Decluttering Cables - DTNS Weekend

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1:02Their programs, strength and organizations and individuals by deepening relationships and fostering new ones. Participants leave with lifelong friends, new potential business partners, and a powerful, globe-spanning network of fellow change makers. Learn more at hbs.me-slashbreakthrough. That's hbs.me-slash-breakthrough. This episode is sponsored by Hagen. AI is great at saving time, but only if it actually fits into your workflow. That's what makes Hagen so compelling. Instead of spending hours setting up lights, cameras and retakes, you can turn a script, photo or presentation into a polished video view in minutes. No production crew required. Whether you're a creator, consultant, attorney, financial advisor or real estate agent, Hagen helps you create consistent, professional video content without making content creation your full-time job. It's rated the number one AI video platform for small business on G2. Features some of the industry's most realistic AI avatars

2:03is trusted by more than 30 million people and 85% of the Fortune 100 and supports over 175 languages. So you can communicate with audiences around the world. Here's the wild part. Record yourself for just 15 seconds and Hagen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand. So you can post everywhere your audience is as yourself without filming every time. Your first three videos are free at Hagen.com slash pod. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N.com slash P-O-D. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Welcome to DTNS Weekend Edition, the show where we deep dive into technology and tech events shaping the world around you. I'm Roger Chang, your host for today. And today we're wrestling with one of the most important topics you can possibly deal with as a tech person who owns their own home.

3:08Or actually, even if you don't own your own home, cables. You know that closet bag or plastic tub full of them? I actually just have ziplock bags full of them. But you know what I mean. Particularly organized and labeled. Exactly. You know what? You should do that. I don't even talk to you about it. But joining me now in that voice off camera is none other than fellow old guy and cable collector, Patrick Norton. I'm delighted that I have upgraded from cable hoarder to cable collector or at least keeper of highly functional cables. It's a weird thing. But before we get too far into it, I want to give a shout out for everyone who's been supporting the show, supporting DTNS. Because without your support, shows like this wouldn't be possible. Supporters like David Smith, Horace, Sean Whittier, and Sabrina Hackney. You're actually a part-time therapist, at least for me. Why do we hoard cables? I have this little cable that's just, you know,

4:09a 3.5 inch millimeter to a 3.5 inch millimeter, just sitting around for no reason. Well, that's first of all, it's not 3.5 inches, 3.5 millimeter. Oh, yes, you're right. Or 1 1 1 1 inch. And because invariably, right, the way, if you're a certain type of geek, and I think of like, you know, my old boss, your old boss, you know, who was incredible influence, it's Jim Lauterbach, who, like at one point, we had some weird thing in the lab, and I couldn't find a cable for it. And Jim's like, oh, I got one. And opens up this desk drawer in his office, reaches in with both hands, you know, like, finger spread, like big salad tongs, and pulls up this giant snake ball of like, like literally like 18 inches across, like two feet long, and drops this balless of cables onto the desk. And we start sorting through it invariably, we found whatever bizarre cable we needed.

5:11And I got to, you know, went back to the lab finishing review, but, you know, there's this sort of be prepared mindset, you know, it's thrifty, you know, you've never, anybody who's ever not been able to finish something or not get a job done or not, you know, anybody who's been through Christmas morning and not had a USB cable with the right end on it to charge a new toy, it's like, I will never, you know, I will never be cableless again, right? And it's, I laugh because one, there used to be, on some levels, it feels like there used to be a lot fewer cables, but we'll get into why that's not true later on in the podcast. But, but essentially, you know, it's like literally because you might need it someday, because you, you know, you have a replacement, like I literally in my backpack, I have, you know, basically what amounts to a laptop charger, a laptop charger with multiple USB ports, and I have it all times in minimum of two USB lightning cables, because, you know,

6:14if you, if you use cables enough, especially USB cables, they start to break down over time no matter how good they are. And there's nothing worse than, you know, running out of power when you need to do something on your phone and your 800 miles from home, you know, and nobody's seen a pay phone in a decade, right? Or again, Christmas morning, like somebody's missing a cable, but you can charge their whatever it is because you've got that cable stored away in the garage. So let me ask you this, because I have only come across this in my own life, and granted it isn't a very lengthy one at this point, hopefully longer, that have you come across like, man, I am really glad I kept on, I held this cable because it is proving to be invaluable at this point in time in my life. There was a point a few years ago where I, you know, there's a point about, gosh, probably for left California when I was like, okay, I am never going to use a scuzzy cable again.

