# Volume 4 Announcement Eve

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2019-05-17  
**Duration:** 62m 41s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Volume-4-Announcement-Eve-e1bkg6d

---

## Analysis

The Blockade Pinball Podcast hosts Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen Pinball app frustrations (challenge rebalancing, coin economy issues, Android reward problems), mobile gaming as a utility, Home Pin's manufacturing approach in China, and hardware maintenance on a System 80 machine. Limited pinball-specific content due to an announcement embargo period.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Zen Pinball changed challenge rules around day 28, reducing coin rewards from ~7 coins/day to 3 coins/day, making higher-difficulty challenges less valuable than grinding basic challenges for coins — _Chris describes his documented experience tracking chart changes over time_
- [HIGH] Attack on Mars score requirements were increased significantly: premium one-ball went from baseline to 8 billion points; basic challenge went from 800k to 2 billion for first five stars — _Chris verified the change himself; Pinball was 45b pointed it out_
- [MEDIUM] One player recycled Safecracker challenges 30+ times without receiving a single coin reward, despite having 70,000 tickets — _Chris reports secondhand account from 'one individual' in particular_
- [HIGH] Android users still not receiving tournament rewards at end of tournaments — _Chris states 'we still have, yeah, the Android people are still complaining'_
- [HIGH] Home Pin manufactures nearly all Thunderbirds parts in-house except one component, partly to avoid supplier dependency and potential Stern interference — _Jared references YouTube video about Home Pin showing single outside part; discusses Mike's stated reasoning for vertical integration_
- [HIGH] Home Pin labor and rent in China are actually more expensive than elsewhere; savings come primarily from proximity to electronic component suppliers — _Jared quoting Mike from Home Pin: 'the labor here is more expensive than elsewhere' and 'rent on the buildings ain't cheap'_
- [HIGH] Star Race edge connector between driver board and playfield has oxidation/corrosion requiring periodic cleaning or professional reseating — _Jared describes troubleshooting process, cleaning with contact cleaner, finding black oxidation, reseating connector resolved issues_

### Notable Quotes

> "And that's annoying. So you can actually get surround sound headphones. I have 5.1 surround sound headphones."
> — **Jared**, ~00:08:00
> _Meta-commentary on tinnitus discussion; not pinball-relevant_

> "So I decided I'm going to farm coins like there's no tomorrow because I want to have all 300 coins before the next table pack drops so that I'm not worried about coins."
> — **Chris**, ~00:42:00
> _Describes strategy shift in response to Zen Pinball economy rebalancing_

> "The game itself is fine. The game itself is fine. It's just all the other stuff around it that is dragging it down."
> — **Chris**, ~00:50:00
> _Core criticism of Zen Pinball: solid base game undermined by monetization/challenge mechanics_

> "But, you know, that bad experience can be removed if you pay the princely sum of $49.95 to unlock the entire table set in Australia. Or $30 at the moment."
> — **Jared**, ~00:52:00
> _Sarcastically notes regional pricing and paywall structure for ad/challenge removal_

> "This is why it took him so long to make it because he's literally basically producing all the parts himself."
> — **Jared**, ~01:20:00
> _Explains Home Pin's vertical integration strategy and timeline implications_

> "He goes, it's not cheap rent for any of this. Where it is a bargain for price is all of the electronic components and buying all of that."
> — **Jared (quoting Mike from Home Pin)**, ~01:25:00
> _Clarifies cost advantage of China manufacturing: component proximity, not labor_

> "So that's definitely the connector that's got a problem. Probably the easier fix for me to do would be get John Grist over from JWG Enterprises and get him to just redo that connector."
> — **Jared**, ~01:45:00
> _Identifies root cause of Star Race hardware issues and proposes professional repair path_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Chris Frebus | person | Host of Blockade Pinball Podcast, known as 'Shut Your Trap'; discusses Zen Pinball app experience and mobile pinball gaming |
| Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast based in Australia; discusses Home Pin manufacturing, Star Race hardware maintenance |
| Zen Pinball | company | Developer of Zen Pinball app; subject of extensive criticism regarding challenge rebalancing, coin economy, Android rewards, and ad placement |
| Home Pin | company | Chinese pinball manufacturer producing Thunderbirds and other titles; manufactures nearly all components in-house; focuses on Chinese market expansion |
| Mike (Home Pin) | person | Founder/operator of Home Pin; interviewed by Head to Head Pinball; designed vertical integration strategy to avoid supplier dependency |
| Stern Pinball | company | Referenced regarding potential supplier interference and Getaway as reference machine for Home Pin |
| Pinball Expert | person | YouTuber/former Stern distributor (Brisbane, Australia); created FAQ and critical review videos; new Thunderbirds video mentioned as upcoming |
| John Grist | person | Owner of JWG Enterprises; pinball repair professional specializing in edge connector restoration |
| Pinball was 45b | person | Community member who identified Attack on Mars score requirement changes on Zen Pinball |
| Attack on Mars | game | Zen Pinball table with significantly increased score requirements (basic and premium challenges) |
| Safecracker | game | Zen Pinball table; final table for Chris to max out; shows problematic coin reward randomness |
| Champion Pub | game | Zen Pinball table; Chris expresses growing resentment due to challenging challenge mechanics |
| Thunderbirds | game | Home Pin pinball machine; features proprietary flipper button design; discussed regarding build quality and gameplay experience |
| Star Race | game | System 80 vintage pinball machine owned by Jared; experiencing edge connector oxidation issues requiring periodic maintenance |
| Getaway | game | Williams pinball machine; used by Home Pin as reference/demonstration machine for Chinese workers to understand pinball gameplay |
| Elvira | game | Pinball Arcade title; discussed regarding non-family mode unlock complexity |
| Pinball Arcade | company/app | DLC-based pinball app platform; compared favorably to Zen Pinball's freemium model |
| Scary Stiff | game | Pinball Arcade title; reference in discussion about unlocking non-family 'naughty mode' |
| Head to Head Pinball | podcast | Podcast that previously interviewed Mike from Home Pin; discussed as reference for Home Pin background |
| Blockade Pinball Podcast | podcast | This podcast; hosts Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Zen Pinball app economy and monetization, Mobile pinball gaming as utility vs premium experience, Home Pin manufacturing strategy and Chinese market expansion
- **Secondary:** Vintage pinball hardware maintenance (System 80 connectors), Pinball Expert YouTube content and critical reviews, Android platform parity issues in Zen Pinball
- **Mentioned:** Podcast embargo period/announcement management

