Talking Business with Pat From Commercial Kitchen Chronicles

I don't know if any of y'all saw the first part of that. Let me try and see if I can get this up and going. I'm just going to have to give up on Instagram. I think they just saw a picture of you on Instagram. Dude, it's a pain in the butt. I don't even do Instagram online, man. I stick to YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. Um... I've got to go on a kick. I never get any interaction. I just always throw it over there because it's easy to do. Thank you. Have you figured out how to do lives on TikTok? You've got to have a virtual, you've got to do like a virtual camera. I know you can like do it like OBS software if you use that, but I'm not sure how to do it on a TikTok. I know some people like will run like a phone beside it. Oh, man. It's a virtual camera that I know you've got to do. Yeah, I've never tried. You used to be able to just hit the button and go, and I think they changed it. Yeah, it's different. I'm using eVmux, and I can stream on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. But when I try to do TikTok, now I'm getting comments. It ain't doing the same. Yeah. So apparently, I've got you over here. I'm not understanding the vertical screen on this thing. I hope everybody can. I can see you on YouTube. Everything's here. But there might be another... If people are watching it vertically on their phone, they might just see Pat. Yeah, I mean. That's funny. It's a really good picture of him, though. That's funny. Oh, and in the intro to this that maybe nobody saw, I was saying we can speak whatever we want about software or tools and stuff that we may not be liking. I will tell you. Um, I've had difficulty with QuickBooks. Have you ever done anything with QuickBooks? No, and I've had some friends that used it when they first started out and they didn't really care for it either. Um, I heard it can be a pain in the butt. Um, I heard some people love it. Some people absolutely hate it. So I don't know. Let me put it this way. It's good at what it does. Sort of. Um, I, I use an iPad in my van. I do everything with the iPad. But the software doesn't do very well on the application for the iPad. All right. It's weird things. It's like I'll be on a customer's page and create an invoice. And I go to send it, and it's the wrong customer. So I have to delete it, back out. Or if I've already sent it, call them and say, hey, please don't worry about that. And then get over on the website version on Safari and do it all over again. So it takes me like 30 minutes to do just an invoice or an estimate. Yeah. You add in three or four of those a day. That's a service call you're missing out on. It's maddening. And I know I probably look like I'm crazy sitting there in a van going. I'm going... I can relate. We use some pretty big software. We have some stuff we integrated in. And it's supposed to bring stuff over, but it doesn't. So, like, you do it in one platform, the notes and stuff, and then you get to copy and paste it, and then you hit the button, and you hope it takes it over to the other platform. And then you hit refresh, and it doesn't take it over. You're like, okay, I copy and paste it. And then you get to copy and paste it in there. And I'm like. Why am I doing, like, oh, this is just how it works. I'm like, no, no, no, this isn't how it's supposed to work. This is how we have to do it. I was like, we pay millions of dollars for software, and we have to do workarounds. I'm like, this is ridiculous. No, this isn't how it works. I know it. I'm going to tell you another one. For example, on QuickBooks, I would put, if it's a rental company, I would enter an address. And list it as a sub-customer of the rental company. It's supposed to import all their information when you do that. And it's not doing it. So I have to back out, go find another listing for the rental company, copy the email, and then go back out to the other customer and then paste that. QuickBooks is dropping the ball. They won't fix it. They won't fix it. And then there's like, I know they have problems because I send them screen grabs. And they know they have problems, and they just don't fix it. I mean, I like some of what they're doing, but I'm ready to jump ship. I've contacted Jobber to see if they can fill in that spot. I may have a problem with them when it comes to subcustomers, but if there's a workaround, yeah, I've about had it with QuickBooks. Let's put it that way. Yeah, I didn't realize. How long has it been acting up like that? Is it just a recent thing, or has it been doing it for a long time? Years, years. I've been using QuickBooks for 15, 16 years, QuickBooks Online. And, um... It's been doing this forever? Always been like this, always. That's stupid. That's ridiculous. It's like there will be a known problem, like it'll cause it to crash if you hit this one entry thing, and it'll go on for like three years. And I'm like, come on, man. This is a major software company, and they can't get this fixed. Yeah. I know in my world, there's a smaller company called Repairs, but they specialize in kitchen stuff. I don't know if they would cross over, but they were built by this. A family owns some restaurants, and the boys, the sons, decided they wanted to try this software thing. And they've got some pretty