This episode of Geek Therapy Radio, I'm talking about Apple's new Game Developer Toolkit,
game Porting Toolkit, I'm sorry, and what that means for the future
of Mac gaming. I talk about my new Macbookpro. I traded in my
thirteen inch MacBook Pro and I've got a sixteen inch Backwripro. Let's let's talk
about that a little bit. We talk about my home air conditioning woes and
repairs. We talk about all sorts of fun geekie stuff. It's just good
to be talking to you again. So without further ado, let's just get
our geek going. It is so nice to be back behind this microphone,
which, by the way, today is the MXLV sixty seven G that I
have had for almost exactly twenty years now. I bought it in the year
two thousand and three when I was broke and going to audio recording school sound
engineering school in North Hollywood, California. It's the first microphone ever bought,
really, first condenser microphone. It was one hundred dollars. I think it's
still one hundred dollars now and today's money, which means it's actually a better
value today in twenty twenty three money for one hundred dollars than one hundred dollars
was back in two thousand and three. But I've had so many mics not
come and go because I keep the microphones that I buy. But if you
listen, if you're a regular listener to the podcast or the Geek Therapy radio
broadcast, you know that I like to tinker around with different microphones, experiment
with different microphones, get bust out, you know everything from my nineteen fifty
four RCA seventy seven DX that has been in my family since the nineteen fifties
when my grandfather worked at RCAY. From that kind of vintage microphone, which
I can't even put a price on, it's probably worth a few thousand dollars,
easily easily over two thousand dollars, just as is, if not more,
just because of its vintage and its heritage. But I also like to
test out cheap ribbon microphones. While we're speaking of microphones, I've done a
recent episode with the mxl R one forty four ribbon microphone, which is also
about one hundred dollars. I went back and listened to that podcast, by
the way, that was a podcast where I was also dabbling at the same
time with thirty two bit floating point recording. In that for things like low
output devices a ribbon microphone, thirty two bit float allows you to basically just
plug your microphone ribbon mic right into it without using a gain booster an inline
gain booster. Anyways, I listened back to that there's quite a bit of
noise in the high end there. That's one of the natures of ribbon microphones,
not necessarily the noise, but that they are. They have a darker
tone, and to bring out a more modern voiceover sound from it, you
need to boost the high end quite a bit. So I boost on a
ribbon microphone between a ten thousand and twelve thousand hurts. I boost it a
lot, like between nine and twelve decibels, which sounds like an incredible amount,
and it is, but not for a ribbon microphone. See the thing
about boosting that on a ribbon microphone, though, is it's really dark up
there naturally, So if anytime you add volume to somewhere where volume isn't already,
you're gonna get some inherent noise, especially if it's a cheat microphone.
So while the r MXCEL R one forty four ribbon mic is a cheap microphone,
is a wonderful microphone. There is a bit of self noise with it.
I'm going to tinker around with that a little bit more, maybe in
an upcoming podcast where I do use the inline gain booster coupled with the thirty
two bit floating point, maybe just not use the thirty two bit floating point
and just see if I can get a cleaner sound out of that R one
forty four. I don't think it's going to happen, because, again,
if you're boosting nine twelve decibels ten killer hurt's range no matter what microphone are
using. If you're boosting that much in that range, and especially there's not
much there to begin with, you're just going to be getting the self noise
of the microphone. Anyways, I didn't originally crack the mic here to bring
this fresh new episode to talk about microphones. Necessarily, a lot happened.
A lot has happened in the tech world in the past couple of weeks since
I've been able to record a fresh episode. I went on a family vacation
with in laws. We went to Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Shout out
to anybody listening from the Carolinas who know exactly where Sunset Beach is. It's
just a shout from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and that's where we stayed
for a week and it was absolutely wonderful with a two and a half year
old and my brother and sister in laws young children. I wouldn't call it
much of a physically relaxing break, but it was an excellent mental break right
up until that vacation. You guys are talking about guys and gals, you
know what I'm talking about, where you won't go on a vacation with kids,
and it's not a physical break, like you're not going to be sitting
there on the beach, lying in a lounge chair, drink in my ties,
just kind of listening to the ways for from sun up to sundown,
just getting loaded on Peta coladas. You're watching kids. You don't really have
the opportunity just to relax on the beach. It just doesn't happen. But
I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world. This chapter in life,
this season in life. This is where I'm at, and I know
a lot of you are are. Dad's listening out there and I'm recording this
right before Father's Day. Actually it's going to air on Father's Day twenty twenty
three. I try to be evergreen here, but I'm recording this twenty twenty
three. This is the Father's Day episode. I guess you could call it.
