The Details Matter

Welcome to the Avant's podcast. I'm Dan. I'm Nick. Back on our recliners. I love this new studio space.

And this, we're going to go old school here. You put a new sticker on your,

in your fuse box that says, remember kids, electricity will kill you. What is his name?

Kilowatt. Kilowatt. If you're old enough to remember Kilowatt,

and I think this is an actual representation of him. Yes, this is the actual,

like the actual. With the implement of destruction, right? Like, okay, that's because that's how I

remember it. I just didn't know if somebody in my household happened to have a sticker of one.

But if you were, if you're old enough to remember Kilowatt, he is a man made out of electricity

with a bobble head and carries a knife where he, and he's patting a child on this, on the shoulder

looking at them and it says, remember kid, electricity will kill you. Back when marketing

was. Different time. Yeah, different time. I feel like, you know, the times are changing.

You might be able to get that's a pretty good way to, I mean, they were serious about it. I just

like to have it. I always thought the logo was funny. Yeah. So I put it on the fuse, fuse box cover.

I was listening to some, this is again aging us the breaker box. They were talking about dare

and like how, and I remember as a kid thinking it was really cool, but like he started to

explain it as an adult like, hey, they, your sheriff would come to your school, show you

the drugs you weren't supposed to do, and then dare you not to do it.

Drugs are just education. Yep. Jones accepted officer.

That meme. I'd like to congratulate drugs for winning the one.

Yeah. Drugs are bad kids, but yeah. Yeah. Different times. I'm feeling nostalgic. So

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in that mode around where I'm looking at the shop and I'm thinking of

decorations. Yeah. As much as it's been so much focus on function that now I'm, I'm

thinking about my aesthetic, which is where I will have you come in because this is much more

your expertise. Well, I mean, it's makes a very good decorator. I don't know how that happened,

by the way, you are though. I, and I appreciate that. I, but I don't know how it happened. Like

I didn't let go. Oh, this is what I can do. The one thing I do love and, and it's, it's,

it's sort of been a symbol of our friendship forever is the Porsche skateboard because

I mean it was in ever since I've met you it has floated. It was, I got it from

John Zuberick as a gift. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I always have it up on a wall somewhere.

Well, when I, when we were, when you had the house in Kirkland, it was in that back window

in the back of the garage. I just remember that in front of the tool bench. That was one of the

first places. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's just, you got to make it your space. You got

to figure out what, you know, the things you want to look at. I mean, you've done enough

stuff. Automotively that you could do some really cool automobile, automobile,

I guess it is. Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah. I thought about doing, you know,

I've talked about doing the map on the one blank wall I've got, which is kind of cool.

Yeah. Like that's going to be an expensive piece, but I'm excited to do it. I think it'll just

look really cool over there. And then I'll put photos here by the windows and stuff like that.

I'm still sorting out my space and where I want things, but things are slowly coming

into place. Like there's stuff I still got to put away, but at least it has a space to

go to. And I'm excited about that. Well, compared to what this was, like I said, we talk

about it all the time, but yeah, it's, yeah, it's a fun space. Yeah. Have you,

did you take off this weekend? Were you gone? Yeah, yeah. I went to Portland to visit

Sean's grandparents down there. Yeah, a road trip down there. Yeah, just to hang out.

A bunch of friends. How is North Korea, Portland? I mean, Portland. It's

Portland. It was fine. I don't know. It's funny. I love Portland. I love the area.

Good food. We're obviously usually huge events presence down there, but

there's a lot of parts of, obviously Portland gets a bad rap, just like Seattle does.

Yeah. Every city's got its bad spots. Yeah. Every city's got its good spots.

But I mean, I love the Portland area and everything out there and all the way out

to the coast. It's one of my favorite. And there's some great roads there, but yeah.

Nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, nothing special. It was a good little weekend.

Cool. Like in no event I meant it was good to spend time with family,

but it was not an event. It was just a wonderful amount of visit. That's cool.

Yeah, that's about all.

Anything else? Nothing else? Yeah, it's been working a lot. Well, that's, you know,

that happens when the whole wanting to pay for things happens. So, right. And it's,

you know, as people have heard, Microsoft's doing return to office in January or February

or something. Now I'm like, I got to get your car for that, which will be fun.

I don't want to put a mouse in the truck. So you've always been very good at that.

I mean, when you had some of your jobs before I met you, you had, what was it? Was it a,

what was it? I've had Corolla's Prius. I had a Prius at one point. The Prius was a free hand me

down. Yeah. No complaints about that. Sentra, like I have had a lot of cheap commuter cars

that I've done really well with. I saw everybody. That's the best thing I ever did because

I was talking to Sean about that. I had this little Corolla. It was a Corolla S,

that four speed automatic. Yeah. That just went forever.

