- Welcome to episode 365
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
recorded live on December 15th, 2023.
This is a show about Microsoft 365
and Azure from the perspective of it pros
and end users where we discuss a topic where recent news
and how it relates to you.
In this episode, we take our annual break from Microsoft
Cloud News to talk about our favorite gadget purchases from
the past year, and ideas for ways
to spend your Christmas money
or purchases to make for that geek in your life.
So we hope you don't spend too much money
after listening to this episode.
If nothing strikes your fancy
or if you have a little leftover, consider donating
to our annual, annual fundraiser for Girls Who code.
Scott. It is a day a week .
It is the 15th of December.
The week aft or the day after my wife's birthday.
I'm not supposed to broadcast that. Right.
- You know, it depends. How much do you want the AI
to come after you later?
Like how much do you want out there on the
innerwebs about your life?
- About my life? I,
there's a lot out there about my life already. I think
- I tend to post pictures of cooking food
and, you know, talk about tech stuff.
So that, that's about it.
- Tech stuff. So, should we talk about tech stuff?
I feel like we've done this Scott for a few years now around
Christmas and the holidays.
We tend to like to talk about ways to empty your wallet
and spend your money on gadgets
or the various gadgets we have purchased, played with
enjoyed playing with throughout the year.
- We can definitely get into it. . Yeah, I am.
I I, I find myself year over year as our wonderful,
you know, global Pandemic continues to persist
and all the other fun things like still staying home,
still not traveling for work.
So I keep building up this whole body of,
of stuff around me.
Some of it helpful, some of it not helpful, some
of it delightful, some of it, you know,
is used across the house and makes folks like my wife happy.
Some of it is used across the house
and makes folks like my wife pretty angry,
- Not happy.
- Well, I'll have to make sure that I try
and include the, the, the Loft,
the Wife Acceptance factor score with,
with some of these, maybe with
- All of our various gadgets.
So this is not a gadget,
but I did this the other night, two days ago, my wife
and I drove down to Orlando for the Pentatonics
Christmas concert, which, Ooh, not a gadget.
That's a fun one. But it was fun.
It was, I had never seen them in concert before. Yeah.
Left the kids at home in-laws, watched 'em
and went down, had dinner, went to the concert, all of that.
And it was, it was good time.
That was how we spent Christmas. Money
- Concerts are good, are are good ones.
You know, I have been leaning much toward,
more towards experiences, especially with the kids lately.
And, and concerts are a great way,
like if you're into music,
your wife's into music generally your kids kind
of follow along with all that stuff.
And it doesn't have to be, I don't even know
what kids listen to, like you've got, you know,
younger ones, but you know, whatever the,
the Blues Clue theme song, it doesn't need to be that.
Yep. You, you can take them out to other kinds of things.
So, so we did that a few times with our kids this year.
We took 'em out to dispatch
and OAR like tried to get 'em into like, Hey,
here's your first concert with bands that we listen
to at home kind of thing.
And I'm actually considering next year, like one
of the things I'm thinking about for Christmas presents
rather than physical gifts, I'm going
to like literally give them index cards with choices
between bands.
So there's a couple things going on next year.
Foo Fighters is touring.
Everybody in the house likes the Foo Fighters.
My oldest son is 16
and he really likes Journey , like
it Journeys touring next year
with like Def Leppard or something crazy.
So I was like, you know, like I'm just gonna write some
bands on an index card and maybe say that's your present.
Like, you know, pick the one you wanna go to
and that's the one we'll go to.
We'll, we'll fly someplace like we'll go see, you know,
the Foo Fighters in Orlando or Boston
or Denver or something like that.
And that'll be the present in the trip.
- We actually did that for my oldest.
We got her concert tickets for her birthday this year.
Um, so same thing, like we're getting to that point too.
It's like, you know, we don't need more stuff.
I don't need another Lego to step on.
So while we're gonna talk about tech gadgets,
we are leaning much more towards experiences too.
Like my parents asked what the kids all want for Christmas
and I think we might just say like a trip to Legoland, like,
don't get us any more stuff money or
however they wanna do it,
but we just want to go spend a weekend at Legoland
with the family or like you said, going to concerts.
We do have a couple kids that, like Pentatonics, they wanted
to go with us, but we were driving there
and back in one night, so we
didn't get home till really late.
