Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Whatever the
case may be. This is Mike, and this
is Mike Dell's world.
Yeah. I say this every time, but, this
this episode number is four zero four,
which is also a euphemism for not found.
Well, obviously, I haven't been found since, May
29 as far as this podcast goes. Of
course, I've done a few episodes quite a
few episodes of podcast insider,
but, you know, I I think this the
theme of this show is missing,
because,
you know, 04/2004,
it's, that just means not found. Well, also,
it could be mean missing.
So,
of course, you know, my dad passed away
in December and, over the summer, I felt
him being missing
because I'm doing a lot of the things
that he used to do around the the
house there and, plus I'm doing the things
I need to do around my house, plus
I'm still working on flight training.
So it's, you know, just
a lot of time has been missing.
And of course, people, you know, the dad
being missing
and and all that. And then, this, a
week ago,
Monday, so almost two weeks ago,
we had a shocker at work. Todd Cochran,
my cohost on Podcast Insider and,
you know, prolific podcaster and the CEO of
my company here, Blueberry,
passed away unexpectedly
on his way home from visiting his kids
out in Washington state.
So that sort of threw the company into
a turmoil for the last couple of weeks,
and
we're,
we're doing doing okay. You know, we've
sort of figured out what what we gotta
do to go, you know, to move forward
and, you know, Blueberry is not going away.
Hence, you're getting this podcast because of Blueberry.
But,
yeah, that's been really hard and, you know,
it's like, you know, I get into a
meeting or something and I wanna I wanna
make a snide comment. You know, I don't
have my buddy to do that with anymore.
That's what we would usually do is we'd
have what we call back channel during
Zoom meetings
and and whatnot. And, you know, just three
weeks ago or maybe more than that now,
but,
at Podcast Movement in Dallas, you know, you
know, of course, we worked the booth together,
Todd and I. And then, you know, we
both spoke there and and all that stuff.
And but on the off hours, we were
out hunting bourbon and eating barbecue
in Texas and, you know, just having a
good old time and holding court the bar
at the hotel,
you know, all the the normal conference stuff.
And,
it's just hard to believe that, you know,
poof, you're gone. It was totally unexpected. He
was 61
and had a
transient blood clot or something. I don't know
the the whole story.
One of the cool things though is I
was able to go down to
his homestead there in
in Quincy, Michigan
and help his mom a little bit and,
you know, Sherry's still around doing well.
And also
his sons,
his son Chris, youngest son is,
gonna attempt to take over Geek News Central,
Todd's main show. He wants to get it
to at least episode 2,000.
So I went down there and helped him
fire up the studio and figure out how
everything works, and I got him set up
with equipment he can take back to Hawaii
to to do the thing.
So,
hopefully, he's got one episode out. I haven't
seen whether he put out the second one.
He said he was, recording one, but,
again, you know, with all the turmoil. And
we went back down for the funeral or
I did, and there was a lot of
podcast luminaries there. Rob Greenlee, Rob Walsh,
from Libsyn,
Dave Jackson,
Daniel Lewis.
About half of the blueberry team was there.
You know, some of them are way across
country and whatnot. But,
and Marlo Anderson
came from North car or North Dakota,
the Tech Ranch guy,
and the
guy that does the,
National Day calendar. There you go. And, by
the way, today's cheeseburger day, just in case
you're wondering.
By the way, this is being recorded on
Friday 09/19/2025.
So, yeah, that
that celebration of life or funeral or whatever
was
was really good. And of course, you know,
I've known the family for as long as
I've known Todd pretty much.
So, and they're not too far away. It
was about a four hour drive each time
I went down there, and I'll probably go
back down there at some point and help
Sherry
with some stuff, but, we'll see.
And I participated in a the final
new media show, which he normally Todd would
normally
cohost with Todd or with, Rob Greenlee.
And we had, Rob Greenlee, of course, Rob
Walsh from Lipson,
Adam Curry from MTV and podcasting two point
o and The Daily Source Code and kind
of the co inventor of podcasting or or
the podfather as we call it.