7:16And if I do for some reason find a hard drive with scuzzy connections on it, I will get scuzzy cables and terminators and I will figure out where to buy them, whether it's on Craigslist or eBay or Facebook, Mark is place, but whatever it was, I was just like, I was, there was a bunch of cables like, I'm, you know, I didn't have any fire wire drives left, I didn't have any scuzzy drives left, I didn't have any scuzzy devices left. You know, and there's some cables that are, are just such rarefied air, you know, weird adapters from like early video capture cards that were using like RCA jacks going into something that looks like a DB9 jack or some proprietary connectors. At some point, like, I just got pretty ruthless and started getting rid of all that. I kept the USB cables, I kept the video cables of various flavors. You know, I feel like unless you're really convinced you're gonna need that weird cable because, you know, I have a friend and his whole thing, his hobby is retro PC gaming and he can't run, you know,

8:20a DOS game on a emulator, it's just a natham of him. His whole goal is like, you know, I have a legitimate, like 1983 PC running a 1983 game. And in his case, he might actually need some bizarre cable for some bizarre device. So, you know, in his case, you know, because he is a collector of a very specific type, it could be incredibly valuable to have these bizarre agent cables. And... Let me ask you and you're probably one of the worst people to ask, because I too am this way, is that we are loathe, loathe to toss anything away unless it become useful in the next month or so and we're kicking ourselves because we didn't keep it up. Absolutely. And, you know, the third instance is, I used to keep really long Firewire 800 cables because I bought two, because... This is the other thing about me. I cannot pass a pase out. If there's like, by one, get one free,

9:20I'll be that guy that makes that marker's dream come true because I will go in on that. So, I bought two like six foot 800 pin, Firewire 800 pin to a Firewire 800. And he came in useful exactly one time back at Revision 3, one of the odd boxes that we used on the chest video. The cable was jacked up and it's like, well, I have an extra one and so they were able to use it. But more often than not, a lot of it just sits in my closet. And as we all know, when you have a family, especially as your kids get older. Space is a premium. It's so, I've been wondering, what is okay to toss and what is one of those things where, you know what, this is still useful, I should keep it. I mean, you know, a really good friend of mine. One of his friends is his goal. He says he's an eight hour man now

10:21and his life goal is to be a two hour man. And that is literally like, if he decides or he has to move for work or if he decides to move to a new place, he currently takes him to eight hours to pack up everything he needs to move. And his goal is to be able to pack up everything in two hours. This is not an individual that has, you know, a couple of 15 gallon buckets of cables sitting in a closet somewhere. This is like Zen the focused, you know, I don't even want to call it minimalist because I think that's insulting, I'm going to call it, the guy has the essentials, you know. Pretty sure he's got two USB lightning cables because he's a belt and suspender kind of guy. But in terms of everything else, he just doesn't keep a bunch of crap around, you know? And it's a very different approach from the average geek or mini geeks I've seen where they have boxes full of cables. And, you know, I was recently witnessing to a crate full of cables that a friend of mine was clearing out

11:23because he was losing the storage space they were in. And it was, you know, I'm pretty sure if we dug deep enough in there, we would have found some scuzzy cables. You know, but at some point like, you know, there's a couple things I've started doing a lot in the last few years, right? USB cables, they're kind of disposable commodities. Not necessarily the one that's on this headset or the one that is plugging my, you know, desktop attached storage into the back of my PC because, you know, if cables are stationary, they often hold up pretty well for a really, really long period of time. But anything where it's like headphone cables, the USB cables that you use to charge your phone, they get thrashed, you know? And they, yeah, they disintegrate over time. I'm on my third micro USB cable for this keyboard. I am on my second USB cable for my DAC. This one is still the original because I don't use this headset

12:24more than a couple hours a week. I am on, I've replaced three cables in the cars in the last two months, three USB charging cables, lightning charging cables because certain members of my family who shall remain nameless keep, you know, not putting them away and letting them drop on the floor and then stomping on them and snapping the ends off. Not that I'm bitter. But it's also, it's like at some point a couple of years ago, I started religiously cutting the ends off of dead cables because I found myself thinking like, well, maybe it's fluff in the phone, Jack, maybe the cable's okay or the cable works on this phone but it doesn't work on any other device. And I was like, this is stupid and it's problematic and I'm gonna be so pissed, you know, if you grab it. Well, or if it's the only one in my bag, the semi-functional cable is the only one in my bag when there's a natural disaster and emergency in event, you know, the car explodes while I'm, you know,

