Episode 238

In this episode, Stephen and Alan dive into a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation about creativity, storytelling, and the realities of building projects from the ground up. From personal experiences and creative challenges to the process of turning ideas into something tangible, they explore what it really takes to stay consistent and keep moving forward.

They also touch on technology, problem-solving, and how different creative paths—from writing to development—often overlap in unexpected ways. Along the way, they share practical insights, relatable struggles, and a few laughs.

If you’re a creator, entrepreneur, or just someone trying to bring ideas to life, this episode is packed with perspective and inspiration.

00:00:44.15
Alan Baltis
Very good, I think we’re ready to go here. Let me get the nails shut off. There we go, get rid that. Yeah, okay, okay.

00:00:52.41
Stephen Schneider
All right. So i just had sticker shock.

00:00:53.65
Alan Baltis
So, how so? what What are you looking at to acquire?

00:00:58.56
Stephen Schneider
Well, this is, you know, end of the year. Why do all these expenses hit at the end of the year my on my car? And I hate cars to start with most of the time, you know.

00:01:09.25
Stephen Schneider
So over the summer, i well, end of summer in August, I had to get a new gas tank because it had rusted through. And this is a 10 plus year old car.

00:01:17.61
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:01:17.97
Stephen Schneider
Okay, fine. So i got new gas tank. Then when we were in Chicago, my brake line gave out. So I’m in Chicago. I have to get a brake line, you know.

00:01:25.65
Alan Baltis
Right, and you can’t shop around. You’ve got to say, please, dear God, help me because it’s Halloween weekend and whatever. Okay.

00:01:31.17
Stephen Schneider
Right, exactly.

00:01:31.44
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:01:32.33
Stephen Schneider
And it was the the holiday day. So I had to wait a whole extra day. And anyway, now I just needed tires. You know, cars need tires. I know that they they wear out. You get new ones.

00:01:44.09
Stephen Schneider
This is ah a Rio. It’s not exactly a Maserati.

00:01:49.91
Alan Baltis
right

00:01:51.46
Stephen Schneider
Oh, with now, now they, they balance that there’s balancing in there. That’s great. you You really need to balance your, your tires. i understand that they wear out faster. If not, it makes sense.

00:02:02.49
Stephen Schneider
So you have to do it, but they charge extra for that. Um, well, not, know, yes, I can code this, but if you want me to type, that’s extra. Yeah.

00:02:11.84
Alan Baltis
that’s

00:02:11.71
Stephen Schneider
And then an alignment on top of that, which is not horrible, but for four tires, for a freaking Rio, almost $800.

00:02:22.35
Alan Baltis
So I hear your pain because I just recently had to get tires for one of the Priuses, not Prius C, but Prius. And got them through Costco, which you know I always sing their praises because every time that I have anything like this happen, they under promise and over deliver.

00:02:41.61
Alan Baltis
So they not only like in include the installation, they do include the balancing. Oddly, they don’t include the alignment, which I actually then took it to Conrad’s to get that done, and it really did need it.

00:02:52.14
Alan Baltis
you know They showed how your tires are canting and stuff like that.

00:02:55.36
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:02:56.08
Alan Baltis
Down where I had, out of 16 different things, I had five little red zones, and they got it down to only one, but the one they really can’t fix because it’s something, the car is now like 10 years old, and something has gone out of alignment where the they The tire is aligned with what it can do, but it’s still not perfect.

00:03:14.38
Alan Baltis
Having said that, I also, and maybe shop like this, you know, I want, we have a Prius. I want to get the best mileage that I possibly can because that’s what car is all about.

00:03:24.08
Stephen Schneider
Right

00:03:24.77
Alan Baltis
However, I did a whole bunch of reading lately. i used to get what are called low rolling resistance tires. You know, they they um the help you in mileage, like five to eight miles per gallon,

00:03:38.100
Alan Baltis
But they wear out more quickly because you get more road encryption, if you will. I know that should it should be a word. Isn’t that a word yet? I think it should be word.

00:03:45.39
Stephen Schneider
Gryption. I like it. Yeah.

00:03:46.84
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:03:46.95
Stephen Schneider
You can make up words. I mean, you know, the greatest people in history have made up words.

00:03:51.39
Alan Baltis
it’s it’s That’s actually not one of mine, but as soon as I heard it, I adopted it just like ginormous. My friend Dave is actually the one that I first heard say ginormous, and now I hear it everywhere.

00:04:02.03
Alan Baltis
So it really is one of those that when people hear it, they’re like, that that is, I will adopt that one. That’s a good one.

00:04:06.23
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah.

00:04:07.65
Alan Baltis
So having said that, I ended up getting Michelins because they’re really highly rated and they last the longest and they’re the safest. And as we get older, maybe it should always have been this way. We so much care not about ride comfort, but about ride safety.

00:04:21.37
Alan Baltis
And if you live in Northeast Ohio, they have to be good in all conditions, right? Especially in ice and snow. So I finally abandoned their, I think they’re maybe called sports or something like that. And they did last five years like they’re supposed to, but the defenders are ranked for like nine years.

00:04:37.33
Alan Baltis
And I think that the low rolling resistance are actually more expensive. And so I’m losing a little bit of gas mileage. Now, instead of being between 50 and 60, we’re going to be like 50, which is still amazing compared to all the 25, 30, 35 cars out there.

00:04:48.89
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:04:51.83
Alan Baltis
And they really do. they They fill them with nitrogen instead of like regular air, because apparently that’s supposed to also get you like your tire stays inflated better because it doesn’t leak out of all the little pores of rubber

00:05:06.27
Stephen Schneider
Yes, but you can’t just stop at a quick gas station to get a tire fill if you’re like, you know, down in Columbus.

00:05:06.62
Alan Baltis
ah

00:05:11.11
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:05:12.82
Stephen Schneider
so Yeah.

00:05:13.32
Alan Baltis
Right. And actually, I’ve done that when it really needed to be filled and I just put in regular air. And so whatever mixture, if I remember right, the oxygen, i’m sorry, the atmosphere is like 90, 70% nitrogen.

00:05:26.39
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:05:26.77
Alan Baltis
This is very funny. I learned that from a Green Lantern comic book from the 60s. So that’s still in my head somehow um because there was an alien that was trying to steal all of our air because they really needed the nitrogen. And having said that, it didn’t blow up.

00:05:39.36
Alan Baltis
I didn’t faint when it came out from release. You know what i mean? Like all of that stuff. So i or

00:05:44.21
Stephen Schneider
Your voice was really high for a while. No, nitrogen is really low, right?

00:05:46.24
Alan Baltis
yeah I should have tried exactly the helium versus the nitrogen.

00:05:48.28
Stephen Schneider
Nitrogen lowers your voice.

00:05:50.94
Alan Baltis
Oh, I’m based a profile.

00:05:51.83
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:05:52.97
Alan Baltis
But, but ah luckily, like, I don’t think that it’s just a scam. know mean? Costco really does seem to be the place that always does the research and they give you the best thing they can for a reasonable price and stuff like that.

00:06:04.10
Alan Baltis
And luckily they really don’t have, when you buy the tires, a big warning that says you must only return your cards in the Costco because then they can addict you. Like HP printers have all the printers to produce their own printing supplies.

00:06:12.27
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:06:17.58
Alan Baltis
A, that’s how they make their money, not from the, the the the the last long thing but the consumables and b because those are priced through the roof kind of the old razor plus blades thing you know everybody uses that analogy and it’s really true and so having said that i was very happy and mine cost just under 800 bucks as well but the experience of getting them was just fine except conrad’s taking it for alignment we got we go to a local with conrad’s and

00:06:28.86
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:06:47.08
Alan Baltis
They’re always late. they Honestly, I was in the car getting ready to drive away when the guy came running out and put my hubcap back on, my wheel cover. They had forgotten You what mean? Sorry, Conrad. One time, no lie, forgot to put wheelcap back sorry conrads you know i one time no lie the to put our um back on And we’re driving down the road and the thing the light surface engine, maybe be even specific to oil, comes on.

00:07:16.45
Alan Baltis
And so we look it up in the book and it’s this. And we go back there and they’re like, yeah, here it is. you know i So it’s the local one in Lakewood and they have a big network. And so I think that they are, for a chain, relatively reputable instead of being… um because they’re a chain and they can push everybody around and all that kind stuff.

00:07:35.75
Alan Baltis
And yet we just haven’t had the best experience since we’ve got consumer reports always says, go with a local independent.

00:07:37.47
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:07:43.28
Alan Baltis
They have access to all the tools everybody else does and all the parts that everybody else does. And they really have like the mechanics that take pride in their work as opposed to kind of a just out of high school guy that’s looking for his next job. He’s going to take a gig at Conrad’s for a while. Maybe they’ll stay there forever. Maybe not.

00:08:00.39
Alan Baltis
Every time that I go to Bruce’s, it really is the old guys that like they can listen to your car and say, oh, that’s the Framistat. And do you know what I mean? I’m just more, the only reason I didn’t go to them was because

00:08:09.65
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:08:12.70
Alan Baltis
everybody knows how good they are now. And so you wait like three or four weeks for an appointment instead of being able to call like over the weekend, go to Econ ads and make an appointment for Monday morning.

00:08:21.06
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:23.44
Alan Baltis
And so sorry about that. It’s amazing. Also, when you have like a car that’s 10 years old, don’t know what the value of it is, but when you like double the value of the car by putting new tires on.

00:08:32.75
Stephen Schneider
Right. I mean, you know, i want to say the cars run well and I like the car.

00:08:33.36
Alan Baltis
ah

00:08:37.78
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:08:38.13
Stephen Schneider
Honestly, it feels fine. I like driving it. I like driving it better than my mother’s Mazda. I like driving it better than the the old PT Cruiser I had. You know, for some reason it just feels okay with me.

00:08:49.93
Alan Baltis
Yeah, Ikea is making its name.

00:08:49.81
Stephen Schneider
um And it runs. Yeah.

