DoorToDoor Geek: Podnutz Origins (963)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and MSPs, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. So this episode, folks, is going to be first of what I told you was coming. This is the 10th year that I have been the host of this podcast in some form or fashion.

And I said that I would be reaching back and talking about some of the origins of my getting started. And that would include reaching out to some people that were doing this well, well before I was probably even better than I was. And one of the people that I first contacted when I thought about getting involved was a gentleman who was running a network.

And I thought, you know what, they have a show. That show has disappeared. I'm going to see if I can bring it back.

And I reached out to him and he told me, no, somebody beat you to it. But if you want to want a podcast, hang out and we'll figure something out for you. I am talking about Steve McLaughlin, the DoorToDoor Geek of Podnutz door.

How are you? Hey, Uncle Marv. Honestly, I'm doing OK. All things considered, still hustling, still moving forward.

Yeah, nice, nice. So things are still going well over there at Podnutz, my original station, I guess you would call it. Yeah, they definitely slowed down partially just because I'm getting old, man, getting old. 

But I'm also trying to end on a high note in my twenty ninth year of government employment. And I was trying to make sure that when that's done, I'm going to be prepared to start a second career or actually like fourth career and hopefully integrate more podcasting into that as well. More podcasts, that seems to be the route that a lot of us are taking.

I've got a couple more under my belt, just so you know. Very good. Well, the truth was every time someone would contact me and say, hey, I want to do a podcast, I always just thought, man, I don't even want to reply to this email because I'm going to get somebody who has a mush mouth and they sound like they have marbles in their mouth and there's constantly hiccupping or their teeth won't stop whistling or a dog won't stop barking or something in that effect.

So it's like, oh, OK, and you were almost the only one. There's only one other person that as soon as I heard an audio recording of, I was like, that's it. We got to find something.

There's a way we just got to make it happen. Really? Because a for those who don't know, for the first 30 years of my life, I spoke never to no one at all. I had a horrible speech disfluency.

I couldn't say three words without stuttering or stammering or blocking for 30 seconds or three minutes, even sometimes. So I made shutting up and listening like an art form kind of thing. And when people speak badly or poorly, it always just aggravated me so much when I was younger. 

And then I heard you, I'm like, here we go. We can do this. No problem.

And I tried to give as many caveats as I could and as much freedoms as you wanted to. And you did a damn good job, Marvin, is what I'm going to say. I appreciate that.

For those that don't know, when we talk about pod nuts, the original I don't know if it's the original tech network, but to me it was pod nuts spelled with a Z. And that's where the show was in the beginning. It was actually started by Matt Rainey. And I brought him back in 2016 when we brought the show back to life.

You've got a bunch of shows over there, but the flagship show, Android App Addicts, that was always the anchor for the network. You guys were doing a great job over there. You are Dini and I believe his name was Sean Dirty Thumbs Johnson or something like that. 

Exactly. Yep. Oh, dirty.

My goodness gracious. But yeah, so the original name of this show for those we have a lot of new listeners in the last few years. The original name was Pod Nuts Pro.

Pod Nuts was the original name, the computer repair podcast. Then there was Pod Nuts Daily. And I believe that was the show that Steve Cherubino, the original founder of Pod Nuts, would just come home after a day of work and just open up the mic and talk about how things went that day.

Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit venting, a little bit. This is what I learned. Can you believe this? And then a little bit of what am I supposed to do about this now? Nothing. 

So the really thing I liked about him was he admitted this is what I did. I went with the right thing. And then he would welcome feedback and people saying, well, this is how I would do it. 

This is how I would do it. And then we as a community very quickly learned. One of the best and worst things about Microsoft operating systems is there's never one way, right? There's a billion ways.

And none of them are wrong if they work kind of thing. So, yeah, that was definitely a very, to me, a high-speed educational time of my life. All right. 

Very nice. So let's talk about the origins of you as well, because I'll be honest, I can imagine the name DoorToDoor Geek where it came from, but I never heard the true story. And, you know, every time we would get together at a hangout or something, you know, there was always a bunch of people around.