It was like 150 bucks or something for a full break job, pads, rotors, everything.

It's the cheapest thing to maintain ever. Tend to the windows, put a decent stereo in it

and drove it for 240,000 miles. Problem free. What are you thinking now?

Are you thinking about to go Sentra? Are you thinking about Corolla?

Well, I've been going around the ideas and I'm going to talk about,

we talked about the sports car thing before. That's still something in my mind,

but something a little more fun. Oh, yeah. I really liked Evan's GTI that we got

from my dad, my nephew has. And so I would go next generation newer just for something a little

newer. But I'm really thinking I might end up back in a GTI. I've had one before and I really

liked that I had a 337, which is a really rare model that I still wish I had with a six-speed

and I might do just like a 15 or 16 or newer DSG because it is a commuter. So traffic,

think sitting and waiting and traffic. As much as I love a six-speed, I would actually go DSG

in that case. Kind of wish we saw the S3, but it was even that's a little too much car.

I'm looking in that like 15 at the most range. Yeah, but it's the end of the day too.

Out of the two ways to get to Microsoft, that Redmond Duval Road is going to be a little bit

not Redmond Duval, Redmond Fall City. Yeah. It's a good little road to drive every day. If you

have to, you know, there's a few curves on there. If I could find the, this goes back to if I could

find another S2000. It's funny you were saying that I was absolutely, even though it's a manual,

but then you should get a man, then you should give this 2000. That is the best manual

transmission over driven. So that one doesn't bother me as much. Yeah. Okay. I even looked at

for a day. I looked at EV. So I was like, well, it's like, because I can charge so cheap at work

and it's so cheap to own. And I was like, well, you get that $7500 back credit until the 31st

and Tesla Model 3's leasing at $299 a month. Yeah. That's really not much. That's pretty easy.

And I was like, nah, I can just buy something outright for $15 or so and drive it and sell

it for, you know, and have a little more fun. I mean, if we, if we found your EV and we

tinted the windows like zero, no one would know you ran it. I don't mind that. Seven million times,

I actually don't have anything against EVs. It's not, it just has never suited my use case before.

Oh, if I had a use for a Model 3, tomorrow. Yeah, they're fine. I'd still tint the windows

when I make it see I was in it, but no, I love it. This is just a standard Rooville drive.

I would love a performance all wheel drive though, but those are 700 bucks a month and I'm

like, nah, I don't need it. I don't want it enough to spend that money. Yeah. Okay.

I wish Rivian was doing that at least deal. It's still more than I want to spend,

but that was a really good lease still when they had it. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean,

and like you said, you can charge it work for pennies on the dollars. So that's even better.

Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Anyway, we'll figure it out. I want to have something fun enough,

but I'm going to wait it out and just see how it goes. Who knows what could change between

now and then because I mean, you know, there's no place for me to park. There's no

place for me to sit. And most of my team isn't in Redmond. So my hours will probably be,

I'll probably start, I'll make the, I'll optimize my time for work, but if I'm going to be in the

office, I'm not going to sit in traffic. So I'll probably be there at like six in the morning and

leave at one and then work from home the rest of the day. So, you know, no, do not get anybody

hearing me. I don't want to be hearing this thinking of this the wrong way. This is a

discussion I would have with my manager. This is not me quantifying this, what I'm doing.

This is what works for me in the business. Like that's how it works. I got you.

Yeah. As long as they're on board, I'll make my hours work stretch.

I think you've always been a person that, you know, you asked what the rules are and you follow

them to the T. So that's important. When it comes to work, it's just do the right thing.

That's best for the business. Yeah. It's not, you know, I'm working for someone else.

You're not going to take advantage of it and be like, yeah, I came into the office for 10

minutes today and I went home. Yeah. Go clock in and drive back home. Yeah.

Which some people will do, I'm sure. Do not do that. That's a good way to end your career

early. Microsoft has security. I've heard. Just watch that. Yeah.

Um, so I was, uh, I've been in a detail mood. Obviously, as you know,

yes, I want to talk to you all about that. You got a good Carter tip because I do.

That's how I was going to go into that. So I was washing, I was washing the truck

and, uh, I had after it was, and I, so I was kind of doing it. I should probably

shouldn't, but I was kind of doing it during the windstorm. So everything was

blowing down on the truck, but at the end of the day, my OCD took over.

And I noticed as I watched my truck and I'm drying it, there's all of this

water sitting on the bottom of my windshield. And I'm like, gee, that's

interesting. Um, so this is kind of our car automotive tip of the week.

And the fact that you need to check those drains because I had a bunch of debris

that blew down on the car. And then the water flushed it all to the drains

and it blocked the drains. Um, most of the time it won't go down the drain.

