YDKF Episode 185: My Current State of Affairs

[m00npie]

Title: YDKF Episode 185: My Current State of Affairs
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2020 23:32:24 +0000
Link: http://podcast.robohara.com/ydkf-episode-185-my-current-state-of-affairs/

Description: In this episode of You Don’t Know Flack I’ll catch you up on where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. I talk about […]

[The Roamer]

Good to hear a new episode of YDKF!

[Flack]

Thanks! I just finished recording a new episode of Sprite Castle.

I've played around with different release days and times, but I think I'm going to schedule them to go live around midnight on Thursdays. That way it should show up in people's feeds Friday morning so they can listen to them at work, or over the weekend. I plan to alternate weeks between YDKF and Sprite Castle, with episodes of other shows thrown in at random times.

Preparation for YDKF and Sprite Castle are completely different. Sprite Castle is a lot of research and combing the web for manuals and box art and things like that. YDKF is a lot of brainstorming and streamlining stories into something listenable. It's good to flop back and forth and work out different parts of my brain.

[obliterator918]

We did a puzzle on Saturday and had your new YDKF playing during that. It was cool hearing about your move and your homes.

[Flack]

This warms my heart. Scott Matteson told me one time that he listened to my shows while driving his bus around the Ohio airport, and even played it for his passengers. I've never been comfortable cussing on my shows, but I always try to remember that while recording. There are certain subjects that are more conducive to adult language (it's fairly impossible to avoid adult phrases on Multiple Sadness), but in regards to classic computing and my YDKF tales, I try my hardest to keep them family friendly.

[obliterator918]

I listened to the first 10 minutes or so and thought, hey, my wife might actually get a kick out of this. As you know, we recently moved to a new home, so I can identify with a lot of what you discussed. It really was a relaxing afternoon hearing you talk about the first world problems of movie rooms and retro collections and storage and all that. And I while I knew your previous home was big, I had no idea you had enough space for a Star Wars Room. I totally get it when you talk about maintenance. Our previous home had a swimming pool -- a 30,000 gallon in-ground pool. Before I upgraded the HVAC we would have $400-ish electric bills in the summer because of old AC (and poor insulation in a 40+ year old home), and running the filter pump 24x7, and I estimated that we averaged at least $1,000 in pool annual maintenance costs, and that's with me doing all of the labor. Sometimes it is nice to scale things back!

[Flack]

My wife wants to put a pool in at the new house. At some point I should let you talk her out of it!

The last house had five bedrooms, three living areas, and two home offices. The second home office (the one I used) was unfinished attic space that had been turned into a gigantic closet (10x10?) off of the second upstairs bedroom. I could have used the bedroom as my office, but the closet/office had a built in desk, so it made sense to leverage that. I put some shelves in the bedroom and put some Star Wars items on it. Then I put some more shelves in there, then some more, and it kind of became the Star Wars room.

It reminds me of the old, old house we owned in El Reno, the one that was built in the 1800s We were just kids when we bought that house and could have lived in a two bedroom apartment with no problem. The El Reno was one house that had been divided up into five different apartments -- four with one or two bedrooms each, and one as a studio apartment. We had no idea what to do with all that space. This is true -- we used one of the rooms as a hamper. We just tossed dirty clothes in one room and kept the door shut. It was nuts! Ah, youth.

[obliterator918]

When I was younger, I was happy to solve storage problems without considering how things would look. I had a lot of cheap shelving (that plastic stuff that is assembled with tubes). Once I bought a long plank of wood and a few metal shelf brackets and screwed it above the wide closet doors in the room that was our office/computer room. It was ugly and a terrible place to put it, but I was able to put a ton of books there and kept them accessible.

These days I will not add shelving or other kinds of storage if I am not pleased with the aesthetics. I do not like just shoving stuff somewhere if it is in view. I realize now that I really spend more time around these things and "seeing" them, than I do actually using them.