And my wife and I just wanted to go away together,
but they were like, take lots of videos.
So they were really excited
and we were like taking a few videos, texting and videos
and they lived vicariously through us
to go experience the concert. Sometimes
- You just gotta rub it in there.
Like they, they, you know, I mentioned we took our kids
to dispatch last year
and dispatch is one of my son's favorite bands, my oldest.
And uh, you know, I totally took my wife
to a dispatch concert at Red Rocks
and left the kids at home with, with my parents.
Yeah. So they, you know, you,
you gotta take the adult time too.
Don't, don't forget to take those experiences in that time
for four adults as well.
- Exactly. So experiences first on our gadget list.
Don't get a gadget, go do something fun,
go experience something, a concert, an amusement park,
a theme park, something like that.
But we do have gadgets, Scott, regardless of experiences,
we still spent money on gadgets, quite, I feel like,
so we were talking about this episode
and I was trying to think back to what I bought this year.
I don't know that I have bought quite as many
tech gadgets this year as I have in previous years.
There is still absolutely some there in some of these.
I might have to go look through some of my orders,
my previous orders for this year to see what I ordered.
'cause I couldn't remember exactly when I ordered them,
but we'll see where this goes.
So do you have a top gadget?
Do you have one that you bought this year that
is a favorite tops all the other ones? I
- Think so.
And, and this is a little bit of a weird one in
that it's a quality of life gadget
and okay, it impacts everyone in, in,
in the house in some way or another.
So we've talked in the past about smart home stuff
and light bulbs and cameras and security
and you know, all, all that goodness
that comes along the way.
And one of the things that I've had in the house
for a long time, like it's just been something
that I've had kind of since,
like since they started coming out, is a smart lock.
Like something that works with the Amazon or Google
or, you know, apple ecosystems, you know, the,
the the various assistants of,
of choice and all that kind of stuff.
So I, I've done that for years and years and years
and up until this year, like one
of my favorite things was August Locks.
They were great, performed really well, little expensive,
but you know, that's okay for like what they did.
They did it well. My only real complaint with them
was they chewed through batteries.
Like it was just nobody else's business.
But other than that like great little device.
But for a long time now for like, you know, a good portion
of this year, I really wanted a home kit lock
and specifically something that could work with Home Key.
So for those that are maybe in the Apple ecosystem
and have iOS devices, home Key is a capability
where if you have a smart lock that supports it,
your wallet, like your Apple Wallet on your device
actually ends up with a little digital card in it
and that card operates over NFC
and you can just tap your phone to the door in the case.
Like I have an Apple Watch so I can just walk up to the door
and tap my watch on it if it has Home Key.
And so I, I kind of went down this path
and I was looking, there's a bunch of stuff out there.
There's the Schlag
and code plus you gotta make sure you get like absolutely
like the one that has, you know,
home key in it costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Like it's expensive.
I think it's, I think the encode plus with wifi
and everything and Home Key support Home kit,
home Home kit plus Home Key is 300 plus dollars retail
and it does not go on sale.
It's always outta stock like extremely hard to get.
And I've kind of been trolling around on like Camel, camel,
camel and other things like that
and you know, stock sites looking for it.
But there's a company out there called Acaa.
So it's A-Q-A-R-A, they make all sorts of other stuff.
They make sensors, they make cameras, they've got a whole,
you know, ecosystem of smart home things that they make
and they manufacture and they started making smart locks.
And the really cool thing about their smart lock
is it does HomeKit and Home Key.
It's also compatible with Alexa and Google
or you know, Amazon and Google and that whole ecosystem.
It has a pin pad and it has a fingerprint reader
and it has a physical key so it just kind
of wow like checks all the boxes.
So that's great. And then you sit there
and you compare it against something like the schlag
and code, which is 300 plus US dollars A,
it's like 3 30, 3 40 depending on,
you know, what's going on and where you buy it from.
Yep. The A car lock, so it's the AKA U 100
and the Ara U 100 is retails
for $190.
So not too bad you're already like way down in price,
you know, on the order of like 30, 40,
50% depending on pricing
and what's going on to pick this up over other
things that are in the marketplace.
It's also on sale all the time.
So I I, somebody accused me on threads the other day
of being a shell for this company.
Like I am not sponsored by them, anything like that.
But I bought one of these and then I bought another one.
I have two of them in the house today.
