaker 2:

Oh, so it was just this year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay, we make much of a hullabaloo. No about them opening up.

Speaker 1:

Fulfillment Center warehouse associate Figure. We would have heard a little bit more about that $17 an hour. Yeah, not great, but no, no, not at all. Delivery driver, customer service, unique opportunities interesting, even have an Amazon account.

Speaker 2:

So Really sticking it to the man. And then the man is Jeff Bezos.

Speaker 1:

I Definitely do, but that's like my whole family uses it. I'm like the family Netflix provider and the family Amazon Prime Prime provider, because I get the military discounts. I think I'm pretty sure I'm also on our Verizon plan.

Speaker 2:

If there's anything that I want, I just asked someone else to order it for me. But yeah, I don't have an Amazon account Felt like a real slippery slope. Order a couple things, then all you, all you all of a sudden ends up like anytime I met Jennings. There's just constantly packages being dropped off all the time, at all hours of the day, coming from everywhere.

Speaker 1:

What the hell? Just by and saying the Amazon elves are just visiting you know you?

Speaker 2:

only you have to look, you just have your card hooked up to it and you order whenever you want. I was like, yeah, that'd be real bad.

Speaker 1:

Is there any new tech or anything coming out this time of year that people should be keeping an eye on? I Know last, last year, or maybe it was a year before it was you guys are going crazy over all of the new Nvidia chips.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, graphics cards nothing too crazy this year, I would say. Probably the coolest thing that's probably releasing for the holidays is the new, I believe let me pull it up the new OLED steam deck.

Speaker 1:

Steam deck, like steam, like the game thing, mm-hmm for me by the way. Is that just like a game aggregator? Is it just like?

Speaker 2:

yes, they're a problem. I guess you could say they're a publisher.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, no, no, I wouldn't say public, because they're not publishing the game, they're not putting the game out, but it's like Well, if you have Xbox, you have the Xbox marketplace where you can go on and buy games and cosmetics and other shit like that right.

Speaker 2:

Steam is like the original one. So they partner with games and have them go through the service and then you know you pay for the games through steam. So I guess it would. This is gonna it's gonna make me mad. What is steam exactly? Steam is a video game digital distribution service distributor, gotcha, yes. So they make deals with publishers and then they get to put their game which I Mean marketplace value-wise there. I mean, every little company is kind of like tried to go and do their own distribution distribution thing, like there's the epic game store because Fortnite became so popular. Ea has their own launcher, ubisoft has all their own launcher for like all the Rainbow Six, tom Clancy games and stuff like that Assassin's Creed. But most of the time I Think they realize that it's not as lucrative and if it isn't on steam at first, it ends up coming to steam eventually, right, right. So just because that's where most people, if you play, video games on your computer.

Speaker 2:

Are you talk to anybody who plays games on their computer? I would say like nine out of ten times. Probably higher than nine out of ten, that Everyone, all of them, use steam for the majority of their games, just because I don't think I've ever made anything else.

Speaker 1:

The steam, the, the. The system is like tried and tested it's.

Speaker 2:

It's easy to use the algorithm that they have in there for, you know, suggested games and everything like that. It's just. It's a good launcher. Launcher is the word that most people would use because that's where they launched their games from Gotcha. But a few years ago they put out a handheld like the switch, but it's just the switch on steroids.

Speaker 1:

Oh that's cool and the thing that I have one.

Speaker 2:

It was like $600 but your entire like steam library. All the games you have on there are available, or most of them are available on the steam deck. So if I'm playing something on my computer which normally you can't just like, take that away and then play on the go. You can. With a steam deck you can play like your entire backlog catalog through it. You don't need a computer to you play the Avo 4?.

Speaker 1:

There are yeah at at like 60.

Speaker 2:

FPS One yeah, it's, it's crazy. You can take it on you can take it on the go, and so they have a newer version that has a little bit better internals, you can get a little bit better frame rate, but the big thing is is it has an OLED screen now, so supposed to look a lot better. Dang, these things are like 700 bucks 500 Dude. Next time we do something in person, I'll bring my steam deck, yeah this bit it does.

Speaker 1:

It does look like a switch on steroids. Oh, dude, it's you. It's humongous. The pictures don't do do it justice.

Speaker 2:

It is. It is so cool. How, what are the? What are the dimensions on it?

Speaker 1:

All right, um, I'm looking it up right now. Here we go seven. Oh, it's like an eight inch screen, that's like a.

Speaker 2:

You can fit in. You can fit an entire subway sub in its case. That's wild, okay, no, that would be sick.

Speaker 1:

I'd totally be down to Check out. Those are pretty neat that way. Like Multiplayer games don't work the best on it.

Speaker 2:

But if you have like single player games, that that you have and you just Don't want to enjoy sitting at your computer playing them, you can just take them on the go. The nice thing, too, is is you can use it as a computer. Oh really, yeah, like the. I think it's a pretty good idea to use it as a computer. So the system itself has like steam I think that it's called steam operating system on it, but you can install windows.

Speaker 2:

Huh because, dude, the, the internals on this thing are are a computer pretty well like a laptop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like a laptop. That's sick.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like the, it's got the two thumb, the thumbsticks, um, and then those are actually like mouse pads, little squares underneath those in the center.

Speaker 1:

Hmm.

Speaker 2:

But the nice thing too is if you're in your home and like on the Wi-Fi or whatever, you can actually not use the internals of the Steam Deck. But if you have your computer, your computer can run the bulk of the game and just beam it to the Steam Deck and use the screen.