We were doing so many things and I never got to sit down and say, how did you become door? The real reason was because the very, very, very first Android app addicts episodes we did was me, Steve Cherubino, Steve D'Amico and me. And to have Steve, Steve and Steve would make a very confusing show. Um, so I basically said, you know, I tried to do this computer repair business and.

I had a good friend of mine, Earl the Pearl professional wrestler, did the artwork for me kind of thing, and he was like, oh, no, I'll tell you what you are right now. You are a geek. You are a geek of geeks.

I can picture you biting your head off a chicken, he said, and liking it. And then he said, and you going to places of business to get things done, you're going door to door, door to door and door to door. So you are the DoorToDoor Geek.

I said, oh, okay. Wow. And it just stuck.

But then in the show, I remember like it was literally like episode one. We were like three minutes into it. And Steve Cherubino, I was going to say Steve, but then Steve Cherubino stopped and like, this is too confusing.

This is not going to work. And I was like, just call me door. And that's like where it stuck.

So it wasn't you actually out hitting the pavement as a DoorToDoor Geek trying to do a computer repair business on the side. Well, I mean, I did have a like small thing where I would have, um, like a lady I worked with, her husband worked for a bank and he had problems and she knew I was a and she would like pay me to come and fix this computer, get it back up and running. And then, um, somebody else, my mother-in-law had, uh, she was a real estate agent manager kind of thing, like at a whole office of agents.

And she said they can sell houses. They can't do a damn thing on a computer, right? So she would then, you know, tell them my name and I would literally go to their house and help them set up all kinds of stuff and processes and here's how you set up email kind of thing. Um, so then it just like sprouted, um, kind of naturally is what I'm going to say.

Um, and then I was very quickly after that reminded, wait a minute, I got into computers cause I hate people. I hate talking to people. So then I didn't do it as much.

Nice. And, and, you know, marriage settling in. Um, I convinced my wife to quit state employment, go get a real job.

I'll keep the state job. I'll keep the insurance. I'll keep the leave and everything.

So then household income got to a point to where I was like, I don't need to go out and make side money. Very nice. Very nice.

And she was happy to, to go out and get that. Uh, was it a corporate job? Um, she made it very clear that if she stayed home, she would kill all the kids. It's only a matter of time.

I got to get out of this house kind of thing. Um, and, um, she knew her craft very, very, very well when she worked for state government, I was able to access some of the numbers and I could see the average counter service rep doing 20 to 40 transactions a day. And she was doing 120 transactions a day.

So I was like, you got to get out of here. Um, and then once she hit the private world, they realized you're doing the work of three people. I don't mind giving you a raise.

So she, for like six years, literally went back and forth bouncing between multiple places, each one offering her more money, more money, and more money and more money until finally she's like, I'm done moving. I'm going to stay here for a while. So would you call yourself a kept man? I will say I married someone smarter than myself.

That's what they tell you to do, right? Oh, hell yeah. No, nice. Very nice.

My mom, uh, my wife works with me now, so I went the other way. Hey, as long as you at the end of the day can turn and say, yes, dear, you're fine. Uh, don't let her hear you say that.

Well, you know, happy wife. Well, there's two lines in public. I say, happy life, happy wife in private.

I quote, uh, Tom Arnold in the movie, true lies, women can't live with them, can't kill them. That's true. That is true.

Don't let her hear you say that either. So let me ask you this. How did the Android app at a show actually begin? Was it something that you as, you know, a listener to the Podnutz network, uh, one of you people reached out to Steve and said, Hey, we have a show idea, or was he looking for something? How did that come about? Well, the first interaction that was memorable was, um, Steve Cherubino was asking for feedback for some issues, some question kind of thing.

Uh, and he loved audio feedback and with my speech impediment and stuff, I was really always a little bit hesitant to do it. Uh, but then one time I was literally in the middle of feeding my now oldest kid. I didn't have time to sit down and do an email.

So I literally, my phone called up the voicemail number and left the message. But at the end of the message, I didn't hit end call. And I said something to the effect of why don't you just eat the waffle? So then after that, Steve kept asking me to send feedback and stuff.