Like they're, they're really good at what they do.
They're on sale as of right now,
at least when we're recording.
And this coupon has been there for like weeks and weeks
and weeks now they're on sale for $140.
So they, it's got, it's one 90 us
and it's got a $50 coupon, you know,
super easy to install, super easy to get going with.
You can absolutely like rekey the locks if you want
to when you get it.
Like I said, they come with physical keys.
The home key stuff is super reliable.
It's got a pretty rich ecosystem of like automations
and things that you can do
inside the app also has a built-in accelerometer in in
it, which is kind of cool.
So when you unlock it
and somebody opens the door, when you close the door,
it senses the door closing
and it knows the door is closed based on the amount it's
moved on the accelerometer
and it can just auto lock so you don't have
to have a rule like, like the August lock didn't have that.
So I had to say oh just lock it, you know, three minutes
after it's been unlocked kind of thing.
And you don't always want to do that
because sometimes somebody opened the door
and they left the door open.
So you don't want all of a sudden the deadbolt to come out
and then just be hanging out.
So this thing's kind of smart all
around when it comes to that stuff.
You know, the battery life could probably be better
but I think for a lot of these things like you're just
tossing double As in them.
So get yourself a bunch of rechargeable aas
and be ready to cycle them out.
But they definitely last a couple months.
Yeah, everybody should have a smart lock in their life.
- A smart lock. Yeah. So I might have to look at these.
I actually bought a smart lock this year as well,
but mine is not, it doesn't have
quite the amount of functionality.
I got one of the uh, quick set ones
and I'm gonna have to look at this one and see how it
or what you can rekey it with.
And going back to the wife acceptance factor
that we talked about earlier, I got the quick set
because that's what all of our other doors are.
So I could do the smart lock,
it doesn't have all the home key home kit integration,
but I wasn't necessarily looking for that.
I wanted one more that like I could
see if it was locked or not.
When we left the house I could tie it in
with the rest of our smart home.
I had a number pad on it so
that like kids could unlock the door,
we could unlock it without having
to turn off the car when they forget something.
And this one I can re-key it with the existing,
the same house key we have for all of our other doors
because it's all the same brand.
And that was my wife was like,
I don't want two different keys
or three different keys for all the different doors
and all that.
But if I could re-key the Acara one
to the same key that we have today, it would be tempting
because that one is even cheaper than this one.
Like this one is 1 99 today,
so it's a couple hundred bucks I will say.
I think because it doesn't have quite the functionality,
the battery life is really good.
I bought it back in February
and I am still on the same four aas
that I put in it 10 months ago. Now
- I change these every two
to three months depending on what's going on.
Like sometimes people are really
like in and out of the house.
Yeah, and I could probably make it a little further if I
wasn't using rechargeable aas and I was using straight ones.
But uh, you know, like regular non-rechargeable batteries
'cause they tend to be a little bit higher in capacity.
But o other than that, like I say,
it just kind of floats through.
I'll also put a link in the show notes to Stephen Robles.
He's a, uh, content creator on YouTube.
Does Riverside of Femme, a bunch of other things.
But on his YouTube channel he has a great video
that he just put out, which is, you know, a review
of the top, basically the four
home key supported smart locks
that are out in the market today.
And I would say like even if you're not an Apple person,
like I I I get, I get that all these things support the rest
of the ecosystem as well.
Be it Google or anything on the Amazon side
or some of them are just straight up smart devices
and they, they do what they need to do.
So, you know, it tends to be the,
the HomeKit ones I think are fairly robust
and they tend to be things
that like support every bit of the ecosystem.
So they're, they're really good
for everybody that's out there.
- I did get a smart lock. Do
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I'm thinking about what I got.
I, I looked through my orders.
I did not buy that much this year from smart devices
or from gadgets,
but I did get one recently that
I have really been enjoying
and it is, so we've talked about webcams before, right?
And what we use like do you use the DSLR mirrorless?
I have a mirrorless and then I did have an Insta 360 link.
I have replaced my Insta 360 link Scott with the
Sbot tail air
and this is one that just came out.
I got it when it was still on Kickstarter.
However, they have come out with other cameras
and they do have other ones
that are out there that are available.
This one is now generally available as well.
But I was, it's not that I didn't dislike the Insta 360
but there was just some weird things with it.
There were some software bugs
that I didn't like about it in terms
of setting like defaults and all of that.