13:24trying to get back from a show and the, you know, I mean, like it's just, I mean, is this an issue of just going through and seeing what your daily divide, for example, you know, I have a smartphone, as long as I have a USB, who's a USB cable, USB cable. That can handle the wattage. Handle the wattage into the brick. Just collect those like anything else, for example, I have the old USB A to USB B, you know, for printers and stuff. Well, all my printers are networked. I connect them with an Ethernet jack. I don't actually connect them directly to USB to my... Well, sure. I mean, if they're Ethernet, they're on the network, they're shared, it's simpler for everybody. I mean, I was laughing because, you know, one of the notes you had in here was like, which USB cables do you keep? And I was... Which one? Howling, right? So my sort of like platonic ideal, like if I'm in Plato's cave and seeing the perfect image of Patrick's relationship, USB cables,

14:25it's because I've hit the lottery and I've replaced every device in my house that doesn't have a USB C cable with a device that uses a USB C cable, right? My will, you know, when I am insanely wealthy, I'm going to have nothing with USB C cables in my house. Unfortunately, right now, I need lightning to USB. USB C, USB C that can handle wattage for some fairly powerful laptops. Type A, type B for my desk attached storage. USB Mini, USB Micro for most of our portable chargers and a couple of tools and gadgets that just won't die. So I keep using the micro USB or the USB micro and then USB micro B for two or three portable hard drives I have, right? So, and that's not even getting into the sort of like, type A, USB 3, type C, USB 3. Let me ask you, let me be the actuary in the counting who says, what would it make more sense to just buy the really thick gauge high powered USB to USB C

15:25and then just get adapters for the ends? Well, is that complicate issues with your cable like tossing out cables? Thank you. So, I mean, at some level, like one, they're kind of expensive. If you're buying them from legitimate sources because you're worried about running 60 watts through some jank under spec'd cable of questionable origins and I will say my personal cable standards have risen a little bit. I still buy a lot of USB cables off of Amazon. But like looking at cablematters.com, dealing with people who are doing high identifications at a AV firm, I've decided that when I can, I will, and I've always been really good about investing in ACMI cables. And I've occasionally gotten a little cheap on the USB cables. But I try to do, I try to buy cables that are going to last. I don't need a 60, 100 watt capable USB charging cable

16:30for my iPhone. In fact, having something like that could be problematic because of it is, I need something where it's not going to accidentally, the cable is so thick, it's going to whip the phone off the tabletop, right? And it's like, is there a point where just being cheap with cables, for example, you were saying like you don't buy the super bargain basement cables where that's like you buy really cheap in your cable. I used to do this, like I did for two years, bought super cheap, like get like half a dozen for like five bucks. And they would just break because they were literally like dental floss, you know, engaged. At some point, I mean, it's at some point years ago, I was like, you know, I had tried a bargain brand that somebody had recommended on Amazon. And two of the lightning connectors and two of the cables died within like four months. And so, you know, I've done a lot of like,

17:32you know, Amazon house brand, that's a lot of bellkin, I've done a lot of, oh goodness. I've done a lot of green. Well, you green's pretty solid, but I'm thinking of a source I'm from the same place. Anchor, I've done a bunch of anchor cables. It would really good luck with the anchor cables. I want to say that Apple cables are better, but they're just more expensive in my limited experience. Although I will say the Apple, you know, USB, C to headphone and the Apple, I've are lightning connector to headphone jack or two of the biggest bargains in audio and in the history of audio. Those are ridiculously high performing devices that cost nothing. But like, in a lot of cases, you know, there's a difference between if somebody at work is, you know, has a, you know, $300,000, you know, super sophisticated high-end team's room. They're not going to cut any corners by saving a couple bucks on a USB cable