And then after I was on an episode of Podnutz, where he just interviewed me about my technique for, you know, antivirus and remote desktop and all this kind of stuff, uh, he saw, he learned that I liked the Linux a lot, and then we started Linux for the rest of us. And then a little bit into Linux for the rest of us, maybe a year or two, I said, Steve, I'm telling you right now, this Android app ecosystem, this mobile app ecosystem is not going to quit. It's just going to keep having more and more and more and more apps and they will never stop.

We need to do a show about it. And then of course we started it. And then less than three weeks later, Twit network started all about Android.

Um, and they swore they were the first Android show, but we see who's still around. So I have to imagine that all of you listeners back then, because you were Linux, you were also Android Yahoo's like me showed up with, you know, iOS. No, no.

I mean, one of my whole, one of the things I wholeheartedly believe in, and this was back when I first started Linux was knowing windows or knowing Mac was great, but knowing windows and Mac and Linux made you better understand each operating system and the choices they made to get where they are, which then makes you understand, well, this operating system has this limitation because of this. And that has that because of that same thing with the mobile operating systems. Um, as time has marched on, I'm telling you, Marv year after year, after year, after year, Android is becoming more and more and more like iOS and iOS is becoming more and more and more like Android.

Well, I think it's a combination of the fact that everybody wants their apps to be able to be run everywhere. So to some degree, they have to be similar in a sense to make it easier. So I get that.

Yeah. And it's like the competition each have drives each other to say, well, he can do this. Why can't you do that? Well, she can do this.

Well, why can't you do that? So then they keep adding features, trying to like outdo one another. And we, as users are the beneficiaries. Yeah.

Now, a question that I've never asked you. And first of all, let me say this. You guys actually let me come on a show once.

I don't know why, because I was throwing out apps and I was, I had, I had this joyful chore of trying to find an app that I was familiar with in the iOS environment and making sure that it was also available in Android because I couldn't bring an app that wasn't on Android. So if I go through that, I went through that trouble just for that one show. How do you guys go through finding apps for all of your shows? Cause you guys are at over 600 shows now.

I remember days where you guys would go through 15, 20 apps. That's a lot of apps. How do you choose the apps? Well, I'll first say in hindsight, Marv, it's crazy because almost half the people who contact me on that show don't even own an Android device.

Really? They it's because they know if I'm talking about something, it either was on iOS for six months already, or in six months, it will be on iOS kind of thing. Um, so that was the kind of thing that blew my mind. Um, throughout the years, I would say techniques have changed is what I'm going to say, uh, right now we're having like a problem with these mobile systems because every time there's a good, super functional app in 18 months or less, the app is no longer needed because that functionality is now baked into the operating system and we keep having that over and over and over again, which means.

I don't want to say it's getting harder to find apps, but you got to know what you're looking for and realize when you're looking at it, that it is a good app. Right. So that is really hard part.

Uh, one of the, like, uh, sources I go to is of course I go to my, uh, advanced search engine search and literally Android app best filter it only things for the last week or whatever, and then boom, there's at least like a couple. But, um, one of the better repositories I'm finding as of late is F-Droid F-D-R-O-I-D, which is a free open source app store alternative. Uh, and everything there basically has to be open source, but they have a very, very good change log that happens once a week under their news blog section.

And you have to basically go down to the bottom of the week's news article. And then near the very bottom, it will say, here are the apps that got removed. And I'll name like four or five apps.

This got removed because it was using an old library. This got removed because it was found to have this, um, risk in it. And then you click this other link and it will list like a hundred updated and new apps this week.

And quite literally half the time I'd go through that list and just look at the names, no, no, no, ooh, no, no, no. Ooh. And just, and then I pick like 10 or so apps and then I glance at them.

I look at them. I download them. I play with them.

And I try to always have at least 10 apps every show because I never want to bring 10 apps. I mean, my logic is I always want to bring more than I need. So I have stuff on the floor and the good stuff is my logic is the stuff I bring and the stuff that's on the floor just didn't make the cut.