You dads know what I'm talking about when your children are in this stage
of life, young children. Riker is. He'll be three in October,
so he's two and a half, two and eight months years old. You
know exactly where I'm at right now. As far as vacations with a child,
it's not a physical vacation, like I said, not lounging around for
ten hours a day drinking piano coladas. You're chasing a two year old.
But that is its own joy. And while it wasn't physically relaxing, the
mental relaxation was worth its weight in gold. Up into that vacation, I
have been plugging away at work. We had a new exhibit opening at the
Houston Museum and Natural Science, the Sharks and meg Exhibit with sharks and Meglodon
and all the myths and facts about sharks and Megalodon. It's an awesome exhibit.
At the same time, at the same time, we had our corpse
flower bloom. And corpse flowers bloom once every several years, typically depending on
the size of the plant, like once every eight to ten years, a
corpse flower blooms and the whole place smells like death. And our corpse flower
we named Meg in honor of Meglodon for the Sharks exhibit. It decided to
bloom right when the Sharks exhibit was opening, So it was a media frenzy.
I know it's hard to like imagine, but Meg, the corpse flower
like equally stole a spotlight for the Sharks exhibiting open. Like we had news
outlets, local news stations. I was setting up live feeds that news stations
were pulling from the live feed I set up like it was absolutely nuts,
absolutely nuts. That was all going on before the vacation, So when the
vacation came around, it was a great mental break from that. Anyways,
I do have some geeky stuff to talk about. I think this is going
to be a geek Tabs episode, and I'll explain what that is when we
come back for the new listeners. In the new segment, you're listening geek
there, Paradio, don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Geek Therapy Radio.
You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hemburger. I think this episode, as
I hinted at in the first segment, is just going to be eventually if
I get to it. That's the other thing about me is if I even
get to this, it might be a geek tab episode. And what that
means is I just opened my phone, which is a Galaxy fold phone.
You can hear it on the microphone here opening up and shutting. Very cool
phone. But I'll get my phone and maybe my tablet and kind of see
what tabs I've had opened over the past couple of weeks or between shows,
and kind of see what I want to talk about. Maybe WWDC twenty three,
the Apple Vision Pro and everything. There's been a cool dev kit.
It's not under the DAR and I don't want to get in too much detail
about it right now, but Apple did release their Game Porting Toolkit. Their
GPT has nothing to do with AI necessarily. It's just called the Game Porting
tool Kit, which is going to allow developers a hopefully an easier pathway towards
bringing Triple A titles to native Mac platforms like like the MS chips, Apple
Silicon. So basically, in a nutshell, I'll explain what it is,
just in a nutshell. So just today I watched a video Dave two D,
which Dave two D is one of the best YouTubers. Best YouTubers because
he's so like to the point and every time he gets on the camera his
hair is like even more disheveled and you can see him growing a little older.
I know he has kids. I've asked Dave two D to come on
Geek Therapy Radio like two or three years ago and he's like, bro,
I have like I've got no time because at the time, I don't know
what if this is still the case now. But he was like an engineer
or a software engineer. YouTube wasn't his only thing. As a matter of
fact, when you watched aptud's channel. Another reason why it's so great is
that he very very rarely ever has sponsors or runs ads or anything like that
because he's got his full time jobs. He made good money before YouTube,
and while he is on YouTube, and I think he's probably it seems like
he still has that full time job and YouTube has always been for him this
kind of auxiliary thing, and he might make enough money now off YouTube.
I don't know. I don't know how much money he makes off YouTube.
I just know that YouTube isn't his only thing and he has children. When
I asked him a few years ago, I want to come on my show,
He's like, dude, I loved to, but I just don't have
a lick of time between work, YouTube and my kids. Basically, between
work and his kids, he barely has time to make YouTube videos. And
anyways, I was watching him. He did a three minute video which is
perfec kind of explaining what this Apple game Porting toolkit is. He said he
was on an airplane on the way home from WWDC twenty three and he saw
somebody on a MacBook on a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air or whatever running Cyberpunk
twenty seventy seven, and he said, Dave dud said, he didn't really
think much of it because you can play Cyberpunk twenty twenty seven on MacBooks.