18:32because USB is problematic enough in high performance environments. So, you know, and we have, well, you have very simple standards. We have a select group of places we trust to provide cables and that's who we buy them from. You know, it's the bigger problem for me is like, you know, if I'm looking at USB cables on Amazon and it's $6 for three USB cables, you know, the brand that has eight reviews, I'm not going to touch. The brand that has like 4.7 stars across 37,000 reviews, that's probably going to be okay. And then I can, you know, and it's not so much money that I'm going to be emotionally traumatized if they don't work out. Okay, well, let me shift gears from traumatic cables to possibly the most ubiquitous cable. And that's power cords, right? The AC power cord you get with PCs, a lot of appliances come with them. But you also have different sized ones, for example, my PS5 and my Blu-ray player,

19:33both use the one they call it like a lazy eight, not a lazy eight, but a figure eight, like, you know, a C7 connector. Yeah, the shotgun, figure eight shotgun cables, but also like the standard thick ones that... 15p to IECC13, aka, you know, yeah, like the NEMA 515p, which is like 12 spare ones just sitting in a plastic tub. And I don't know if I'll ever really need them, but I feel very comfortable knowing that they're there and I never have to buy one again. Well, it's funny, right? Because it's one of those things where, you know, I love microcenter. I have nothing but love for microcenter, you know, but occasionally I'll see the price for something like a, you know, a PC power supply cable, you know, 515p to IECC13 or whatever it is. And I'll look at the price and I'll be like, that's like a measurable percentage and what the power supply cost. And they do that because it's not something they sell very often. I need to make their margin and you need to basically deal

20:35with it sitting on the shelf, not being purchased for a couple of years, right? Like I get it and I am willing to support my local brick and mortar store, but it's a lot easier, you know, to have a half dozen cables, you know, in the cable box, you know. I did a huge purge of them a while back because when, you know, one of the places I worked at shut down, they were like, just take all these cables because otherwise they're going in the garbage. And, you know, I got rid of all the lighter gauge ones. I got the ones that looked like, you know, they had been heavily used. And it's funny, right? Because when you start digging into those, they go from 18 gauge to 14 gauge, like 18, 14 gauge, you know, so I got rid of like all of the lighter gauge ones, except for a couple of like six foot long 18 gauge cables that I use when I'm trying to do weird things with monitors and I don't want to have to fight bending the cable. You know, but it's crazy when you look at the amount of water to those can handle even with the smaller, you know,

21:35wire inside of them. So I'm not, you know, long story short is, you know, you probably don't need a hundred of them. Like I think I, I think I recycled, you know, et al. e. waste recycling center to make sure the copper didn't end up being lit on it. Make sure somebody in India was inhaling plastic, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, so, so, but it's like, you know, a half dozen, like how often are you going to, you, I mean, because like I kept a lot of the 10 foot ones because most televisions, you know, most, you know, super electronics devices come with a decent four to six foot cable power cable. So I kept some of the more extreme ones for when I need like a 10 foot cable or something. I have all the ones I have are six foot, except I have one that's maybe double the length. And I always keep it because I know at some point, I'm going to have something that's a little too far away from the plug. And I don't want to pull out a power strip or an extension cable to plug it in. But I mean, so you would say, safely say, keep like a dozen or so.

22:39If you have them, just blind. I think for, you know, it's about how much gear you have around your house and how tremendous, you know, how, you know, how, how do you want to be able to, you know, repair all of the cables for some reason? It's, it's very easy to sort of fool yourself in the thinking that you're going to need all of these at some point, because you're going to wire a bunch of things in series. It's going to save the world because only carried like, you know, 300 feet of these cables that you could line together. All right, moving from power to video, because you mentioned video earlier. Oh, no. Video cables are kind of a strange breed, because you have television, you have HD TV, then you also have PC monitors, all at which point in time use different cables, right? So, you know, you can safely, I can safely say that I no longer need our CA video cables or S video cables or am I being incredibly diluted in thinking that I'll find that one magical CRT.