So I had heard you guys mentioned this F joy and I was going to ask you about that because I, I mean, I looked up what it was obviously a nice repository, but. My first thought was, okay, who found that and why did they find it? And was it attempt to really D Google, you know, the Android ecosystem? Um, I don't want to say D Google but at least offer opportunities. Now in the very, very beginning, when we flashback 10 years ago or so, um, there was a thing called romming where people could root their device, get admin on their device and replace the operating system on it.

And there were many, many, many options you could install because Android is Linux based. You could install the operating system and they would D Google by the operating systems. So there was no hooks in the backend.

There was no, um, services running in the back where Google could secretly get into your phone kind of thing. It was just the free open source Android things. And these stores would pop up and they would try to fill that gap of, well, we don't have a play store.

We can come here. Um, F-Droid is one of the few ones that have been able to pivot where the romming scene is basically dead. Um, to where now what they focus on is extreme transparency in the app, where the app came from and, uh, linking to source code and they try to, um, also post when or if something was third party audited, which is one of those things that we're learning day by day in the tech world, like when stuff like open SSH or SSH is not independently third person audited, really bad things can happen for the globe.

That is true. That is true. So F-Droid, the alternative entirely free and open source.

Very nice. Yeah. And like one of the apps I use, it's weird.

It's almost like, um, you can buy from multiple stores in like one website. Like imagine if you had one website where you could look at Teemu, you could look at AliExpress, you could look at Amazon, you could look at eBay. You could look at office supply, you know, all these places, all from just one interface.

Um, one of the apps I use that does that purpose for me is called Obtanium. Obtanium, Obtanium. And what it can do, not only can it search F-Droid, but it can literally search the entirety of GitHub for Android apps.

Now with GitHub, the code's there already. So we know the code's out there. Um, and you can literally get your updates directly from GitHub releases, which means F-Droid can sometimes be a little bit behind because the people have to submit their changes to F-Droid.

Uh, they usually prioritize Google play because that's where the money's at. So they prioritize updating that one and making it fresh again. But with Obtanium, I can, as soon as they hit release on GitHub, I can get that update.

So I'm finding a lot of really good apps through that service. Uh, and I liked the fact that it tells me basically like how often something is typically updated. Cause you know, depending on the app and depending on the type of information in the app, I might want this thing updated very frequently.

Or it might have such, you know, non-personal information in it. I don't care if it's never updated. Gotcha.

So I myself did a search where I was trying to find, is there something in the F-Droid universe that also exists in the iOS universe? And the first thing that came up was an app called MSP process. Ah, there you go. So the mobile technician app, uh, which basically is a secure communications.

Uh, it's really not, uh, an RMM or anything like that, but, uh, it has a bunch of stuff in there, SMS, chat, email, uh, and push notification channels. So very interesting. Yeah.

I would expect all the solutions in there would not be. Um, the nice way to put it, not all in all encompassing, but very niche. Very niche.

Yeah. Very narrow, narrow focus. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so I've got a two part question and the first is, I'm assuming going to be an easy answer. How many people recommend apps for you guys to talk about on the show? And then the second half of that question, I hope I see your go ahead and answer.

Um, I'm just thinking, I'm thinking, cause it's random. There are busy periods and slow periods, but there are times where we have like in a month, eight different people or 10 different people, like regulars is what I call them, you know, pinging me about stuff. Um, I'll say we get new randos, maybe like two a month, uh, that submit once.

And I don't hear from them again for like a year. All right. The second half of that question is, do you have apps that you guys talk about? And I say, talk about in the sense of you're not recommending these apps to people, you're not, you know, ranking these and saying, this is a great app.

You got to get it. But are there apps that you have talked about that you're like, Oh man, shouldn't have talked about that? Yes and no. Um, what happened in beginning, um, there was in pod nuts, there was the show nuts at night.

And Steve D had a blast talking about things in such a way where Steve Cherubino like would take like an hour to pick up on the fact that you, wait a minute, I asked you for something good. And you're bringing me something negative kind of thing. Like, like he couldn't like, he couldn't catch it kind of thing.