We've seen that before. He usually used the game streaming service g Force now
or whatever. But then he thought about it, was like, wait a
second, there is not on this flight. There wasn't any Wi Fi,
as he said, or not strong enough Wi Fi to be streaming in that
quality, and he said all right. After the flight, he said,
all right, curiosity got the best of him and he said, hey,
how are you running Cyberpunk twenty seven seven in is Oh, it's the game
development toolkit, game porting toolkit. The guy on the flight was tinkering around.
He was running Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven Tiveley on his Apple Silicon MacBook.
And here's the thing about it. While we are only days into the kind
of the development, the launch of this game development toolkit from Apple, we
are only days into it. As of recording, it's literally days into it.
We are just at the beginning of this. But this is massive,
massive for gaming, mainstream gaming on MacBooks on Apple devices period. I have
said it, and many of my other colleagues in the kind of text sphere
have said the same thing, that MacBooks are so good now Mac Silicon is
so good that there's no reason why more games shouldn't be developed for Mac now.
There are already some games that do work on Mac. Tomb Rader being
the one that comes to mind right now. I always fire up tomb Rader
on my MacBook to a kind of benchmark and run test and it runs spectacularly
on Apple Silicon. But other developers like you know, bringing twenties Cyberpunk twenty
seventy seven to run a MacBook natively. What I want, what I've said
on this show ad nauseum, is that I want Microsoft Flight Simulator twenty twenty
and twenty twenty four that's coming up, by the way, to run natively
on Apple Silicon, because streaming it through Xbox or like Microsoft Game Pass or
whatever is cool, but there's no keyboard support. Everything you do in Microsoft
Flight Simulator through Xbox game Pass, microsoft game Pass, whatever you call it,
has to be done with your Bluetooth controller or whatever controller you've got plugged
in. You can't type anything. There's a bunch of commands that I use
in flight to that require a keyboard. For instance, I need to reset
my altimeter, recalibrate my altimeter, I press the B button on my keyboard.
I can't. There's no button, dedicated button on a mouse or on
a on a controller like an Xbox three sixty controller to reset mild time.
Midflight can't do it. So anyways, it would be great if Microsoft Flight
Simulator twenty twenty or twenty twenty four in this case would run natively on Apple
Silicon and that's what this game Porting Toolkit will allow. There's already a flurry
of activity. It's very crude. Let me just read the blurb off of
Apple's gaming wiki just right here, or the Apple Gaming Wiki. I don't
know if it's owned by Apple or run by Apple or not, but it's
Apple gamingwiki dot com. And I'm just gonna read the first paragraph here kind
of explaining what it is. Game Porting Toolkit from Apple Gaming Wiki, the
wiki about gaming on M one Apple Silicon Max. Again, I'm quoting all
of this. Game Porting Toolkit is Apple's new translation layer, released on June
sixth, twenty twenty three. Game Porting Toolkit GPTK combines Wine with Apple's own
D three D Metal, which supports Direct X eleven and Direct x twelve.
This is a less user friendly method of installing Windows games on Apple Silicon Max
compared to Crossover or parallels. However, it unlocks the ability to play many
Direct x twelve games. A lot more games work using gpt K, However,
games that use anti cheat or aggressive drms generally don't work, along with
games that require AVX AVX two eg. The last of us part one.
So that's the end quote from from Apple from the Apple Gaming Wiki. It's
a way to play games natively on Apple Silicon. But what it really is,
though, what it really like the main point of this, the main
attraction to this, like the big the big deal about this is it helps
developers. They can see raw readouts of how they are, how they're coding,
or how they're repackaging. I don't I'm not a software designer program or
I don't know all the technical terms here, but how their tweaks to the
game are affecting how well it runs on Apple Silicon, and they can see
that in real time. So I'll just give it for instance on like how
well things run. If you watch Dave Duty's video on this on the Game
Developing tool Good, you'll see. So let's say if you're if you have
like a Windows PC in a decent graphics card, and you're running Cyberpunk twenty
seventy seven at sixty frames a second on your PC while running it through the
Game Porting Toolkit, it'd be running it like thirty frames a second, maybe
thirty five forty. But as you're running it, the developers can be making
tweaks to the code as they're playing it, or turn off the game and
recode and basically see how they're tweaks to poured it over to Apple Silicon at
how those tweaks work in basically real time, and it makes it's just a
lot easier pathway for game developers to start running their games on Max make make
ports of them for Mac now for the longest time. The real reason why,
and I'll end a segment like this, the real reason why developers didn't
develop games for Mac is because there was not a big market share of gamer
of people playing games on Mac. First of all, MAX never still don't
have the market share that Windows compatible computers do. It just doesn't. There's
a lot of people have MAX, of course, but it's still a relatively
small market share, especially among PC gamers. It's an infinitesimal market share among
PC gamers that they are gaming on a Mac. This hopes to change that.