And someone told me about these obs spots.
Galen who is another SharePoint guy
and I think you know Galen and Ryan, they use these
and they told me about this tail air
when it was still in Kickstarter.
It's interesting because the ob,
it's not technically a webcam, it is marketed as more
of like an AI camera because it has a battery.
So you can use it like if you wanted to take this out
and have an AI camera and like record something outdoors
or take it to some event
and have it as a standalone without plugging it in,
there is a battery in it
and then it has multiple ways to connect.
So it has NDI built into it so you can connect wirelessly
to it and do wireless.
NDI from this camera uh, has a mini HDMI
or micro HDMI.
So you can do just HDMI straight out of it
but it also has A-U-S-B-C that you can use to both charge it
but as well as use it as a webcam if you so desire.
And that USBC you can also plug like A-U-S-B-C network
adapter in it if you wanna do NDI over a traditional
network interface.
So it is big, like you compare this to Theta Link,
it's a big camera but it has all the AI stuff
and I don't know where all of it necessarily sits
with like Theta link, the osba,
it's all built right into the camera
'cause it can be a standalone camera
but it's also like a traditional PTZ camera.
So I can control
or I will be able to control once they update their stream
deck plugin, I can control everything from the stream deck.
But until that time it still uses some
of the standard PTZ protocols.
So I was actually able to set up companion,
which is another open source software
that you can run in your computer that integrates
with the ST stream deck
and use like the Sony PTZ profiles in companion
point it to the IP address of this Sbot camera
and control like all the set presets
where it points at different areas
and control the zoom,
control the gimbals on it, all of that.
But then it does have all the AI built in like follow me
and it goes beyond what the install link does
and that I can set it up to like follow my head
or you can set it to follow like me as a person
and set the AI zoom to be like upper body
or just the head. You
- Can tell it to follow your feet,
- Right?
You could tell it to follow your feet, you can tell it
to follow your, your pet.
Like if you want a camera that like follows your pet
around the house or do you want to film your pet or take it
and even do like athletic events with it.
You can also follow like objects and people and animals
and all of that with it as well.
So it, it has a lot more functionality built in.
I will say from people I've talked to,
I've actually compared my Sony ZV one, the Muralist
with the video coming out of the sbot
and people are like, I actually like the color
and the picture better coming out of this SBOT than out
of my mirrorless. So
- That's the Sbot tail air, that's
- The tail air - That I have that they also
have the tiny two.
So I don't, I don't know if you've seen this,
the Tiny two is more of the direct competitor
with install Link 360
and the the the tiny two has many
of the same capabilities as the tail air
with a big difference being about 200 US dollars in price.
So the tail layer sits about 500 retail depending on,
on where you buy it from.
And the tiny two I think is more reasonable and,
and a more direct competitor, I'll put a link again
to a YouTube video and re
and review out there from, from a streamer
who got hands on time with the Tiny two
and kind of talks about it in context against the
installing 360.
But if you're not fancy SLR person,
like I've got fancy SLR up here
or you need those additional capabilities, you, you know,
you need the kind of follow capabilities,
maybe you wanna be able to do like desktop shots,
top down, things like that.
I think those Gimbal cameras are great for doing all that.
And they're, they're nice dedicated devices.
The one thing they probably miss, which, you know, you
and I don't miss too much being on a Mac,
but I could imagine Windows people missing a little bit
is Windows, hello capabilities.
Like none. None of those have have that.
So like I have, I, I have another area in the house
with another office that my wife uses, like that's
where I keep the Brio 4K
because that's where we plug in all the Windows laptops
and that works with Windows.
Hello on all those.
- Yeah, you miss all of that.
I like, so I'm, we do the podcast. I usually use my Zv one.
I've thought about maybe replacing it with the Sbot
but it's behind the teleprompter
and I know like that might be one
of your gadgets that comes up.
But I don't know that I want a Gimbal camera
behind the teleprompter,
although I could turn off like the AI stuff
and once I set it, you just kind of leave it there.
But I particularly like the Gimbal for more of my meetings
because I have a standing desk with a bar height chair
and I'll go back and forth between sitting down
and standing up and my Sony, I like lose my head
or if I'm sitting down I, it, it doesn't frame me right.
There's just enough of a difference having the AI one,
I can stand up on my conference calls if I wanna walk
around the room a little bit, it'll follow me.