Speaker 2:

What yeah, yeah, so with like air playing the game to your Steam Deck Steam Deck in your house, so that you're not. You're saving battery life, you're not? You're not crying like you're not, you're getting better frame rate and stuff like that, because you're not using the small internals or you're using your computer internals.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But using the Steam Deck screen, which is dope, because I've done that like from upstairs I've played games and just had my computer running it downstairs.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty sick, that's sleek, that's cool.

Speaker 2:

So that's that. Yeah, I think they're on. They might be on sale for the winner or for the holiday season or they will, because they usually do, like the Steam winner sale or whatever. That is my number one tech release. Like that's non-specific. If you're into 3D printing too James was having me look at stuff because I know he's been interested in 3D printer there's a lot of deals and stuff on them going on right now, like Micro Center. You can, if you if you sign up, I believe, online like to be like on their contact list or whatever, or email list, they're sending out coupons off of 3D print, like $100 off a 3D printer.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's sick.

Speaker 2:

When James and I were up there a couple of weeks ago, the guy said like, basically told James like, don't buy this $200 3D printer, go home, sign up for the account. We're going to be sending out these coupons through email and online registries and it'll drop the price of the 3D printer that James was looking at from $199 to $99. So if you like 3D printing, they look like there were some good deals. Micro Center's up in Cleveland, mayfield Heights. Actually, if you're into techy, computer or just digital stuff, that place is like is like a grocery store for computer parts.

Speaker 1:

That's a great way to describe it. Micro Center is awesome. We used to get all of our computer stuff growing up from there until I I forget what it was, maybe it was software of high school. I swapped over to Mac and I haven't really gone back since. It's actually probably when my my gaming career also died. It was around the same time when I switched over to Mac.

Speaker 2:

It's never too late to become a gamer. It's never, too late to go pro. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's what I'll do. I'll just just drop and go become a pro pinballer.

Speaker 2:

There you go. Mechanical pinball.

Speaker 1:

No, I'd, I'd go back to the OG stuff, find some like huge community.

Speaker 2:

Mechanical pinball Very yeah, they're out there for sure.

Speaker 1:

Oh, dude, you can find a community for literally anything that you want to do, anything, I guarantee you that there's a community for it. There are communities out there for people that are obsessed with carving statues out of butter, like that was just on top of the thing. I don't know. I'm going to go to the sculptors, I'm going to Google that now, like there's community for butter sculptor the butter cow, home to the largest butter sculpture display of any fair in the county.

Speaker 2:

Damn In that county impressive.

Speaker 1:

Dude some of these. This is legit.

Speaker 2:

They're pretty good yeah.

Speaker 1:

No, this isn't just one stick of butter. Oh it's a lot of butter. This is a lot of butter. I'm about to share screen so you can look at this. That's a lot of butter.

Speaker 2:

Holy Christ. I wonder how cold it has to be in there.

Speaker 1:

I don't know, it has to be Things aren't just melting. This is in Kashakden, some dude in southern Ohio.

Speaker 2:

This is in Ohio. Of course it's in Ohio. I wanted to say I was surprised but, I'm not yeah.

Speaker 1:

Here you go. The Ohio State Fair is home to the largest butter sculpture display of any fair in the country.

Speaker 2:

Keyata Baby Wow.

Speaker 1:

A temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit is maintained inside of the cooler. Each year, approximately 500,000 people visit the dairy products building to see butter sculptures and enjoy dairy products.

Speaker 2:

Way to go Ohio.

Speaker 1:

Shout out to the Ohio dairy products.

Speaker 2:

Another record in the books.

Speaker 1:

Oh boy, sometimes you like I try to explain things. People from Iowa get it, people from like Eastern or Western Pennsylvania get it. But I feel like sometimes, especially after traveling and then coming back home and everything the Midwest, is just like a fever dream. We're not like the ranchers or cowboy type thing, but we're also not hardcore and involved in city life. We're caught in this weird. In the middle there's some major cities but then all of the manufacturing left, so they're all decrepit. You've got thousands of acres still of farmland and stuff, so you just get these groups of people that come together and find random stuff to do. A lot of cheese, a lot of milk in Ohio, a lot of dairy it's a good description of Ohio in general.

Speaker 1:

Cows, corn and sweet soybeans, Cows, corn and cudd. Yeah, all right. Well, I need to get ready for my next meeting, roger, roger, I'm going to jump For those of you that are listening. We're going to be taking the podcast in a slightly different direction, going into 2024. I'm going to be doing a lot of like I don't know it's been pretty casual this last half of 2023 just talking through stuff Not to say that these episodes are going to go away, because I do enjoy just getting a kick it with RJ for an hour but in 2024, we're going to be doing a lot more behind the scenes stuff about how we're actually building businesses, how we're helping customers, strategies that we're using to build customers and things of that nature.

Speaker 1:

If you know anybody that's in the agency space where you have people that are going to be looking for information in that, have them become followers. Leave reviews Always are really, really helpful. Whenever we get on Spotify and we can see another five store review or somebody that left a comment, those are also super helpful. And then, if you have any questions that you have for us, whether it's tech, gaming related, it's leadership development related or the nerdy stuff that you hear me talk about or the business related, and it has stuff to do with Apex. Shoot us a message. We're always down to bring those up on the show. Absolutely All right, everybody. Have a great rest of your week and happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, happy Thanksgiving everyone.