### Sentiment

**Negative** (-0.72) — Predominantly negative toward Zen Pinball app (economy rebalancing, design decisions, Android issues), mixed-to-positive on Home Pin (admiration for manufacturing independence, reservations on table design), positive on mobile gaming utility. Meta-discussion (tinnitus, personal updates) is neutral.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Zen Pinball monetization model creating negative player sentiment: freemium wrapper with forced ads even after $30-50 payment, imbalanced coin rewards, platform disparity (Android tournament rewards), making players abandon app despite solid core game (confidence: high) — Chris and Jared both express frustration; Chris hasn't opened app in month; describes model as making experience 'worse' with each tweak; references one-star review potential if Android was primary platform
- **[business_signal]** Home Pin pursuing domestic Chinese market expansion with game specifically designed for Chinese market rather than export, representing strategic pivot from Western-focused custom manufacturer (confidence: medium) — Jared states 'it's actually going to be a machine that's made specifically for the Chinese market' and notes 'that's a big market. That is a huge market'
- **[community_signal]** Pinball Expert (former Stern distributor) positioning as critical industry voice with new Thunderbirds video; community acknowledges satirical 'screw you Stern' energy in his 'Should I Buy New Stern' content (confidence: medium) — Jared mentions Pinball Expert's upcoming Thunderbirds video will 'surprise and delight everybody'; notes employee feedback that expert 'made him laugh' with critical commentary
- **[design_philosophy]** Thunderbirds flipper button design (concave 'saw-like pit') forces finger-tip pressing rather than pad-of-finger technique, creating ergonomic UX problem that requires immediate aftermarket replacement (confidence: high) — Jared describes personal experience: 'makes your finger go to the tips for pressing... you're using the tips of your fingers rather than using the pad' and recommends immediate replacement with $1.50 standard buttons
- **[market_signal]** Regional pricing variance in Zen Pinball ($30-50 USD equivalent in Australia) and freemium monetization structure driving comparison to Pinball Arcade's DLC model as superior value proposition for casual players (confidence: medium) — Jared notes $49.95 AUD (~$30 USD) for full unlock; both hosts compare favorably to Pinball Arcade's straightforward DLC approach without forced ads post-purchase
- **[community_signal]** Pinball Expert's transition from active Stern distributor role to independent YouTube critic represents industry figure repositioning toward content creation and critical commentary (confidence: medium) — Jared identifies Pinball Expert as 'was a Stern Pinball distributor' (past tense); notes he now runs independent business; produces critical review content alongside promotional content (Thunderbirds)
- **[product_strategy]** Home Pin's vertical integration strategy (manufacturing ~99% of Thunderbirds in-house) driven by supply chain vulnerability fears and desire to avoid Stern/competitor interference, mirroring risk management seen in other boutique manufacturers (confidence: high) — Jared explains Mike's reasoning: 'he didn't want to be beholden to another company... someone else in the pinball industry just cleaned out all their parts' and fears Stern influence on suppliers
- **[product_concern]** Zen Pinball challenge rebalancing reduces coin rewards dramatically (7→3 coins/day) while increasing score requirements (8B points for Attack on Mars premium), making grind mechanics feel punitive rather than rewarding (confidence: high) — Chris documents 28-day chart tracking showing changes; confirms verification with Pinball was 45b; describes decision to abandon four-challenge strategy in favor of basic grinding
- **[technology_signal]** Star Race System 80 edge connector deterioration requiring periodic professional maintenance or board replacement (Pinball Controllers System 80 board suggested), highlighting aging vintage hardware reliability challenges (confidence: high) — Jared isolates root cause through troubleshooting: black oxidation on connector fingers, loss of tinning on display board edge fingers, reseating resolves issues temporarily but requires monthly cleaning or professional reservice