So what happened there for a while, uh, Eric Ardini would bring what he called crap apps. And he said, here's an app. I found it's stupid.

It's useless. Do not install this. Uh, and he would find, he would try to find the absolute worst and ugliest and buggiest thing he could.

And man, they were some ridiculous crap apps I'll say. Um, but the one thing I will say I'm super happy about is every single time I've ever heard anything about an actual Android exploit from apps, 99.999% of the time, you can't even get those apps in America. When you see these websites, I'm like, get rid of these 30 applications from your Android phone immediately or else you're going to get hacked.

They're all in China. They're not even available in the U S market. Um, and every time I do see the ones that are available in the U S market, uh, we've never suggested them except one app.

And that was, oh man, I want to say it was called, uh, it was a file explorer that everybody loved for years. And then they sold it to somebody else. Like how every now and then your browser plugin can get sold and become bad.

Right. That was, that was a habit. It was a, um, it wasn't solid file explorer, but it was, um, like it wasn't F X, but it was something like that.

Was it two letters explore file manager? I want to say, I thought it had two, two letters in the very beginning, but it was sold easily like six years ago. And so I'll say five, six years ago or ES file explorer. Yes.

That's okay. You got it. Yes.

It was great. I loved it. It had plugins and all these little things.

If you wanted to, you could install SSH servers and all the things to connect to. It had, it had an FTP client in it. I remember that.

Yeah. And then it got sold and then, wow, on a dime became garbage. That's what, uh, that's what some big companies do.

Right. I mean, I can only imagine they're in it, they're doing it and they just become exhausted and tired and like, I can't do this anymore. Let me just sell it.

I don't care who I sell it to. Mama needs new shoes or something. Yeah.

And then the, whoever buys it thinks that they can figure it out, but they don't have a tech on staff that can, you know, keep it up to date and, or they break a code and don't know how to fix it. Well, and I'll say this, you're almost mirroring a conversation that me and Steve Cherubino had a while ago, um, when he wanted to not own pod nuts anymore. Um, he, when he started it, I didn't want to buy it.

I had the money and anyway, she controls the money, not me. You know what I mean? She's better than me. She's smarter than me.

Um, but then he got to a point to where he told me, look, I don't want to sell it for the money. I'm not selling it for the money. I'm selling it because I can't do it anymore.

And I want somebody to try to do it the way I've done it. And he had more than a couple of people offer him a lot more money than he got from me. And he knew, and he said he knew in his heart of hearts that they were going to try to just suck the name dry of money and not worry about, you know, what people thought of it, just, you know, uh, use it, abuse it, squeeze it dry.

So yeah, Steve, I mean, yeah. When he sold it and you, you bought it out, I think everybody was happy that it was staying one in the community, you know, and I think that was a good thing. Now, granted at one time, there were a lot of shows on the network.

At one time I was doing five a week myself. Yeah. Um, I was on there.

Jeff Halasch was on there. Who else? Lisa Hendrickson. Uh, you had a bunch of other people on there.

Um, Martin Obando, the Geeksters. Uh, whatever you do, don't forget. Stay gruntled.

No, it's be gruntled. Be, be gruntled. Um, and then we all started to, to leave you.

Any bad, any bad feelings there? If you hate me for that. Oh, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no.

My whole thing was I always thought, and I expected, I don't want, I really never wanted somebody who was doing podcasts for years to say, I want to be on pod nuts. I don't know. I'd much rather have somebody not knowing how much of a pain it is not knowing how much work it is doing stuff, getting it set up, right.

Not understanding Mike presence and how to do things right. But somebody who wants to grow and become better at doing something. That's what I always wanted.

And my whole logic was, you're not supposed to stay here forever. You're supposed to stay here till you get comfortable, stay here to feel, you know, confident and then do what you want to do, you know, if you want to go someplace else, you can, you want to stay here, you can, but you know, you're always going to be better off when you're the captain of your own ship. Um, which is like one of the reasons why, like when I, I mean, I at least tried with every show I tried not to, you know, step in, stick my nose in and tell people what to do or how to do or what thing, but to do it yourself because, you know, this is your ship.