Morke Therapy Radio coming up, got your Mental Curator Johnny Hamburger, don't
go anywhere, Welcome back to Geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator
Johnny Hamburger. So speaking of MAX, and we were talking about Apple and
MacBooks and whatnot. I actually have a new MacBook Pro, new owl refurbished,
technically refurbished. I no longer have my thirteen inch M one MacBook Pro
that had eight gigabytes a RAM and an eight core GPU and eight three It
was eight eight eight mm one MacBook Pro thirteen a core's eight core GPU and
eight gigabytes RAM. Fantastic little computer. But right now I'm rocking a refurbished
sixteen inch MacBook Pro M one pro with ten CPU corps and twice the GPU
corps at sixteen GPU corps and twice the RAM. It's at sixteen gigabytes of
RAM. Why did I do this? What was wrong with my thirteen inch
MacBook Bro? There was nothing wrong with it. A matter of fact,
I traded it in. That's what I'm getting it at as I traded it
in towards this refurbished sixteen MacBook Bro. A while back back in twenty twenty,
when I first got the thirteen inch MacBook Pro, I said on this
show. And maybe I'm too lazy to go find out where I said it,
but I said it somewhere back there, and I've said it probably a
few times sporadically over the past few years. On this show, I said,
the real winners and Apple's changed to their own in house silicon, the
M one chips. I said, the real winners are when the M two
chips come out or the M three chips come out, and these M one
laptops start going on massively discounted sales. The real winners here are the people
who are going to buy a fifteen hundred dollar laptop two or three years later
for under a thousand dollars once the upgrade cycle continuous. Because these M one
chips are just spectacular chips, and they will continue to be spectacular chips for
three to five years, maybe seven years. I think obviously they'll still be
usable in ten years, depending on if if Apple still supports. Apple has
a pretty and correct me if I'm wrong here, Because I am not a
lifetime Apple user. I have used in recording studios and different production scenarios,
but like for my personal use, I dove into the mac ecosystem. I'm
still very much in the PC ecosystem also, but I dove into the Mac
ecosystem in twenty twenty with the M one MacBook Pro thirteen inch. But I
haven't been in it that in the Apple walled garden much more than that.
I've had a couple of iPhones way in the past, But correct me if
I'm wrong here. Apple has a pretty good record of supporting their devices throughout
the years in my experience there. I doubt Apple is going to end support
for M one, macwoopros or M one airs for quite a while. I
think it's I think we might get to the decade after the M one release
and they still kind of in some former fashion, have os updates still for
M one, macwoopros and Macwagaerson. I just don't I just don't see that
as far fetched. Apple does support in their devices four years. I don't
know if ten years ten years might be a stretch, but I just want
to be surprised. And one chips are so good first gen M one chips
are so good that they will probably still be supported officially by Apple for several
years, and I don't think that's a stretch of the imagination. So anyways,
a few years ago, when I said the real winners are going to
be in a two or three years when they come out, when Apple comes
out with the M two chips and then the M one chips are at a
steep discount, but darn near just as good as M two chips. I
mean, the margin between an M one and an M two is what is
like twenty percent something like that, which sounds like a lot, and it
is a little chunk, but it's not like this massive massive gain over an
M one, especially when you could figure in the price, like if you're
going to buy an M one Macwpro thirteen inch versus an M two Macwpro thirteen
inch or fourteen inch whatever, but you're going to save a thousand dollars,
Is there enough of a performance difference to close that thousand dollars gap or to
make is there is there? Here's a better way to put it. Is
there a thousand dollars worth of difference or several hundred dollars worth of difference between
an M one and an M two chip. That's for you to decide it.