---

## Transcript

 this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris frebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan g'day how's it going long time no speak right yeah this we we always say it folks but this is what happens when we're in that gap we've discussed all we can about the last pack we've speculated all we can about what there is to speculate about and we have to shut our mouths about what we know is coming and so we just kind of have one of these episodes where it's just like oh well what can't we talk about yeah what What can we talk about? I've got a few things floating around in my mind. I've got a few things too. We'll see how we go. I reckon we'll be able to piece together an episode here. I'm sure we will. Come on for the ride, folks. For those of you that watch us live on YouTube, feel free to pop into the comments section and make some suggestions. I had an ear test today, Jared. The funds of getting old. As they're still attached? My ears are still attached. Oh, good. They're apparently still working. The problem is, this happened probably, I don't know, maybe a month and a half ago or whatever. I suddenly became aware of ringing in my ears, which people would know as tinnitus or tinnitus or whatever they call it. Tinnitus, yeah. Tinnitus, yeah. and it's one of those things that once you notice it and I honestly have no idea how long it's been going on but now that I'm aware of it I can't not be unaware of it and it's it was starting to kind of drive me mental in terms of oh god is something really terribly going wrong I don't know and so yeah I had to go get my ear test and they were just like no you're just getting old see I have this At the moment right now, because I've got headphones on, like this sort of headphone that you see in the video, it tends to block out a lot of white noise. So therefore, the noises in my head start to speak to me. And some of those noises are the tinnitus that you're talking about. I can hear a high-pitched sort of tone. That's what mine is, high-pitched ringing. But that's all it is, really. And most of the time, if there's lots of ambient noise around, I just don't really notice it. And that's to say, I don't really notice it that often. When I'm going to sleep, I don't have any problem. It doesn't keep me awake or anything. It doesn't bother me. But where it is is if I'm trying to watch a movie or TV at low volume so that I'm not blasting out the wife and book teen, so that otherwise they're going to say, put on your headphones. I don't like having to wear the headphones. Okay. I don't want to, Mom, wear the headphones. I'll have the volume at a reasonable level, but it's not too loud. But the problem is, is like in quieter moments, I'm trying to hear the movie over the ringing in my head. All right. Yeah, that's annoying. And that's annoying. So you can actually get, you know, you can get surround sound 7.1 headphones. I have 5.1 surround sound headphones. Exactly. So you can actually have probably a better movie experience with the headphones. No, because they don't produce bass that thumps your chest. I'm sorry. Or just go like this all the time and then you can get it. Right. Well, get one of those transduces that you can mount on yourself and wear like a vest, a transducer vest. Look it up. Jared thumping his chest like that reminds me of a joke I'm going to tell. And it might cause us a lot of problems. But what I was going to say before we get to the joke that might cause us problems. I did learn something interesting about the tinnitus, and that is why you have the ringing in your ears to begin with. Why is that? Well, okay, so you got the inside, deep inside the ear, you got this little, what is it, the cochlear or whatever, I'm not sure. It's got all the little tiny hairs in it, right? Those little tiny hairs are what send the receptors for the sound. Well, when those hairs, some of those hairs get really, really small, They shrink down. And depending on which hairs shrink can cause you issues. Like, for instance, being able to go on rides that spin you around like a merry-go-round. Suddenly you can't handle them anymore because your hair is now too short and it's throwing off your balance. But in others, they deal with how you interpret sound. And eventually if the hair gets too short, it basically sends a signal to the brain of, I'm not working anymore. I'm done. Right? and the brain goes, oh, well, we can compensate for that. Boom, ringing. Yeah, or like while your brain is relearning what your ears are telling you, it's essentially repatching. I'm doing this. I'm like doing like an old switchboard motion in the video here, repatching all its connections going, oh, we'll just ignore that one. We'll just take that, unplug that from the switchboard. It'll be fine. We'll just use the other ears, and you won't hear it that much. Yeah. Okay, you ready for the joke that, sorry, folks, if you get offended easily. It's all Christ's fault. It's all my fault. I was telling this joke ever since I was even going to private Christian school. Why is it better? I'm just putting this out there, folks. Why is it better that Christ got crucified than stoned? Because it's a lot easier to make the sign of the cross. Now you go. It's terrible. anyway not as bad as I thought but still a terrible joke depending on who you're talking to that's god awful god awful pun wholly intended little bump yes okay on that note I'm going to do my one and only pinball thing that I actually have and what do you know what does it relate to why is it a pinball app oh yes of course it does why would i not be surprised exactly so i had been following this rigorous uh methodology of filling out a chart every single day i was not resetting the challenges i wanted to know what was possible within the time frame right and then after about 28 days zen changed the rules which i think you know as a caveat you should probably expect to happen every 28 days, by the way. Probably, I don't know. So anyway, they changed the rules. Now, granted, the only way that I even recognized that the rules got changed was because I was keeping these charts. But they changed them, and suddenly you were getting fewer table parts, you were getting a lot more tickets, and you were getting next to no coins, which was highly annoying. I went from doing an average of seven coins a day to getting three coins a day, if I was lucky. There was a couple of days where I got zero coins for the day, and I was doing all four challenges. Yeah, that's pretty shoddy. That's tight. So I wound up getting, finally getting enough coins, my 100 coins, to upgrade my final table, which was Safecracker. now the last time during the um the initial launch of the game itself when i plowed through all seven tables in 16 days is what it took me to max them all out um as soon as i'd maxed them all out and was no longer collecting table parts there was just no card to even flip i didn't get a card right it was like gone so i was curious to see what's going to happen now that i'm not collecting a table part. Well, lo and behold, I'm getting a coin instead. Oh. Every single time. I'm getting a coin. And I went, okay, well, all right, do I continue doing the four challenges, and that's it for the day, and being very angry. Oh, the one other thing they changed, which was just they changed the score requirements on Attack for Mars one ball. i noticed it when playing premium to get 15 star or yeah 15 stars it required 8 billion points on one ball right okay that's which is pretty hard brutal brutal but then pinball was 45b pointed it out to me and then i confirmed it myself that in basic challenge it got insanely more difficult too. Really? Yeah. Like it went from being only needing 800,000 for the first five stars to being 2 billion for the first five stars. Right. And it capped out at 4 billion for, I think it capped out at 4 billion for five stars or for 15 stars. Anyway, that's just for basic challenge. And it was like, it's kind of mean, kind of difficult. And then on top of that, you get the stupid safecracker challenges, which are just like ridiculous. You want to kill yourself. And then I already went over how I now hate Champion Pub. So you're slowly starting to build resentment for all the tables in the game, basically, because of the model that you're being exposed to. Precisely. Isn't that excellent? Yeah. So basically I came to the thought of, well, why am I beating myself up over this? If I'm guaranteed at least one coin per goal challenge, even in basic, why don't I just keep on resetting basic challenge over and over again and earning these things like wildfire? So that's exactly what I did. I said, screw it. I'm not doing the chart anymore. I will, if I don't want to play the premium challenge because I don't like that table or I think it's too difficult, I'm not playing it. Same thing with the pro. I don't want to waste a whole bunch of tickets just trying to accomplish it. What I'm going to earn the exact same amount of coins is if I just did the basic and reset the hell out of it. For 25 tickets? Like, bargain. 