23:40So I have to, I have a couple of like, it's been really funny. Watching cassettes kind of have the, you know, vinyl resurrection moment, not because, you know, I like, you know, again, digital audio files and CDs are 9,000 times easier to use than a cassette, although I, you know, merely holding a cassette and slamming it home and a cassette player brings me a certain amount of joy. You know, but like, I literally, I own basically what amounts to professional cassette deck, like a studio great set deck, I got it a ridiculous sale at one point and I still own a VCR. And the only reason those exist are so that I can transfer when I occasionally run into, you know, a mixed tape I have treasured memories of or actually right here, I have a front of house recording from one of my favorite bands of all time that was a gift from a friend of mine and who is a

24:43taper and collector and it is the only copy of that show I have ever heard of or seen. And, you know, so like I have, I originally bought that, that, you know, that nice professional grade tape deck so I could transfer that tape to digital files. I've used it, you know, loaned it to a friend of mine who is a professional musician and his partner had a bunch of demo tapes as he wanted to transfer so she could send the MP3 files to people she was rehearsing with on a new band. And, you know, so if there's some older stuff in your life and it'll be useful, keep them. Otherwise, like get really vicious about getting rid of them. You know, I have like, I think I have two VGA cables left in my life. And what I actually think of as my garage monitor, which is this industrial grade Dell ultra sharp display that's really good. Episode prep gets messy when research slack threads and script

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27:47to hydrate faster than water alone with three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink plus eight vitamins and nutrients. Whether you're traveling, exercising or podcasting the best business ever, liquid IV makes it easy to stay hydrated wherever life takes you. So shop now at liquid IV dot com liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you. Harvard Business School executive education creates powerful connections for leaders from around the world. Their programs strengthen organizations and individuals by deepening relationships and fostering new ones. Participants leave with lifelong friends, new potential business partners and a powerful globe spanning network of fellow change makers learn more at hbs dot me slash breakthrough. That's hbs dot me slash breakthrough. Probably, I don't think it's older than shameless, but it is in that neighborhood. It is, it is at least 10 plus years old, you know, but it's, it's,

28:48it's, it's, it's got like six inputs on it or something ridiculous like that. It's like the last monitor I've got where there's HCMI, HCMI DVI, VGA and I don't know if I think display port, it was pre kind of display port, but I had that because A in case somebody brings an old piece of technology around and then I can get a display connected without buying some weird adapter off of Amazon or someplace. And two, because it just won't die. So, you know, I can do something silly like a tattoo, you know, I've, like, you know, I mean, it's, it's something I have, the only reason I have the cables because I still have this one monitor with a VGA input on it. I mean, do you keep around like anything that's super esoteric, like maybe, for example, the old style eight pin, like RGB cables were it ended out into eight like our B and C connectors that you have certain monitors

29:51using pretty much no. I mean, although ironically enough, I'm pretty sure there are some BGA connectors on the back of that monitor, but I basically, I have like two VGA cables left one, which is attached to that monitor. I've got like one DVI cable because pretty much anything I almost or have owned with DVI and HCMI. And I've kind of gotten rid of all the old HCMI cables in my house, partially because as, you know, we went from like, you know, 720p HCMI 1.0 to getting to 4K 60 hertz, you know, as my home theater equipment upgraded, I just, you know, got rid of, you know, again, I've got a couple three spare cables that are in my vastly smaller cable drawer, cable box. And most of the rest of them have gotten rid of them, not because they might not be, you know, useful someday, but at some point you're like, you know, how did I end up with 26 HDMI cables? And what about HDMI?

30:53Now the thing tricky thing with HDMI is like when you bought them, if you got like, you know, the first or second generation, they're still useful. But if you have like a 4K or AK TV and you have set top box as a game culture, some that can feed it, you need to have the rated HDMI cable or am I, am I not understanding you can still get by with like, you know, the first or second Gen HDMI, HDMI 1080p cables. If you don't mind running your 4K TV at, you know, 1080p in a max of 60 hertz, by all means, you said HDMI 1.0 cable. But, you know, I mean, it's crazy, right? Like HDMI 2.0, that was 13 years ago, right? And that's, you know, 4K video at 60 frames per second, HDMI 2.1. Is God, let me look it up because it's been a while. 2017, that's the 48 gigabits per second bandwidth, you know, and that's like, you know, resolutions maxing out at 10k frame rates up to 120 frames per

31:58second. But, you know, that's like, that's 2017. So, you know, you're probably, if you're running a 4K, you know, monitor, you're running a 4K television, that's probably the cable you have connecting here right now. I'll be honest, I got, I have HDMI cables from 2008. I have one from 2009, I still use. And it is one of those things I've often wondered. It's like, I got a lot of these. Should I just toss them based on a spec, for example, the nearest spec we're compatible and so, you know, other than the fact that one of them for some reason is 12 feet long, because I got it from a central computer. And that's all they sold at the time. But like other than that, like kind of weird bit, I mean, just a standard, like it gives you my 1.0 cable. You know, if you've got the space, you know, if you have, you know, a 6,000 square foot barn on your property and, you know, you can store the cables without, you