For me, it's no For instance, this sixteen inch Macwpro with the
M one pro in it is was brought down to such an incredible value that
it was a no brainer for me to upgrade. The real the biggest reason
I upgrade it is a I've got it right here next to me. I
have this GPD Win Max two. It's not the twenty three variant, but
it's the GPD Max twenty two GPD Win Max two Windows device obviously ten inch
ten point two inch screen. Whatever point is. I have my small computer,
like I have my sub notebook, it's almost a netbook size thing.
I've got my super small, easily travel travelable computer. So I was like,
you know what, when I'm working at home, for instance, I
just got my Windows laptop. It's the seventeen point three inch what is it
a or seventeen h Maybe I'll talk about that in the next segment. Why
I haven't actually been wound up using that too too terribly often. I'll just
say right now, it's because of audio issues I'm still waiting on. It
just needs to be updated more. We need more driver updates and everything.
It's just it's a little bit Last time I checked a few weeks ago,
it's still a little bit clicky and didn't play well with Reaper, which is
why it was just when I do my podcast with so I kind of haven't
been using it for a while. For video editing and gaming, it's an
absolute unit of course RTX forty laptop RTX forty eighty in there, big massive.
The point is I said, all right for a MacBook though, I
do like I do like a bigger screen, and it was worth it to
me even if the processor remained unchanged to go from a thirteen point three inch
screen, I believe is what the thirteen inch Macbookpro is to a sixteen point
two inch I believe is what the Mapoopro sixteen is. That extra real estate.
I'm recording this right now, usually on my workstation when I'm here in
the Geek studio, in my geek cave, whatever you want to call it.
Man it gave. I have my laptop plugged into the lap. I'm
looking at the laptop display and I'm looking at my forty two inch oh lad
screen in front of me. That's how I work, but with a bigger
screen laptop like the sixteen inch Macpoopro. I've been working on this all day,
video editing and Da Vinci Resolve which just keeps getting better and better,
recording this podcast and Reaper doing everything on the sixteen point two inch screen.
I believe it is. I have not missed the forty two inch screen right
in front of my face, like I've been working on this big screen laptop
all day. My eyes are just I'm done, like I've done in going
through normal day to day work mode on tiny little laptop screens. I will
work out in the field, like if I'm at a hotel or something like
that, or if I'm on vacation or wherever. I'll bring the smaller screen
with me where warrants, and I'll happily work on things like that when i
have to. But for the day to day nine to five, I'm not.
I'm done looking at small screens. I am big screen laptop mode.
I am almost forty years old. My eyes already suck. They have sucked
my entire life. I'm just like, why am I doing this to myself?
What am I doing this to myself with the small screens just to be
like sleek and smooth in sexy tech and everything like that. Now give me
the big screen. For a matter of fact, Now I'm going here.
Now I'm off on a geek, real geek tangent here. I've asked my
beautiful loving wife many times, halfway joking that I want to order a pair
of big giant nineteen eighties Dad windshield glasses because I have these glasses on that
I've been wearing for the past couple of years. The style that is very
stylish. It fits my face. I like the way it looks on my
face. I don't know if it's actually good or not, but I like
the way they fit on my face. But I have to look over and
under the lenses because they're a little small, like rectangle lenses. I'm always
looking over the top of my glasses, like, can I just can I
just put fashion aside? That's where I'm at in my life with dad mode.
Can I put fashion aside to be comfortable? And what's what's really funny
is the other day at work at the museum, we were filming for a
TikTok we want to release for a Father's Day and it's basically an o to
museum dads or dads at the museum basically walking in with shorts and a Fannie
pack and a collared shirt and socks and sandals and whatever. And me and
Mike and Steven pulled up because we're the three actual dads in our marketing group
here and we all we all rolled up and we're just like this really isn't
that far off from what we wear every day, that's anyways, Like not
even as a joke, Like I wear these sandals almost I wear these sandals
very regularly. I wear these shorts regularly. I wear this shirt regularly.
Like this is not a very this is not a stretch from our day to
day wardrobe. Anyways. That's where we are in life. That's where I
am in life as I approach forty years old, as I am one hundred
percent willing to sacrifice style for comfort. The last two pairs of Vans I
bought are the comfort cush soles. I'm done with just kind of the flat
rubber soles there. It's like my back just can't in my feet. No,
I need I need the cushioning. I need the inserts in the shoes.