00:08:52.52
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Like way long ago when Honda first came out, they were like, oh, that’s like a motorcycle engine turned sideways.

00:08:53.38
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:09:00.23
Alan Baltis
They really all kinds of, of course, American made and built snobs talked about all the various different invaders from Japan were made out of cheese and stuff like that. Well, Honda had this thing where every year they got better.

00:09:12.90
Alan Baltis
And you do that for 20, 30 years and you’re a fantastic car. The Honda Accord was a top rated car for like 10 years in a row.

00:09:16.61
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:09:19.06
Alan Baltis
And then it became the Toyota Camry. But do you know what I It’s no longer anything coming out of Detroit, unfortunately.

00:09:23.95
Stephen Schneider
No.

00:09:25.16
Alan Baltis
and And having said that, the Kia lately, like when you look at various different categories that they have concentrated on, they’re like the top three of everything. They really are a great hungry brand that has looked at what is everybody else doing and they do it better.

00:09:35.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:09:39.29
Alan Baltis
They make it it’s more dependable and and better mileage.

00:09:39.73
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:09:43.30
Alan Baltis
I hardly ever buy cars on aesthetics, and yet I just noticed recently they have a thing with the headlights where it’s not just headlights. They have a little line of light going back along the crease of the bumper, and it looks really cool when you see one approaching. And so it’s like, well, I’m not going to buy a car because it looks like a spaceship.

00:10:00.58
Alan Baltis
That’s freaking cool. You know what I mean?

00:10:01.82
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, right.

00:10:02.57
Alan Baltis
So…

00:10:03.71
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that i’ve I’ve seen some articles. There’s some new, sportier, higher-end Kia. And like I’ve seen articles where they compare it to a BMW. And it’s like, wow, that’s, you know…

00:10:16.28
Alan Baltis
Consumer Reports regularly has that where they say, you know, don’t buy this, this BMW or this Cadillac. Buy this one for $30,000 less. That’s one, two points difference in our ratings.

00:10:27.40
Alan Baltis
It’s got all the features. It’s got all the appropriate creature comforts that kind of stuff. And it’s 30K less. It doesn’t have, it doesn’t ride on its brand.

00:10:37.77
Alan Baltis
It’s trying to establish itself in each of those categories, you know?

00:10:38.96
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:10:40.45
Alan Baltis
So, well,

00:10:40.82
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:10:41.85
Alan Baltis
we We are so happy with our our Priuses, our Priai, that probably when we need a new car, and it’s kind of funny, we’re not looking at needing one. We have one with 120 and twenty and one hundred and fifty k and they’re running like a top. So I think they’re going to make it to a quarter million like my Infiniti did.

00:10:55.87
Alan Baltis
Having said that, I really love Consumer Reports, and we go to the auto show, and you have to try a car on when you’re both rodents of unusual size. I have to fit so my head’s not bogging, and Colleen has to fit where she doesn’t have to like put stilts on her feet to reach the belt.

00:11:07.73
Stephen Schneider
sit sit on a phone book.

00:11:08.71
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Exactly. but and Luckily, the the reason that we were confident in getting the first Prius we got, the Prius C, was because we had rented a Toyota Yaris when we were down in Texas at one point doing our capitals.

00:11:24.15
Alan Baltis
and It’s like a subcompact. You’re saving a lot of money doing this. I hope I fit. and It was really, really comfortable, even for big me. and so It’s like, well, the Prius C is the Yaris body with the better hybrid internals.

00:11:38.71
Alan Baltis
And so honestly, we, we did, you know, tried it on. It was just right. We, it wasn’t, here’s the, here’s the last one left. It’s purple. It’s an odd color. So, you know, sometimes it really is that you don’t, you don’t buy a car because of color, but you might reject one because you just can’t picture yourself in it. You can’t see others seeing you in it.

00:11:56.24
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t know, a bright green car, though I had a bright green car at one point, the one I inherited from my dad for a dollar. So, so, uh, ah so um

00:12:08.95
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:12:09.53
Alan Baltis
i I love the fact that Costco makes every experience. You like I go there while they’re doing the tires, I’m shopping. they You get um some part of that back because they have like a Michelin deal that you get some money back and also because you’re buying things from Costco and I’m in the executive club, you get like 2% back.

00:12:25.09
Alan Baltis
So I just got my check in the mail recently for like $140 for the year’s purchases.

00:12:27.60
Stephen Schneider
Right. nice

00:12:30.48
Alan Baltis
And I think executive membership costs like $125. So They’re paying me to shop there. You know what I mean?

00:12:36.08
Stephen Schneider
right

00:12:36.76
Alan Baltis
it’s not like I’m going there artificially trying to get that number up. Everything I get there, I like anyway. And then I still get 15 bucks off the deal. And it’s been higher than that in the past. And we’ve bought any number of things, for instance, for the kitchen.

00:12:47.15
Stephen Schneider
you

00:12:49.92
Alan Baltis
We bought two of the appliances, the refrigerator and the dishwasher through Costco. And then that all goes on to a Costco shop card. And you get back like, you know, $200 or $100 or whatever else it might be. We got our HVAC done that way.

00:13:02.14
Alan Baltis
So all those, I just can’t tell you, all those services, all those things that we we just, we’re going to Hawaii. Yay. We’re going to Hawaii on our next cruise to get our last state capital. Honolulu, here we come.

00:13:15.55
Alan Baltis
And we check with Norwegian directly and various other places. And Costco was the one that had the best deal.

00:13:21.06
Stephen Schneider
um

00:13:21.34
Alan Baltis
Or we’re going to, we were, instead of taking a boat out from the coast of the United States, We’re gonna fly off to Hawaii, do an island hopping cruise. So otherwise you have to like, you know, do your own transport. have to pay for little planes or boats wherever they get around the various different islands.

00:13:36.13
Alan Baltis
This one takes care of all of it. It’s like this eight days. We go to all the places that we wanted. We’re getting volcanoes and black sand. And I know I’m, oh my God, I’m talking this morning. And yet Costco, Costco and like you get,

00:13:48.24
Alan Baltis
the the cabin that you want at the price that you want. And like, you know, I think it’s like the free at sea package. So we might upgrade to the more at sea because that way you get better wifi, but they, they have done the shopping and they’ve said, what’s going to make people say, well, that’s a good price, but it’s bare bones. I’m getting nothing. Instead, they get kind of the combination that you want anyway and get it for a great price. So hats off to Costco with us having bought our cars through them.

00:14:14.31
Alan Baltis
We saved so money on those cars being like, not only, like they often say it’s dealer’s price or manufacturer’s price, but it was like so low. We saved so much money compared to every dealer that we went to when we were looking at things that that’s paid for our Costco membership for the rest of our lives.

00:14:30.98
Alan Baltis
We saved thousands of dollars. And at 125 year, it takes, you know, eight years to get to a thousand, 16, 24, 32, honestly, for the rest of our lives. we’ we’ve We’ve got free Costco because of how much they saved us on our card.

00:14:43.22
Stephen Schneider
Right. Well, I’ll have done maybe look back into Costco.

00:14:45.67
Alan Baltis
not a member you should be you know but

00:14:47.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. lie Our issue only is it’s it’s a 25 minute drive to the local Costco. So it does become more of a burden to try and get there, you know.

00:14:56.10
Alan Baltis
okay yeah i think mine is 15 maybe 20 even and yet it’s i just do it like twice a month and i stock up on you know you we we buy all kinds of things everybody talks about well if you’re only a single or a couple it is does it make sense well you buy the things that are durable like a bale of toilet paper not 50 pounds of potatoes we’re only going to get through maybe 10 before they start rotting so we’ve learned which things we can and can’t buy then we go to the local to marks and to giant eagle and stuff for lots of different things but costco produce is good and if you work your way through a whole bunch of cucumbers it’s okay to buy a three pack you know what i mean that kind of

00:15:20.67
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. yeah

00:15:34.20
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And I know that’s what Colin and Eli do out in Baltimore. They they go to Costco like once a month and then they have a ah little store literally in the same block as their apartment building.

00:15:40.32
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:15:44.70
Stephen Schneider
And it’s it’s a like a small local store, not a big grocery store anything. And they just pick up fresh fruits and stuff. they’re like, their prices are about the same as the the giant eagle that’s a half hour away.

00:15:55.36
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:15:56.70
Stephen Schneider
ah you know So why go through all that hassle in Baltimore?

00:15:57.09
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:15:59.91
Stephen Schneider
I mean, a half hour drive, it’s only like 1.2 miles.

00:16:03.64
Alan Baltis
written

00:16:03.54
Stephen Schneider
you know

00:16:04.60
Alan Baltis
Yeah. And actually that’s interesting for a small store to be that price competitive is uncommon, you know, but they have the concept now of food deserts where people have moved out of the, the, um, I don’t know, student places or lower income places where you kind of can only go to a convenience store and then you’re paying $8 for mustard, not two, that kind of craziness.

00:16:23.03
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:16:24.96
Alan Baltis
So i’m I’m glad that they’ve got that worked out. Well, another thing that about, sorry, Costco has it where like they’ll take returns on virtually anything. They’re kind of like Neiman Marcus used to be, you know, where I occasionally like I’ll pick up a shirt for Colleen or I’ll pick up something and and I’ve never had it where, well, you got to get your receipt and you got, you know, no, we don’t take that back.

00:16:49.01
Alan Baltis
Almost everything. Whenever I bought like a don’t know, I make mistakes. I bought like, you know, twice in a row, a 12 pack of mushrooms. And I just, I’m not, even though they’re canned, I’m not work my way through. And they were like, it’s not just justify it What’s wrong with them?

00:17:03.11
Alan Baltis
It’s like I double bought and they can see the record of what you bought. And that’s right. You did, sir. You’re right here. And then you put on your little Costco shop card and you have free money.

00:17:13.65
Alan Baltis
I get my glasses through Costco. I get, I know I wrote ah at one point a big Facebook post where I like gushed. You know mean?