20 tickets. Oh, 20? Oh, they dropped it. 20 tickets. And on top of that, which, again, talk about what the hell are you doing? So basic challenge resets for 20 tickets. The other three challenges reset for five coins. Why in the hell would I spend five coins to recycle that? Well, I'm not even going to earn five coins in the process. That is, that's ridiculous. Five coins. So you want to spend hard currency. And it's super difficult to be. Again, I don't understand what the logic is. It's like, why would I possibly give you more coins than I'm possibly going to earn for tables that are way more difficult for the score goals? You should be giving me more for doing those, not less. You would think. You would think. So, yeah, I just... I think they'll probably find in 28 days when they look at the stats, statistical data for that particular change they've made, it hasn't been so successful as far as re-encouraging people to come back to the app, I would think. So I decided I'm going to farm coins like there's no tomorrow because I want to have all 300 coins before the next table pack drops so that I'm not worried about coins. Well, maybe it might be 300 coins or they could change it again. Right. So, you know, at least I'll be like there. So as it is right now, I'm at 260 coins. I'll probably have the other coins depending like the first couple of days. I was just, oh man, I was playing just a buttload of this. I was like, that's kind of not much fun either to just kind of grind through it. So I just, I dropped down to, you know, recycling a couple of times and just, If I can collect 10 coins a day, I'm cool and go from there. But then I've heard from other individuals, one in particular, who he's only got Safecracker left also. He recycled over 30 times and didn't get a single coin. Wow, that's pretty bad. That's terrible. That is terrible. He's got over 70,000 tickets. Oh, my God. 70,000 value list tickets. Excellent. Things are not quite balanced the way they should be. Just putting that out there. Just think how many tournaments he can play on Android and then not get awarded for the tournament at the end. That'll be great. Well, and that's another thing. We still have, yeah, the Android people are still complaining that they're not getting any rewards at the end of the tournament. We still got apps or ads that are crashing the app, denying you of your prize for watching the ad in the first place. We've got this imbalance of coins. We've got certain scores that are wonky. Tables that need the timer turned off because otherwise the score goals are just brutal to try and achieve. The game itself is fine. The game itself is fine. It's just all the other stuff around it that is dragging it down. The core game, the actual art of playing pinball, when you're actually in the game, when you're playing the pinball table, good. Good experience. All the other crap, not. Bad experience. Yeah, bad. But, you know, that bad experience can be removed if you pay the princely sum of $49.95 to unlock the entire table set in Australia. Or $30 at the moment. Yeah, but those of us that pride ourselves on not paying anything. Well, you've only got yourself to blame that's what i say to that there is still the issue of and i think that i i do agree with people hey if you go ahead and you pay that fee why are you still getting in-game ads well yeah that should be like one of the the main main things you get when you unlock a game in the freemium model is usually the freemium games have a remove ads option as a discrete option right because that's the thing that pisses you off the most as a player. But this Zen being clever, they want their ad click revenue and they still get you to view ads between the challenges, which I think, I guess if you look at it, the freemium wrapper around the game is exactly that. It's a shell around the main game of pinball. You don't actually have to play any of the challenges or any of that sort of thing if you don't want to and if you've paid your money. But if you choose to, it's your choice, then you do have to actually put up with the ads because that's part of that aspect of the game as far as Zen sees it. Yeah. So, you know, it's... It just seems every fix that they do, or I shouldn't say fix, every tweak that they do, is making the experience worse. And there's nothing being added that you make you go, oh, well, hey, that's a good trade-off. okay I benefiting on this end if I put up with this Instead it just like oh now I got that Yeah Yeah I do get it And if our primary platform was Android, and it has been Android for a very long time, the pinball, and it's only recently that Steam is now kind of the thing that I play everything on, I'd be spitting chips. I would not be a happy customer at all. I'd be leaving one stars on the app, probably. But, you know, honestly, I haven't actually opened the app for probably about a month, because I don't have the energy to expend on this model of game. I really detest this model. And because my primary platform is Steam, I just don't, number one, I don't really even have the time to play Steam. So why should I concern myself with the vagaries of the Android experience? Well, it's funny. The two places that I'm playing this, or reasons why I'm playing this, if you will, one, like today, after this podcast, I go and take my kid to martial arts. I got to sit there in the car while he's doing it. So what do you think I do while I'm waiting? I play some pinball. I play some pinball. The other thing is, right now, we're testing the beta for the new packs on Steam. it's such a pain in the butt to switch from the beta to the regular because then it's got to re-download all the tables and that takes a while and sometimes you lose data so it's just easier to stay in the beta until the beta goes away yep and then switch over to the so I'm not playing any other tables than what is in the beta right now either so again, boom, then I go to the phone and I can play those tables if I want you pick it up, you play it yeah I was in a waiting room when I was doing my hearing test I'm in the waiting room what do you think I'm doing playing pinball that is where mobile is genius and that I truly appreciate it it's just you have to I think if you as an android consumer of Williams pinball you have to make a decision as we've kind of just alluded to in our discussion here you have to decide whether you just want to play the game and you don't want to have to involve yourself with the challenges and and think about how you you are or are not getting good value from the challenges it's like just like you would with a with a fast lights the pimble arcade app you know each each time a table pack comes out you just buy the dlc and and that's it you've got your game you can play it you've got the pro physics you've got everything that you would want if you were just essentially wanting to play the game as a pinball table. And it's yours to do with which way you play with it offline. Everything's there for you. So if that was me, I would just be buying it. It's kind of funny. I was perusing YouTube the other day and I came across a video which was how to unlock naughty mode on Scared Step. Naughty mode? Naughty mode. That's what they were calling it. Naughty mode. Oh, naughty mode. Oh. and so I was watching it just to see what the person was talking about and they showed all the steps you need to go through in Pinball Arcade to unlock non-family mode which by the way in the operators menu the family mode or the non-family mode is set to default yeah but clearly i mean that's that was the default mode of the table when it you know was dropped off yeah so but oh my gosh i didn't because i know that i've i've done it but it was a long time ago and i remember thinking well that wasn't worth all the effort because as soon as i exited out of elvira it was gone i was gonna have to go do it all again um and yeah seeing all that i was just like, holy crap, that was talk about an experience that you don't want to go through. And he's sitting there going through all the instructions and here's what you got to do, here's what you got to do. And at the very end, he was like, oh yeah, you also have to have owned Pro Mode. Like, oh yeah, that thing. Oh yeah, that's just a little minor point that you probably should have brought up at the beginning of the video. Hey, you know, speaking of YouTube videos, you know how we were talking last week about that guy that you're watching on YouTube that was really, you know, wasn't really telling you a lot of information. Wasn't answering a single question even though it was answering, supposed to be answering all your questions, yeah. Well, I had something come up on Facebook the other day and it was from one of the guys that I, well, actually it's from one of the guys that I got Star Race from actually. He said, so could it have been by any chance a guy called pinball expert that this video was i don't know maybe because pinball expert is um well this guy's boss and um and the funny thing is well it's it's a protracted story but it put it this way it was it made him laugh to hear your comments about his videos hold on i'm looking up right now pinball expert and yes that is the guy i see the picture he's got a very stern face and a baseball cap on and that is the guy well but who got the good laugh not the pinball expert himself but the guy that's the employee of him hey what no that's no that is the pinball expert expert that dude in the video yes yeah that's yeah the guy that i'm talking about is uh is different But yeah, so he used to, but there's like, you know, he's set up his