cool stuff for the restaurant world. I don't know if it'd transfer over anyway to your side of it. But they are. They do some pretty cool stuff for my co-host, Rich. He's, I think, five guys now, six guys maybe. And he has no complaints. He loves it. So I don't know. Software is, I mean, software is, it's either a blessing or a curse. And the problem is once you buy into it, you're stuck with it. Like you're stuck with it. However long the contract is, whether it's a month, six months, a year, you just got to suck it up, man. It's like, this is ridiculous. They get your money. They don't care. It's like, oh, here you go. Yeah. Yeah. Now, um... I tried Housecall Pro, and they're pretty good at what they do, but they tried to sell me on their accounting side of what they're developing. And forgive me, people over at Housecall Pro, but their accounting part of that is a joke. It is an absolute joke. You have to send them your bank statements, and then they make a report. That's it. You're paying what? I forget what it was. It was like $300. It made me mad is what it did. I've heard guys love Housecall Pro. I don't know if they're using the accounting side or not. I was really wanting to get away from QuickBooks and Housecall Pro. If it could do all the accounting stuff that QuickBooks does so well, keeping up with inventory, pricing, and all of that. If they could do that. As well as QuickBooks does, instead of having to send information to QuickBooks, that would be great. I mean, QuickBooks does almost do as my taxes. I mean, they do payroll. They do everything. And I think the best I can do is look for a software that just cooperates with QuickBooks. And if it just sends them the information, hey, that's fine. Yeah. I haven't played around with software too much. I don't know. I mean, surely there's something that integrates with it and you can use it on the back end real easy. Almost all of them do. They'd be crazy not to. Oh, yeah. Because QuickBooks is a major player out there. Yeah, the dispatching and the invoicing stuff is just kind of wonky. I mean, that's just dumb. Did we talk about... Um, You're losing weight before we went live on this second time? Yeah, that was the first one. Okay, well, we tried to go live a little while ago. I actually, mistakenly, it looks like I published like three versions of going live, and it's the software I'm using. I was editing and saving, and I saved it three times. So, y'all forgive me if y'all got confused at the beginning, but one of the things I wanted to talk about is... This journey you're going through, because you posted something not too long ago. You had lost 30 pounds in 47 days. Yeah, I'd lost 30 pounds in 47 days. I'd probably do a lot better, but I went out of town. When I get out of town around certain people, they like to drink bourbon. Well, I like to drink bourbon and make bad decisions, and I eat badly. So I'm human. I'll never pretend I'm not. I'll never pretend to be somebody I'm not. I'd probably do better, but yeah, I was kind of excited for it. We were talking earlier, I've got a grandchild on the way. I've got a grandson. He'll be here end of August, end of September. You know, I've. I've been doing this job 20 years, and I've been overweight pretty much the entire time. If you don't work in restaurants, you don't understand, but when you work in a restaurant, you're the hero, and you get fed anything you want. I mean, like I've... Had every fast food in the world, five-star restaurants, lobster, steak, filet mignon, whatever it is, dude. Like, if you fix something on a Friday or Saturday night when they're busy, they will give you whatever you want or sometimes they'll send you out with stuff. So, I mean, we used to do cheesecake work, dude, and I installed a bunch of ovens at all these cheesecake factories. And every one of them would send us home with a whole cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory. It's like 20,000 calories or something. So, my heaviest I was at was 440. I've had a 100-pound swing like four times. Um, I'm down to three 30 and I got a goal to be a certain weight by HR next year. So, um, when you go to tactical wars, actually, I want to wear a tuxedo. Um, yeah, just part of it, man. Just a little journey. I'm on, like I said, I got a grand son coming and I want to be able to, I want to be able to play with him. I want to be able to go to his games and I'm just, it's gave me a different outlook on life and stuff. I, um, I have my own goal for HR and I'm going to try to go. The only one I've gone to was kind of local to me, and it was in Orlando. It's going to be miserable, dude. It's Chicago in January. In the middle of winter. Okay. I hate that this goes to Chicago. I mean, I love Chicago. It's a fun city. It's a great place for something like that. But January in Chicago is absolutely miserable. You can't. It's the winter. February. February, February, February. That's like the peak of coldness. Oh, yeah. I don't get any colder than that. I didn't go last time I was in Chicago because I'm a one-man business, and it got cold. I had to work. I couldn't just blow off that much work. And I'm going to try to go. I'm going to try to go. If it looks like they're having, like, a Nor'easter or something blow through, y'all can count me out. I mean, I'm from the South. I don't even have proper. And insulated clothes to walk around in that kind of stuff. Well, last time I was in Chicago, they had the Tactical Awards out on the observatory, which is out on the lake. Out on the lake, yeah. Dude, it was so cold. Came out of there just dying. My wife's wearing a dress. I'm just wearing, you know. I'm wearing dress slacks. I had a jacket, so I gave it to her. I'm just out there freezing to death. It was brutal in that lake. That town's wild because no matter where you're at, there's always wind. Just because of the way it is, come off the water and stuff, it just swirls around down there. It's just brutal down there, man. It's fun. It's a cool city, but man, I don't. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm from Indianapolis area, so it's cold here. But that's just a little colder up there, and that wind's just stupid. I, uh. I'm going to share something with you. I've only been to one HVAC tactical show, and that was one, you can't see it. They gave me a YouTube channel of the year, and this is a true story. When they called my name, it was Zach. When they called my name, I stood up and started walking, and no kidding, I felt like I could feel a breeze in my crotch. No, I was thinking, um, I need to look, make sure I'm zipped up, but I didn't do it. I knew I was on camera. I did not walk all the way up there wondering in the back of my head is my flying zip. That's funny. Um, when I was, I finally got to where I could look and I was like, that'd be embarrassing. That'd be embarrassing. I'm curious. Yeah, that was one of the coolest things I've done winning that. I knew I was nominated. That's all I knew. I didn't know, like, because that's when he wouldn't tell everybody. Like, he'd just say you were nominated. He'd just, like, bother you, ask you if you were going. And, like, that's how he figured out you were nominated. Now he gives a list of who's nominated. And, like, you wouldn't even get a category. So I'm just sitting there watching it. And, like, we get the best social media content. And, like, I'm like, holy crap, that's one of my customer's ice machines. And I was like, oh, crap, I'm nominated for this. I was like, there's no way I'm winning this. I happen to be sitting with Chris Stevens from HBRC Videos. He gave it away. And, um, He's a good friend of mine. I talk to him all the time. He read the name and he looked at me before he said the name. I was like, holy ----, I won. Go on. I was not prepared. I did not have a speech. I did not have anything ready. I was totally unprepared. I was glad that... I won, for sure, but man, I wish I was prepared. This is mine. I would like to be proud of it. I don't feel like I earned anything, though, to tell you the truth. I'm the same way, man. It's imposter syndrome, man. It's imposter syndrome. No matter how much or how good a content you put out there, it's never enough. You never feel worthy. It's just part of it. The good thing is, this is peer-selected, peer-nominated. There's a board of peers. Let's go through the process of picking the actual winners. So, you know, it's people that you know. I mean, they can't say who they are. They sign NDAs. Like, they're not supposed to tell who they are. And that keeps it honest, and I think they do a good job picking. So, they just got to quit picking all these dang Canadians. I don't know why he didn't. Speaking of Canadians, if there's some Canadians in here, y'all forgive me, but y'all got two of them who are very famous. Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds, and I can't tell them apart. I look at one, and I'm like, is that the Mint Mobile guy? No, no, no, no, no. They look alike. They sound alike. They have the same kind of attitude. They must have gone to the same school or something. I don't know. Oh, thank you. They could be brothers. I can't figure which one is which. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah, I'll be there. I'm not going to miss it. I'll be at AHR every year. It's a fun thing. I go and I do the podcast. I record a couple of podcasts, two or three podcasts there. I'm do some booth appearances, check out some of the new tools and stuff. There's not a whole, I don't do a whole ton of HVAC. I'm mainly refrigeration based. So there's a few things I see I stop at, but most of it's just tools and stuff like that. I go to check out, play with. That's why I go maybe create some content on some new tool. I always forget. I always forget. I get busy. I quit recording. Right. I just need to wear a camera and just record everything I do, I guess. The last one I didn't go to, that was Las Vegas. There he goes. Started getting cold. I had plans to go. I had reservations. Did you see that? That was Riley. He, uh... There's a pear tree in the yard, and he's learned to pick pears and eat them. Oh, boy. And he eats a lot of them. I'm waiting for the day when he starts having bowel problems because of pears. I mean, he eats like four or five a day. He loves them. That's wild. That is wild. But, yeah, I didn't go to Las Vegas because it got cold. And, in fact, there was kind of like a winter storm happening here as far as winter storms go here in the south. And Atlanta started getting backed up. Everything around here goes through Atlanta. Everything. In fact, the only flights out of my little town just go to Atlanta. That's