My new office is an actual study according to the floor plan, though I upgraded it to a bedroom (which means putting a door on the entry and the closet). It's really the perfect size for my needs, and I have plenty of desk space to do actual work and also have hobby stuff out. But I struggle a bit with storage. I have two nice book cases with glass shelves, and as long as I don't go crazy with it, it looks very pleasing. The young guy in me who would buy any retro stuff he came across is looking at the walls saying, install some cabinets in this room and load up! But NO. Not gonna happen. The room feels nice, it's not closing in on me, and I don't really NEED more space in here.

[obliterator918]

This is how I have my C64s displayed.

[AArdvark]

Dude!

THE
DROOLING
AARDVARK

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yeah, that looks great, man. So nice, organized and clean.

[k8track]

I just finished listening to this a few days ago (AFTER the new Sprite Castle, which I guess is slightly out of order). YDKF is my favorite of all your podcasts and I'm always happy to hear a new one. I've always listened to all my podcasts while driving, and I have great memories of taking road trips and hearing your voice as I drive. Since I am not driving much these days, it's taking a lot more time to get through them, whereas I used to just rip through all of them and then have to wait a while before I had new ones to listen to. Now I'm building up a backlog and who knows when I'll get through them all. Eventually.

You mentioned that it comforted you to listen to podcasts during these horrible times, and you had an epiphany that you bring the same joy to others with your podcasts. I just wanted to confirm that is the case. I appreciate all of your podcasts.

[k8track]

Well, I feel like kind of a hypocrite now. Not long after I posted here yesterday and professed my appreciation, I received an automated email saying that your Patreon had been reactivated and gave me a heads up in case I needed to cancel my support. A few years ago, I had a monthly pledge (only $5/month) which I was very happy to contribute, until you suspended your Patreon. Unfortunately, my financial situation is completely different than what it was 3-4 years ago. I had a full-time university teaching job and was making a very nice salary with full benefits. Now I've been unemployed since last August and am on food and medical assistance and am living off my savings. I've already had to cash in one retirement plan. I'm desperately seeking any kind of online teaching job but no dice. Long story short, I am unfortunately not in any kind of financial position to contribute to things that I would otherwise love to, not even $5/month. I therefore, regrettably, had to cancel. For that I deeply apologize. I love your podcasts very much and I want to help. At the moment I am locked in survival mode. I just want to not die and survive into next year when I can hopefully return to Korea and hopefully not return to the U.S.

[Flack]

I am very sorry to hear about your current living situation. My wife and I are very fortunate that the current pandemic has not affected our livelihood. Not only have we been able to continue working, but our disposable income has probably increased rather than decreased over the past several months due to the fact that we've (for the most part) stopped eating out, stopped going to casinos, stopped going to thrift stores and garage sales, and reduced how much we've been driving. It is sometimes easy to forget how the current economy combined with the covid situation has affected people.

The message that came out from Patreon wasn't automated -- I manually typed up that message and sent it out. I didn't look at the names, but when I was retooling my Patreon, it told me that there were still five people attached to my account. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to remove them off manually, but it would allow me to send out a blind mass message and so that's what I did. I didn't want Patreon to surprise anyone with a payment out of the blue.

The only reason I added the PayPal and Patreon links is because a few listeners kept asking me to. On the one hand, I really don't need to make any money off of podcasting. My operating costs are negligible. I am not trying to make a living off of podcasting. If I never made a penny off of another podcast, I'd be okay with that. On the other hand, I have listeners with (I assume) disposable income or who are in a position to kick a few dollars a month my way. I talk to other podcasters with fewer listeners than I have who are literally making hundreds of dollars a month off of their shows. Opening up donation venues for those people seems logical.

I am going to mention something on my next podcast because of your post. I will not name you or anything, but I want people to know that all of my podcasts are free and I don't want anyone to feel guilty for not donating. I really only put a virtual tip jar out because people wouldn't stop asking for one. The most valuable currency for me are listens, feedback, and shares.