own business now and whatever. But he knew exactly who you're talking about. Here's the video. I'm looking at the video right now. Top 12. So if you want to look it up yourself, because now we're going to expose him. Top 12 FAQs from first time pinball machine buyers by the pinball expert Brisbane, Australia. Yeah, that's there. That's him. So the other one that you should watch and think about this, that at the time of recording this video, this guy was a Stern pinball distributor. You should also watch, should I buy a new Stern pinball? Oh, good. Yeah, you've got to watch that video. I see it right here. Yeah, so that one is one that you should add to your watch later queue, because I'll give you a, I'll summarize it without going into too much detail, but he kind of says, screw you, Stern. So, yeah. And apparently, there's a new Pinball Expert video coming out, which is going to surprise and delight everybody, because it's going to be telling you how great the new Thunderbirds is. Oh. You know what? I watched a video on YouTube that was basically titled The Only Pinball Manufacturer in China. I was like, oh, interesting. clicked on it turns out it's a fun it's home pin and thunder it was a really interesting video watching because i mean they they gotta delve into the fact that there's only one part on the entire table that they haven't made themselves correct this is why it took him so long to make it because he's literally he's basically producing all the parts himself so he said a while back that he did it because he didn't want to be beholden to another company who was supplying parts because what he saw in the past i think planetary pinball or one of these other like contract manufacturers were trying to get parts to do up their um remakes of all their tables and basically someone else in the pinball industry just cleaned out all their parts and they had no parts left they had no coils and so he could he could see that happening he thought yeah you know I'm just a small pinball manufacturer here. I don't want to be beholden to one of these U S companies that, you know, gets a whisper in the ear, you know, allegedly from Stern. And then, you know, it says, Hey, look, we're going to give you, you know, X amount of dollars to stop production or stop selling parts of this person. And there goes their business, you know? Yeah. So he's smart in that respect. He's smart in that. And I mean, good on him for, for doing all that. I just now, I mean, I know Jared doesn't like the table at all. I didn't have that. I didn't have that experience thinking that it was a horrible table. I just didn't find it very, like, to me, the spooky pinball tables are all much worse. I don't think so. Some of the early ones, I will say they're a little bit basic in nature, but some of their later ones, they've got a bit of depth to them. It's not a matter of depth. It's the matter of how they look, the build quality. I don't know. There's something about the spooky ones I don't care for at all. And the Thunderbirds one didn't give me that impression, but it also wasn't like, wow, that was really a lot of fun. No. And on top of that, it's got the horrible flipper button, which just… The saw-like pit of doom flipper button. It's terrible because it makes your finger go to the tips for pressing. That's what you want to be pressing with, basically, because it's so concave, your fingers just naturally go. And now you're using the tips of your fingers rather than using the pad of your finger. And it just doesn't feel right. I mean, if I bought one of those machines, that'd be the first thing I would do is swap that out immediately. And to anybody that is buying the Arcuda cabinet, which is using home-pinned parts, so I guarantee you you're going to be getting that exact same button because that's the button that I felt when I visited up at Farsight just put on order right now some new regular $1.50 buttons that you can buy from any pinball retailer out there you'll want them clear I think because I think they are illuminating them so you'll want the clear buttons but yeah but it's a good video though it is a pretty good video showing you like you as opposed to a stern factory video where there's this giant assembly line and all these employees and and you know you can see how it's all chugging around uh the home pin factory it i mean it's tiny and you really get a sense of hey if you only had 20 people making pinball machines this is what it would look like yeah so it's a worthy video to to check out yeah Yeah, I did see that cross into my feed as well. I think Google liked to service these sort of things for me as well. So, yeah, I didn't check it out because I kind of know the backstory to it. I knew exactly from the screenshot that was on the article, oh, yeah, that's HomePin. Yeah. But, yeah, it is a very – if you don't know a lot of the ins and outs of what HomePin have had to do to set up their business in the China area, there's actually also coverage on a previous episode of head-to-head pinball where they interviewed mike from home okay um shortly after his wife passed away which has been one of the challenges that he's had along along the way and all the other challenges that he's had setting up that business in china it was it's been a long march what's interesting is some people think oh you're doing it in china for cheap labor he was like actually the labor here is more expensive than elsewhere. These guys are highly skilled and they get their demand a high price. He goes, what the savings... Oh, and he goes, and rent on the buildings ain't cheap. He goes, it's not cheap rent for any of this. Where it is a bargain for price is all of the electronic components and buying all of that. It's all right there. So he doesn't have to deal with shipping. He doesn't have to deal with with any of that. It's just right there, and that's where all the cost saving comes in. And then as he's built up all these custom parts or whatever, and built his own part supply, he's not having to worry about all that either. Essentially, he can now, and I think he's doing this for the next pinball machine, it's actually not going to be a machine that's destined for outside China. It's actually going to be a machine that's made specifically for the Chinese market. And you think about that, that's a big market. That is a huge market. So here's another highlight from the video. Because he was saying, yeah, most of China, they don't know pinball machines. No. And so he had a getaway brought in. And I almost want to say that it had to be Frankenstein together, like from a couple of different getaways. Right. And put this thing together, got it running, and was like, there you go. because he said he was having a hard time, and this is both through, you know, he doesn't speak Chinese, or Mandarin, or whichever one it is. Sorry for saying speak Chinese. Yeah, either Mandarin or whatever the other one is, Cantonese. So everything has to go through interpreters, but the problem is if they don't have, if they've never seen these things or understand, how do you interpret that, right? So that was the whole point of bringing in Getaway. So it was like, does this make sense to you now? And the people were like, oh, okay. Oh, right. And so he said, And what was really shocking to him was he would come in sometimes either early in the morning or he would leave late. And he says the workers would be piled around the machine playing it like just for having a good time. And he was like, ah, see, it does translate. But then the problem was, was they were trying to copy everything that was how Williams built Getaway and trying to come to him. But this doesn't work how we're doing. And he's like, oh, that's the whole point. I don't want it to be this. Be Williams. This is just an example of what the finished product looks like, not how we're going to do everything. Yeah, exactly. It was kind of interesting. Like I said, watch the video, folks. It's 20 minutes. It's worth your time. Yeah, definitely. I'll see if I can find it and link it in the show. I'm good at tracking things down like that. Okay, so we're going to have Pinball Expert linked. we're going to have this china thing linked uh what else do we got to go for uh what pinball stuff do you have well i what did i do this week i think i might have isolated on star race the root cause of the problem with all this weird behavior i'm getting and it's it does have something to do with either the the board edges or the edge connectors on the table because it was going fine for for a while and then i sort of get the weird lighting thing happening again that i was experienced i was going okay well it was fine just the last play and now it's screwing up again so that's got to be interconnects of some description so got out the contact cleaner again um ran my finger with a cloth along the front and the back of all the terminals and there is a bit of like black stuff coming off And really it it one of two things It either I don know if the the actual connectors are transferring the black stuff onto the boards or the boards are doing it in reverse. But what I think needs to happen is that just periodically, unless I replace the board with a Pascal board, which is like the replacement for system 80 boards. I, I will just have to keep on maintaining these edge connectors and just cleaning them