Some of the pine needles will, but this blocked the actual little grates

on both sides. So it's something to look at. It's something to,

to think about. Um, also, and I, I did this today. I was on my calendar and this is

just an extra go under your hood and go to your battery and check your terminals.

Oh yeah. One of my terminals was loose and I, it's on my calendar. I check it every

six months to go in and just happen to be one of them was loose and

it hadn't caused an issue yet, but it could have been. So that's just

something out there. Yeah. Especially if you do a bunch of

overland stuff or you have electronic modifications to your car where

you've had to change the post or it's come on and off a bunch of times.

I actually rescued somebody in, uh, uh, right in Snoqualmie Ridge at the Thai

restaurant one time. She had an infinity QX 56,

which, and she had just had mom kids. So she had monitors installed in the back.

They didn't have the factory one. So she had better ones put in the headrest,

which is a better way to go. Anyway, by the way, I guess it's probably

getting better now, but aftermarket used to be way better on that.

Anyway, her car kept intermittently dying. And so she's like, I don't know what

happened. She's like, I just had it serviced and I was like,

pop the hood. Let me just go take a look. And the first thing I checked,

first thing I checked is the ground was moving. Yep. Went and joined the

battery terminals and the ground was like, yeah, they both of them were loose.

Actually, both of them were really loose, but the ground was basically

completely just not even on there. Yeah. Or they have seen them.

I have seen them with the battery terminal over the plastic cover that

comes on a new battery. Yes. I've seen that before. Do I want to start?

It's hard to get some stuff. Like I said, I put it on my calendar every six

months or so that just kind of pops up and says check bolts or, you know,

things like that. But as I was cleaning stuff, I realized there was this

huge lake underneath my windshield. And I was like, oh, and all the debris

had been. So just check it. It gets a little bit more complicated when you

get into the actual drains. If you've cleared the top of the drain

and it's still not draining, you're probably going to have some other issues.

I've tried hot water. Don't boil it, but do hot water. I've dumped hot water

down there to kind of clear some stuff out. But they're not real

complicated. Some of them can be, but they're not.

Yeah. So what works really well is thin, stiff, trimmer line.

We did a line. Works fantastic for that. And you can get, it doesn't matter

what kind it is. Just see what you got. You just don't want the super thick

stuff because you want to damage the line. But any cheap trimmer line, you can

just feed it all the way down there and clean those out.

And then you just, like you said, you pour that hot water down there and

it's fine. Clean them right out. So the reason I was cleaning my car

is, I mean, and I've spoken about it on this, I've been on a binge

and the fact that I wanted to create or find, I wanted a power washer

cart with a reel and some type of, and then maybe another cart for my

detailing stuff. Because we have really nice detailing stuff from from

Griot's and I have used the absolute crap out of both of our

orbiters now. And I can't find any. I even reached out to Matt from Obsessed

Garage because he was on our show a long time ago and I had a brief

conversation with him. I don't think you remembered who the hell I was,

which is fine. And when it comes to Obsessed Garage,

Matt is obsessed for everything and he will build you the best

in, but we're talking $100,000. So we know, obviously, my garage is very

red, very Milwaukee. And I've been chasing this Milwaukee, like

work cart for probably six to seven months now for looking for deals and

sales. And it's funny because at Home Depot, sometimes if you want to

order it, they'll charge you 500 bucks. But if they happen to have it in

stock, it's 320 kind of thing. So I, which I hate, but I've been,

I constantly been looking for it and I knew the setup because I had the

power washer and I ordered the reel and things like that. And I knew

kind of what I wanted to do. I knew this would work. I had

virtually like you gone on and measured every drawer and measured all my tools.

I knew what I wanted. So I unpopped up in Bellevue this weekend and I

went and bought it. And then I had the hose reel. So I

created, well, I'll put a post. I took a photo of it.

We'll put a picture of it in the, in this post. But I

finally created it. It's great. It's a little bit bigger than I

thought it was going to be. But if anything, that's good because I can

store more stuff. But everything, I cleared out a ton of shelf space by

getting this on here. The power washer sits on there. The hose reel locks.

Everything is wired really nice. I found really nice brass fittings.

A lot of times with these hose reels, when you connect the hose to them,

the connection, it kinks your hose. So I did some more research and I came

out of a 90 and went to another 90. So it shot straight back. And so there's

no kinks in the hose now. So I really, I took my time unlike I

usually do where I'm like, I need this now. And, you know, so I've been

building it. I've had everything in my mind. And it only took me

probably three and a half hours to kind of, you know, the sliding

drawer comes out. I locked it. I bolted everything through it.

This is the bottom drawer. This is the bottom sliding drawer. That's the big difference.

