Cable Clutter: What Can You Ditch? - DTNS Weekend

[music] 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 uh who owns their own home or 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 ziplockc bags full of them. Uh but you know what I mean. Uh >> meticulously organized and labeled. >> Exact. You know [laughter] what? I should do that. Which reminds me, I've been talking 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 or at least keeper of highly functional cables. Um, >> it's it's 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. Uh supporters like David Smith, Horus, Sean Whittier, and Sabrina Hackne. You're actually a part-time therapist, at least for me. Why do [laughter] we collect? Why do we hoard cables? Like I I have this little cable that's just, you know, a 3 and 12 in millimeter to a 3 and 12 in millimeter just sitting around for no reason. >> Well, that's first of all, it's not 3 and 1/2 in. is 3.5 mm 3.5 mm or 1/8 of an inch and because invariably right the the way >> if you're a certain type of geek and I think of like you know my old boss uh your old boss um uh you know who was an incredible influence it's Jim Ladderback uh 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 like fingers spread like big salad tongs and pulls up this giant snake ball of like like literally like 18 inches across, like 2 feet long, and drops this ball of of cables onto the desk. And we start sorting through and invariably we found whatever bizarre cable we needed. and uh and I got to you know went back to the lab finishing review. you know, there's this sort of be prepared mindset. Uh, 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 is like, I will never, you know, [laughter] 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 um you know it's like literally cuz you might need it someday cuz cuz you you know you have so you have a replacement like I literally in my backpack um I have you know basically what amounts to a laptop charger a laptop charger with multiple USB ports and I have at all times a minimum of two USB to lightning cables. Um because you know if 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 you're 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 cuz I have only come across this in my own life and granted it isn't a very lengthy one at this point hopefully longer uh that uh have you come across like man I am really glad I kept on [clears throat] I held this cable because it is proving to be invaluable at this point in time in my life. [sighs and gasps] There was a point a few years ago um where I you know there's a point about gosh probably before I left California when I was like okay I am never going to use a scuzzy cable again and if I do for some reason find a hard drive with SCSI 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 market place but whatever it was I was just like I was there was a bunch cables like I'm, you know, I didn't have any FireWire drives left. I didn't have any SCSy drives left. I didn't have any SCSI devices left. Um, you know, and there's some cables that are are just such rarified air, you know, weird adapters from like early video capture cards that were using like RCA jacks going into something that looked like a DB9 jack or some proprietary connectors. At some point, like I just I just got pretty ruthless and started getting rid rid of all that. I kept the USB cables. I kept the video cables of various flavors. Um, you know, I I feel like unless you're really convinced you're going to 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, a DOS game on a emulator. It's just anathema to 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, cuz he is a collector of a very specific type. It could be incredibly valuable to have these bizarre >> aged cables at hand. Let me ask you, and you're probably one of the worst people to ask cuz I too am this way, is that we are loathed, loathed to toss anything away, lest it become useful in the next month or so, and we're kicking ourselves because we didn't keep that one. >> Absolutely. >> And and you know, there there are instances I I used to keep really long FireWire 800 cables cuz I [laughter] bought two cuz cuz per this is the other thing about me. I cannot pass up a sale. If there's like buy two, you know, buy one get one free, I will be that guy that, you know, that that makes that marketer's dream come true because I will go in on that. So, I bought two uh like 6 foot 800 pin 800 FireWire 800 pin to a fire 800 and it came in useful exactly one time back at revision 3 when one of the audio uh boxes that we used to ingest video, >> the cable like 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 as we all know, when when you have a family, especially as your kids get older, >> space is at a premium. >> Is a premium. 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, [sighs] you know, a really good friend of mine, um, one of his friends is his goal, he's he says he's he's an eight-hour man now and he's his life goal is to be a 2-hour man. [sighs and gasps] 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 15gallon buckets of cables sitting in a uh closet somewhere. This is like zenfocused, you know, I don't even want to call it minimalist cuz I think that's insulting. I'm going to call it. And you know, 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 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 because 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. Um, you know, but I at some point like, you know, there's 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 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, um the USB cables that you use to charge your phone, they get thrashed. Um you know, and they they yeah, they they disintegrate over time. I'm on my third micro USB cable for this keyboard. Um I am on my second USB cable for my DAC. This one is still the original because I don't use this headset more than a couple hours a week. Um I am on I have 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. Um, so but it's also it's like at some point a couple years ago, I started religiously cutting the ends off of of dead cables because I found myself thinking like, well, maybe it's 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 >> if you grab it." Well, or 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, an emergency, an event, you know, the car explodes while I'm, you