Now I'm not buying anymore like Converse All Stars that is just basically fabricant
rubber stitch together. And I was like, I need a cushion my feet
now. I want to get big giant nineteen eighties Dad windshield glasses because effort,
rather just see everything getting these big screen laptoks because screw it. I
just want to see and be comfortable. And my eyes not want to be
popping out of my head at the end of the day. I am forty
year old daddy, and I just want to be comfortable and work comfortably.
And that's why. That's basically the main reason why I traded in my thirteen
inch MacBook Pro for this sixteen inch MacBook Pro with the M one Pro processor,
and I could not be happier with it. This is just a wonderful
device. I'm not trying to sell Apple. I'm not an Apple salesman.
I still have all my PC stuff. I'm still my knee is still tapping
against my desktop workstation and it's a nineteen inch rack mount a cage silvertone PC
case here at the RTX thirty ninety. I'm not an Apple show I still
have more PCs than a Max. All my screens are just getting begger because
I'm old and I just want to be comfortable more geek Theapy radio coming up.
Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to eat. What did I just do?
My screen's freaking out. My hand rubbed on the giant track pad.
Anyways, I'm back. I'm back to UH where I should be bracket cruising
altitude now Welcome back to Geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator Johnny
Hamburger. I have air conditioning in my house again, well, air conditioning
that actually works in my house. I came back from vacation and I had
set my thermostat to like away from the house mode, basically where I set
the inside thermostat to like eighty five degrees and just and leave it there while
we're on vacation. And believe me, it will still come on at eighty
five degrees. It gets to It gets to eighty five degrees in this house
in Houston in the summertime rather easily, So that's not too far fetched to
have it set at eighty five on vacation. A lot of people set there's
way lower than that on vacation. Like, yeah, I leave the house,
I bump it up from sixty nine degrees to seventy five degrees. And
when I'm away, I'm like, are you that's arctic? To me?
Who is utilizing that cold air while you're away? Seventy five degrees? That's
another dad mode of mine is you've set your thermostat that low. That's insanity.
Anyways, I checked my Google Home whatever app and when we were kind
of like the day before we got home, like twelve hours or whatever.
Before we walked to the house, I turned the air conditioning back, or
I set the thermostat down lower, back to like seventy six or wherever I
usually keep it. And I checked the app later half a day, you
know, throughout the day later, and I said, it's been running nine
hours non stop, Like it has not turned off in nine hours. Fast
forward a few days, I'm like, why can't this house stay? It
can get to seventy nine degrees and the AC is working for no kidding,
over sixteen hours a day non stop. It just does not cycle sixteen hours.
I'm like, all right, this is something's wrong here, very wrong.
It's low on cool And I said, I bet you if I open
up the air intake here, I'm going to see all the coils just completely
frozen in Chunk's eyes. Yep, completely frozen over. I was like,
all right, this system is definitely low on refrigerant, which is not a
big deal. Every once in a while you shouldn't have to replace the refrigerant,
which, by the way, in modern as I'm recording is our four
twenty a refrigerant and it's about to change again. The guy was telling me
not to get too off track. The technician was telling me, yeah,
there's there's a meth. There's a pro I think he said, propane based
refrigerant coming down the pipe. I hesitate to say this, but some people,
because I don't want you to blow yourselves off the face of the planet.
But there are some people who have used propane as a refrigerant to compress
and expand the gas, to get the healing coolant to take the heat out
of the room, or whatever. Propane technically works as a refrigerant. It
is exceptionally dangerous to do so. The R four twenty is not like our
one thirty four, which I don't think they even use anymore. These are
nonflammable gases. These are nonflammable refrigerants on purpose, because you don't want a
bunch of flammable liquid and gas running through your your AC condensers and pipes and
air handlers. You don't it's you're gonna blow your house right off your block
if you're trying to use propane. People try to use propane in their their
vehicle refrigerent systems, their air conditionings and their vehicles. Don't do it.
Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't use propane as refrigerant. You
risk you run the very high risk of blowing yourself straight to whatever realm that
your personal religion believes in. Like it, don't do it. But the
technician said today, as he's putting, he I was low by four pounds
of our four twenty, I was low by four pounds. He had to
add four pounds of refrigerant to my system. He said, By the way,
just to end this little sidetrack, that there is a propane based like
an inert, nonflammable version of propane. Don't quote me online an HVAC expert.