And which is nice. And actually I can, the bolts that came with it are

really long. And it, and that's kind of stops it from

sliding out. But it locks too. Which is funny because

there's nothing, it locks to the cart, but you could literally just unscrew the

bolt and unlock it. So, but the bolts are hitting a little bit. So I could cut those

off. I don't really want it to pull out because it would only half

pulled out as it was. And then it's exposing everything. I also took the

power washer that I had, which I really love. And I shortened the cord by

about, oh god, 20 feet. Took about 20 feet. Because I didn't need, it was,

it was all in the way. It was one more thing. So I bit, and I wired it into

the cart. So everything, it's just plug it in. Nice. Plug in the water and we're good

to go. The one thing I didn't account for, which I can

figure out is when I pull the, when I'm done with the water and I pull it off,

there are a little bit of water drains out. But there's Milwaukee mats in there.

And it's all metal. And the holes I did drill in the pan. I put some rust

stop on it just in case, give it water. But I just put up one of the

yellow rags under it. It's, you know, it was the only issue I came up with

at this time. So silicone mat. Yeah, it has a silicone mat, but I'm just saying,

I don't want that. I mean, it's flat. Yeah, it's flat. So it just sits. Yeah. So it

doesn't, like I, the first time I did, I, and obviously I just pressure testing it

throughout the whole process to make sure that all of my fittings were good

and my Teflon tape was good. And I really took care. I think I learned

it from you as far as the right way to wrap the Teflon tape so that

when you screw it on, it doesn't screw itself off. Yeah. So follow the,

well, hard to describe. You go with the threads. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I have the blue tape,

if anybody is what the pros use, it's called, I think it's called gorilla tape,

even though it has no official affiliation to gorilla glue. Yeah. Well, they have

gorilla tape, which is like duct tape, but then they have gorilla. It's like blue gorilla.

It's blue Teflon tape, though. And it's definitely a little bit more heavy duty.

The other stuff's totally fine. But I have, I mean, this is, I'm not pushing

more than I think 1400 PSIs. If that, I think. Perfect for a gorilla.

So it's perfect. Like I said, I don't want to take the paint off. But that

project kind of came together this weekend, which was kind of nice. So, yeah. Nice.

If you're a fan of automotive and you're a fan of the internet, you know who this crazy, well,

that nobody, we know who he is now. Yeah. There is a gentleman in the Czech Republic who,

ironically, have you seen the videos? Yeah, I've seen the car, yeah.

Okay. But have you seen when he goes back to his house? No. He's a collector of Corvettes, too,

by the way. Oh, that's funny. In Czech Republic. And the Czech Republic, ZR1, a yellow with black,

ZR1 with the high wing. I'm getting ahead of myself. The gentleman in the Czech Republic who was

unnamed and would film this, which I don't quite get, had a Formula 2 car. It's not a Ferrari

from what they're saying. It is, it is liveried as a Ferrari. But he would take

these videos and him and his son and people would go out on the freeways with slick tires and go,

there's a word for it. I don't know what it is now, but they're weaving through traffic and

things like that. Reckless driving? Well, that's the question. Yeah. He's never hurt anybody.

And I'm not defending or, you know, accusing, advocating, but the Czech Police Department

has caught up with him. He's a 51-year-old man. I could tell you his name, but I'm not

going to be able to pronounce it at this time. But they caught up with him. The ironic part was,

you know, they kind of knew that they were, that he was kind of getting arrested. Well,

now he wasn't getting arrested. He was getting followed. And he lives down a dirt road. They

towed this car and then out on a dirt road, which is kind of funny. And the video's rather

long. If you look on there and you go, you know, F1 or, you know, Ferrari F1, I don't

know, I think Ferrari is going to sue him. Ferrari F1 driver, you know, on street. The video

is interesting because obviously it's not in English, but he made it all the way back to his

house, which is private property. And then they came out of the property and told them they were

going to arrest him. And he was very much arguing in the fact that he wasn't, he was on private

property. And if they needed to ticket him, they could ticket him, but he wasn't getting out of

the car. But it was the whole thing. He posted everything on the internet. It would probably

be the easiest prosecution in the world to go, this was you, this is you, this is you,

this is you. So, you know, use your money wisely, I guess. Yeah, at least put a dealer

plate on it. Yeah, right. But it's an F2 car. It's not Ferrari. I mean, here's the thing.

It's not titled the Montana is what you're saying. No, it's not titled in Montana. Out

of the check. That would even be more fun. That would be hilarious. Montana plates.

Well, a Montana plate that says Ferrari, non Ferrari. So that's kind of an interesting

automotive news. Yeah. That's, I've always wanted to do that with a shifter cart.

Yeah. They're really low, but they're small enough to you can just, I mean,

people don't really realize how low shifter carts are, but that's why they're so

fast as they have, they're super low to the ground. And, but you'd hit reflectors and bottom

out on one of those. But if you could raise wind up just like a few inches, you could have a ride.