00:17:21.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:17:21.43
Alan Baltis
ah Long ago, when when I started to read, of course, being in business books. And one of the things they talked about from a marketing perspective was you don’t want people that just kind of tolerate you. You want raving fans.

00:17:32.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:17:32.46
Alan Baltis
You want people that are going to say whenever there’s a conversation about, hey, where get your tires? I will step up and say, good Lord, school Costco, Costco. You can’t believe how good the service is and that kind of stuff. um that whatever companies lot times have like goodwill on their balance sheet where they claim that the difference between, you know that they built this kind of public rapport.

00:17:52.87
Alan Baltis
Costco, whatever that number is, it’s got to be low because they really have a great reputation They’re one of those places where they’ll go to a place and like, I don’t know, for Bailey’s Irish cream or something like that, they’ll say, make us a hundred thousand bottles of that.

00:18:07.80
Alan Baltis
We’re going to put our own label on it.

00:18:08.27
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:18:09.20
Alan Baltis
You know so it’s not a generic, it’s a, it’s a Kirkman brand or whatever. They’re they three different brands, but everybody who tries it is like, it’s as good as the wine, as good as the Irish cream, as good as the all kinds of different bacon.

00:18:12.73
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:18:22.34
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? That they, they go right directly to the place and say, Hey, we’ll, we’ll buy a whole bunch of units.

00:18:23.22
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:18:28.06
Alan Baltis
And from what I understand from reading, not in a weird way like Walmart does similar things, where they got their Savers brand or something, but there’s any number of cautionary tales where manufacturers don’t want to sell to Walmart anymore because they’ve cut their margins so tight.

00:18:44.100
Alan Baltis
the The big classic tale is there’s like a 10, let’s see, quart jar of pickles. what mean? Where it’s just a big old thing and it dominates the bottom shelf of your refrigerator.

00:18:56.04
Alan Baltis
Well, whoever was making those pickles made no money, even though they sold 100,000 units because Walmart, but you know, it’s, let’s see,

00:19:02.61
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:19:04.69
Alan Baltis
but not monopoly, but monopsony pricing, right? Where the buyer actually is so much that they need that business that they can kind of call the shots and a lawnmower place at a pickle place.

00:19:15.92
Alan Baltis
And they had all these tales of like, we just don’t deal with them anymore because they, they really bargain hard.

00:19:21.21
Stephen Schneider
right That’s, I mean, if you look at that dollar general does the same type of thing, it’ll look like the same size of peanut butter.

00:19:22.75
Alan Baltis
ah oh

00:19:27.68
Stephen Schneider
But when you look, it’s a quarter ounce less peanut butter.

00:19:30.91
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:19:31.15
Stephen Schneider
And when you calculate the price and that, you know, instead of being a four, you get 1.75, which looks like a two.

00:19:37.100
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:19:37.93
Stephen Schneider
and then when you calculate the cost, if you buy two of those, it’s a dollar more than just going to giant ego and buying the full four. you know And I know my classic one for Walmart was the Wii. When the Wii came out, Nintendo knew they needed to get that on shelves where the consumers were, which was Walmart.

00:19:49.39
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:19:55.58
Stephen Schneider
They wanted to be Walmart.

00:19:55.83
Alan Baltis
All

00:19:57.22
Stephen Schneider
Walmart said, okay, well, you’re selling it for 300 bucks, whatever it was. They said, no, we want to sell it for 250, so you need to lower your cost.

00:20:00.66
Alan Baltis
right.

00:20:04.30
Stephen Schneider
And Nintendo was like, we can’t. It costs us like 250 to make it.

00:20:07.15
Alan Baltis
but Right.

00:20:08.90
Stephen Schneider
We’re as low as we can go.

00:20:09.26
Alan Baltis
right

00:20:10.65
Stephen Schneider
And they’re like, nope, sorry. so What Nintendo did was they pulled the wires out, the power and the connector to the TV, pulled it out and put it as a separate thing. So you could buy a Wii for two 50, but then you had to buy this $50 package of wires, you know?

00:20:25.95
Alan Baltis
Power block. Exactly. Yeah. but yeah

00:20:29.38
Stephen Schneider
And that, that was, that’s my remembrance story of that, how that works.

00:20:33.50
Alan Baltis
yeah

00:20:33.60
Stephen Schneider
So it’s like, you know, people are like, Oh, you know, Walmart is so much cheap. Yeah. But it’s hurting as much sometimes, you know?

00:20:40.67
Alan Baltis
I just saw a quote and and someone shared it, but they didn’t attribute it. But that says, is the entire economy just based on scams now?

00:20:50.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Well,

00:20:50.79
Alan Baltis
It really feels that way, that every loyalty program, every couponing, every that kind of thing, adjusting um volume or weight just enough so that it looks like the old packaging, but you’re getting less at the same price or they they put it on sale. But all you’re doing is getting back to the same price it always was.

00:21:11.25
Alan Baltis
It’s terrifying how often when you investigate that, you just feel like, man, can’t you just sell a good thing for a good price? Can’t you just be the 10 companies that are doing it out of a thousand?

00:21:19.18
Stephen Schneider
well Here’s the…

00:21:22.09
Alan Baltis
They get all my loyalty because they’re not.

00:21:22.38
Stephen Schneider
It’s the… It’s the same problem we have with people backing politicians right now.

00:21:29.91
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:21:30.08
Stephen Schneider
they They look at the clickbait headline and don’t go lower than that. So that’s what happened. They take advantage of it.

00:21:37.28
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:21:37.38
Stephen Schneider
you know i found, so i mean, i I’m obviously not trying to rip people off, but I found I’ve got some free short stories online and I’ve advertised them.

00:21:49.24
Stephen Schneider
I’ve offered them, I’ve shown them, whatever. I barely get anybody clicking on them. And when I do, I don’t get people clicking through to buy the book. It’s like, okay. But everyone’s like, oh, free short stories.

00:21:59.66
Stephen Schneider
So I took some of those short stories and I printed them out in little mini books and I put them on my table called stocking stuffers.

00:22:07.05
Alan Baltis
okay

00:22:07.65
Stephen Schneider
People grab them, hand me $3, grab two of them, hand me, but they’ll grab ah you four of them. I’m like, so these people will pay me money for the same story I’m giving them for free.

00:22:15.83
Alan Baltis
we’re free yeah um i’ve read that too that you know too many free means worthless that they wouldn’t be giving it away and it was like only um

00:22:18.15
Stephen Schneider
yeah it’s all It’s all the psychology of it.

00:22:25.23
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:22:28.71
Alan Baltis
end of the run and there’s a new better one coming out or whatever all the excuses are. And that you have to charge like a nominal fee, a dollar, $3, just to get people to say, I’m getting a deal instead of I’m getting a cast off.

00:22:40.72
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:22:40.89
Alan Baltis
Do you know what I mean? it’s It’s kind of weird that way too. i I don’t always go to the lowest price. You know, they they kind of talk about that, that if you’re, if you do that kind of price comparison, it’s often good to back off from the top by about three positions and back up from the bottom by about three positions because that way you’re not getting

00:22:57.37
Stephen Schneider
right

00:22:57.65
Alan Baltis
absolute most cut rate or the most premium, you’ve got someone that actually did a calculation and said, well, my cost is this and I don’t have to make all the money, but I’m going to make enough money so I can continue to be in business.

00:23:07.35
Stephen Schneider
Well, I saw a survey or ah a study that was done with beer.

00:23:08.59
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Okay. Right.

00:23:13.70
Stephen Schneider
I think I’ve talked about it before with premium beer and medium level beer and, and people would buy the premium if all they had was premium and medium, you know?

00:23:18.14
Alan Baltis
right

00:23:22.96
Stephen Schneider
And, and so for the soaps, we started, offering a premium soap and our regular soap and we had bars and then we had slightly cheaper cupcakes, but they were at the same price for the ounces, you know, and, and now I’m offering and a cut rate soap.

00:23:28.38
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:23:35.66
Alan Baltis
okay

00:23:40.53
Stephen Schneider
That’s not our good ingredients. It’s just the the crap ingredients like everybody else has.

00:23:45.48
Alan Baltis
okay

00:23:45.68
Stephen Schneider
you know how many people will buy that ah more expensive bar? Just it’s premium. Well, what’s in it? Well, it has this. ah Okay. I’ll take two of these. You know, we we we were like, are you kidding? So we had to like make more, you know?

00:23:58.39
Alan Baltis
That, ah as you might imagine, for pretentious drinking that, you know, we regularly, i don’t know that I read tons of liqueur reviews to find out what it’s going to be. We kind of go there and look for something new or we look for something that’s classic.

00:24:11.14
Alan Baltis
but there’s a whole section there of like the Kuypers, you know what I mean? Where it’s got all the artificial flavors. And the reason I don’t get them is because it doesn’t taste like elderflower. It tastes like elderflower metal. You know what I mean?

00:24:22.58
Alan Baltis
But some of them are really like just cinnamon one or I’m pressing whichever ones people have said, well, this is just as good as Goldschlager or something like that. And yet there’s a psychological thing about, you know, you go to the Kuypers and that’s kind of like, I don’t know. Um,

00:24:39.72
Alan Baltis
Did you find this at 7-Eleven as opposed to a liquor store or something like that?

00:24:43.99
Stephen Schneider
right

00:24:44.66
Alan Baltis
So we get a couple because sometimes the bit sometimes people just want to try. If I like this, then I can get away with getting an $11 bottle instead of a $20. And when one lady at Pretentious Drinking came up and said, what’s the most expensive thing you bought here?

00:25:00.49
Alan Baltis
um If I’m going to get it for free, I kind of want to try the most expensive thing and see, is it worth it? and And so I guided her over there and like, you know, I have the whole spreadsheet kind of in my head, but not exactly. And I said, I know in the past we’ve had like often chartreuses really expensive. We’ve had Napoleonic brandy where Ketman got that for us.