the only flights in and out. They go to Atlanta and Atlanta started cutting flights because they were getting backed up because the whole country was having problems and they cut my flight. And that to me was like, I'm sorry, I'm not driving to Atlanta to catch a flight. Yeah. That's a, that's not a fun place. Yeah. I don't like, I don't like driving to Atlanta. So Georgia. South Georgia. I'm closer to Florida than I am Atlanta. It takes me three hours to get to Atlanta and maybe two to get to Tallahassee. So I'll be going down to South Florida. We have a sister company down there, and I think they're in Albany, Georgia, maybe. Albany? Yeah. That's where I am. Well, I'll be down there Q4 this year, so we'll have to come hang out. I'll be down there for two weeks. Oh, dude, get in touch with me. Yeah. I'm going to come down and teach refrigeration. There's a company called Sam's Service. Oh, yeah. They're one of our sister companies. So I'm going to go down there and teach refrigeration for a couple weeks. So I'll definitely hit you up when I'm down there. Cool deal, man. That's why I thought you were pretty close to where I was going. I had to go look. I live and work in the metropolitan area of Albany. It just. Basically, Albany is all that is right here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's some surrounding towns where people are trying to get out of the city that are growing and they're not like 10, 15 miles away. So I would say our whole population of this area, I mean, Albany is like 85,000, but the whole area might be double that. Nice. Mike B says, teach Curtis refrigeration. Curtis can figure it out. He's a smart guy. I have all the faith in the world in Curtis. I'm going to tell you, I worked for a company that did do refrigeration, and I remember one time we had to replace a walk-in freezer, green as I can be, and I go down there inside the freezer, and I just start disconnecting wires, and they were planning on reusing all those wires. I should have labeled them or something like, this one goes to the heat strip, this one goes... I didn't. There were like four or five of them down there. I'm just pulling them off, and the technician that had to come along behind me was cussing me. Thank you. He was mad. He was like, you don't even know where this goes on the timer. He had to trace them all out. Mm-hmm. Yeah, one, two, three, four, and X. And I did, I had to figure out how to use those timers and how to set them. I worked with that company probably. A year and a half, and in that year and a half, I went from doing duct work to install to technician. I mean, I mean, literally, my introduction into being a technician was, go do some preventive maintenances. And I'm like, okay, I can do that. So I go out on the job. As soon as I get done with it, they're like, you know, there's somebody right down the road. There Their AC ain't working. Go look at it. And I'm like, what? I didn't know anything. I was green as I could be. I remember specifically one of those calls. It was like a train air handler. And I called him and I said, hey, the blower ain't working. we And they were like, why? I'm like, I don't know. go. We ought to start somewhere, man. Unfortunately, there's a lot of places that kind of just throw guys to wolves. You know, some guys make it that way. That's how I was trained. I just got thrown to the wolves. I got like a week and a half. I got to help figure it out and let him go. I know. I know. That's kind of what happened. And I figured it out. They shamed me so much for calling in that I was like, you know what? I'm going to sit here. I'm going to figure it out. And there's some really complicated stuff out there. I mean, I remember this one. I think it was a York system, a package unit. I couldn't tell what was coming, what was starting, what was running on anything. I didn't know how to do that. I had to follow my wires back to the compressor and find the one that said C, S, and R, and then follow it back to my contact. I didn't know how. In this particular package unit, every wire in it was black. Every wire. Low voltage, high voltage, everything. And I must have been out there for six hours trying to trace out wires and figure out where things went. Thank you. If you've ever been on a package unit like that, you'll be thankful for the color coding on wires. Yeah, when I go to SFEST, I go to SFEST a couple times a year, and I teach basic refrigeration. And we have mock-up boards that have defrost clocks on them that have temp controls. We use lights to simulate heating or cooling and all that stuff. And they actually make us use one-color wire. Just so they have to figure it out. And like the first one I do, someone brings up to me to check it. I'm just like, I can't do this. I rip them all off and I just do it with them because I use five. I try to use five colors of wires when I do it. Plus ground, green for ground. And then. I go there and I use all red wires, dude. And I'm like, my eyes just start to cross. And like, it gives me a headache the very first time I see it. And I'm like, we got to stop doing this. They're like, well, they can do it this way. They can do it that way. And I'm like, whatever, man. You guys are, you guys are a-holes for this. Man, when I went, when I was working at that job, I started going to tech school. Y'all