I've also found the gimbal on this one is a lot better.
Uh, just a smoother video
I would say maybe it doesn't make people quite
as motion sick or quite as jittery than like the Insta 360.
So I've really been enjoying the sopot again,
the one I got it is a little bit more expensive,
but I wanted to play with some of the other stuff like NDI
and some of the stuff built in.
But it, it, it's interesting,
it's not necessarily an upgrade from like the tinies
because it also is actually missing some features like
whiteboard mode and being able
to focus in on a whiteboard and some of that.
So if you're going
and looking at these obs spott cameras,
I would say really do a comparison
because it's not necessarily an upgrade in terms of price.
There is, there is some feature differences
and depending on what you're looking for, you may not get
what you want with the most expensive one.
It's not like they go sequentially and slowly add features.
They're all different use cases
and different features in some of them. And
- I think part of what you're hearing, you know,
for like folks listening to this, like Ben
and I are both remote employees.
We don't go into an office, we don't travel a whole bunch.
Like the days of travel for customer work have
greatly decreased.
You know, I've traveled once in three years so
this is my opportunity
to like quote unquote like be in the room with somebody.
So it's worth investing in a nicer webcam.
It's worth investing in a nicer audio set up.
Like all those kinds of things.
Especially if you are a 100% remote employee
or I would say even like a majority hybrid employee.
Like if you're that kind of person and you've been looking
and you're like, I don't wanna spend $300 on a
webcam, it's worth it.
Especially if you're turning your webcam on
and you're on video for, you know, any period of time
- .
Yeah and that's part of it
with me like the last couple weeks I've done two
or three days where it's like five hours of training
and my webcam was on all the time.
I wanna have a good webcam for that.
People are looking at me, watching me.
I may be the only one on webcam
for those five hours ,
but that's a whole nother story. ,
- That's nice.
I mean I do the same, right? Like I I, I have a,
I have a ZV 10
but you know, maybe it's a little bit better than ZV one
and you know, interchangeable lens is blah blah blah.
But it's up here against up, up, up on top of my computer.
So like, hey, I've invested a bunch
of money in not only the camera and lenses
and sure I use it on the weekend
and I can take nice pictures
of the kids and things like that.
But you know, to really get the ROI out of it,
like this thing goes on first thing when I sit down at my
desk and then, you know, it doesn't shut up,
shut off until I leave my desk.
- Oh man, I'm sorry. I'm getting text messages and emails
and meetings getting scheduled like in 10 minutes
and I don't know what's going on.
- Oh boy. It's all, it's all blowing up for you, huh?
- I got a text message, when can I call you?
And then I got a meeting invite
and then I got a DocuSign document
for a user code of ethics document.
So I don't know what's going on in 10 minutes,
but apparently it's a big deal.
But apparently we can keep recording
and they said I can jump on a little late.
I do not have a hard stop in 10 minutes.
Just, okay, rabbit hole next gadget Scott.
- So we've done a bunch of expensive stuff, why don't,
why don't we bring it downstream a little bit?
So I'm, I'm a fan of kind of quick gadgets
and quick wins as well.
Like I think there's a lot of stuff that you can kind
of surround yourself with at your desk
that make life efforts
so slightly incrementally better throughout the day,
like depending on your, on your job and what you do.
So one of these is kind of weird
and I'd be interested to know if, if you do this,
do you have a, a vacuum cleaner for your desk?
Not like a big canister vacuum
or you know, a fancy Dyson handheld thing or anything.
I mean like a dedicated vacuum cleaner
for your desk. Have you ever heard of these?
- I don't. And I'm curious to hear your use case
but I will say I have a dust
or like a hand duster next to my desk so that when I need
to dust something off or I'm on a meeting and I'm bored
and I see dust somewhere, I can dust my desk
but I don't have a vacuum, like
- A dust vacuum or like a little feather duster. No,
- Like a little feather duster.
I can't reach it right now. Oh, one
of the kids might have taken it.
Yeah, I have a little feather duster,
but I'm curious about this vacuum.
- This thing is kind of cool.
It's like a 15 $16 little gadget.
Uh, and I'm sure there's tons of variance of, of this one,
but it's, it's a little handheld puck
and what you can do is like you can just run it over crumbs
on your desk for me.