00:25:18.14
Alan Baltis
An incredible act of generosity because that stuff is like crack a bond type expensive. You know what I mean? And yet, there really is for all those various different things, the The companies are doing that now, too, that you’ll find out these five names are all made by the same company, but they’re positioned to be the premium, the medium, the low, and I don’t know, the ladies, the teens.

00:25:39.56
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:25:43.23
Alan Baltis
there There’s all different.

00:25:43.41
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:25:43.91
Alan Baltis
different Marketing is so strong and they’re so good at it that you really can say, well, this in particular is for um expats living in Guatemala. And then it’s like, well, that’s what I get. So i anyway.

00:25:55.69
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. And it works. you You learn those things. Okay. Wait. I wanted to one bring up something else about ah vehicles.

00:26:03.86
Alan Baltis
Sure.

00:26:03.87
Stephen Schneider
um We always wander off.

00:26:05.80
Alan Baltis
know

00:26:05.71
Stephen Schneider
And before I forget.

00:26:07.40
Alan Baltis
but We made a logical progression. It just isn’t waiting.

00:26:09.16
Stephen Schneider
yeah We did. We always do.

00:26:10.31
Alan Baltis
ah

00:26:10.40
Stephen Schneider
It’s a conversation, you know? um But one of the things I’ve seen that I’ve noticed, and this could be my age, um but the the headlights on some of these vehicles nowadays are freaking ridiculous. I don’t know how much night driving you do, but you get some of these guys with the LED trucks and not only do they have their headlights, they have five layers of these LED lights. And it’s like, I can’t see.

00:26:37.87
Stephen Schneider
and And they’re not even on brights. And I’ve heard, well, it’s still the luminosity is within the range. It’s fine. It’s like, that can’t be good. And I watch them when I have the dog out at night and I watch cars come down the road and you can see cars like mine and it it’s a little bit brighter.

00:26:54.51
Stephen Schneider
And then you see one of these guys come and it’s like, I can read my neighbor’s book that he’s got in his armchair across the road.

00:27:01.51
Alan Baltis
I hear you.

00:27:01.77
Stephen Schneider
It’s like, this cannot be, and it is really difficult to see, but I haven’t seen too much of anyone caring to like push for it a little bit, but I can’t see cops, especially around here, stopping somebody because their lights are too bright, you know?

00:27:15.69
Alan Baltis
Right. I know i for a while they were experimenting with mercury vapor, right? And and maybe they’re establishing now because it cut through fog better or whatever, like, or blue versus yellow versus straight multi-spectrum white.

00:27:19.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:27:26.57
Alan Baltis
I know on earth besides the headlights, I’ve seen cars where they don’t just have brake lights. They have like a line going up because it’s a solar car.

00:27:31.79
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:27:33.15
Alan Baltis
And unfortunately, that puts it not like at your hood level, but at your eye level.

00:27:37.31
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And that’s the other problem are all these vehicles that are jacked up off the ground.

00:27:41.30
Alan Baltis
Yes.

00:27:41.88
Stephen Schneider
yeah And, and actually I just saw something about that. Maybe it was ARP maybe or something, but they were talking about how there’s, they’re trying to put in legislation about some of these vehicles because the chassis of the vehicle is above the safety features ah of 90% of the vehicles out there.

00:27:48.20
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:27:59.36
Alan Baltis
So if you got in the collision, you would go under it and it would go into your cab.

00:27:59.60
Stephen Schneider
And so, yeah, yeah.

00:28:03.20
Alan Baltis
Exactly. That’s, I hear it.

00:28:04.91
Stephen Schneider
wouldn’t make, you know, airbags aren’t going off. Uh, people are getting, you know, they’re, they’re top of their car stuff. So, you know, I, I hope there’s some things going on with some of the safety issues caused by some of this people and, and worse are the idiots that think, Oh, I’m big and tough.

00:28:24.23
Stephen Schneider
And I have this a lot on some of the back roads around here. These big jacked up trucks, they ride with their highs on and they don’t care because I’m brighter than you and you just have to deal with it.

00:28:29.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:28:35.55
Alan Baltis
hear you.

00:28:35.51
Stephen Schneider
You know, what am what am I going to do? If I pull in front of them, they’re just going to go bloop it over me. It’s like, was that a pothole? You know, and if I flash my brights, they’re like, oh, I mean, it’s Christmas vacation all over again, you know, right there in front of you.

00:28:48.44
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:28:49.49
Stephen Schneider
So it’s like, ha ha, you can’t do anything about it

00:28:52.49
Alan Baltis
yeah that’s That’s long been not just a joke, but reality. There’s all kinds of cars that are just kind of meant to make up for someone not being certain of their masculinity. So I hope make fun of it.

00:29:01.68
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:29:02.79
Alan Baltis
That’s the new 2025 compensator. You know what I mean? it it’s

00:29:06.08
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:29:06.54
Alan Baltis
it it There’s all these names that you can do for, because they really, and when you see the guy getting out of it, it’s like, yeah, that might be. kind of like small Dick energy. You know what I mean?

00:29:16.92
Alan Baltis
Like there’s all kinds of things going on there, but it works.

00:29:17.41
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:29:20.53
Alan Baltis
and don’t know what the sales units are for those, but especially big jacked up trucks and stuff like that. We see them on the road all the time without a speck of dirt on them. They’re not, we don’t even have a, they don’t have a tool chest.

00:29:29.20
Stephen Schneider
Oh, God, yeah.

00:29:32.06
Alan Baltis
They don’t, they don’t have anything that makes it look like it’s a working man’s truck, but what they want to do is be jacked up high so they can see over everybody. And of course they’ll win every collision because they weigh more and are higher. And yet they’re a hazard.

00:29:44.04
Alan Baltis
You know, we have Lakewood has any number of places where get out to the three main roads, you come off of a side road. Well, if there’s a guy parked on the corner, like near Buckeye Beer Engine, it’s pretty much you can’t see around him until you pull out into traffic.

00:29:58.96
Alan Baltis
And the like he always parks there.

00:29:58.88
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.

00:30:00.100
Alan Baltis
I think he works there or maybe he lives in the apartment next door, but that’s where he parks. And I just… There, again, there should be some legislation, there should be a ticket being issued for you’ve created a ah hazard, a site hazard, because you’re just so massive that you’re like a rolling bill nobody can see past you.

00:30:16.49
Stephen Schneider
work Worse are like if you’re getting off the freeway or you’re at a stoplight, they’re in the left-hand turn lane and you’re in the right-hand turn lane.

00:30:19.02
Alan Baltis
ah

00:30:25.31
Stephen Schneider
Okay. Now there’s a chance you could turn right on red with no traffic’s coming. That’s a legal thing in most places.

00:30:32.25
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:30:32.60
Stephen Schneider
There is nowhere he is going to move on left when the light is red. Okay. So I ease up a little bit to see past him and they pull up just to block me.

00:30:38.20
Alan Baltis
right

00:30:41.91
Stephen Schneider
I pull up a little bit. They pull up again just to block me.

00:30:43.04
Alan Baltis
like if you think we’re dragging don’t you like you know obviously if you look you’d see your and my turn signals are both on yeah it it i wish it wasn’t like that but

00:30:44.41
Stephen Schneider
I’m like, seriously, you know,

00:30:52.74
Stephen Schneider
But they do. They know exactly what they’re doing. and Sorry to say. And I would i would i would i would stake my my flag on this hill that even if People with two bright a lights could get stopped with tickets. People with jacked up trucks could get stopped, inspected tickets, whatever.

00:31:16.28
Alan Baltis
right

00:31:16.30
Stephen Schneider
ah You know, blocking somebody, you know, just a cop pulling them over to say, hey, you shouldn’t do that. I can, I’ll stake a hill, a flag on my hill that in this area, this county, the cops wouldn’t do that because they admire it.

00:31:30.15
Stephen Schneider
That they’re they’re all for it. theyre they They probably have trucks like that of their own.

00:31:34.87
Alan Baltis
That might be, that’s their private vehicle, etc.

00:31:35.100
Stephen Schneider
So, yeah.

00:31:37.56
Alan Baltis
ah Here’s a last, I guess, a sweeping statement.

00:31:41.15
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:31:41.50
Alan Baltis
pretty sure that if you were to go into the parking lot and look at which guys backed into the parking spot instead of pulling those in, especially where they backed into a diagonal slot where it really is wrong to do so, maggot, maggot, maggot, maggot.

00:31:56.09
Alan Baltis
There’s a huge Venn diagram crossover between that’s, you know, they, they, every accusation of confession, every time that I hear from some guy talking about virtue signaling, that the only reason that you’re doing that is to act as if you’re a good guy.

00:31:56.03
Stephen Schneider
Absolutely. i would agree.

00:32:10.15
Alan Baltis
Well, that’s a vice signaling, an asshole signaling to say, and don’t have a cyber truck yet, but I do this behavior so that you could pick me out. And if you’re like, well, Look for the Trump bumper sticker. Look for whatever other red hat signs there are that those people that make everybody wait while they back in.

00:32:27.94
Alan Baltis
And I will say this, if they did it nice and smoothly, it would hardly cost any time. I’ve seen them do it where it takes two and three and four tries yeah like that.

00:32:35.04
Stephen Schneider
Like they always tease women of.

00:32:37.89
Alan Baltis
They’re they’re crappy drivers. And if they do that all the time, they’re not getting betty any better at it. They suck at it. They’re always not aligned in the parking spot at all.

00:32:43.76
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:32:45.91
Alan Baltis
And so it’s just, i I, because I’m I don’t know, I’m big. And so I get to say these things. Like if I see somebody doing that, and it’s like, I comment like, wow, that’s a crappy job.

00:32:59.13
Alan Baltis
Wow. Why back in here? and and And of course I get dirty looks and I get, you know, um once in while, a guy i honestly holds his hand up as if with a gun. It’s like, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I guess I got to stop doing that because it escalates from I’m slightly annoyed to I’m going to shoot you a heartbeat.

00:33:15.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s, that seems to be the mentality.

00:33:16.64
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? There’s bunch of people.