every so often, like every month, just go in there, wipe them clean. Because when I did it, I thought, okay, I booted it up again this morning to check behavior and I booted it and it did exactly the same thing. All the lights weren't lighting up correctly. There were like some lights on that weren't scrolling in sequence. I thought, all right, that's clearly a problem between either the, the, the main connector that goes from the logic board. I'm sorry, not the logic, the driver board down to the play field. So I pulled that off, reseated it, sure enough, fix the problem. So that's definitely the connector that's got a problem. Probably the easier fix for me to do would be get John Grist over from JWG Enterprises and get him to just redo that connector. And that would probably, in the long term, solve the problem. And, you know, I think I'm almost willing to do that because I think I've isolated the problem enough now. That's it. That is the thing that's causing the problem. The other option is that once I've isolated either, see, it could be the actual fingers that are on that edge connector. They could be dodgy or it could be the connector itself. Now, I've had a look inside the connector and it actually looks pretty clean. Like the pins and everything look pretty good. But I noticed that on the actual fingers that go into the edge connector, they're down to brass. They don't have any tinning on them. And normally what I do is take it off and re-tin it, but I try to re-tin the display board on this one and lift the track almost instantly. So you need really low voltage soldering iron, which I don't have. So I think it needs to be either re-tinned or something like that just to get it back, or maybe just use a heat station perhaps and just reheat the pad like that. That's the aspect of owning a machine that I don't like. I don't mind the mechanical stuff for instance, like I said I need to get new drop targets I don't mind replacing that stuff, that to me is kind of fun digging in, you unscrew, you get in there you put it all back together, hey, boom great, as soon as you get into the electrical stuff, that to me is just annoying I think the way I could resolve this problem is just go and spend 400 euros on a Pascal board because the guy that we were talking about before not the pinball expert guy, but the guy who told me about the pinball expert. He has done some work for this local builder of all companies here called Hutchinson's. And they're a really big construction firm. Like, you know, they build skyscrapers sort of thing here in Brisbane. And I think nationally as well, they're a national company. But they're really, really into Gottlieb System 80s. Oh, okay. They love them. In fact, they've got probably all of them that were ever released. Yeah, they're hardcore pinheads. And so what he's done is he's done a re-theme of a couple of these games for them. And as part of the re-theme to ruggedize the system, he's put in this board system called Pascal. And Pascal is basically a drop-in replacement that merges three boards into one and uses all the existing edge connectors in the game. So you don't need to do any rewiring. You just put this board in and you're done and off you go, basically. So, you know, if it continues to be a problem, I can look at maybe doing that. But, you know, that then adds a complication. And that is it adds an extra amount of money that I have spent on the table. And is the table even worth that? Exactly. Well, it's probably not. That's the thing. Exactly. Like I'm getting to the point now where I've spent close to, I think the last count would have been around $3,500 total on this table to get it to where it is now. And I'm not sure whether anyone would actually pay that for this table. I mean, it's a rare table. There's only 800 produced. But, you know, it's a question. I've seen other Godlieb System 80s going for around $2,500, which are just regular light standard bodies. And I don't know. I don't know if people would actually pay that much for it. That's what I've had to keep in mind with my 8-Ball Deluxe and Firepower. Unless you're doing a high-end restoration... You're not going to get the money back. No, these tables, they sell for maybe $1,000 tops. Yeah. and look you know even though I've clear coded the play field and I've done some touch ups here and there it's by no means a restoration of quality touch up like this is the best that I could do with the resources that I had but you know we're not talking about this guy here in Australia who does savage restorations and the work he does on playfields is just astounding like he will take he will take like a absolutely shot play field retouch it and then put this clear coat on that defies explanation you just have to see it it is amazing so that is what a pinball collector assumes as a as a play field that's being redone because that's like people were telling me with uh they were like well why don't you just buy a brand new firepower play field i'm like well because it's gonna cost me five or six hundred dollars i spent $500 on the entire machine. And if I'm going to drop that much money on the play field, well, you better believe now the back glass better start looking really good. And I better have the proper, you know, the, there's not going to be specks of dust and dirt and grime all over all the wires or anything. It's going to, it's got to all look beautiful in order to then sell. Come on. The price that you want. Tops three grand. Yeah. And that's, that's for like a mint. A mint one. Yeah. So, So, you know, I think I just need to look. There's two ways I can look at this. I can go, look, I've had so much fun doing the work on this game. It's been a blast. And I would do it all again, honestly. It's been an absolute pain in some respects to do the thing up. But it's been all the right sort of pain for me. I've really enjoyed it. So I could get to the point where if I sold it, I would feel okay with actually selling it. So that would be like, you know, I'm not selling a lemon essentially because I wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't want to actually like go, hey, this game, look at this. And then, you know, when people get at home and they start running into the sort of similar problems that I am, they then have to go and repair it. But if I could just make cost back on it, I'd actually be pretty happy with that if I sold it. But, you know, the thing is the pinball market down here is insane at the moment in Australia. Like, you will see people are selling, you know, games that have had 40 plays on them for basically the same amount as they took them out of the box for. Or maybe, you know, $1,000 less. And people are just going, yep, shut up and take my money. I'll have that. And, you know, project pins down here, which are like, you know, people going, look, this thing, the play field presents well, but look, it's not booting. It's nearly there. The lights are coming on, but it's not booting. It's $2,000. Yeah. so for a non-working game two thousand dollars in good condition so this is the sort of market we're facing down here and you know which makes me think well maybe i could actually get that money back for it for the right collector who actually wants it so yeah i don't know um or i could just keep on enjoying because i'm really enjoying it at the moment like you know after you get the connector problem sorted out on the on the table and it starts to work well it's great like it plays really well. I don't know. It might just hang around for a bit. It's funny. If you're on Facebook, they'll throw up now and then, here's a memory from what I got. Here's a memory of when my kid was playing Firepower. You've got to understand, I only had that up and running for a month and a half before I took it apart. That memory was from six years ago. Wow. six years ago. Far out. I'm like, I really need to, and I've already said what I'm, my intention now. Just put it back together. Play it. I'm just going to put the decals back on, put a final coat of clear on, and then I'll put it back together. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And then, do you know what? It's going to be great. Like, it's going to play well, and it's going to be like, the play field is going to be in much better condition than it was when you got it. And, you know, I think there's something to be said in some respects for player condition tables. Like, I'll tell you that there's this game on the floor at Netherworld. It's called Trident, and it is a Stern Electronics pinball machine. And this thing, it is probably one of the most reliable pinball machines on the floor, right? It rarely malfunctions as far as we're led to believe. And I know that the guy who runs this machine had it when we were actually doing the pinball tournament out at a Greenslopes Bowls Club. So this machine has been in his possession, earning him money for, oh, I'd have to say probably something to the order of three to four years. And it will have paid for itself five times over by now because I know he got it for a good price. And, you know, the thing is worn. The play field has got, you know, art missing from it everywhere. And, you know, plastics are in good condition, but the play field, it's getting pretty worn. But do you know what? It doesn't matter. It's still fun to play. You can still see everything. Everything works relatively okay. So who actually cares? Like, it flips, it works, it's fun. Who cares? Yeah. You know? So, yeah. So, in all this time of being in between pinball stuff to speculate about and playing or whatever, and this, again, God, it all starts from stupid YouTube. so my favorite band for many many many many years and still to this point basically was a new order okay and uh my if you want to say current active band it would be nine inch nails which right are you know too wildly different sonic experiences but anyway in my youtube stuff I came across some interviews with Peter Hook, who was the bassist for New Order. Okay. And they were recent interviews. And you've got to understand, back in the 80s, next to no information about anything New Order ever popped up. And they were this very much enigmatic band, didn't know what was going on. So all of a sudden, I'm seeing these interviews, and I'm like, oh, sweet, I can actually learn from things. So I watched all these interviews only to find out, and I knew this, but I didn't really understand it. But Peter Hook's no longer in the band. He basically left the band, and then the band reformed, even though he thought the whole band was splitting apart. But they don't actually own the name New Order. They have to license it from New Order. Oh, right. Which is kind of funny. And he was talking about the major, like, basically they were fighting the entire existence of the band. I was like, oh, I didn't know any of this either. So that then brought me back. I was like, you know what? I remember there was a documentary that I never got to watch way back in the day. I bet that's up on YouTube. So sure enough, type it in. Oh, yep, there it is, New Order Story. So I watched that. So I watched that, and then I'm like, I wonder if there's any books that I haven't been familiar with. Turns out that Peter Hook has written three books, and I wound up reading all of them. They're basically memoirs. So the first book is called The Hacienda, How Not to Run a Club. And this is what we're going to talk about mainly because it pertains to my fancy of opening up a pinball. Right. We'll touch upon that. But anyway, The Hacienda, for those that don't know, was a nightclub in Manchester that Factory Records and New Order basically funded. And it was open for, I believe, like 15 years. and it was the epicenter of what they called the Madchester scene, that style of music that style of club, the acid house and the rave culture all that, it emanated from this place, basically they were the ones that were the reason why Ecstasy got introduced into Robert Englunds it all spurned out of this and the amazing part is it never made a penny. Right. Not a cent. It ran in the red. Well, there were some years that it turned a profit, but unfortunately they owed so much money that there was no profit to be distributed. They ran in the red the entire time. So basically they just managed to pay off some bills with the profit they made. Yeah. Barely. Or hold off the creditors, more or less, is what you wind up being. Yeah, yeah. But then he also wrote this other book, It was called Unknown Pleasures Inside Joy Division and then Substance Inside New Order. So, oh, and I had also just watched because it was in my DVD rack. And I was like, oh, I haven't checked that out in a long time. 24 Hour Party People, which is about that whole scene. Scene, right. Anything that you've ever seen about Joy Division or any of the movies, it's always about Ian Curtis and always so somber and how and and, you know, brooding and everything. And I've always had this hard time understanding how the music went from Joy Division to New Order because New Order is always so light and jubilant. And then on top of that, in a couple of these things, even in 24-Hour People, Party People, they talk about how the reason why the band and a whole bunch of bands even formed was because they went to a Sex Pistols show and they fancied themselves punks. And I never associated Joy Division with punk in the least. After reading the book, it's like all the pieces are connected. And you start seeing, oh, that's how, oh, and why they sound the way they sound. Half the time it was by sheer accident. I mean, it's amazing all these little things that pop in. And then you get into New Order, that book, Substance, and it is basically Peter and Bernard Sumner, the singer, just at each other's throats the entire time. Um, and for anybody that's, uh, watched that Netflix documentary called the dirt, which is on all about the debauchery of Motley crew. And they have a book that's filled with all the debauchery. Turns out new order was just as debauched. Isn that the case with a lot of eighties groups though Well when you find out they were doing like three grams of Coke a day Well that a fair bit of Coke It just a fair bit I mean these people were off their heads 24 And not just for a couple of years. It's like the entire 80s and most of the 90s. So all of the albums produced during that time were under the influence. Every single one. Every single one. Yeah. It's just amazing. And none of that comes through in the music, which is what I find fascinating. But anyway, the you have to ask, you have to ask yourself the question, what would it have sounded like if they weren't? Oh, yeah. Well, one of the things that Peter Hook says is he goes, we sounded our best when we were most at each other's throats. he says the tension is what made the music what it was but there was a breaking point where if there was too much tension then they just stopped talking and then the music started falling apart again because everybody would evolve into their own little camps he used to say about like they would they would he was a day person and the rest of the band were night owls so he'd come in lay down his bass tracks and then leave and then come back the next day and the song would be completely different, wouldn't have any of his bass in it, it would be all this electronic sequencing and guitars, and then he would have to go in and put his bass in. He says the second he picked up his bass, everybody would scram and leave. He was always trying to fight to put his bass in, which is funny because the very nature of their sound is Peter Hook's bass. It's past that whole tension. That's very interesting. With the host, he ended up, and why I found this fascinating was the mistakes they made right off the bat. So right off the bat, rather than buying the property that they were going to put the club in, they went to lease it. And they signed a 25-year lease. 25 years? A 25-year lease. Because it would have been cheap, like getting a lease for 25 years. You would think, but you're locked in for 25 years on a nightclub. Yeah, which is generally transient. Right. So then they hired and the building that they were in, they used to build yachts in. It was a boat where they manufactured boats. I shouldn't say yachts. Sailboats. Sailboats. And so then they hired this designer to design the facility. They basically just gave him a blank check. Said, go for it. And he came out with his budget and they all went, okay and then promptly doubled the budget of what it was all going to cost and the club that he produced as they put it it was too far ahead of its time because all the clubs look like what it looks like what that club looked like then but then nobody was like why would i want to go here because they basically made it too light and airy with the paint scheme which they said then they constantly had to repaint because it got dirty so fast and then it was also too much of an open space, like tall ceiling and everything, which made it that was fine if you had the club packed out with 2,000 people. But when they first opened and they only had like 40 people, it was like standing in a giant cavern. That wouldn't be making a difference in anything. Well, they did say the acoustics suffered greatly for it. But it also just was like, how am I supposed to feel comfortable getting down and groovy when I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a giant warehouse? You know, rather than being in a tight confine. and then they made the mistake of being open seven days a week. Oh, so it was like, oh, yeah, I can just go to this thing whenever. It's not like a destination, right? Yeah, well, and part of the deal with Manchester for getting their license was they did it as a membership club, so people had to buy a membership, and that's what got them in. And so they were viewing it as, well, we want this place to be a place that you can just hang out and enjoy. but it was costing more to obviously run and employ the joint than it was customers coming in and the the oh my gosh the bookkeeping on this place was just so out of control nobody knowing what but one of the things right off the bat they didn't have enough money so they looked for somebody to help uh pay for this and so they went to a local brewery that they were going to be getting their beer from the brewery. Yes, we'll help fund it. But the bad news was that then they couldn't buy any of the alcohol at a discounted rate. Oh, because the brewery wants his money back, which meant that then they had to charge more money for the beer than other clubs in the area. Well, they didn't want to do that because then people were going to come. So they basically sold the beer