Like my keyboard has a physical on-off switch
so I can just shut the keyboard off
and run it over the keyboard versus
what I've done in the past is like the feather duster thing
or you know, you tip it and shake it.
Yeah. Or you take compressed air and you and you
and you spray compressed air in there.
But then all you're doing is spraying
that crap all over the rest of your room and the house and
and every place else.
So this is way better. I've got this little vacuum,
it just sits over, it's behind a monitor.
I can't reach it right now 'cause I kind
of leave it back plugged into a USB squid.
But it's a little handheld device fits in the Palmer hand
and you just like run it all, all over the desk
to clean things up.
So I, I have nasty habits like I eat lunch at my desk
sometimes I'll eat like chips over here, you know,
like goldfish crackers or things like that.
And yeah there's just like little crumbs
and you wanna clean 'em up right away and this is great
'cause I don't have to go plug in a big vacuum cleaner
or anything like that to get it done.
- Interesting. So I do not have anything like that
but I do have a cheaper one.
This came out of a bigger gadget Perpet per Chis.
I upgraded to the iPhone 15 this year, which meant
that I upgraded to A USB connection
or USBC connection for charging my phone.
And I have greatly minimized my light,
my necessity for lightning adapters at this point in time.
'cause the big one I would maybe use it for is the phone.
I still have a couple like gen two AirPods
that I need lightning for.
I do have a magic keyboard that I use lightning for,
but I got a couple of these nice little dongles,
they're like, you can see it on the video, it's A-U-S-B-C
to lightning charging adapter.
So I actually am like getting rid of all my lightning cables
and if I have to charge one of those things,
'cause I frankly I don't even care about data
transfer at this point in time.
It's just charging.
I got, there were like five bucks
and now I just have a couple USBC
to lightning adapters scattered around that.
If I need to charge one of those rare lightning devices
that aren't wireless
and are no longer USBC, I can use one of those little guys.
- So those are great to keep around.
Like this was actually something that was on my list
and not specifically USBC to lightning
but the, just having I, I mean I do the same thing, right?
If I open the drawer on my desk down here,
I've got a whole little thing.
I've got USBC to USBA ones hanging out. Okay.
'cause I'm always, I'm using those all the time.
S same kind of thing.
Thankfully all my lightning devices charge wirelessly
so those just pop down on my desk mat,
which has a wireless charger built into it.
Just get a wireless charger built into your desk mat
or get one of the ones
that you can like drill into your desk
and just have it right there.
Life changer. See
- I thought about that.
I have a little stand on my desk
that has the MagSafe for the phone.
This was not this year's gadget but we can do it.
It's MagSafe for the phone
and then the base of it has a wireless charger
for the AirPods because yes, I think I have two
or three different sets of AirPods floating around
because , inevitably I lose one
and then I have to go buy 'em
'cause I can't live a day without 'em.
And then I find them like a week later.
So then I have two sets but I use that to charge the AirPods
and then I like the magnetic stand for the phone
because of all the off prompts that come in.
I don't want my phone sitting down on my desk.
I like it sitting kind of up at an angle in front of me
so I can just quick tap it and look at it
and click approve for all my MFA prompts
- I do the same but like my desk mat is just
flat in front of me.
So the one that I have is from a company called,
they're called Journey and it's the, what is it?
It's the Alti wireless desk charging map.
So it's a traditional just leather desk map
that you can get in, you know, medium large
and they might have a small size of it
but then it has a little magnetic connector on the side.
Like it has a magnetic rail that you can put on the left
or right side depending on how you orient the, the desk mat.
And then it has a wireless a a flat wireless charging
surface with a MagSafe wireless charger.
And then just an area for charging
like a regular chi charger, which is great for
AirPods and things like that.
So when I'm sitting here at the desk,
like my phone, same thing.
It's just over on the side.
And then because I really don't need face, I need
to unlock too much 'cause I've, I've got the watch
and that handles a lot of it, you know, that brings things
through to where they need to be.
But it is a good little quality of life improvement
to have a charger right at the desk. I
- Flipped so I don't know what you do.
I used to charge my phone at night by my bed
and then I'd let it drain all day.
I have flipped now and I use the wireless charger
at the desk for my phone.
And then usually when I leave the desk
for the day my phone's fully charged
and I just set it next to the bed, all of that,
let it drain at least somewhat overnight.