00:33:19.36
Stephen Schneider
ah I’m better because i have power. I can shoot you. I can’t handle this any other way and I can’t be a good person, but I feel like I’m important because of this. And the ones with the angled parking folks, when you do that, you pull out, you’re going the wrong freaking way down the road and it makes it difficult for other people.

00:33:36.46
Stephen Schneider
If I’m pulling out, I shouldn’t have to look both ways. And several times I’ve almost hit people and they’re honking and flipping me off

00:33:44.11
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:33:44.08
Stephen Schneider
And a couple times I’m coming down ah an aisle and I’m in the right, there’s cars parked all along on each side of me. I’m going the right direction and you get some moron in a truck. Every single time it’s been in a pickup truck.

00:33:58.52
Stephen Schneider
Every time i take that back once or twice, it’s a minivan with some Karen with fingernails out to here.

00:33:59.79
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:34:05.63
Stephen Schneider
Like I will be in the middle of that aisle and I’ll be heading towards them. And I’m like, and I put it in park and I sit there. Where are you going to go? And what what’s going on? And they’re cussing, swearing and flipping me off and and a yo roo edging up. I’m like, go ahead.

00:34:23.08
Stephen Schneider
This car is not worth that much money. You want to hit me? let’s Let’s go. I’ll sit here. I’ll call the cops. I’ll call the insurance. I’ll push my insurance to fix every goddamn thing that’s wrong with this car.

00:34:34.41
Stephen Schneider
You know what mean? And then they get pissed off and back up and you know yeah better flipping me off and all sorts of stuff. I laugh and I wave.

00:34:43.65
Alan Baltis
When I was young, I really had that fantasy of buying the beater car that I’d have like a railroad tie for a bumper just because no matter what collision I got in, it would cost them more than me.

00:34:49.76
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:34:54.40
Alan Baltis
So they’re the one that has to worry about that, the idiot factor, the intimidation factor.

00:34:54.64
Stephen Schneider
Right. that that the The Mad Max cow catcher on front.

00:35:02.44
Alan Baltis
Like that. Another thing I’ve noticed is the trucks aren’t, as you know, too big. They really don’t fit into conventional parking spot anymore, but that doesn’t stop them.

00:35:08.44
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:35:10.67
Alan Baltis
And in fact, the combination of being a big idiot truck and backing into a space, they don’t even, they don’t want to bump the back of their truck against concrete in a parking lot.

00:35:19.07
Stephen Schneider
They stick out.

00:35:20.23
Alan Baltis
And so they’re off by a foot or two feet and they stick out, making a hazard for everybody else. And so a long time ago, i kind of stopped doing it because I just was so annoyed at sharing this all the time.

00:35:31.82
Alan Baltis
I took a picture of, here’s the truck. Here’s how much is sticking out. Here’s how much it left in the back. Idiot, idiot, idiot. And yet it’s such a common thing nowadays. And, you know, we all, I guess this is how many people pass on the right.

00:35:45.92
Alan Baltis
It’s a video game thing where all lanes are equal instead of being no, you know, medium, medium is regular and you go slow on the right and fast on the left. I, I have had to develop that self-defense thing of always checking on the right.

00:35:59.18
Alan Baltis
If I’m moving over to get off, you know, an off ramp and stuff, because somebody could be taking that opportunity to try to pass me right then.

00:35:59.24
Stephen Schneider
Right. Well,

00:36:05.94
Alan Baltis
And I don’t get it. i do that in driving school, but people don’t go to driving school anymore.

00:36:08.04
Stephen Schneider
I’ve almost hit people that way.

00:36:11.95
Alan Baltis
Schools don’t have it. And I guess once you have that infection in the population, The father will pass it along to his son that it’s just like, no matter what, don’t go into the fast lane because that’s where the police are watching.

00:36:23.24
Alan Baltis
Pass in the slow lane because know what I mean? There’s all kinds of psychology that goes into by you being selfish, you wreck whatever societal agreement we all had as to expectations of the road so you won’t get in trouble.

00:36:25.91
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Well,

00:36:33.04
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:36:36.17
Stephen Schneider
I, I, I’ve been driving back and forth to Columbus occasionally, ah for various things.

00:36:40.55
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:36:42.17
Stephen Schneider
and you know, it’s three lanes going down there for most of the way. And I’ll be in the middle lane cruising along couple miles over, maybe somewhere right in that you know realm.

00:36:51.86
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:36:51.80
Stephen Schneider
And there’ll be some people in the left lane, maybe passing me slowly, not real you know just ah normal, but going a little faster past. And then you’ll see in the mirror, some guys zipping down through the right lane, just bypassing everybody. I’m like, Oh,

00:37:05.71
Stephen Schneider
Click, click. I pull over. i slow down to like two miles below the speed limit. And they’re flashing their lights at me. And I’m like, dude, I’m in the right hand lane. Where am I supposed to go You go left.

00:37:15.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:37:15.81
Stephen Schneider
And they can’t because people are now streaming past. They’re all pissed off. I could have made this blah, blah, blah. But it does. That’s the thing. It teaches them nothing. They learn nothing other than I was the asshole, not them.

00:37:29.13
Stephen Schneider
You know, that’s, that’s the problem.

00:37:29.83
Alan Baltis
I’ve done that too. I pulled over, not necessarily to cut them off because I had to get off of the next ramp.

00:37:34.63
Stephen Schneider
Oh,

00:37:34.94
Alan Baltis
And the other, you know, of course, too many people, in order to punish you, in order to let you know that you’re impeding their progress, they come up right to your bumper and then back off instead of, oh, be the sensible thing.

00:37:46.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah,

00:37:47.71
Alan Baltis
You know I’m now in the lane. You know you’re going 10 miles an hour too fast. Maybe slow down and leave an interval like you’re supposed to No, you get the headlights. You get that, that it whatever that. And it’s like, yeah, I sure i am intimidated by my doing everything lawfully and you being the a-hole here.

00:38:01.80
Stephen Schneider
yeah I am trying to get off.

00:38:03.16
Alan Baltis
Exactly.

00:38:03.43
Stephen Schneider
This is where I need to get off. You’re being an, and but, but that’s the thing, ah you know, as our country has shown, more people seem to want people who are assholes and they want to be allowed to be an asshole.

00:38:15.62
Alan Baltis
Yeah, that I think that’s a big part of it.

00:38:15.93
Stephen Schneider
it

00:38:17.83
Alan Baltis
They get permission by the more that becomes acceptable behavior to be the asshole they always wanted to be.

00:38:22.46
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:38:23.37
Alan Baltis
I don’t know. I Colleen and I are both pretty careful drivers. It’s been a long time since we had an accident and it should be that way. You know what mean? That everybody, because we do our wonderful road trips, There’s never a time we we have actually kind of at one point said, let’s at least not do that. Let’s not comment on these things because all it does is kind of get a sour attitude and that kind of stuff.

00:38:43.47
Alan Baltis
And yet you can’t be five minutes on the road without being, who’s this guy weaving? Who’s this guy tailgating? Whatever else it might be. And and it’s there’s they’re all over.

00:38:51.09
Stephen Schneider
right

00:38:53.29
Alan Baltis
It’s not like one or two and the cops don’t seem to catch.

00:38:56.54
Stephen Schneider
No.

00:38:57.09
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? They just go.

00:38:57.94
Stephen Schneider
ah Well, worse is when these people are doing it and there’s a cop nearby and the cop just, yeah, whatever, ah you know,

00:39:06.85
Alan Baltis
Have you ever had this, just totally anecdotal, you know when somebody passes you, like maybe going 50 miles an hour over the speed limit, it really feels like they’re zooming. We’ve had one time people pass us like as if they were trying to do the 24-hour coast-to-coast thing.

00:39:23.62
Alan Baltis
They must have been going 100 miles an hour, and I’m doing 65. But it really, it’s just, there there’s the movement of air, the sound of it, the, where did that guy come from?

00:39:32.100
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:39:33.56
Alan Baltis
Fear of it, you know, like, and and then they really had, I think, The reason I think it really was going on is because they seemed to have a car in front of them that was doing the clear of the lane, make sure that they could always have a way to go instead of having to weave.

00:39:48.04
Alan Baltis
And it just, it sure seemed like there was something going on. They didn’t have like flashing lights on as if, Hey, we’re going to go catch a bad guy. It, if I remember right, it was even one of those like fast, but anonymous cars.

00:40:00.14
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? Like you could tell a Lamborghini on the road and that kind of stuff, but it was somehow really jacked up, but didn’t, it kind of looked like a Volvo or something where it was really anonymous boxy safe, but boom.

00:40:12.11
Alan Baltis
So anyway, I ah just to end on that fun note of like, at least,

00:40:12.50
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:40:17.59
Alan Baltis
day to day you don’t get that where it’s like where did that guy come from i could have just thought the lane was empty and started to move over and he was second you know the interval

00:40:21.98
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:40:24.30
Stephen Schneider
i I had that I had that when I went down to ah Columbus to see Colin Hayes, I was in the right hand lane and there was a ah ah ramp coming on and I’m going and there’s nobody beside me coming on, you know, and there’s a guy in front of me and I’m just driving.

00:40:33.06
Alan Baltis
okay

00:40:43.36
Stephen Schneider
Suddenly some idiot. And I know they were, ah whatever word you want to use thugs, punks, uh, whatever. And they’re just like, we’ll do whatever the hell we want and screw everybody else. Suddenly they’re trying to push in front of me and they’re inches from the the barrier.

00:41:01.89
Stephen Schneider
And it scared me. I’m like, Oh shit. And i hit my brakes and laid on my horn and they kept coming and I had to swerve and I had no idea what was next to me. yeah.

00:41:10.35
Alan Baltis
Right. You’re just trying to out of the way because you know it’s going to be bad if you’re here.

00:41:13.52
Stephen Schneider
yeah So now I’m in the left-hand lane I’m like, what the hell just happened? So I start to speed up and they pull right in front of me and then hit slam on their brakes. And then they pull in the left-hand lane, and slow down, flip me off and then speed away.