forgive me. And they had a board. with a mechanical everything that had lights for motors and lights for heat strips and stuff everything was mechanical sequencers defrost timer one of those old RanCo E15 defrost timers i don't know if anybody remembers those but they would snatch all the wires off of that and part of graduating you had to wire it up where everything worked and um i did that But everybody else was leaving the wires on when they got done. And we had a new instructor who really didn't care. And the other people would just go, oh, it's fixed. I know how to do it. So I yanked all the wires off. I fixed it. I got it going. And then I yanked all the wires off again so the next person couldn't do that. So at least one person had to figure it out. Somebody got hosed. That That's funny. Yeah, that wiring, man, someone had a post, I think it was Blue Collar Code, Bobby, he had a post last week about, he's never had an electrician fix his wiring, but he's had to fix electricians' wiring. Oh, yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah, dude, like, I'll tell electricians, they'll be like, hey, I you. need five different colored wires over here to wire this up, and like, I'll go, and it's like two different colors of wiring, and they have no idea what they did, and I'm like, Man, I'm just like, I'll just do it myself, dude. Like, go away. You know, there was one time I was at this lady's house and she had like a hundred amp panel outside for a heat strip that had 15 KW and the breakers had burnt the bus bars and rather than replace the whole panel myself, I told her, call an electrician, have them replace the panel. And, um... Because I couldn't move breakers or there wasn't enough space. And she calls me back like three hours later and says, the electrician's here. He says, there's nothing wrong. And I'm like, put him on the phone, please. So I get him on the phone and I said, you need to go outside and pull those breakers out and look at the bus bar. And he called me back about 20 minutes later and said, you were right. I mean, I felt like I had to tell him how to do his job. Yeah, and that's the cool thing about what we do is, you know, we're doing plumbing, we're doing electrical, we're doing, you know, we're doing everything in one job. It's fun, and that's why I like it, because I do get to do everything. If I got stuck doing one thing all the time, I'd be bored. So, this job always keeps me guessing, plumbing, HVAC, I mean, we do it all, piping, electrical work, so it's fun. Oh, speaking of which, I'm going to have a video premiere at 6 o'clock. on youtube where i show you how to use a condensate pump in the old pvc line to pump water out from a space that wasn't draining very well nice just a little trick i used to do tips and tricks i need to get back into it i've been kind of slacking um i've got some video ideas stuff to work on i just kind of just been trying to focus on some other things and Everything else is getting kind of easier now, so I think I'm going to get back into trying to create more content. I've got some talking head stuff I want to do. Thank I've been kind of... Huh? TikTok? I'm all over there. I just hit or miss, but I feel weird when I... TikTok's hard for me. TikTok's hard for me. It does. I don't gain traction there like I do on YouTube. I don't know... you. I think the mentality is more short attention span, something funny and I'm not trying to be funny. You got to get them. You got like three seconds to get their attention or they're gone in the next video on TikTok. That's the bad thing. You can do longer stuff over there, but you got to have that hook in that first three to five seconds or they're gone. If you can get them to stay, they'll stay, but that three to five second window, they don't like it. Next video. Swipe up. Swipe up. Swipe up. Yep. YouTube seemed really easy for me. I really started YouTube, no kidding, just to share what little bit I know. I don't have anybody to pass it on to. And it grew into something more than I expected. Let's put it that way. Yeah, Megan, TikTok isn't the same since the government got involved. Yeah, it's definitely a lot different. They've cut a lot of the money. That's the bad thing. Oh, really? A lot of the money. Oh, yeah. Creation fund, the creator fund has drastically changed since it sold to an American company. You know, YouTube used to pay more. Yeah, I make like $120 a month on YouTube, and I don't push it. I do a live stream. I do some stuff here and there. I need to... That's what I was talking about earlier. I need to do better about recording. So I got some new Metaglasses. My old ones, the batteries in them suck. Hopefully, the new ones are better. So I got some new Metaglasses. I've got some other cameras I wear. My problem is I'll start recording and then I get involved in a job and I just stop recording and don't pay attention. And then all of a sudden I'm done. And I'm like, oh, I've got the first half. I don't have the second half. This is kind of pointless. Or I'll have to order parts and my son will come back and hang the parts so I don't have the conclusion. I'm like, oh. Well, it takes practice to, especially if you can get like on diagnosis and repair in the same video, sometimes that may take two or three days. Yeah. These kitchens always have loud-ass