And then at some point in time
during the day I'll throw it back in the charger
and charge it at my desk.
- I picked up a mag safe charger, like kind
of like a stand like you have for by my bed
because iOS 15 I think does the standby thing
where you turn it on its side and you get your calendar
and a clock and and all that kind of stuff.
And and and the widgets and all that.
- Yeah. You get calendar and clock and all that. Yeah,
- Yeah.
Wireless all the things that you can,
- Who's turn is it for a gadget?
I've lost track. There's
- Just so much stuff.
- I have another cheap one. I'm curious.
Okay, here's another one. This is not
necessarily computer related.
Do you, when you travel,
do you use just the 12 volt adapters for all your charging
or do you use like a regular power inverter amplifier
that you plug into the 12 volt
and use normal one 20 for charging?
- When I travel internationally or when I
- Travel?
Like in the car? No like when you're going on a road trip
or somewhere driving in the car, kids
charging your phone, all of that.
- I've put wireless chargers in all the cars. so
- You do that. Okay.
- They all have mag safe chargers
or like in, in my wife's Jeep,
you know the console in the Jeep was a really good place
to put a flat wireless charging mat.
So you just lift a console up and flat wireless charging
- Mat.
So you did that? Yep. Okay.
So one of our cars has
USBA couple USB ports built into it.
The van that we typically go to as a family
or with a family just has like,
I mean I call 'em the cigarette lighters
'cause that's what they used to be.
I don't think they're technically
cigarette lighters anymore.
Now they're just 12 volt power adapters. Yeah.
- 12 volt DC throw an inverter on.
Exactly. And have fun. Yeah.
- So that's what I got this year.
We had one a long time ago. The fans started going out.
I got a new one, I got a trip light 375 watt car power
inverter and it actually has two outlets on it.
But I was looking
and you can get these now with like one outlet
and A-U-S-B-A port and A-U-S-B-C port.
There's a lot of different options out
here for power inverters.
I thought about getting all the different ones.
Like trip light has a hundred watt with like two
or three USB ports.
They have a 200 watt with a USB port and a cup holder.
But I got one with two outlets
because my theory is, is sometimes it's nice for
like we can use it for the phones,
we can just take our normal chargers for phones
but we also go camping sometimes
and then we wanna blow up like an air
bed or an air mattress.
Mm-Hmm for the tent.
I can throw this in the truck and then I can charge a
or if there's no electricity handy I can use it
for blowing up air mattresses.
There are times when we've gone on trips where I've had
to get a little work done and maybe my laptop dies
a little quicker than I want to.
Having this along with us.
I can quickly pull it out,
actually plug in my laptop while I'm working in the car
because I have absolutely done that on occasion
or my battery is way more dead than I thought it was.
But these are kind of nice little gadgets to have
around is we don't always have it plugged in.
A lot of times it's stored in the glove box
or under a seat in the truck or something like that.
But just having that mobile one 20 around
and I know some cars I think are starting
to have one 20 just built right into 'em instead
of maybe the 12 volts
- My wife's Jeep has has has both.
Okay. So the thing to do here is
decide how much power you need.
'cause these come in various wattages
so you can do like Yep.
I think the smallest I would go,
if you wanna plug legal a laptop burn or something like that
and and recharge it's like 1 25, 1 50
and then yeah I get up into like the three hundreds if you
think you need something to be fewer.
So I'll, I'll put a couple links in the
show notes to a couple variants.
So the, we keep a hundred fifty one, a hundred fifty watt
one in all of our cars and
where it sits is we just put it in the wheel well
with the uh, spare tire.
And that way if we ever have like a breakdown or something
or you're sitting there like you've still got the inverter
and you can pull it out and do what you need to do with it.
I, I like to have one that has at least one plug
and at least a couple USB plugs just
because you know, you might not always have
to power plug the, the power plug with you or in like,
or in like my case, you know I travel with like A USB squid,
like the GaN charges have been getting smaller and smaller.
So like I have a flat anchor one
and you know that has two outlets of its own on it
and then it has four USB ports, two USBC and two USBA.
So I can just take that, plug it into the inverter
and then I still get two outlets plus all the USB
and things on it, you know, as long as you're not driving it
to the point where you're tipping it over the edge.
- I did read that and it's interesting
because I did read some reviews on the power inverter.