00:41:28.32
Alan Baltis
We regularly have, i shouldn’t say regularly.

00:41:28.65
Stephen Schneider
I’m like,

00:41:31.01
Alan Baltis
Occasionally we have that where someone’s really been a jerk, but then you somehow you come up to them at this stop sign, stop light, because they didn’t gain anything from all of that.

00:41:39.23
Stephen Schneider
yeah, but they don’t realize that and care.

00:41:39.97
Alan Baltis
And you right you kind of have to look over and see, what does a jerk like that look like?

00:41:46.49
Stephen Schneider
Now, warning on that, Casey told me once that something like that happened and the the guys pulled up a gun and pointed it at him.

00:41:46.73
Alan Baltis
You’re just kind of curious. You know what I mean? Yeah.

00:41:52.45
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:41:57.02
Stephen Schneider
They’re like, come on, what do you want to do about it?

00:41:58.92
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:41:58.92
Stephen Schneider
And he’s like, what the hell? You know?

00:42:01.35
Alan Baltis
so Like I said, I’ve had the the signal of a hand. I’ve never had a gun pulled out.

00:42:05.65
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. He had an actual gun pointed at him and it was the other person’s total fault.

00:42:07.85
Alan Baltis
you

00:42:10.10
Stephen Schneider
But, you know, they’re like, what’s anybody go do about it?

00:42:11.22
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:42:12.61
Stephen Schneider
Cause I’ll just shoot you.

00:42:13.66
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:42:13.80
Stephen Schneider
You know, that’s where we live.

00:42:17.10
Alan Baltis
Everybody is trained by Grand Theft Auto, I think.

00:42:21.13
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. You know, we can blame video games, right?

00:42:24.62
Alan Baltis
Exactly. So what else we’re going to talk about? Let’s see. We’re going to go see some Happy Christmas lights. There’s going to be a big display in Victory Park in North Ridgeville. We’re looking many places more than in the past are doing it.

00:42:36.85
Alan Baltis
And it’s like we like where you can walk through it instead of drive through it. So we go to Neela Park and we go to that kind of thing. So a new discovery. We’ll try that this year.

00:42:43.89
Stephen Schneider
and that and And I agree. It’s interesting because when the kids were little, there were several places and we’d go to, and then it seemed that they kind of all disappeared. And now it seems like some of them are coming back new ones and and stuff. So I don’t know if it’s some cycle phase thing or whatever.

00:42:59.14
Alan Baltis
Yeah, I haven’t done this yet, but I really want to. At one point at a maker fair, they had a guy that had done the Christmas lights computerized. You know, you buy one of those big 100 light, maybe a thousand light mesh, and they program it with like ah a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino that you can make it do cool patterns and and light.

00:43:15.74
Stephen Schneider
Right. All right.

00:43:19.14
Alan Baltis
And of course, the light, the things have to be not just bright and dim and on but all kinds of colors and well we happen to have a fence right next to us that would be a great display either against our house where you could kind of see it from the street or against the parking lot where we put on a show for everybody that’s going to to the merry arts and stuff like that and i don’t know why i haven’t done it because just

00:43:41.51
Stephen Schneider
We’ve talked about that in the past.

00:43:42.82
Alan Baltis
you know

00:43:44.03
Stephen Schneider
I think clear back in our first year, we were we were talking about we should do it and have a competition to see what we can each come up with.

00:43:50.35
Alan Baltis
Exactly. I’ve just kind of sat on it. And and i ah really want to, because I think that it’s it’s one of those, like when neighborhoods do it, not that there’s this big display over at Victory Park, but there are certain streets in Fairview Park, if I remember correctly, where three streets in a row, everybody does their lights up, kind of the Griswold thing.

00:44:09.21
Alan Baltis
and And we just we go there and we drive back and forth and sometimes do it twice because it’s just so cool to see that. And I kind of want to do that for our neighborhood. I don’t think that Lakewood is ever going to do it on Lakeland Avenue.

00:44:21.39
Alan Baltis
And yet for us to be one of those, i don’t want to be the guy that creates the traffic hazard. i don’t want to be able to do a beautiful thing and then someone vandalized it maybe some of those thoughts are what’s keeping me from doing it but just as a programming exercise and getting to know like a raspberry pot better i really would love to try that you know what i mean make sure that the box is all weather shielded and we got an outside outlet that we can attach to do now with the garage i just that’ll be one of my but like here

00:44:32.04
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:44:36.36
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:44:47.95
Alan Baltis
can’t do it this year too a little time for next year as a hobbyist project i’ll i’ll report in and i’ll say well here’s what i did here’s what it cost that kind of stuff because i think it would be really cool and it doesn’t even have to be spectacular it just has to be we got like a 50 foot fence that’d be enough to do like an aurora borealis a you know what i mean all the cool shifty things get some stars blipping and stuff like that there’s got to be

00:44:53.93
Stephen Schneider
That’d be great.

00:45:07.30
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:45:13.91
Alan Baltis
a dozen different effects I could do and have them cycle and people would come and look at it for a couple minutes and they’d see it start to repeat and they’d say, okay, here we go. kid People would bring their kids to see something cool like that and maybe a little bit of give back to the neighborhood.

00:45:24.84
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:45:26.62
Alan Baltis
You know what I mean? That guy’s a geek or maybe he just bought all that. But I kind of want to do it that I do it that I’ll have things nobody else has because I did it because I did

00:45:34.38
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:45:34.95
Alan Baltis
That’s a Fibonacci sequence. You know what I mean?

00:45:36.40
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:45:36.97
Alan Baltis
I’m going to…

00:45:36.93
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I was thinking of doing that and putting, having a camera attached. So if it’s like people walking by, it would catch their image and it would like throw them through the lights or, you know, you put your face up to it and it shows the face coming out of the lights.

00:45:52.02
Alan Baltis
What an interesting idea that is, because you really could do recognizable enough with, you know, 10,000 lights.

00:45:56.79
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:45:58.11
Alan Baltis
You could do something. that’s a great. So if I, I will, of course, attribute it you know, here’s the face.

00:46:02.31
Stephen Schneider
So the,

00:46:03.60
Alan Baltis
Thanks, Steven. You know, okay.

00:46:04.99
Stephen Schneider
The other thing is now with some of the like connect when they had the connect for the Xbox, you could get that and hook it up to like your windows.

00:46:09.90
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:46:12.95
Stephen Schneider
I don’t know about pies, but, but program it so you could have it detect. Oh, that’s a person and they’re waving and then have it wave back or have a certain sequence when somebody waves, as opposed to, you know, a thumbs up or.

00:46:25.21
Alan Baltis
It’s a trigger, exactly.

00:46:26.57
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:46:27.42
Alan Baltis
yeah Exactly.

00:46:27.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:46:28.36
Alan Baltis
Thank you. Or yeah just that way back. and that All those are great ideas. I know you’ve done stuff with how you monitor your your South 40, your backyard, that it you know it’s like the lights can go on just because it detects movement and it’d be variations on that.

00:46:36.76
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:46:42.14
Alan Baltis
It doesn’t have to be running all the time, but the minute that it sees anybody, a car driving through, and it’s kind of funny, turning it on abruptly with all that light, it really would startle people.

00:46:52.27
Alan Baltis
It’s like, oh my God, is there a plane landing?

00:46:53.71
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. you

00:46:54.15
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Exactly. So I had to think of, and i don’t know, it’s dark 14 hours a day now, right? i yeah

00:47:02.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:47:02.93
Alan Baltis
um our Our power bill might go up, but actually if it’s LED lights, we run our Christmas tree and our our outside lights for two months. And I don’t see much of a of ah of ah ah spike in our power consumption.

00:47:15.98
Stephen Schneider
Right

00:47:16.55
Alan Baltis
The lights are really power sipping good nowadays. You know what I mean? So anyway.

00:47:20.61
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I remember my father, that was one of his things with all his wood projects.

00:47:25.95
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:47:26.10
Stephen Schneider
He’d put them out front and he got floodlights and he’d run the floodlights until like two in the morning.

00:47:29.12
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:47:32.39
Stephen Schneider
And you know, the, the electric bill would always spike. Cause it’s like, why two in the morning?

00:47:36.38
Alan Baltis
but

00:47:37.43
Stephen Schneider
There is nobody driving through here. Do it till like 10. no. no no I want to make sure everybody can say, Oh my God. you know And of course, it grew from a handful of wood things to, now I’ve got 35 and I need a floodlight for every single one. And well, you know what? If I do colored floodlights, I can cycle them and it changes.

00:47:56.11
Stephen Schneider
So now I’ve got three floodlights for every one. And it’s like, oh, stop. You need to stop, mad scientist.

00:48:02.17
Alan Baltis
Right. and if can i There are natural segues into how we speak. Another thing that we’re doing is Friday at the Great Lakes Science Center in their dome theater, they’re having a thing called Astronomica.

00:48:12.84
Alan Baltis
And it’s, there have been in the past one called Mesmerica and maybe like Hypnotica, if I remember right. It’s a wonderful big lights display put to music and they really make use of the entire dome.

00:48:23.90
Alan Baltis
So you kind of like, you know you lean back in these astro astronomy chairs and then it just is filling your field of vision. And it’s really cool, like Pink Floyd, ah you know, like original music as well as attributed stuff.

00:48:38.15
Alan Baltis
Honestly, I’ve been doing this for 50 years. A long time ago at Chicago, they had a place called Triton College that had an observatory. And they would have big, ah like a July 4th and a Christmas version, if I remember right, that were all those songs set to music or to Christmas carols or whatever else might be, which is music.

00:48:53.84
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:48:56.15
Alan Baltis
But it’s really, i love… that kind of experience, that overwhelm where everything in your field of vision, everything in your hearing is you’re like giving yourself over to this thing. Take me on a journey. You know, like just fill me with music.