music playing, so I'm always getting copyright struck all the time. I didn't think about that, yeah. And then they have a son that started his car. That thing's so loud. Then they have, everything's branded. Like, the equipment even has branding on it, napkins. Uh, you know, boxes, branding on it, the brand for the restaurant. Yeah. So like, and I don't want to get like, some guys just do it and don't care, but I'm like, nah, like I'm not trying to like, all it takes is one mad manager to call my boss and get shut down. You know what I mean? So I try to like to not do that. If you, if you've ever, if you follow Chris Stevens, like guys try guessing the restaurants he's at and he'll delete their comment. Like he just leaves a comment cause he doesn't want to get involved. Like I know where he's working at. Cause I've worked in these restaurants. So like he gets up on this roof. I'm like, Oh, you're here. You're here. You're here. I know where you're at. Just cause I've been in those situations, but I'm all it takes is one manager to get mad and call my boss. And then he gets shut down and I don't want to get shut down. So I have a lot of guys, a lot of guys, you know, we'll post stuff in a uniforms and get some bad attentions. I'm like, I just try to be good. So. Yeah, the copyright strike thing, it'll get you. I've had TV going on in the background, and one time it was like a Disney movie, and Disney gave me a copyright strike. Dude, I had a video, like the whole video, there's music just blaring, it's Mexican music, they're having a good time in the restaurant, and the music's just blaring, I was like, well maybe I'll get away with it, maybe I'll get away with it. And, like, I got away with it, and it got me for one part. I was inside the oven working, and I had the camera in the oven, and I was, like, in there changing the blower wheel. And it got me for that part because you couldn't really hear it. You could hear it, but when I got in the oven, it, like, somehow, like, magnified it. Were you able to take it out? Yeah, I was able to just take that section out. YouTube will let you go in and play over top of it or something or delete the music from that section. But something about that camera setting, it switched to a different recording mode inside that oven, and it picked up the sound better and amplified it better. And it got me for that. I'm like, if you didn't get me for the 20 minutes where it's just screaming in the background in the kitchen, but as soon as I stick my head in this oven with the camera, it got me. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. There was the video that I'm going to release at 6 o'clock. There was a section of it where music was playing, and I was in Lowe's, and I'm showing people what I'm buying to make happen what I wanted to happen, and there's music over the PA system. I got you. Well, actually, do you use a software to edit your videos? I use it. If I'm doing it on the phone, I use CapCut Pro. If I'm doing it on the MacBook, I use Premiere Pro. I use Final Cut Pro, and there's a little option where I can just do voice isolation, and I can adjust it up and down. Now, it does kind of make it sound like your voice is a little bit digitized, but using that, I can sometimes take out most of the music so that YouTube doesn't recognize it. Now, I can do that on CapCut Pro on my MacBook. If I use it on the MacBook, I can do it because I was actually playing around with that right before we got on this I bought those DJI mics, and I recorded, like, an hour-long interview at NRA in May, and I didn't have the app running. So, if the app isn't running, the microphones won't work. It's stupid. So, like, I had so much background, and I was playing around with that, and it actually, like, sucked the background out and, like, isolated our voices. That's pretty good. So, is CapCut Pro a real editing software, or is it just a TikTok? it's a spin-off but it like it's got legit features and it'll do some pretty good stuff i mean it's not bad it works great mobile um i i was looking for something to remove the sound off and like i came across a tiktok video where someone used used it for tiktok like they used the pc version and was able to isolate the audio so i wanted to see it on that video so i threw it in there and i was like oh it worked for the most part now a little bit it's kind of weird but It was loud, like tons of background noise. I was so mad at myself. These people, they didn't pay me, but they gave me, they had extra tickets in. So I got vendor passes to get in the show early and stuff. And I felt terrible to have them on the show. But they're a customer of mine, customer of my company's actually. So it worked out. They're giving us business at least. Speaking of DJI, this one, this is the Osmo Action 4. The new one? It was super new when I bought it. In fact, it was so new it wasn't released in the U.S. yet. Oh, boy. I bought it from an Amazon store that was selling out of Hong Kong, which was a mistake. Because when it failed, I couldn't get warranty for it. And I've got another one on the way. It's supposed to show up tomorrow. I've got the two-year warranty on it. I like how it works with the DJI mic. I like that it shoots in square because I can set it up sideways, and I get the same picture as I do if it's like this. Yeah, it's