33:00know, raccoons peeing on the box and rooting what's inside of them. I'm bringing that particular. I'm bringing that up because I wouldn't call it a metaphor. I think I would call it an example and a friend of mine who had a bunch of stuff stored out in the barn and literally a nest of raccoons were peeing on it. Turns out raccoon pee is really, really bad for, you know, those fancy, those tiny little pins on the end of, you know, cables. But the, that gross example aside, like, you know, if you've got the space, keep whatever you want. If you don't have the space, you know, if it's time to downsize, if you suddenly realize you've got the giant ballast of cable that's ways 40 pounds and takes up this three foot wide, you know, file case cabinet drawer, you know, on one hand, in certain office environments, I can see where like being the silver back with the giant collection of cables going back to since before you were born, kid, can be useful.

34:01But at some point, I just, like, I just didn't want all the crap around. So it was like, I got rid of all the old HDMI cables. And then also I won't have to worry about any HDMI cable in my collection, not working. If I, you know, if for some reason, let's say a large 22 pound Tom cat somehow manages to get wrapped up in the HDMI cable and bends the HDMI cable miraculously without breaking it off in the television or yanging the television off the stand. Not that I'm getting specific again for a reason. It's nice to have a spare cable, you know, around the house. But I also like, you know, I have a sort of a pair and a spare mentality. Or, you know, I live on the farm and we're going to keep everything because it might be reusable someday. And I've been trying to dial that back as I get older. I mean, that's really hard because even at that point, I'm thinking like, man, this 12 foot US, your HDMI cable might be out of date, but long enough for me to tie someone up with, right?

35:02So it's, and I mean, I, I, what I'm the most creative, like, excuses for holding on to an old cable I've ever heard. I, I, I kid you not. I have, I've had like, you know, I could still tie something with this and then emerge like earthquake happens and I need to carry like someone out of a building or something. But see, I have like paracord and, and climbing rated rope and, you know, a thousand pound ratchet straps and, you know, I mean, how often do you use those during, during, alarmingly regularly? Well, you also have like what, three trucks, three pickups. I mean, I ratchet strap something, you know, a furniture box in the top of the Subaru a few weeks ago. Oh, you know, I, okay, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I left the

36:05ratchet straps all back in there and it's like, they weren't expensive, but there are times where it's super handy. Okay, so let me, let me, let me, let me boot us back into, to, to what we're talking about. Cable wise, your, your, your, your general rule of thumb is USB, USB C, ideally. And I mean, I've got rid of, I've got rid of all the cables I don't use around the house. Uh, that rule of thumb, just whatever you, you write, if you want to get, again, I, my rule of thumb for me at this stage of my life is I do not need obscure cables and connectors, you know, that have not been in common use since the early eighties, you know, to mean, or even the mid eighties, right? Partially, it's a space thing. Partially, it's like, you know, after 20 years of reviewing products, uh, and bouncing around and building and relocating and shutting down, you know, various lab and testing environments. Um, you know, I had a alarming amount of cables like, like I, I, I, I, I feel

37:09the group is a safe space. So I'm using my feeling words. I feel that I probably had 75 pounds of cables. Um, I just never bothered to weigh them, but it was, you know, I could basically pick up one box at a time. It was essentially, you know, 12, you know, four, like a, whatever the, you know, I can't think of how many gallons, six, eight, 12 gallon container, um, full of, of cables. And it's like, I have a fun, you know, private equity is bought all the storage unit systems up. And, you know, even the ones who aren't owned by private equity have learned all the private equity games for maxing out the price. And it's like, I don't need to have, you know, a whole bunch of, you know, stuff I'm never going to use. I don't need to be paying for a whole bunch of stuff I'm never going to use for the privilege of having it, you know, in your face. And arms reach, you know, because I can go to my storage unit that's accessible 24 hours.