know, trying to get back from a show and the you know, you mean like it's just >> I mean, is this is this an issue of just going through and seeing what your daily for example, you know, I have a smartphone as long as I have a USB who's you know USB cable USB >> that can handle the wattage. handle [laughter] the wattage into into a brick. >> Just collect those like anything else. For example, I have the old USBA to USB, you know, for printers and stuff. >> Well, all my printers are worked. I connect them with an Ethernet jack. I don't actually connect them directly to US 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. Um, I mean I was laughing because you know one of the notes you had in here was was like which USB cables do you keep and I was howling, right? So, so my sort of like platonic ideal, like if I'm in Plato's cave and seeing the perfect image of Patrick's relationship to USB cables, it's because I have hit the lottery and I've replaced every device in my house that doesn't have a USBC cable with a device that uses a USBC cable. Right? My you know, when I am I when I am insanely wealthy, I'm I'm going to have nothing but USBC cables in my house. Unfortunately, uh, right now I need lightning to USB, USBC, USBC that can handle wattage for some fairly powerful laptops. Uh, type A, type B for my desk attached storage, USB mini, USB micro, 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 uh uh USB micro, and then USB microb 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. >> So, you know, let let me ask you, let let me be the uh the actuary in the counting who says, would it make more sense to just buy the the really thick gauge highowered USB to USBC uh and then just get adapters for the ends or does that complicate issues with your cable like tossing out cables like? So, I mean, at at some level, like one, they're kind of expensive, uh, if you're buying them from legitimate sources because you're worried about, you know, running 60 watts through some jank underspec, you know, uh, cable of questionable origins. And I I will say my my my personal cable standards have risen a little bit. I still buy a lot of USB uh cables um off of uh Amazon, but you know, like looking at cablematters.com, dealing with people uh who are doing high-end integrations at a uh AV firm, you know, uh I've I've decided that when I can, I will, you know, and I've always been really good about investing in HDMI cables and occasionally gotten a little cheap on the USB cables, but um uh I try to do, you know, I try to buy cables that are going to last. I don't need a 60 100 watt capable USB charging cable for my iPhone. In fact, you know, having something like that could be problematic because if it is, you know, I I need something where it's not going to like accidentally, you know, the cable is so thick it's going to whip the the phone off the tabletop, right? U >> and it's like >> Go ahead. Is there is there a point where just being cheap with cables for example you were saying like you don't buy the super uh bargain basement cables where that's like you buy really cheap and your cable like I used to do this like you know I did for two years bought like super cheap like get like a half a dozen for like five bucks >> and they would just break because they were literally like dental floss you know gauged in it >> I mean at at some point years ago I was like you You know, I had I had tried a bargain brand that somebody had recommended on on Amazon and two of the lightning connectors and two of the cables died within like four months. And so, you know, I'm, you know, I've done a lot of like, you know, Amazon House brand. I've done a lot of Belcon. I've done a lot of um Oh, goodness. Um, >> Green. >> Well, UG Green's pretty solid, but um >> I'm thinking of source them from the same place. >> Anchor. I've done a bunch of Anchor cables. I've had really good luck with the anchor cables. Um, I want to say that Apple cables are better, but they're just more expensive in my limited experience. Um, although I will say the Apple, you know, USB C to headphone and the Apple I or Lightning connector to headphone jack are two of the biggest bargains in audio in the history of audio. Um, those are ridiculously high performing devices that cost nothing. But 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 teams room, they're not going to cut any corners by saving a couple bucks on a USB cable because USB is problematic enough in high performance environments. So, you know, and we have we have very simple standards. we have a select group of places we trust to provide cables and that's who we buy them from. Um, you know, it's the the bigger problem for me is like, you know, if 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. Um, >> so, okay. Well, let me shift gears uh from traumatic cables to possibly the most ubiquitous cable, and that's power cords, right? The AC power cords you get with PCs. Uh, a lot of appliances come uh come with them. Uh, but you also have different sized uh ones. For example, my PS5 and my Blu-ray player both use the the one they call it like a um a lazy eight, not a lazy eight, but a figure eight like you know um >> C7 connector. >> Yeah. The uh the shotgun figure eight shotgun. >> Yeah. >> Uh cables, but also like the standard thick ones that >> 515P to IEC13 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 it's funny, right? Cuz it's one of those things where if you know, I love MicroEnter. I have nothing but love for MicroEnter, you know, but occasionally I'll see the price for something like a, you know, a PC power supply cable, uh, you know, a 515P IEC13 or whatever it is. And I'll look at the price and they'll be like, that's like a measurable percentage of what the power supply cost. And 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 with it sitting on the shelf not being purchased for a couple years, right? like I I I I get it and I am willing to support my local brickandmortar store, but it's a lot easier, you know, to have a half dozen cables, you know, in the cable box, you know, uh I did a huge purge of them a while back. Um because when you know, one of the places I worked at shut down, they were like, just take all these cables cuz otherwise they're going in the garbage. And um you know, I got rid of all the lighter gauge ones. I got rid of the ones that looked like, you know, they had been heavily used. Uh, and it's