like a four-by-three raw. Well, that's, yeah. It's square. It's weird. It's weird. The GoPro is like four-by-three. That's what I'm using right now, this one. And, um, I have to readjust my screen when I'm editing just for that shot on sideways when it doesn't like to do it at all. It's a pain in the butt to do. Yeah, I like to shoot as square as I can instead of 16 by 9, because then I can go back and edit and post and make it for vertical, or I can make it for YouTube, and I'm just doing it with one camera, so that's why I do that. Yeah, so I've been trying to do 4x3, because it transfers over real easy. 4x3 is pretty... it goes back and forth pretty easy it's like my glasses do like a four by three so if you look at my youtube video from today like the edges are cropped out a little bit because i didn't i didn't do anything i just did on my phone and uploaded it but um i use for my like my action camera doing jobs i use the uh ace pro 2. the What brand is it? Insta360 Ace Pro 2. And that thing is 8K. That thing is, it's legit, dude. It's badass. Okay. My problem with 8K and 4K and all this other stuff is that it takes so much room. I know it. I got. I'm going to show you something else. I can record in 8K, but I don't have no way to process it. So my phone will do it, and I have a S25 Ultra or whatever, and it hates it. My phone gets hot. It does not want to touch it. And I just end up knocking it down to 4K, and it still hates trying to take it down to 4K. So I don't even record in 8K anymore. I just wanted to try it. I was like, this is cool. I was like, oh, who's going to do 8K? I record in 4k and I shoot in a square frame for a reason because I publish my videos in 1080p. Mm-hmm. So if I'm shooting in 4k and somebody appears like in this part of the video, I can zoom in and change the frame without losing any detail that I'm publishing in 1080p. That's why I do that and I want to show you something else. This is How small those memory cards are in the cameras, but for me to work to load it on my computer, I have to use this. It's like a little adapter and I have found out that my old one, it was a black one, I wore out. It was starting to not transfer data very well and I was getting some corrupted files and it wasn't my card, it wasn't my camera, it was this little adapter thing. So I wish they would make a port on these computer things where you can just plug it, plug up the right size. So I don't know what's going to do it, but... Is that what you're telling me? This is, it's got a USB-C, and then on the side, it's got a micro SD and then the SD card and slot in it. So you can just plug it straight into your phone. You can plug it straight into your laptop. So it's by Anker. Oh, that's pretty cool. I need to look for that. Yeah, it's got just the both sizes. I've actually got a third one because I've got this new camera, and it takes this weird CF Express Type B card. It's a huge card, but it's really good for 4K stuff. I don't have it. My wife has it in her camera for taking pictures. So we've got three different adapters. And you've got to watch out on those memory cards because you want the faster speed because the faster speed is the transfer speed. Uh-huh. Like, I've got some old ones that are slow, and they take forever. Uh-huh. Especially a 4K video. And I've got some new ones that are real high. It's like, I can do the same size video in, like, a quarter of the time. I'm like, holy smokes. No, I've got an old one-terabyte card. Uh-huh. And I tried to use it. I was doing something with the camera. Actually, I forgot my GoPro, and I've got one in my van. So I tried to put that old one terabyte card in there and use it. And like I said, I'm shooting in 4k. It wouldn't let me do it. It was too slow. Couldn't write fast enough to it. Couldn't do it. And I, and I tried to, you know, change it to 1080p still couldn't do it. I had to come back home and get mine. He said, Screw it, I'm going home. I've went to Best Buy or Micro Center and bought cards, dude. And I'm not going to lie. The thing is... It's Albany, Georgia. There's probably not a Micro Center or Best Buy around there. We used to have a Best Buy mobile in the mall. I mean, it's just going to be phones and stuff. We used to have that. Our mall is dead, though. Yeah. I mean, it's terrible. You have to go to Walmart. There is a Target. You probably have better luck at Target. But as far as, like, dedicated electronic store, we used to have a Circuit City. It left, too. So there's not a lot here. Yeah, I probably would have came home too then. I did. I came home and got my camera. It's very common for me to leave something anyway, so I just come home and holler, hey, it's me, and go back out the door. I forgot my memory card. I forgot my camera. See you later. But I'm going to tell you the truth. The shooting the videos and making content has helped keep me more interested in my job. I was getting some burnout. So shooting the videos, It was, it, um. It kind of helped me out a little bit because I was getting to the point where I was, some of it, I was just sick of it. I mean, how many times can you tell somebody to change their filter or blow out a drain and not feel a little bit of burnout, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I couldn't do residential, man. I don't know how you guys do it, going to people's houses. Like, people say the same thing about me going in dirty, nasty restaurants. But, dude, I'd go in someone's house and they're a hoarder and I'd be like, F this and just walk out and leave. Um... There's some nasty, I'll tell you what. What time is it? There's some nasty stuff in commercial, too. I have seen it. Oh, 100%. 