00:49:13.15
Alan Baltis
i I love those kinds of things. And that’s another way that they seem to do that regularly now where they come to the omnimaxes or the dome theaters and that kind of stuff and i so i think it’s only one night they called it a preview so maybe it’s going to come back for more performances either over the holidays or into the new year or whatever like that but i just i like it so much i didn’t want to miss it you know what i mean it really so do you like that yeah okay

00:49:34.85
Stephen Schneider
yeah Oh yeah. I remember going to those when I was younger. I don’t think, I don’t know if I ever took the kids to one just partly because, you know, it’s all up in Cleveland and i don’t think I paid enough attention to catch when they were um and think about it, but I used to, I remember.

00:49:48.84
Alan Baltis
okay

00:49:52.11
Stephen Schneider
And I haven’t been to an IMAX in a while. The last time I, last time I went to IMAX was when 2015, when the star Wars force awakens came out and

00:50:01.83
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:50:01.83
Stephen Schneider
and they had the IMAX for, maybe it was what last Jedi, ah maybe it was 2017, 18, but it came out and I saw it in the theater, but then they were showing it at IMAX and I’m like, okay, that’s gotta be amazing.

00:50:15.43
Stephen Schneider
Let’s go. So I went to an IMAX showing to watch it.

00:50:16.15
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:50:18.91
Stephen Schneider
Yes, it was. Oh my God, this is amazing.

00:50:23.12
Alan Baltis
Right. When the spaceship comes overhead and it really, like on your head, you know what I mean?

00:50:25.41
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah. Yes.

00:50:28.31
Alan Baltis
Right.

00:50:28.71
Stephen Schneider
What? there was one speaker down front in the center and that was the only sound system for the whole place.

00:50:34.99
Alan Baltis
oh

00:50:35.11
Stephen Schneider
And I’m like, are you kidding me? i like, I get better sound at the but bargain basement theater in Kent.

00:50:41.71
Alan Baltis
like

00:50:41.88
Stephen Schneider
And I’m like that the sound is so important.

00:50:42.54
Alan Baltis
this into the yard like they They have embedded speakers throughout along with you how they do the lighting and stuff like that. and And in fact, I know we did this once.

00:50:52.86
Alan Baltis
They have like a computerized music program at CSU but or youre at Cleveland State. And they had student works that were designed for the Dome Theater, knowing that they had this.

00:51:00.44
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:51:03.21
Alan Baltis
And so it was fantastic with the washes, not only of light, but of sound following it kind of like going to Vegas on in, um, what’s downtown you know Folsom Folsom Street um it it really like for a student project this was really really well done and and and probably 10 different things you know so it wasn’t one big presentation but they had things that were very ah lyrical and and you like if you’re going to have Ravel’s Bolero it has to build to that big crescendo and it did it was really really so I’m always looking for those things because I love the fact that Cleveland

00:51:39.43
Alan Baltis
for for it being you know ah a second, a middle-sized city, it really has great museums, great like a hold with your museum campus and stuff like that.

00:51:46.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:51:48.82
Alan Baltis
And between Natural History and Science Center, and and the the oh they have everything. They seem to get every show that comes through like that. And they have some some, I guess, like I said, independently created local works that are really high quality. And just I just want to see what the kids are doing. So I love it. I love it.

00:52:07.80
Stephen Schneider
but So speaking of shows, did you see besides rush next year, which is huge, that weird out and now he’s continuing the tour bigger and weirder that there was enough response that he’s added 90 new locations to it and he’s doing it again.

00:52:13.51
Alan Baltis
right

00:52:24.24
Alan Baltis
Oh my, eyes I don’t know. So as you know, last time we had to get out of what was going on in Cleveland and actually go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, because weren’t going to miss it, but it collided with our, our crews.

00:52:31.79
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:52:36.41
Alan Baltis
I will check that list. And we’ll, know, if it’s back to Cleveland, if it’s, as you know, I’m going be able

00:52:37.53
Stephen Schneider
Yep.

00:52:40.43
Stephen Schneider
Columbus, I think, is the only Ohio one. He’s doing a lot of shows in places he didn’t do last time.

00:52:43.79
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:52:45.69
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:52:46.08
Alan Baltis
that see That makes sense too, to bring it to more. So Columbus is, I’ve i’ve gone to Columbus for all kinds of things and we’re down.

00:52:51.81
Stephen Schneider
Yep.

00:52:52.34
Alan Baltis
I would see that again. we just actually found out Emo Phillips, who we really love is doing a similar thing.

00:52:54.07
Stephen Schneider
yep

00:52:57.57
Alan Baltis
He’s extended his tour and he’s not coming back to Cleveland, but to Columbus. I’m like, are we really going to drive two hours for an hour show? And yet I really love him. so

00:53:06.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, ah he’s kind of worth it.

00:53:07.11
Alan Baltis
we’ll go to the Golden Zoo and we’ll go to the good bookstore in Germantown. We’ll make a whole thing out of it.

00:53:12.52
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the problem with going to the damn shows in Columbus. Last time I went, I went a little early and I’m like, oh my gosh, look at all these star Wars books that I don’t have.

00:53:24.08
Stephen Schneider
Oh my gosh. So I’m like joking with the guy ringing me up. I’m like, you know, I’m not sure if this is a fair trade. He’s like, what do you mean? I’m like, I am giving you a whole lot of green paper for all these black and white papers. I’m not sure how good of a trade this is on my part. And he’s laughing at me.

00:53:37.81
Stephen Schneider
And I’m like two bags. And I’m like, you know, any normal time you’re walking down the street in a city, you worry if you’re carrying bags, people going mug you. They’re going want it.

00:53:46.48
Alan Baltis
you ah Yeah.

00:53:46.57
Stephen Schneider
It’s like, yeah, I’m carrying books. I don’t think I have to worry about people mugging me for my books and the people that would, I’d share them with them. you know so

00:53:55.66
Alan Baltis
I have, we’ve both had that experience, right? Where it’s like, you, you I don’t know. I was coming back from, an RG probably in Cincinnati, but I stopped at a small town in Indiana. And of course it was, Oh no, someone who my exact taste just died and sold all their stuff to this bookstore.

00:54:13.40
Alan Baltis
And I, I, I escaped like spending 200 bucks on $2 books. It amazing treasure trove.

00:54:18.36
Stephen Schneider
Use books.

00:54:18.76
Alan Baltis
And I’m like,

00:54:19.08
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:54:19.35
Alan Baltis
just it was an amazing treasure droveve and and i’m like Okay, this is going to take a while. And as I like move from section to section, from the humor to the science fiction to the mystery, it’s like, i kind of like you know that if you go back there, it’ll never be the same experience.

00:54:36.53
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:54:37.09
Alan Baltis
Helene and I, come we we use the term tamarack. There’s a really cool artist colony down in West Virginia that the first time we went there, it was just amazing to see all the cool crafty, arty things that they have artisans working on site and stuff like that.

00:54:51.51
Alan Baltis
And we said, well, we’ll come back every year. and We’ll do our Christmas shopping for our family and that kind of stuff. And the second time we went, it was so much less. I think it was exactly the same thing. But it wasn’t the experience of discovery and stuff like that.

00:55:01.34
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:55:03.63
Alan Baltis
So that’s always, if I discover a great bookstore like that, I will be back in like five years because I think if I come back next year, I’m going to get like two, I’m going to get the dregs and and like I’m going to be like, oh, I’m going to be all set even though still found a couple of treasures, you know?

00:55:16.01
Stephen Schneider
right Yeah.

00:55:18.27
Alan Baltis
So, but we, Colleen and I love our road trips and we are, we’ve talked about, you know, the objects of power tour that we’re doing.

00:55:18.26
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:55:26.13
Alan Baltis
Colleen, by the way, just held an Olympic torch.

00:55:29.66
Stephen Schneider
Oh, cool.

00:55:30.05
Alan Baltis
friend of hers in the book club carried the torch for a leg when it was atlanta 96 i think it was right and so she had the torch in her house and colleen got a chance to hold an olympic torch how cool is that what that must have been a yard at least it really was a like a one of those big things you know like

00:55:40.34
Stephen Schneider
Wow.

00:55:43.30
Stephen Schneider
That’s pretty cool. Was it as tall as she is? Yeah, they’re big.

00:55:54.33
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:55:54.86
Alan Baltis
so um So just that, this kind of thing of like, you know, we could just look for used bookstores. We could just kind of tootle around Ohio, take a weekend and go to like four each day for a while.

00:56:03.57
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:56:06.03
Alan Baltis
a Barbara and Jim McIntyre were doing that. They were doing like, everybody gather. And everybody pets the the the a cat. that The bookstores often have a kitty cat roaming around stuff like that. But I found all kinds of treasure because but I’m pretty omnivorous. You know i have all kinds of things.

00:56:23.23
Alan Baltis
And I no longer carry a list. For a long time, I carried a list of all the things I wanted to fill in my collections. And then I kind of filled them all in. So now I just kind of go in and see, well, what do we have?

00:56:33.65
Alan Baltis
But invariably I do find, like, I didn’t know there was a fourth in this series of McGill Feigen, the teleporter, you know, a great, that yeah that kind of thing. You discover things that even though you keep track of it, they sneak things out because there’s no longer a Walden’s and a Dalton’s booksellers that specialize in paperbacks.

00:56:47.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:56:53.49
Alan Baltis
And that’s where I would go and always get my Doc Savages and my Destroyers and all my series that I had going. Well, the Barnes and Noble doesn’t really do it that way. If anything, they’ve s switched from paperbacks to trade paperbacks and hardbacks because I think that per square footage, it makes more money for them or something.

00:57:10.38
Alan Baltis
But that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m always looking for the next Lucas Davenport in in regular size paperback, what they used to call a pocketbook, maybe that kind of thing.

00:57:20.24
Alan Baltis
Yeah.

00:57:20.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yep. That was a, that was a brand too.

00:57:22.70
Alan Baltis
yeah And fact, one other thing is that I… the people have laughed about you know what the dilemma for people who maybe are a little OCD, where you’re like at the gas station, and you’re ready to click over ear and the number of gallons or the number of dollars, and you can’t choose as to which one you’re gonna let it be I hate finding a book that i really want, but it’s in crappy shape.