Maybe if you're listening and you are an HVAC expert, you can email
me Johnny at geek Therapy radio dot com or just go to geek Therapy radio
dot com and the very first thing you see is that form to contact me.
You're not on any mailing list. It doesn't there's no newsletters, there's
none of that malarchy. It's just basically it sends a ding to my inbox
saying, hey, someone sent a message. But if you are an h
professional, go to geek Therapy radio dot com or email me Johnny jo h
n n Y at geek therapy radio dot com and let me know if this
is true, because I'm just flying off the seat of my pants here.
I'm using my methane I'm flying off of my methane rand to talk about a
potential propane safe propane refrigerant that the AC technician told me is might be coming
down the pipes. So let me know if I'm wrong on that. Anyways,
he added four pounds of refrigerant. I was down four pounds. I
can already hear you through your speakers and yelling through your EarPods or whatever.
You're listening to this with sounds like you got a leak. Bro Well,
maybe and maybe not, because here's the thing. We haven't touched our air
conditioning system, not a tune up, nothing, since we moved into this
house in twenty nineteen. So we're going on four years of doing absolutely nothing
to our central air conditioning. So if we went down by a few pounds
of refrigerant over the course of four years, that's not not bad. That's
probably a teeny tiny, literally microscopic leak possibly, But what we do now
is after we put four pounds in there, added four pounds of the system,
which now it's blowing in ice cold, it's running awesome. Basically,
monitor it over the next month or a couple months, and if it gets
low again, if it's not cooling to capacity again, that means yes,
obviously we have a leak. But to refill your home air conditioner or your
car air conditioner with cool with coolant, not coolant with refrigerant, like once
every I think what the centers like. If you do it like every once
one to three years is pretty good. If your system is tighter than a
well, I don't know where I'm going with that. But if your system
is all sealed up and running perfectly and there's no leaks anywhere, you can
probably go several years without having to touch without having to add refrigerant. But
if you have to add refrigerant every one to three years, one to five
years on a stretch, like if you have to do it once a year,
that's still okay. Like refill it once before the summer, get through
the summer. If you have to do it once every summer, and then
that's that's decent. And of course a technician is going to tell me that
because it's a lot of money. Right now, as of recording, it's
like one hundred and twenty dollars a pound for a refrigerant, and that's a
lot. I paid a lot of money to have my HVAC or refilled this
time around. But if it lasts no three to five years, it's lasted.
Again. I mentioned we moved in this house in twenty nineteen, it
probably hadn't the HVAC probably hadn't been refrigerant hadn't been refilled since probably before that,
before twenty nineteen, So it's probably gone at least three to four years
without having to refill the refrigerant. So if it has to go another three
to four years without refilling the refrigerant, then I'd say we're in pretty good
shape. All I know is even as I'm recording this last few seconds,
minute or two of the GEI Therapy radio here, the air event has on
on top above my head. Here it's cooling. The house is cooling normally
for this house. My house is insulated like an old rusty tin shed.
That's the next thing I need to address is getting insulation going. You know
what I'm gonna put this out there right now. I'm gonna put this right
out on the table, because why not. If you work for or run
a home insulation company and want to come insulate my house for free, let's
talk about that. I will promote your service if it's a good service and
did trustworthy work and I feel comfortable recommending it to my listeners. Come to
my house please and let's let's insulate this. Can I say this on the
radio? Bach? Is that going to trip any sort of FCC steal my
house up? Brat? Come on, just talk to me. Geek Therapy
radio dot com is how you contact me, Johnny j h n n y
a geek therapy dot com. I'm serious. If you want to come out
to my house and steal up, steal it up and let me talk about
you on the radio to send people to your company. If you do a
good job, I'm all about it. I am all about it. I
have a meeting with Microcenter soon. That's exciting. No matter what, I
want you to remember something as we close out here. You are worthy of
love. Not just HVAC engineers, but y'all too. Everybody listening to this
is worthy of love. You're worthy of giving love receiving love, and you're
worthy of your own self respect. Find your geek thing. Lean into your
geek thing. That's one way that you find out you have more respect for
yourself is that you're actually good at something. Lean into your geek thing.
Embrace your geek thing, and I will talk to you. Next time you've
been listening to Johnny Hamburger, I'm your mental curator. This has been Geek
Therapy Radio. Take care grab the podcast Geek Therapy Radio podcast in your favorite
podcast Pleader, all right, peace,