100%, yeah. Don't ever go work at your favorite restaurant because you might not go back. I tell people that all the time. I'm like, just because you spend more money does not mean it's any cleaner. One of the biggest names in chain restaurants, high-end chain restaurants across the country, they were building a new restaurant a quarter mile down the road and across the street. And, like, they're like, hey, can you go in here and look at this equipment and tell them what they can keep, what they should keep, what they should get rid of? And I opened the back door, and it was the first time I ever walked in there. And I was like, who's in charge? This guy's like, I am. And I was like, oh, I'm here to evaluate your equipment. He goes, yeah, what should we take over there? And I was like, throw all this ---- away, dude, to start over. This stuff's nasty. Steve. Man, oh, man. So, um, I'm... Okay, because you work in restaurants and stuff, and I work mostly in houses. I do like commercials sometimes. What's some of the craziest things you have seen, like in a restaurant, that would make you think, no, this ain't right? What's something crazy? So I was at a Chinese buffet, and they had a burlap sack full of cabbage or lettuce or whatever is in the egg rolls. And they were in the parking lot driving over with their car to smash it down in a burlap sack. Are you kidding? No, dude. Dude, it... And I used to eat that place all the time when I was a kid. And I was like, holy smokes, what have I done? Yeah, they had, like, that place was wild. They had a dish machine. And if you know anything about cockroaches, they love heat. They love heat and moisture. That's like their two favorite things. So they'd call in this dish machine like every four to six months and be like, hey, it's not heating. And I wouldn't even go out there. I'd just take two, I'd order two contactors and I'd go out there and I'd shut the disconnect off. I'd open the top. I'd change the two contactors, put the top back on, turn the disconnect on, just walk out the door because the roaches would get inside the contactors and the contactor opening and closing would smash them down to the point where it wouldn't close anymore and they'd quit heating. And that was like every four to six months, dude. I did it for like three years. And I was like, oh, gosh. Oh, that is terrible. That is terrible. That's terrible. One of the worst ones I have been to, I've only told this a couple times, I was working for somebody else probably like 20-something years ago. And it was a mobile home. And this lady had 27 chihuahuas. Holy smokes. Very specific number, but I remember. And they didn't go to the bathroom outside. Oh, no. I was able to dodge landmines and get back there to her electric furnace, but the whole area was just covered in poop and pee. I told this woman, I said, I know it's cold, but I can't work in this. I can't. You've got to clean this up and give me a clean place to work. She cleaned up a place. The electric furnace was right there by the back door. She cleaned up that one little spot, and I came back the next day. You're a bigger man than me. If I came back, I would have called in sick. That was an man, that one, the electricity had shorted inside, you know, a mobile home, the cold, the electric furnace just blowing down. The water had damaged it so much that it had caused the main breaker for the whole mobile home to trip. Dude. Rewired the whole thing, and you can imagine how bad it smelled in there. Yeah, you see some bizarre stuff sometimes. I mean, I can handle grease. I can handle that kind of stuff. I mean, occasionally I'll get a garbage disposal that's been down for like a couple of weeks and they finally, you know, call it in. And like, I'm like, how long has this been down? They're like, oh, a couple of weeks. I'm just like, I looked down in this thing. I was like, I'm not touching it until you clean it out. Well, we thought you'd clean it. I'm like, you thought wrong. Like, you clean it out. A lot of times I'll have to change them out and I'm like, you going to clean that out? I'm like, no. I'm like, okay. So I just take it, I'll unhook it, I'll just dump it on the floor and just leave it on the floor. I'm like, I'm not putting that because if I got to change them out, most of the time it's warranty. I'll just dump that ---- on the floor and put the garbage disposal in the box, throw it in my truck. I'm like, I'm not taking that. That's yours. That's not my mess. That's your mess. Oh, wow, wow. People are wild, man. Yeah. Well, um It's getting close to my 6 o'clock premiere, so I'm going to go ahead and call it a day. I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sorry about how this got started. You're all right, man. But it's good talking to you. I hope we can have this conversation again sometime. Just talk about weird stuff that we've seen. Anytime, man. Just get a hold of me. I'm always – Sundays are generally pretty smooth. Cool deal, man. I'm going to –