38:11And if I need this really weird ass cable at three in the morning on a Thursday, I won't have to wait until, you know, eBay or Amazon can deliver it. I can drive out to my storage unit. It's like, well, storage units have gotten pretty expensive. And so, so maybe I'm just Swedish death cleaning early. This is my thing. I have, you know, I used to keep the oddball cable around for old devices, for example, an old, not a mixer, but an old, no, actually was, you know, the audio interface because it only took firewire 800, but it was also from like 2005. Right. And there's a much better version of things like that now that I've replaced it with. So it's not necessary. And I keep holding on to things because, you know, I'm just that kind of person, but I find that I only really need USB C. I only need your standard AC power cord. Yeah. And I only need HDMI. And that's like 90% of the cables I use in my daily life. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's partially, it's like, you know, you have this

39:15list in the script. That's pretty funny. Not because it's funny. I tell you, call it out. Roger, you ridiculous fool. You list. That's not, no, that's not, that's not how I'm. If I'm going to call you a ridiculous fool, Roger, I'm going to sing that out. But it's no, you were like, you're like a bunch of stuff you put under odds in it. It's like SATA cables, SLI jumpers for, you know, video cards, right? Parallel cables, old 25 pin parallel cables, scuzzy cables, firewire cables. Like, I can't tell you the last time I saw. We cleared out some old Macs at an office I worked at. And that's the last firewire jack I saw. I haven't seen anything that plugs into the other end of a firewire jack from a, from a computer in probably a decade, maybe longer it feels like, you know, parallel cables. I have a couple parallel cables around in case somebody brings me, you know, in a, in a, you know, parallel cable hard drive, you know, USB adapter, you know,

40:20and this, you know, and some spare SATA cables tucked around. Because you never know when you're going to add a hard drive here, and you'd like one more SATA cable in. But like again, for me, it's like getting rid of, for at this stage of my life, getting rid of a lot of the stuff that I was 99% sure I was never going to ever have a use for, you know, again, I probably had in one bucket, 40 plus, you know, PC power cables, you know, 515p to C 13, whatever they are. And it's like, you know, a half dozen, you know, I got a couple of the Mickey Mouse ones. I got a couple of the cutoff ones, like, you know, the standard ones. And that's, I'm good, you know, because it's, well, I mean, no, I mean, this is really good information because I keeping on to a lot of stuff out of just, I mean, you know, he to save that's kind of the security blanket.

41:23But I don't really need them though, right? I all the higher wire cables I have came with the external drive enclosures. Right. But I don't have that many hard drives left because I opened them all to take the magnets because I mean, this really is turning into a therapy session. Because you've got to remember, Rods, you're like, like the other thing I like, I have, you know, audio equipment that I'm, you know, I am a fist. Well, I'm laughing is like, I have, you know, I finally started. There are some amps. I have, there is one amp that I refuse to get rid of that I've had since I was 19 years old. And it's oddly enough, a bit of a collector's item. It's not a tube amp. You know, but like, there's, you know, I kind of like upgraded amps on and off for about 10 or 15 years and managed to like not get rid of most of them. And then I kind of got to, you know, what auto enthusiasts call my endgame, which, you know, turns out to be a, you know, commercial, just like this company called ATI makes amp in California, you know, amps in California.

42:24And in my mind, it's little old ladies that used to solder together all the connectors for like F14 Tomcats. And then like whenever their factory went down, they ended up manufacturing amplifiers. Because like the quality is just so good. And as ridiculous as that sounds, I'm bringing it up because like, you don't have like I have spare parts for two diesel trucks. I've got, you know, probably enough tools to sink a small battleship. You know, like, like I have an excess of hobbies and, uh, and it was time to get rid of a bunch of stuff and the cables for the stuff I'll never see again. That was an easy, that was an easy skim for me. You know, the third set of metric wrenches, the ones that I don't use anymore because they were my dad's boy, you know, like I, I will, I'm looking forward to gifting those to the first of my children that leaves the house for their, you know, for their apartment tools at, right? Yeah. No, I mean, this is all really good. And people get special insight into my psyche.

43:26But I unfortunately come to the end of this show. That's it for this episode of DTS weekend edition. What are you thinking about? Got some insight into a story or actually any of the things that we talked about. What sort of cables fill your dreams or nightmares or your closet? Let us know feedback. And you can learn more about the entire family of DTS podcast and shows at dailytechnethe Show.com. And on YouTube at YouTube, YouTube.com slash daily tech news show. And if you like what you hear, consider supporting us at patreon.com slash DTS. I like to thank Patrick for being with me today. I appreciate his sharing his cable, his cable story because really it's Patrick's story with us. And until next time, you could listen to DTS.

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