I'm just a guy across the waters. So for me, it's been 10 years, uh, even though I rebranded the show and everything, and I always look back to that time, uh, how has the 10 years been for you when you look back? Um, I know it's longer because you were a part of this longer, but, uh, you know, it's been a decade. Yeah.

Um, there's been, I'll say this. There's been two extremely, um, like life changing events involved with it. Uh, the first to me was a joyous event, uh, but it wasn't even on pod nuts.

Um, I was on a show called unbootables where, um, we asked Tim who was around pod nuts for a long time to be on a show. And we, so then we were doing the show. Then we invited Tim on the show and then Tim showed up on the show and Tim was not the Tim we were expecting instead.

He was a Tim who was on the pod nuts forums known as in like Tim. Um, and that was one of the best things I think that's ever happened to me on any recording ever. Uh, and the dirty secret is I still chat with the guy at least like two or three times a week.

Um, he is the sweetest, nicest, um, guy I think I've ever met in my life. Loves to laugh, loves to say, you know, like quippy things. And, um, he understands a lot of tech stuff.

He was doing it for a very long time, uh, and just have fun. And that was when I realized, you know, I need to loosen up a little bit. I need to, you know, just, just talk, just talk because I truly believe people listen to a podcast for two separate reasons.

There's the reason they tell everybody else they listen. You know, you got to listen to Marv. He does this and he knows about that.

And he, and he's this and he's that. But the real reason they listen is because they love hearing Marv's voice. They love the history they know about Marv and they know when he says something, where it came from, and they can then say, I bet you, if this happened, Marv would do this kind of thing.

It's that, it's that connection that they make that they really do like to watch the show or to listen to the show or participate even, um. And then I had the complete opposite, uh, event right before COVID when Eric Ardini pinged me and told me he had three months to live and to a guy who was the sweetest, nicest guy I think I've hung out with ever, uh, that really still to this day hurts, hurts really bad. Um, it's just proof.

Nice guys never, um, stick around. So I was still there and I remember that. I remember our 24 hour podcast that we did, uh, straight through continuous, no breaks.

That was an undertaking. It was long sitting and my butt really hurt. That's when I knew I need a new chair.

You know, my buddy built for this. Uh, I actually looked up his, uh, GoFundMe and I think it was three, two or three years old. It's still up.

Um, how, how was the family doing? Do you keep in touch with them? Um, after about two years, um, his wife was like, I can't, I can't talk about this anymore. She needed to move on is the way I'm going to put it. Gotcha.

Um, so I mean, every now and then I still, when I have extra money, I throw it into that GoFundMe. Um, every now and then I know some other people who are on the network back then still, you know, try to help when they can. Uh, I believe she moved like more than a couple of towns away.

Um, all of his children now are old enough out of the house starting a life. Um, I know for a fact, every now and then when I do a show, I do see one of his kids pop in the chat room. They don't say anything, but I know it's them because of the name.

And, uh, yeah. So in terms of your plans, both personally and for pod nuts, uh, anything that you know, for sure, coming down the road or just going to ride the thing out? I mean, the only thing I know for sure is I'm going to have to pay taxes and die. Yeah.

Um, I, I literally, I keep the time. Your timing is pretty kind of funny. Um, less than two weeks ago, I did send an email to six people individually.

Um, saying Lennox has gotten so unbelievably boring in the last like six years, because it's all enterprise hardware, it's all enterprise operating system, it's all this backend infrastructure, it's all this AI slop hype bubble stuff. Um, all of the desktop things. Cause here's the dirty secret, Mark 99.9999.9% of all the desktop issues that you've ever heard people have in Lennox don't exist anymore.

Um, yeah, it's, it's hard to get a good video editor. Okay. I'll give you that one.

Um, but, and yes, Adobe still won't run on Lennox. That's not a Lennox problem. That's an Adobe problem.

I'm just going to say that. Um, but I mean, virtually everything else you can imagine, think of, or do is literally sometimes easier or quicker to do on Lennox. Granted, you gotta know what to click, but just like on windows, you had to know where to click to get something done.