00:57:47.09
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:57:47.61
Alan Baltis
Even though I really want to read it, of course, Everything else in my collection, i have things that look like they were just bought yesterday that are 50 years old. I’ve taken really good care of my books. Colleen kind of laughs about it.

00:57:58.83
Alan Baltis
And so I’ve ordered a couple of things used over Amazon. and they’ve started to be crappier conditioned.

00:58:04.77
Stephen Schneider
That’s what you said. Yeah.

00:58:05.54
Alan Baltis
Like, I want to go to the used bookstores now to like see it before I buy it. And if I found that one doc’s damage I’m really missing, but it had the spine broken and somebody put a coffee cup on the fucking cover and all that kind of stuff.

00:58:09.65
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:58:18.67
Alan Baltis
And I’d be still like, put it but I’ll never see it again.

00:58:21.63
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:58:21.98
Alan Baltis
It’s right here in my hands.

00:58:23.58
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. That’s a rough choice.

00:58:24.58
Alan Baltis
It is. It’s terrible.

00:58:27.73
Stephen Schneider
Okay. Okay. Before we go, one one more concert coming that I heard about.

00:58:29.21
Alan Baltis
Yes.

00:58:31.68
Alan Baltis
Yes, please.

00:58:32.96
Stephen Schneider
The opener is Matt Nathanson, who i don’t know if you’ve ever heard him. I’ve seen him as an opener a couple times. So it’s a name I know and have liked, but the headliners is a dual concert train and bare naked ladies.

00:58:44.47
Alan Baltis
Okay. Bare Naked Ladies. I did see that. I was like, i that combo?

00:58:48.06
Stephen Schneider
Oh my God.

00:58:50.55
Alan Baltis
i

00:58:50.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:58:50.97
Alan Baltis
i That’s a very interesting, because Bare Naked Ladies has, like, I don’t know. I’ve seen them many times and really love them. I don’t know that I can say that about Train. Would I go see the both of them because I wouldn’t recommend Bare Naked Ladies so much?

00:59:02.36
Stephen Schneider
I think train I’ve had train is one of my, the first time I saw a train was one of my top concerts ever.

00:59:04.38
Alan Baltis
Do you like that? Okay.

00:59:11.04
Alan Baltis
That’s a good recommendation.

00:59:11.29
Stephen Schneider
Uh, and the last time I saw them, they were fantastic the last time.

00:59:12.55
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:59:15.43
Stephen Schneider
So they started as a Led Zeppelin cover band.

00:59:18.50
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:59:18.56
Stephen Schneider
back in the day and in the last decade or so they released led zeppelin to the whole album as a cover um and when we were on we saw him last in concert me and colin a couple years ago uh pat the lead singer guy walked back and sat down on the drums and they started playing um uh zeppelin dun dun dun

00:59:26.22
Alan Baltis
Interesting. Okay.

00:59:43.13
Alan Baltis
Yeah, immigrant following. Exactly.

00:59:44.35
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:59:45.15
Alan Baltis
That’s great.

00:59:45.04
Stephen Schneider
They started playing and he’s on drums and Pat’s son came out and sang the song and this kid was nailing it.

00:59:45.75
Alan Baltis
Okay.

00:59:52.66
Stephen Schneider
And he’s like 12.

00:59:54.20
Alan Baltis
that’s great oh my god

00:59:54.60
Stephen Schneider
So that it’s little things like that, that I love about seeing them. It’s always something new. So I’m like, Oh my God, so many good concerts again next year.

01:00:02.71
Alan Baltis
um because that’s got to be like at blossom in the summer though that’s like seven months out right it says okay of okay okay

01:00:09.06
Stephen Schneider
I’m assuming I haven’t looked. um So, but yeah, of course, you know, I also, I also keep an eye on where they’re showing like in Harrisburg or Baltimore, because I could go out there and me and Colin could go rather than him always coming back here.

01:00:22.91
Alan Baltis
ghost that’s great ah right

01:00:25.19
Stephen Schneider
So, you know, like I’m looking around a little more on some of these, but I’m like, oh my gosh, I hadn’t heard of anything like, like super big next year. And of course my buddy, Kevin, he’s going, Hey, we need to find a concert and go to Red Rocks this year. I’m like,

01:00:39.12
Stephen Schneider
Oh, really? We do?

01:00:41.65
Alan Baltis
it is supposed to be an amazing play you know there’s i i by name that might be the place that i’ve seen most live albums come out like for while it was you know live at the like um

01:00:42.94
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:00:49.68
Stephen Schneider
Lots of good.

01:00:53.08
Alan Baltis
Let’s see, what’s the, a couple particular theaters, like out in San Francisco or something like that. But Red Rocks, ah for an outdoor venue, it’s the one that they always, Dave Matthews and, um oh, like we can start naming them There’s lots of Live at Red Rocks.

01:01:05.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:01:06.82
Alan Baltis
Okay, that’s cool.

01:01:07.39
Stephen Schneider
U2, the U2 live at Red Rocks.

01:01:09.32
Alan Baltis
Maybe Bowie.

01:01:09.68
Stephen Schneider
And that was early in their career.

01:01:11.07
Alan Baltis
Yeah, yeah. Okay.

01:01:12.13
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. um All right. So lots of stuff coming up.

01:01:15.06
Alan Baltis
All right.

01:01:15.59
Stephen Schneider
Should probably go work to earn the money to go see these concerts.

01:01:18.81
Alan Baltis
i You know, we i mentioned we saw Paul McCartney and it’s like I think the most we ever paid, but but he’s a Beatle. You have to see a Beatle before they’re not around anymore to do it.

01:01:25.71
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:01:27.61
Alan Baltis
And it was absolutely worth the money, but it really is.

01:01:27.60
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:01:30.53
Alan Baltis
i I’m just, like I guess I’m frugal going on cheap and I really try to get my money’s worth. And yet there’s some things that out of scarcity, out of of magnificence, you kind kind of pony up and see it.

01:01:43.25
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:01:43.41
Alan Baltis
You know I mean? I really would see Weird Al again.

01:01:44.50
Stephen Schneider
Yep.

01:01:45.81
Alan Baltis
Colleen, at that we’ve talked, that might be one of our top three concerts for this year. That Weird Al show was fantastic.

01:01:51.74
Stephen Schneider
It was, it was really good.

01:01:52.48
Alan Baltis
And I’d love to see it again. So that’s interesting. Okay. Columbus, here we

01:01:55.92
Stephen Schneider
And I’ve seen Barenaked Ladies and Train several times.

01:01:59.61
Alan Baltis
Very good.

01:01:59.80
Stephen Schneider
I’ve seen Rush.

01:02:00.03
Alan Baltis
All right.

01:02:00.51
Stephen Schneider
So, I mean, none of these are like new bands. know, we’re not seeing the new bands at all. That’s out there. you Well, you see some of the prog rock stuff, you know,

01:02:07.50
Alan Baltis
Right. And in fact, at my Prague Rock cruise, I think I mentioned, you know, Goblin is going to be back. We’ll do the really good horror movie, Prague.

01:02:14.100
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I’ve seen some movies with their soundtracks.

01:02:15.73
Alan Baltis
Yeah. Actually, Suspiria and stuff. And Eddie Jobson is going to be there. who like He’s kind of a hermit. He does not tour or even like a play live at all, but he’s going to be on. And so if I can hear good old UK music or things off of his ink, and I’m just, um and when there’s people on the boat that could like, I’m not sure who his band is, but if it’s strong,

01:02:37.60
Alan Baltis
other people will like join them on stage for a while. So like, why not?

01:02:39.100
Stephen Schneider
Oh, that’s awesome.

01:02:40.32
Alan Baltis
Yeah. know mean? It, but there’s all, and Merillion, big, big train, a number of great bands are going to be on there. And I’m just looking forward to not only the big stage things, but also the, but is that Rick Wakeman sitting at like the lobby piano?

01:02:54.79
Alan Baltis
What the, I’m wetting myself. He’s, this so human.

01:02:58.63
Stephen Schneider
I touched Rick Wakeman! I touched Rick Wakeman!

01:03:00.49
Alan Baltis
I touched on exactly that. You know, Rachel Flowers singing with Michael Sadler from Saga. It’s like, my God, this is, it’s not only a spectacle, it’s beautiful. You know what mean? They really are in the era of you don’t need auto-tune. You have talent.

01:03:14.53
Alan Baltis
You sound great just sitting there acoustic.

01:03:17.61
Stephen Schneider
And that type of environment, that type of people going to this, they’re not going to be these ravening fans screaming and running and clogging things.

01:03:17.82
Alan Baltis
Yeah. think so.

01:03:25.72
Stephen Schneider
It’s that it’s more casual. They would be more open and willing, I’m assuming, to, hey, hey you have a drink. It’s great. Let’s talk. you know ah And that’s awesome.

01:03:34.37
Alan Baltis
Right, exactly. That’s one of those things, whenever that starts to happen, you can see everybody on their phone, like, summoning, oh my God, you got to get here. They’re in the bliss lounge, and you can’t believe who’s doing this. So, you know what I mean? I love that. I love that.

01:03:46.54
Alan Baltis
All right.

01:03:46.87
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. All right, man. Yep.

01:03:48.50
Alan Baltis
As always, a pleasure, Stephen. We’ll see you a week.

01:03:51.01
Stephen Schneider
Take care.

01:03:51.19
Alan Baltis
Okay.

building projects, business podcast, content creation tips, creative journey, creative podcast, creative process, developer mindset, entrepreneurship podcast, indie author podcast, indie creator advice, making ideas happen, motivation for creators, problem solving skills, productivity podcast, self publishing tips, storytelling podcast, tech and creativity, writing podcast

Like this:

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

When's the Fun Kick In? Short-Sleeve Unisex T-Shirt

Episode 238

Share this:

Like this:

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

When's the Fun Kick In? Short-Sleeve Unisex T-Shirt