So, you know, it was it was good.
We had some, you know, funny stories and
and good stories and and all that stuff.
So if you wanna go check that out,
go to newmediashow.com,
and that'll be posted there for a long
time. I'm sure Rob's not sure whether he's
gonna continue that show or not.
It could happen and maybe not. We don't
know.
But anyway, so yeah, that's been the latest
shocker. But, you know, going all the way
back to December, I think I did, you
know, a couple of shows in May. One
of them was stupid, the last one, four
zero three, but
they played with AI weather forecasting and whatnot.
But,
one before that, you know, explained what was
going on and and all that. And all
winter long, you know, having to, you know,
blow snow and haul the tractor around and
blow snow and haul the tractor around.
Just never got well, I figured it would
let up after the snow, but and it's
not, you know, anything to do with my
mom. It's just
things to do with everything and everybody.
You know, my my time has not been
my own as far as
any free time. So we'll we'll call that
404 on my free time.
So, hence,
I haven't really sat down to podcast. I
should just carve out time, but, you know,
this is a this is a show. I,
flip the mic on whenever I think I
want to, and,
yeah, I appreciate you guys hanging around. But,
yeah, it's
it's
one of those things.
But, yeah. So, you know, this summer, it
just flew by. You know, we're already feeling
the fall cold a little bit here and
there. It hasn't been cold last few days,
but,
let's see.
Just give you a big overview of all
this stuff.
Campers. You know, we went camping, and I've
had to haul the campers, both campers, dad's
camper for mom and my sister and whatever,
and and then I gotta go back and
haul my camper. And, you know, we went
camping a couple times, and then my mom
loans out her camper to her friends, which
I really think is cool and, you know,
I have no problem doing it, but I
have to
I have to pull the camper because I
inherited I inherited dad's truck, and that's the
one that pulls the camper. So
so I had to deliver the camper out
to one of the campgrounds for these friends
of hers and
and he's,
he does home dialysis, so he can't really
camp in a tent and
this camper really works out for him and
they're doing great. And then I did it
again this fall
or late summer,
and that was kind of a problem because
at some point during the
year,
my,
I don't know how you what he's a
relative ish sort of, kind of.
But my
cousin's
grandfather
and my aunt's father
was 97
years old, and he passed away. And my
mom was the executor.
And so I did a lot of hauling
stuff around for, for the the estate, you
know, because they sold the house, and I'd
get some of the stuff that they didn't
sell out of the house.
And of course, my mom bought
a kitchen table,
which is really nice. Antique wooden kitchen table
is really nice. And,
you know, of course, I hauled that and,
you know, again, it was just a lot
of a lot of a lot of as
I call it. Plus, I'm still trying to
get my flight training finished.
I took the checkride
about a month ago
and screwed up a couple of maneuvers, so
I have to go do do a recheck.
So I've been, training with my instructor on
the on the items that I missed. I've
got till October 15 to finish that, but,
shouldn't be too much of a problem,
barring weather and airplane delays and
whatnot. But,
so that's still going along swimmingly except for,
like I said, I botched a few maneuvers.
You know, I did a short field landing.
You gotta land
on a spot on the runway,
and you can't land anything before the spot,
and you have to land within a 100
feet for this particular checkride
of the spot, you know, beyond it.
Because, you know, you're simulating. You're landing on
a really short runway.
And I hit the spot
perfectly,
but I did it from five feet up.
And, yeah, it's not acceptable.
It was a rather rather rough landing
and, you know, and a couple other little
maneuvers I had to I have to reshow
the in the,
examiner,
but, that shouldn't be a problem. We've, you
know, flown a few times since then, and
I think I got everything dialed in. We're
gonna do one more
next week. And then
after that, the following week, I'll take the
the recheck or the check ride, finish the
check ride, and hopefully,
that'll be that. And I'll have the rating.
So it's all good.
Let's see what else has been going on.
Of course, you know, there's always
visitors. You know, we're in a tourist area,
so we have friends and family that show
up. And, of course, you know, you gotta
kinda entertain them. And,
you know, we had a a garage sale
that, took up a lot of time and
took a really long time to to
get rid of.