at the same price that they were paying for the beer, so they never made any money off the alcohol. Which is kind of the main thing you make money off. Exactly. Because that's where you make the cash. So I'm thinking about all these things based off of our discussion of what it would take to open a pinball arcade and how you'd make your money going, holy crap. Yeah, you can't just build a place that you just want to hang out in because you think it would be cool because that's not going to earn you the money. You know, this is the thing. I think in Brisbane, this is related to something that I heard recently in Brisbane, that there's this guy, he's well-known in the Brisbane pinball scene. His name is Dr. John Cosson, and he's got a lot of pinball machines. And he actually opened up a little, he took rent out on this place, and he opened up this sort of place he called The Grotto. And I think he put about 20 of his machines on location in the site and found out the other day that he's closed it down. and he closed it down because he was finding, well, you know, I only open it up, you know, every so often and it's like I've got to pay rent on this seven days a week and even though, you know, he's like a surgeon, I think, so he's not short of cash, but still even he was going, this isn't just financially viable to do, I've got to get rid of this. So, you know, I think it's a very important point to make about how you balance your opening hours with the revenue that you expect to take in. And it's got to be, like, if you're opening, for example, just on the weekend to catch a weekend trade, for example, or late at night, for example, when people are back from work and going to that area where you've got all those things that they might want to do during the evening, you've got to do some careful math about how that's going to work financially because if you don't get that right you're in you're in the shiznit well that's what we have a place locally i don't know if they're national or not um but it's basically called three-day suit broker and that's where they've done the math where they're like we're gonna be open for three days a week that's it because we know that we're not selling suits mid-week to the business fan no we're only gonna sell them on the weekend when you've got time yeah exactly that's smart like you've got to be self-aware enough to go look you know we need to know when we're going to open. And I think in a lot of cases, unless you have things like beer and you're a pub or something like that, there's very little reason why you would want to open up on any day of the week. People don't have disposable time at their hands. The weekend would probably be the time to do it. And that would really keep your operational costs down from a power perspective and all that sort of stuff. It's also when you think about every arcade, the pinball arcade that you hear open up, it's usually because the person already has a collection of pinball machines. Yeah. Nobody's doing what I was saying, which is starting at zero and just, you know. And you're right. That really does change the balance of the startup cost for this. And like, you're basically going in with essentially that $100,000 worth of pins already got, where you're just looking for a place to put them and a place to house your passion. And that takes, well, $100,000 off the ticket. So that's going to make a very different business proposition. Exactly. That's just renting utilities and a bit of marketing. So I think I mentioned that Barcade was opening a location here in Los Angeles. And it's now open. And so I haven't gone there, but I was reading somebody's posts about it and everything. And what Barcade even went and mentioned, they go, we've got enough locations now that we have a whole mess of machines. And we'll just rotate them in across all of our facilities. And it's like, yeah, so your utilization rate is always going to be at, say, 90%. Yeah. as opposed to having to pull a machine, having it sit so that you have room for other machines to come in, and therefore your utilization rate just goes down the toilet. Down, yeah, exactly. You've essentially got money-making devices not making money because they're off the floor. Right. Yeah, that's a big problem. I know that from when I worked at Panavision, the motion picture rental house for camera gear. Renders and stuff, yeah. And they, there was two locations in the Los Angeles area. And I worked at this one that was in right in the heart of Hollywood. And then there was another one that was over in the Valley. And the Valley one is kind of, that was, that was where manufacturing was. It was the home office. It was the, you know, the prestige day. And the one that was in Hollywood was basically where you went. If you want to make a music video, a commercial, that's where you went. So everybody would check the gear out on the weekend and come back on Monday. and the gear was just constantly turning over. And they ran a utilization of our lenses and our camera bodies. And our lenses had a utilization rate of something like 90% to 95%. And the camera bodies were, I think, 80% utilization. That's so high. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Because basically your camera bodies are going to have to have time off to get serviced. And then be put back in play. And there's also the fact that certain camera bodies would go in and out of fashion for what people would use, right? Yeah. Compare that to the other location. The other location, their lens utilization was something like 50, no, I think it was 40%, and the camera bodies were maybe 60%. And that's basically because camera bodies, they did a lot of features and television shows, so the camera bodies would be out for long periods of time. But the lens is, because they were always catering to these high-end DPs, directors of photographies, that once that DP found a lens package that he liked, when he was done with his show, he'd go, put that on hold. And they'd go, okay. And then they'd go and put it on hold, and nobody could check it out until he worked the next time. So was this guy paying for the hold? No. They were doing it to keep him as a client. because there's lots of other camera rental houses and they didn't want him going to another camera rental house. And so it would be like, sure, we got plenty of lenses. Well, our location was always running out of lenses, so we were constantly calling over there going, do you have this lens? Can we use it? We just need it for the weekend. And they didn't want to do it. And so eventually we got a new president and he had looked at the numbers. He was like, oh, no, none of that. We're not... This lens is going to make money when they're actually being used, mate. so let's use the lenses, eh? Exactly. Who would have thought? Who would have thunk it, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, geez. All right, well... Well, I guess that's a show. That is kind of a show. Go figure. See, even when we have nothing, we can fill it. There's one thing that I've learned this week as well, and this is to do with gaming on the Surface Book 2. So I've been finding at certain points in playing pinball games the performance is going great, great, great. Then it just goes to the toilet. I get stuttering and all sorts of crazy stuff. And, you know, this thing's got a GTX 1060 in it with 4GB of RAM. Like, that's a pretty decent video card. So I was going, what's going on? So I looked online in some videos, and I found that there's a thermal throttling issue in this particular laptop. So it's not the GPU that's the problem, it's the CPU. And the CPU and Surface Books are actually in the screen. So the screen is like, you know, you can detach it, right? And, you know, walk around with it and it's like a tablet and then you dock it to the keyboard, which has the discrete GPU in it, which is the NVIDIA one. and what happens is the because of the thermal um management in the screen where the cpu is it gets hot and it just starts shutting down yeah so um yeah oh you're on mute too i think i didn't mean to i'd hit it to say something i didn't unmute myself yeah yeah that's that's kind of so you know what the fix is now on a three and a half thousand dollar laptop what you do is you put a fan behind it and it basically improves the thermal management by about 20%. So these people have these $3,000 service book 2s and they have a USB fan plugged in blowing on the area where the CPU is and it fixes the problem. Ridiculous, right? That's what I'm going to try. What do we call those? Life hacks? That's a life hack, alright. Well, we better go. We're going to go. So, hey folks, thank you once again for listening to us. I'm not even going to hit you with the socials this time. You know why? Because you should know them by now. But that's okay. We'll hit you with them next time. And speaking of next time, okay, hopefully we'll have some actual news to drop on you. There's just, like I said, we're in that lull. We got nothing. So feel free to hit us up on Twitter and stuff and tell us, hey, these are a topic that I'd like to hear during these times when we have nothing to say. So that'd be all good. All right. Until next time, thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlogAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 1164d2f0-9d5a-45dd-9d6a-c13843ebff8a*