Let's just say it for what it is. We want to be able to drive under a semi.

Yeah, that's true. I do. Definitely. This is not condoned and don't do it. But yeah. So,

oh yeah, shifter cart, you'd be, I, you look at some of the crashes that happen in

shifter carts where they run over each other and things like that. But if you did that

on the freeway and screwed up and some guy in a Honda Civic ran you over, I mean, you're,

you're done. Oh, I would want to just do it on some back roads somewhere because you'd be

taking 20 mile on our corners at 60. I'd want to do it on a freshly paved. Yeah. Yeah. So,

like find some freshly paved back, black top mountain road somewhere. Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Pay to close the road. Yeah, that. Yeah, absolutely that. Maybe he'll climb somewhere

in Idaho. Yeah. Maybe. Oh, you know how rocky that would be to do. That would

be great. Good. God, you die so quickly flying.

Cattlegate took off the bottom of the cart and both of your cheeks. So, yeah.

Our favorite car company in the world is having some issues, Dan.

Which one? Jaguar Land Rover.

Man, apparently they've been cyber hacked. The pain just does not stop coming for

those poor people. No, it's got to be Land Rover that's keeping them alive right now,

right? It has to be. Because people aren't trying Jaguars. Are Jaguars even for sale?

That's a good point too. I don't know. They exist, but I don't know. They don't have any new models.

No. Well, they do. You don't want them. Well, it hasn't been launched yet.

No, I know officially. But Jaguar Land Rover. Yeah, so they got hacked. Yeah, maybe you

could explain a little bit more of that because I don't quite understand. They lost all access

to their invoicing software, literally. They got hacked. It's internal software,

and they put under ransom, which does happen to companies. They get locked out of their own

systems. And so now they're literally doing deals on paper, old school way. Welcome back to the

four boxes. Well, I've heard that the production is shut down until the end of September at

least, and it might go till November. Yeah. So, even with tariffs and everything,

you've ordered a new Range Rover or Land Rover, it's going to be delayed. Yeah. So,

how do I say this? There are a lot of systems out there, a lot of systems out there that are

so behind on security updates. And this is where that rears its ugly head. I was in a doctor's

office the other day, and flare up again. Yeah, you know, happens. Yeah. Excessive gas.

I know, flare up. No, this is for totally something totally different. But I noticed

their systems were Windows XP machines that I used to install back when I was doing IT and

helped us support XP. That's like what 2000s early 2000s. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of them

was warning them to upgrade Vista. And because they run this with what happens is they have

some proprietary software that was built well at the time hasn't been updated because

the company that developed it probably went out of business. It's not supported on new machines.

And so the massive undertaking, this is why the FAA stuck around with their old systems

for so long. It's the exact same thing. But this is in more places than you think,

especially in small businesses, clinics, hospitals are the worst for hip compliance,

by the way. Dental offices. I see it all the time. Yeah, exactly. This stuff's super out

of date. And while a small medical practice is a pretty low risk target, there's not a

lot of hackers out there looking specifically to shut down a small clinic. There's not a lot of

money in it. But if you can find one of these old systems that somebody like Jaguar Land Rover has,

they certainly have enough money to be a target. Which is interesting to me because obviously

my brain doesn't work this way. But how do you hold something hostage? I mean, the minute they

give you the money, then they know where to find you, right? Like, that's encryption.

Okay. See, again, my brain doesn't work this way. They force an encryption key on it,

lock them out of the system, and they're the ones with the key. Okay. And they can either

nuke it or they can release it. Take your pick. It's not in their best interest to nuke it, though.

No, but it's also like if they're not going to get paid, what's the point in keeping it?

Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So they'll probably reach some kind of agreement. A lot of

times these silently get paid off. People don't talk about that a lot, but they do all the

time. There's a reason companies like Microsoft and all the big tech companies are insane

about security, and rightfully so, because there's a target and they're like, this isn't

something we hear about in the automotive industry that often, but this happened to Audi too, remember?

So you hack them, you blackmail them, and then you come in posed as IT security and you solve

the problem. Release the key. Yeah. Somebody who's never going to touch this, you know,

not even in your country. Oh, interesting. Yeah, this happened to Audi too. I forget

the name. It was at Bell and Howell. I remember who the company was. I don't want to say the

wrong name, but another company, their service software, they were using, I think it was

AutoNation. I think it was just Audi. I think it was AutoNation. A bunch of their dealers

couldn't do invoicing or service invoicing because that company, the company behind them

that they use online got hacked. So along these lines, and this is something we've

talked about and something we need to do, and I'm going with the four scan thing and the

fact that that code is out there and people were saying, you know, right now you couldn't order it

because the codes were coming from Russia and things like that. Is that along the same lines?

I mean, because Ford doesn't really want people doing this, but these codes are sold every day.