So I had to move some stuff out
of the driveway and all that. Also, when
I was hauling that camper or not the
camper,
the
the kitchen table that mom bought,
I
jackknifed the trailer into the side of the
truck and put a nice big dent in
the side of the truck, which sucked.
So I had to get that into the
body shop. So, anyway, I put it in
the body shop when we went to Texas
for the conference,
and it was supposed to be done. But
just before that,
I had to, haul a camper out to
or no.
At just after that, I had to haul
a camper out to another place for these,
friends of my mom's. Of course my truck
was still in the shop longer than it
should have been so I ended up
hauling it out with a borrowed truck and
that was a little stressful because I didn't
know the truck very well and it's a
36 foot camper, and the truck's just a
half ton, the one that I borrowed.
And, you know, it was a little squirrely,
but we got it out there, got it
parked for them, got it set up.
And then, you know, I figured I'd get
my truck back, and I did except for
when I went to go get my truck,
it it quit running. You know? And this
is a relatively new truck with low miles.
And so I had it towed over to
the dealership, and the dealership was supposed to
get it done on a Friday.
And I was supposed to go pick up
the camper
on Saturday.
Well, my truck wasn't done on Friday.
And then
on Monday, it wasn't done. And on Tuesday,
it wasn't done. That was over Labor Day
weekend. Of course, it wouldn't be done on
Monday. But anyway, by Wednesday, I finally got
it back, but I had to use that
borrowed truck
both directions,
for this camper pole. And
that was
an adventure
for sure.
But, anyway, got the truck back. Dents gone.
The fuel pump went out. That's what was
wrong with it. And come to find out
it was still under warranty, and it was
a known issue with that truck. I have
a 2020 Tundra
with,
I guess, now 46,000
miles because they put a thousand miles on
it this week back and forth to,
Quincy,
two trips.
So
but, you know, it's low miles for a
five year old truck. And,
you know, I love the truck. It was
dad's last truck and,
you know, it's got all the bells and
whistles. And it's a, you know, heavy duty
truck, so I can pull the big campers
and
I think I'll pull stumps, I guess. I'm
not gonna do that. But,
anyway, nice vehicle, and I'll probably have that
as long as it'll have me.
Although, you know, I kind of worry about
the electronics,
but they're getting better. And Toyotas are always
pretty good.
At least,
in fact, that's all we have left is
Toyotas.
I've got my old '99 Corolla with a
stick shift and Kathy's got a Highlander
SUV.
So, we're all Toyota family at the moment,
but I think I might,
sell that Corolla
or or whatever and get a get a
fun car.
I'm thinking, maybe a a Miata
or
a or a Porsche Boxster
or an Audi TT convertible,
Something. Yeah. Something I'd only drive in the
summer anyway,
but we'll see.
I don't know if I need that headache.
Maybe I'll just save my money and buy
an airplane that,
that's kind of come up in my list
too. Maybe build one.
But, yeah. You know, toys, toys.
But, yeah, it was, you know, with
Todd missing from work, that's, that's been, like
I said, a hardship.
You know, dad missing as well. That's, you
know, I wouldn't call it a hardship. I
mean, I guess it is the order of
things, but it's, you know, kinda hard to,
you know I don't don't have my buddy
to call, you know, either Todd or my
dad.
You know, I have other friends, obviously, but,
you know, we always had
always had the stuff, especially with flying. You
know? My dad was an instructor
and air taxi pilot and few other things
in the aviation world, and,
you know, it was always cool to
to chat with him about flying and and
airplanes and whatnot. We'd get into those conversations.
And, well, I got my uncle, dad's brother.
He was also all of those things, instructor
and air taxi pilot and, you know, he
had an airplane
and so, you know, get to talk to
him, but not nearly as much.
So, anyway,
I'm sorry I've been missing, but
that's that's what's been going on in in
my world.
I was trying to think of anything else
of interest
that's happened since May.