Um, I would really like to do more Lennox type stuff. Um, cause the real truth is Lennox is okay. Going to own gaming nearly outright, very shortly.

The gaming industry already makes way more money than Hollywood has ever made. Um, Lennox has the steam deck valve behind it with the proton that they've been developed. It's now unbelievable.

The number of games you just click and they just work. There's no effort. They're coming out with a steam machine, which is a TV based console, um, and the steam deck, both of them, you can very easily one click drop to a desktop and in one click install wherever you want a browser and office suite VPN software, whatever it doesn't matter.

It's all right there. Um, but then secretly valve has been investing in Lennox and Android now for 10 years, working on a Android layer for their headset, their VR headset, which is also coming out in 2026, um, which meta has already admitted the quest is dead. Developers are trying to contact them to get stuff done.

They won't even reply anymore. Um, valve has already created a one shot application. You take your meta, um, APK cause Meta s headset is nothing more than Android.

You take that meta file, you one click it. Now it's going to work perfectly fine on the valve headset that's coming this year and with no issues, it's just going to work. Um, they've also been secretly investing millions of dollars on a transformation layer.

You take any game that's on Android and without the developer doing anything, the layer will be able to interpret foreground background and put a parallax effect into it, even though the developer had nothing to do with it to make the game native three R um, VR like, okay. Um, so the amount of money and you got to remember in December alone, valve made $1.6 billion. Do you know how many employees valve has Mark? No, I do not.

Take a guess. I love, I love people. Guess a hundred 50, 35, 35, 35.

Okay. So we know that Linux is big outside of the corporate arena. Uh, it's behind gaming.

As you said, wait, wait, wait, wait. I know that it's behind a lot of the networking tools that I use. The handheld tools are all running, uh, Android, Linux.

Azure is a hundred percent Linux. Okay. The back end of Azure is a hundred percent Linux.

Yeah. But most, uh, most techs and MSPs don't know that. I know.

I know that's true. True, true, true, true, true. It's just like the number one most installed database in the world.

Nobody knows it's equal light. They think of it as a doctor. Yeah.

Let me throw my windows machine on this. Right. SQL light has more than 30,000 times more installs than any other database.

But people don't know it. People think Oracle or SQL or whatever, you know? No, but yeah, it is quiet. And that's the thing.

There is never going to be a year of the Linux desktop. We, you know, me as a nerd knew that. And I've also stopped telling people, I can't believe you're running windows.

You know, you go through that. I'm running for free. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm tired of being that guy.

So I'll just say, if you need help, I'll help you. You know, if you want to know how I do stuff, I can. If you want to do it on windows, good luck.

Now you, you briefly mentioned AI in there. How much do you think AI will play a part in what happens going forward with, with some Linux stuff? You already talked about the gaming and all of that is, is AI going to help people learn Linux? Well, the way that I'll say it is I'll paraphrase Yogi Berra, making predictions are really hard, especially when it's about the future. Um, I firmly believe AI in a matter of years, maybe three, maybe five, maybe six is going to be the equivalent of spellcheck.

Okay. It's not going to do anything more impressive than anybody ever expects. It just does what it does.

There's no consciousness coming from it. I can easily guarantee you of that. Um, and it's just going to be there.

Um, the people who know how to use it will have an easier time doing their job. Just like the people, I mean, if the spellcheck didn't exist, Marv, I would still be working in a warehouse, lifting up boxes because my spelling is that bad. With multiple learning disorders, including dyslexia and stuff.

Yeah. If I didn't have spellcheck, there's no way I would not be in a warehouse. Um, I think it's going to assist.

Um, make a lot of things a lot simpler, a lot easier. And dare I say, let people, the old adage was with technology. Well, you're only going to have to work like three hours a week.

No, no. In this country, we are always going to work our tails to the bone. The difference is AI is going to make certain tasks, certain aspects of a task simpler, easier, more, um, manageable and expectable like what they are.

Um, I don't think there's anything that's literally special about AI, except in actuality, we, you know, we actually had exactly what AI is doing 20 years ago. It was just called Google. I'm feeling lucky.