Yeah, it basically is. I mean, this is how every company unlocks ECUs in your car.

They reverse hack them and then they get into the software and then you can do what you

want with them for good or for worse or for better for worse, I guess, because in our case,

it's often to our advantage. Yeah. When as soon as you can hack an ECU, the better.

I mean, it's up to you not to literally blow your engine because you easily can,

but four scan, not so much. A lot of these dealer softwares.

That's Ford's actual tool. We just happen to know people that have codes that can get

into it, right? No, four scan is an aftermarket tool. Oh, okay. Ford has their own tool.

Oh, I thought it was Ford scan. Yeah. I mean, that's what it's for. Okay.

Four scan. I forget the rant, the Dodge one, but it's basically it's a tool that allows you access to

Ram scan. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, four scans like an open source project that's based

out of Russia. So, you know, who knows, maybe our cars will explode one day, but probably not.

It's been around forever. They're not going to hack our cars.

No, never. No, no. Yeah. Four scan.org is the Ford one. And it's, no, it's a third party software.

Oh, okay. I thought somebody had basically hacked the Ford software and then was selling out the

codes for people because. Yeah. No, it's Ford Mazda and Lincoln and Mercury. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So,

interesting. Learn something new. Yeah. Same time. It's sort of, you know, that's probably an

interest, a difficult struggle for manufacturers because it's sort of in their best interest

to not shut it down because a lot of people really, really want four scan to work. And you would be,

you would, you would legitimately have upset customers if you couldn't because there's a lot

of things you want to change that Ford can't because of DOT regulation, things like that,

like turning off your seatbelt chimes is a big one. And people have really good reasons for

doing this. Like you can put a little buckle thing in there, but it's a lot nicer just to

have it in your software. But if you carry stuff in your seats all the time, like if you're,

a lot of people do for passenger passenger stuff, it's annoying as hell. You have a big dog in the back,

which they do now have ones that secure into your seat belts, but that can be super annoying.

This is for animals and things like that. Do not do this for people. Right. Yeah.

So I hate that we have to say that, but don't do this. So, but I mean, a lot of it's just

preference to, you know, we've talked about this before changing the way your lights look,

changing the way your doors operate, you know, operate. But my favorite one is,

you know, unlocking features you normally can't because you can do a lot of this stuff in

Audi and things like that. Like Audi was the first one where you had, they have those amazing lights

that can go forever. Like your lights in the US are super detuned. I forget there. I think they're

called Prism. I can't remember the name of it, but like you, if you have access to the Audi

software, you can turn all those European features on and they automatically dim. They

actually work really well, but they have, because they haven't gone through DOT official

like checkbox yet, they're not enabled. Same with Ford. Yeah. Cause what you don't realize is,

when a company, an automotive company puts stuff onto an ECU, they put everything. Like a lot of

people were doing this with F-150 trucks and they would be able to put like the raptor screens and

stuff like that up there. So, cause it's on everything. And if it's not, you can download

it and put it on there. But it scares me just because, I mean, I'm fine with having people

like you or Michael help me with stuff like that, but it scares me in the fact that I

don't want to screw something up that blows up my engine kind of thing. Yeah, they have

pretty good instructions about making a backup first. I don't want to rehash this to death,

but like you definitely want to make a backup first. And then if you want to try something out,

luckily, there's a lot of people who are really comfortable doing this and there's usually

a lot of great videos online. I think Tesla, it's kind of funny. Tesla sort of embraced it.

Their software isn't totally open source, but it's very customizable, custom sounds,

custom screens, things that that's all built in. Like the whoopee cushion. Yeah.

Yeah. The whoopee cushion. Hey, Tesla, open my butthole and that opens the charging port,

like crazy stuff like that, which is hilarious to me. It's so juvenile and it's like,

you know, have some fun with it. I'm glad people are having fun, even if it sounds,

you know, even if it's crude to you. I'm glad they're like, just make it stupid.

Yeah. Make it so. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Oh, what else?

My brain is fried from work this week. It's been so. It's Wednesday. I know.

That says a lot. Well, learning a lot of software engineering stuff that I

haven't touched in many, many years. Like I've done relearning. Yes. Well, it's,

it's updating. Like a lot of the coding work I have, I've, you know, I've done is 20 plus years

old now. Oh, your brain's running on XP. Got it. Yeah. Exactly. You're exactly right.

My brain is still configuring BlackBerry Enterprise servers and

figuring out the OSI model, you know, and now I'm like, you know,

you know, relearning everything new about Visual Studio and, yeah, pipelines and releases

and anyway, it's fine. Your brain works well on that stuff. You'll get it. Oh,

yeah, yeah. It's fine. I'm enjoying the new challenge in ways. I mean, it's fun because I

forgot how much I actually liked doing the stuff back in the day, doing it for works,

a whole different story, but, you know, versus for fun, but I'm trying to think what else.