funny, right, because when you start digging into those, they go from 18 gauge to 14 gauge, like 18, 16 or 14 gauge. Um, you know, so I got rid of like all of the lighter gauge ones except for a couple 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. Um, you know, but it's crazy when you look at the amount of wattage those can handle even with the smaller, you know, wire inside of them. So, I'm I'm not uh, you know, long story short is is you know, you probably don't need a hundred of them. Like, I think I I think I I recycled uh, you know, at a legit e-waste recycling center to make sure the copper didn't end up being lit on make sure somebody in India wasn't inhaling plastic. Yeah. >> Existed. Well, I mean, so, >> but it's like, you know, a half dozen. Like, how often are you going to cuz like I kept a lot of the 10-ft ones because most televisions, you know, most, you know, consumer electronics devices come with a decent four to six foot c power cable. So, I kept some of the more extreme ones for when I need like a 10ft cable or something. >> I 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 uh to plug it in. But I mean, so you would say safely say keep like a dozen or so if you have them just blind. >> I think for, you know, it depends on how much gear you have around your house and and how tremendous uh, 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 uh uh fool yourself into 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 you carried like, you know, 300 ft of these cables uh that you could line together. All right, moving from power to video cuz you mentioned video earlier. >> Oh, >> now 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 RCA video cables or Svideo cables, or am I being incredibly uh deliluded in thinking that I'll find that one magical CRT that >> So, I have two I have a couple of like it's been really funny watching cassettes kind of have the, you know, vinyl resurrection moment. Um, not because, you know, I like, you know, again, digital audio files and CDs are 9,000 times easier to use in a cassette, although I, you know, merely holding a cassette and slamming it home in a cassette player brings me a certain amount of joy. Um, you know, but like I literally I own uh basically what amounts to a professional uh cassette deck, like a studio grade cassette deck I got at 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 mixtape 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 uh uh who is a taper 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 thought that that, you know, that nice professional grade tape deck so I could transfer that tape to digital files. Um, 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 that she wanted to transfer so she could send the MP3 files to people she was rehearsing with on a new band. And uh, 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 um my life and what I affectionately think of as my garage monitor, which is this industrial Dell um ultrasharp display that's probably I don't think it's older than Sheamus, but uh it is in that neighborhood. It is it is at least 10 plus years old, you know, but it's it's uh it's uh 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 HDMI, um, uh, HDMI, DVI, um, VGA, and >> display. I don't know if it I think display port it was pre kind of display port but I have 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 uh Amazon or someplace and two because it just won't die. So, you know, I can do something silly like attach a you know I have you know I mean it's it's something I I have the only reason I have the cable is because I still have this one monitor with a VGA input on it. I mean, do do you keep around like anything that's super esoteric? Like maybe uh for example, the old style um uh eight pin like RGB cables where it ended out into uh eight like uh B and C connectors that you and certain monitors use it >> 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 own with or have owned with DVI had HDMI. Um, and I've I've kind of gotten rid of all the old HDMI cables in my house partially because as you know, we went from like, you know, 720p HDMI 1.0 to getting to 4K 60 Hz. Um, 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. Uh, 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? [laughter] >> What about HDMI? Now, 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 boxes, a game console or something that can feed it, >> you need to have >> the rated HDMI cable, or am I am I not understanding? And you can still get by with like, you know, the first or second gen HDMI 1080p cables. If you don't mind running your 4K TV at, you know, 1080p at a max of 60 Hz, by all means, use an HDMI 1.0 cable. Um, but, you know, I mean, it's crazy, right? Like HDMI 2.0, um, that was 13 years ago, right? And that's, you know, 4K video at 60 frames per second. HDMI 2.1 is go, let me look it up because it's been a while. um 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 second. But, >> you know, that's like that's 2017. So, you know, you're probably if you're running a 4K uh, you know, monitor, you're running a 4K television, that's probably the cable you have connecting it right now. I mean, I'll be honest. I have I have HDMI cables from 2008. Uh I have one from 2009 I still use and it is one of those things I've often wondered like I got a lot of these. Should I just toss them based on a spec, for example, the newer specs backward 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 uh Central Computer and that's all they sold at the time. Um, but like other than that like kind of weird bit, I mean it's just a standard like HDMI 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 know, raccoons peeing on the box and ruining what's inside of them. I'm bringing that particular uh [laughter] I'm bringing that up because I wouldn't call it a metaphor. or I think I would call it an example. I had a a you know friend of mine who had a bunch of stuff stored out in the barn and literally a nest of raccoons were >> peeing on it. Uh 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. U but the uh that gross example aside like you know if you've got the space keep whatever you want. Um, if you don't have the space, you know, if it's time to downsize, if you suddenly realize you've got the giant ball of cable that weighs 40 lb and takes up this 3- foot wide, you know, file case cabinet drawer. You know, on one hand, in certain