And instead of giving you back video or audio, it just gave you back text or a website. Well, we had a lot of it back then. We had a lot of, you know, backdoor animate, uh, automation.

We had all of the search engines that are just now being, you know, turned into large language models. I mean, ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Google. I mean, that's where all that started.

Yeah. Um, the one, one of the reasons why I really was hoping I could retire this year, because, um, I can't remember the guy who said it back in the eighties, but I want to say he was one of those old assembly type peoples who said, when you get into computers, this is like back in windows 3.1, you should be programming everything you need yourself because then you know, you're going to get exactly what you want because there's no off the shelf application that ever does everything you want and no more. Um, now with the vibe coding kind of thing, I really wouldn't, I really wanted to retire from my nine to five and sit down and vibe code and figure out how to do all the little things that I want.

So quite literally I can walk in my room and go boom, and then just cross my arms and have it do what I expect it to do with me doing minimal effort. Nice. All right.

So a peek into the world of Linux folks, um, door, thank you for doing this. Is there a, I want to give you a little bit of time here. I don't know if you had anything, uh, thought wise that you wanted to get out there, but what would you like to leave the listeners with? Hmm.

Um, number one, always and never stop forgetting. There are many people out there that not only think about you, but care about you. Just randomly ping people from your past.

Like Marvin did to me and just say, Hey, how you doing? Want to chat? Because I guarantee you, it's always going to be good times. Um, two, never, ever, ever let anybody ever hold you down and say, you can't do something or you shouldn't do something. Or how dare you think you could like start your own business? No.

What are you doing? You crazy? No, always shoot for the stars. Always shoot for the stars in this country, the United States of America. We have the easiest path to entrepreneurship with the most safeguards in the world.

If you don't try to be your own boss, at least once in your life, there's only one guarantee you'll always hate your boss, that's just life. Um, and I will say, Marv, you got into that niche of doing the MSP things at the perfect right amount of time, because you're right, everything about it has changed the tools, the ecosystems, the end user knowledge, the hacks, the cracks, the crypto stuff all going, but the bottom line is customer service, being transparent to your customer, managing their expectations, giving them what you say, and then cashing that check. And if you do that, you're going to always be successful.

It has been a good time. I appreciate it. Uh, Dor, thank you very much for doing this.

Uh, he is the owner of pod nuts, the tech podcast networks pod nuts spelled with a Z. He is one of the host of Android app addicts. One of the, listen, I don't know if it's one of the premier tech podcast out there, but I can tell you this. I, I did see the numbers and you guys got a ton of downloads.

You were definitely the flagship podcast of the pod nuts network. Um, it's great to see you guys back and add it. Uh, episode six one, one is on the board now and good to see you guys, you know, having fun.

Yeah. And it's crazy because now I have a cohost in British Columbia, Canada, who once only wanted the podcast from his tub. And then the other host is in New Zealand in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sheep.

So, yeah. And it's 90 degrees in Christmas. You know, it's just crazy to me.

It is podcasting is a worldwide thing that we can all be a part of. So, uh, door, I did want to say thank you. You were, like I said, one of the first people that I spoke with, uh, when I joined the podcasting world, uh, you didn't turn me away.

You, uh, let me hang out and, uh, introduce me to some folks there. I got hooked up with Jeff and Paco and the rest of the gang. And I appreciate that.

Thank you very much. I, I can honestly say I would not be here now if it not, if it were not for you. So I just want to publicly say thank you.

Thank you, sir. Always good to talk to you. Right.

And we'll be back at some point and talk again, but folks that is going to do it for this episode of the IT Business Podcast. A huge thanks to a daughter door geek for hanging out with me and sharing his insights. Uh, if you got value from this conversation, uh, do me a favor, share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it, hit subscribe, do all of that stuff.

I know I never really asked you for reviews or ratings, but Hey, why not? And of course, support the sponsors over at it, business podcast.com. Also visit there for past episodes, resources, and ways to stay in touch with me on the socials and the community. Again, that's going to do it. Thanks for listening until next time.

Holla.