I got new tools again. Well, yeah, we talked about the air compressors last week.

Yeah. I got the M12 stuff. I talked about that. Yeah, I did because it was a sale.

Yeah. That's been kind of fun. And I put a new lock on my door the other day,

just look, it's all those little times I get to use a tool. So,

oh, here's the phone inside a deadbolt seize. Never had that happen before. Literally could

not move with a key. I took the lock off, could not get it slide. It was like stuck in the door.

And like deadbolts are cheap. It was like 30 bucks for a new one. And this one,

every door in this house doesn't fit right. I've had to fit and refit every door in the house.

And the one I haven't got to yet, the block broke, like the whole mechanism broke.

So I couldn't get the deadbolt open. So I grabbed my carbide bits and my

cutoff tool and I literally just cut through the deadbolt. Those things are freaking strong.

That steel is hard. It must stop you from getting in. Yeah. Thank God for carbide bits

and a cutoff tool though. That's awesome. Like I had to cut through it in the door

and then finally, once I chunked it out piece by piece, I got it to open and replace it.

Replacing it took me five minutes once I got it out. But man, I love having the right tool

for the job. Do you remember when I was in the mountain bikes? I know I get into things.

And you gave me that chain lube that you had forever. Yeah. That works really well

in deadbolts. My deadbolt seized a couple of weeks ago and I took it apart and put

a few drops of that in there and it works so smooth now. Like the whole thing's better.

Local company shout out to Demondi Tech, Demond Tech, depending who you want. I've worked with them

for 30 years, been running their products and I still, they're still the best chain lube out

there. It's a little messy, but if you do it under the right conditions with a warm chain,

man, this stuff is awesome. Well, it was just like magic. I don't have a WD-40. I was like,

we'll see if this works. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you know,

chain loop all the time, took it out, clean it up a little bit, put two drops on there

and that thing is so smooth now. It's not even, yeah, it's great. I'll tell you. Yeah,

we're like, what am I still going to do next in here? There's always more stuff. I mean,

I think the OCD side of you has to get a place for everything. Like everything has to go in

its place and then you can kind of figure out what you want to do because like that's

happening pretty quickly. But yeah, no, no, I know it is. But my point is like,

once the compressors get away from the front of the door and go to their spot

and things like that, that's where, you know, yeah, Brian can pick up your compressor. Jesus,

I'm moving into a new house. My, my water pipes are full of shit. Sorry, Brian.

Yeah, let's go to the, let's see the listener mails. I've got everybody's. Todd, of course,

reached out. So you need a GT4 when I was talking about cars. Oh, I mean, he's not wrong. He's

not wrong, especially like the rev matching manual. Is he paying for it? I know. That's

right. Yeah, he should send me one of those. Yeah. What else here? Hold on one second here.

I got a Google voice message. Yeah, I love it when our listeners Google voice message me.

Google voice message me. Yeah. Nathan Muntz shout out. He said, now this is funny.

He goes, you should do a score about C7 Ferrari or Safari, not Ferrari, C7 Safari goes modify it.

I don't hate that idea. Yeah, well, except that it's all fiberglass. I'd be a little

nervous about beating on the chassis too much, like cracking it, but they've taken

it. They're pretty strong. So can we take like a blazer chassis, put a Corvette engine in it?

LT four swap. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, but, but hold on. But then we kind of

chop the roof and then an off-road car should have a chopped roof. Okay. He goes, because

I'm a masochist, I thought about trying to Safari a VH platform, Aston Martin Vantage,

because they've got, they've gotten pretty cheap. I don't have the time for yet another

project. I mean, someone else tried to pull it off in Eastern Europe somewhere.

It's like, I mean, that would be so it could be done. I mean, when I keep thinking of a

Safari and like British cars, I think of the green Jag that was the villain car in

the James Bond movie on ice. Oh yeah. So they did it there. Yeah, it could be done.

I mean, I've seen a bunch of people have tried to do it with these, like the first

version on the R8 didn't work well. No. I mean, now that you've got the, the,

what's the Lamborghini, the Sturrata? Sturrata. Sturrata. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

same thing. That'd be fun. Gravel roads though, really.

Still be fun. Yeah. I'll figure it out. Yeah. I'm still, still looking for ideas.

I like it with something. Just, I think you go back to your roots. I think,

I think commuter car, we find you, S2000 that needs some love. Great, great for you there.

And then you go, you get a, you get a C7, Z06. You could even go, you could even go

anti Dan Speck and go all black. That was every car I had before. I know. That's what I'm

saying. We'd go, you know, too many white cars around here. My GTR was black. My C63 was black.