We've had kind of a weird summer. It's
been, you know, really hot and dry at
times, and then we get dumped on with
water
and with rain. And they say this winter
is supposed to be an El Nino winter,
which usually means we get dumped on some
more. So
but I think I'm gonna handle the the
snow removal a little differently.
I'm gonna leave the tractor out at the
farm and
and,
you know, take care of that as soon
as I can because, you know, mom needs
to get in and out, whatever.
And then only bring the tractor into town
to do mine on the weekend, you know,
say on Saturday. I'll go out there, get
the tractor, bring it in, plow here,
and in the meantime, I'll just use the
walk behind blower,
to
clean out the driveway enough to get in
and out,
and I think that'll be a lot less
stressful than hauling that camper every time, Or
camper, the tractor every time.
You know, so that that's that's the story.
I think I think I'll go back to
that method rather
than rather than every time.
And that'll give me a little more time.
And tomorrow,
you know, usually
on Saturdays,
I do
some aviation stuff. We go over to the
hangar and do some hangar talk with the
EAA group or
or I go flying or you know whatever.
Saturday mornings, I usually have something going on
and I just decided now this last couple
weeks have been stressful.
So tomorrow morning, I'm gonna attempt to sleep
in, which means I'll probably get up at
five.
That's alright. I'm gonna sit in my easy
chair and drink coffee and
surf the web on my iPad or read
a book or
watch some YouTube, whatever, and then got some
chores to do.
We have, you know, I think I told
you I live in a in a log
cabin, in a real log cabin, you know.
And we had a rotten log.
They just the the face of it, it
was rotten. The structure is okay, but
it just was getting rotten. So I
cleaned it out, you know, cleaned out all
the rotten wood and filled it full of
that Great Stuff foam,
and then put
some
reinforced
heavy duty boards to hold the top log
to the to the,
I guess,
what do you call it, the foundation because
it was the bottom log
and reinforced
that and then put a flat board over
it. And I'm gonna be painting that.
And I'm also gonna be working on my
studio
slash office slash shed slash man cave out
here in the backyard.
I'm gonna paint the back wall. Right now
it's kind of a brick orange
color and it just doesn't look good on
camera.
So I'm gonna paint it the same off
white and got the rest of the walls.
So tomorrow afternoon we'll be painting
and I got to paint the door.
The back door gets all scratched up from
the dog and or dogs.
We have
dogs here sometimes,
extra dogs, and they always like to scratch
on the back door, and the back door
is real wood.
So,
throw a coat of paint on that too
while I'm at it.
But, yeah. Hopefully, I'll get it I get
a day off, and I'm gonna make it
more of an effort to, at least update
this one more often. You know, I can't
guarantee it, and I've said it a thousand
times. Well okay. 404
times, probably.
But,
yeah, I hope not to be missing as
much as I have been.
So, again,
you know, thanks for staying subscribed.
And, if you just ran across this,
I was much more prolific in the first
couple 100 episodes
than I have been
since. But,
yeah, just my fun little podcast course. Podcast
Insiders sort of on hiatus right now. Mackenzie
and I are gonna carry that show on,
and we may bring on another team member.
We kind of round robin that when Todd
was doing it and
and ironically we have Todd's last recorded podcast
episode and it was podcast insider with McKenzie.
We're trying to decide whether we're gonna put
that out or not. We probably will, but
we'll, we'll probably edit in some
some
announcement or whatever. And then
our editor Kate is working on a best
of reel
for
for Todd. So we'll probably put that episode
out before we resume the normal episodes over
there.
So be sure to check out podcastinsider.com
if you're interested. You know, it's all about
podcasting and what's going on at Blueberry and
Raw Voice and,
you know, the the greater podcasting world.
So
anyway, I will cut this off and everybody
have a good however long it is till
I'm back.
Again, like I said, they've been rather missing
and, you know, this episode number
is actually apropos,
four zero four. I was gonna do a
comedy
bit with the four zero four thing, and,
of course, that was before all the
all the, events of the last couple of
months. So
anyway, everybody have a good one. Catch me
later.