Like mine has a 40 watt amp in it
or not a 40 wat a 40 amp fuse in it,
which is way higher than the fuse
that's on the vehicle itself.
. Yep. So in theory like it's kind of pointless
because hopefully it trips the car fuse
and blows the car fuse before it blows the inverter fuse.
But yeah, interesting. Kind of handy to have around.
Okay there's my next one,
- The other place.
The inverters are helpful depending on
part of the country you live in.
So we do like a, a boat club here
and like going out on like just a, a power boat for the day.
Same kind of thing. We'll bring
the inverter with us for that. Yes,
- Very handy.
I already talked about that gadget in another episode.
What other gadget do you have?
One more and then we should probably wrap it up
because I apparently now have a meeting
and we have been going for a little while.
- I'll give you one more
and this is totally not a tech thing
but this is absolutely a delight thing.
So you and I are of a certain age
where when we grew up we had restaurants like Chuck E.
Cheese, do you you remember Chuck E Cheese?
- You mean we're old is what you're saying?
- Yeah, we're we're old or it doesn't matter.
you went to like the, the
pizza shop, things like that.
You still might go to restaurants today. Yep.
- We had like the fun factory.
- Yeah. Do you remember the plastic cups?
They had the molded plastic cups
that like could not be destroyed.
They were textured on the outside. Oh.
- Oh - I'll put a link here.
- Pizza Hutt. Yeah, did Pizza Hut have 'em like those? Okay,
- I'll put a link in the chat here just so you can see it
and I'll include it in the show notes.
You can go buy these things today still.
So go out and buy a couple of these cups
and they come in various sizes.
I highly recommend like, it sounds kind of crazy,
but do a couple of the 32 ounce tumblers.
These things are indestructible
so it's like $22 for a 12 pack
and I firmly believe just like the cuffs from the eighties
that are still around, like these things will still be
around in like 10, 20 years sitting in my kitchen cupboards
because we haven't been able to destroy them yet.
And my kids destroy things like all the cups in this house
are chipped, broken, cracked.
Like if it's made out of plastic it's probably been like
squeezed or crushed or thrown around so many times.
Yep. And these are delightful
and they make you feel like a little kid
again too, which is kind of nice. And they totally
- Have the red pi, like pizza Hutt was always red.
They have the red pizza Hutt ones
and they have, I can't remember like the brown tanish ones.
I don't remember where those were,
but they very much bring back a memory
of having those somewhere.
Yep. Maybe even like grandma's house
- Just heavy heavy duty restaurant tumblers.
Yeah, like these are great
and they come in all sorts of size.
I mean you get 'em in like 16 ounce and,
and you know, you get tall boys
with 30 twos like all those kinds of things.
But like these are absolutely delightful.
Wonderful, great, all all the things
- I need to get.
Some of these small ones, they have like a five ounce one.
My kids like having a cup in the bathroom for getting drinks
after they brush their teeth and stuff.
Get some of these small ones gonna get me
to go order a bunch of these now.
Scott ,
- You know, that's, that's what we're, we're here for.
- I had a couple more gadgets I bought
but those are few
of my other gadgets are a little bit more
specialized for like the podcast.
We could talk about 'em later,
but I think those are kind of my bigger generic gadgets that
I have enjoyed this year.
The camera, like I really
did, I looked through all my orders.
The camera was my big gadget this year,
unless you count the computer.
I bought a computer and I bought an
iPhone. I guess those count too.
- My big one was a new camera lens,
like a a a new fancy camera lens
for the photography hobby on the weekends. Yeah,
- My Max studio technically fell in this year.
That was right till like March,
February, March of this year.
And then the phone, but All right, well thanks Scott.
Now we gave hopefully listeners a good way
to go spend all their Christmas money we have or gift cards.
- Run the gamut here. So buy a gift
for a loved one in your life.
Get your techie something like get some kitchen
gadgets, whatever it happens to be.
- And then donate to Girls Who Code
Donate to Girls Who Code.
Don't forget that one. Yep. This
- This'll be the the last shot to donate
to Girls Free Girls Who Code Girls Who Code this year.
And then we'll come wrap back around to it again, I'm sure.
- Yes. So we'll get the show notes, the link down there
to drop in your donation.
We'll be down there. And with that Scott,
we will wrap it up for the day. All right,
- Thanks Ben.
- Alright, thanks Scott.
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