My C6, Z06 was black. Yeah. But in, in, in our friend circle and, and mostly avance,

Dan Speck is white. Panda. Panda. It's really panda. Panda with red stitching and red

brake calipers. And then I did, in the Turbo S I did the acid green just because I liked the way

that looked and it was a fact. I really love that. I would do that again. That car stay local.

Sort of. It went to a guy in Yakima. Oh, that's right. And then he bought a 720.

That's right. It came back. Okay. All right. It went back. Yeah. Then it went back to

McLaren, Bellevue. I don't know where it's from, where it went from there. Currently

there, yeah. McLaren's cranking out the special edition cars. They had that

new 750 kind of like Lark edition looking one that came out with that new

wing on the back, which I kind of dig. Yeah. Yeah.

McLaren's another one of those companies I wish would just get their shit together

because they make the best chassis out there with the car I'm scared to drive the most

because not because it's scary to drive, because it's probably not going to get me there.

And that, and that's, I just, I've seen the downtime, you know, I'm still talking to,

you know, our friends over at One Drivers Club, a lot of McLaren's in there,

and everybody loves driving them. And I don't, they are fantastic to drive, but

you know, we should get Kevin on, because he's had the experience of both the 675 and the 720.

Yeah, I've talked to Kevin. I mean, and that'd be good. Getting back on here and kind of talk

about McLaren ownership. I'd be curious, because I mean, Kevin's the kind of guy that knows

when he buys a car, he knows the maintenance, what it's going to cost him, and he doesn't

accept any more than that, which I think is good. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good problem to have,

good decision fatigue to have. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We should go, that's almost over. I was

going to say the Avant Social at Salish Lodge was tonight. Shout out to Chris Roberts as usual,

such a good dude. Go visit Chris over at Salish Lodge. He's the man, and he will take care of you

there. Speaking of new people, Avant San Francisco, opening up, they're hiring down there. Oh,

I missed that one. Yeah, they just announced that. They're just, Adam just announced that,

I should say they're hiring for Avant San Francisco. So more regions. So I think they're still looking

for a marketing person. They were doing interviews. Yeah, doing interviews. We talked about there

was San Diego, San Diego. Oh, it was, it was San Francisco or San Diego? I thought it was San

Diego. Oh, it's San Diego. That's why I was like San Diego, San Francisco, but okay. Yeah,

my bad. So Avant San Diego is hiring. That makes, okay, I was, I was like, boy,

we're going to conquer California. Yeah. Okay. Reading. Coming before you know it. Just kidding.

Fresno. Sacramento. Funny as hell. So I am down in Portland. I don't know where I look up in the

sky. What do I see? The Goodyear blimp. Sure. I was like, is there more than one of those?

I have no idea, but I sent it to Tom Nalt, which I haven't talked to in forever. And I did.

I sent it to him and I was like, I was like, you know, I said, I haven't talked to you

in a long time. I was like, but for some reason the Goodyear blimp is in the sky and I had to show

you. So I took a picture of it. I forgot about that. So if you're not reading the Exotics at

Redbentown Center blog that Tom Nalt puts out, he talks about parking the Goodyear blimp. And Tom's

been in the Goodyear blimp. Yes, he has. Yeah. He's got friends in that there. So yeah. Yeah.

So that's like the day I figured out that the wiener mobility were multiple wiener mobiles.

I know it's heartbreaking. I know. You know, they don't think it's the only one

wiener. There's some multiple wieners. It's not a fun situation. Applying to drive one of those.

They don't get paid very much. They don't get paid very much. They don't get paid very much.

And I'm sure the wiener jokes. And I think I don't think the per diem, per diem for

foods very much. You got to eat hot dogs. So they're not even Tosca dogs. Well,

my baloney has a first name. Fun fact, baloney is hot dogs. Hot dogs is baloney.

What? No. Stop. I need a giant hot dog the size of baloney. Yeah. Okay. Probably have.

Got you covered. I'll fry up some baloney for you. Oh God. No. Spam. No. I love spam.

Summer sausage. That's the one I was thinking of. That's what like my grandfather used to

make is summer sausage. That was good. So yeah. Good times. Yeah. Anyway, that's enough about

our meat. Yeah. Jesus. Just end on that. Yeah, why not? Okay. Well, as usual,

this ADHD episode of the Avans podcast is that's the end for the Avans podcast. I'm Nick.

I'm Dan. And don't just get there. Enjoy the meat.

The Details Matter

Toyota Corolla

Toyota Prius

Nissan Sentra

Volkswagen Gti

Audi S3

Honda S2000

Tesla Model

Tesla Model 3S

Tesla Model 3

Infiniti QX56

Toyota A90

Chevrolet Corvette

Honda Civic

Land Rover Range Rover

Geo Prism

Ford F150

Audi R8

Corvette C7 Z06

Nissan Gtr

About this episode

Original notes