office environments, I can see where like being the silverback with the giant collection of cables going back to since before you were born, kid, can be useful. But 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've, you know, if for some reason, let's say a large 22PB tom cat somehow manages to get wrapped up in the HDMI cable and bends the HDMI cable miraculously without um breaking it off in the television or yanking the television off the stand. Not that I'm getting specific again for a reason. Um it's nice to have a spare cable, you know, uh around the house. Um, but I also like, you know, I have a sort of a pair and a spare mentality or a, 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 12T US, you know, HDMI cable might be out of date, but it's long enough for me to tie someone up with, right? So, [laughter] it's [gasps] and I mean I I just >> one of 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 in an e like earthquake happens and I need to carry like someone out of a building or something. But u >> see I have like paracord and and climbing rated rope and you know thousand lb ratchet straps and you know >> but I mean how often do you use those during during your >> alarmingly regularly? [laughter] >> Well you also have like what three trucks three pickup trucks. >> I mean I ratchet strapped something you know a furniture box to the top of the Subaru a few weeks ago. Oh, >> I I that Okay, I side note, that's the one thing I miss about not having my truck after, you know, I donated. I I you know, in the back behind the seat is you have a little bit of space between that and the back of the cab. >> Should have got rid of the cables kept the truck. >> I [laughter] know. I I left I left the ratchet straps all back in there. And it's it's like they weren't expensive, but there are times where it's super handy. Okay, so let let me let me boot us back into to to what we're talking about. cablewise, your your your general rule of thumb is USB USBC ideally. And >> I mean, I've gotten rid of I've gotten rid of all the cables I don't use around the house. >> Is that your rule of thumb? Just whatever you use. If if if you want to again 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 80s you know what I mean >> u or even the mid 80s 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 feel the group is a safe space, so I'm using my feeling words. I feel that I probably had 75 lbs 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 f, you know, private equity has 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 >> at arms reach, you know, because I can go to my storage unit that's accessible 24 hours and if I need this really weird ass cable at 3:00 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. [laughter] >> This is 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 um >> No, actually it was >> an old audio interface cuz 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 cuz, you know, I'm just that kind of person. But I find I only really need USBC. I only need your standard AC power cord. >> Yeah. >> Uh 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 list in the script that's pretty funny. Uh, not because it's funny. >> I like how you call it out, Roger. You ridiculous fool. You listed all >> that's not No, that's that's not that's not how I meant. 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 you're like a bunch of stuff you put under odds and ends like SATA cables, SLI jumpers for, you know, video cards, right? Um, 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. Um, you know, parallel cables. I have a couple parallel cables around in case somebody brings me, you know, and a and a, you know, parallel cable, hard drive, you know, USB adapter, you know, and, you know, and some spare SATA cables, um, tucked around because you never know when you're going to add a hard drive, you're going to need 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. um you know 515P to C13 whatever they are and it's like you know a half dozen you know I I got a couple of the Mickey Mouse ones I got a couple of the cut off ones like you know the standard ones >> and that's I'm good you know because it's >> um >> well I mean no I mean this is really good information because I I keeping on to a lot of stuff >> out of just I mean you know I hate to safe. That's kind of a security blanket. Uh, but I don't really I I I don't really need them though, right? I all the FireWire cables I have >> came with the external drive enclosures I have, but I don't have that many hard drives left because I opened them all to take the magnets cuz they >> I mean this really is turning into a therapy session because you got to remember Roger like like the other thing I like I have, you know, audio equipment that I'm >> I have a fist. Well, I I'm laughing as like I have, you know, I finally started there there are some amps I 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. Um, 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 audio enthusiasts call my endgame. um 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 and 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 uh manufacturing amplifiers because like the the quality is just so good. Um, and as ridiculous as that sounds, I bring 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. Um, you know, I mean, like like I 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 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 tool set, right? But >> yeah, no, I mean, this is all really good and people get special insight into my psyche. But unfortunately, we've come to the end of this uh show. Uh [laughter] that's it for this episode of DTNS 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 uh uh fill your dreams or nightmares or your closet? Let us know. Feedback at daily newsshow.com. >> And uh you can learn more about the entire family of DTNS podcast and shows at dailytechnewshow.com and on YouTube at youtube.com/dailytechnewshow. And if you like what you hear, consider supporting us at patreon.com/dtns. Uh, I'd like to thank Patrick for being with me today, uh, sharing his sharing his cable his cable story because really it's Patrick's story uh, with us. Uh, and [laughter] until next time, you've been listening to DTNS. [music] [music] The DTNS family of podcasts helping each other understand. >> Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker. [laughter]