You know, nobody is just reading off of a website or reading a press release. What makes them unique is everyone's individual tastes, their opinions if they offer them, what interests them. For me, I'm more about competitions, and you probably hear that when you listen to my profile, and the people that play in these competitions. So we get to know a little bit about these people, But there are other great podcasts where they dig deep into the new games that come out, and they talk about the collecting side of it, which is fascinating to me because I don't consider myself a big collector. I have machines, but it's not about mods and toppers and things like that for me. But I love the passion of the people, and I can't say that I won't be that one day. Maybe I will. Just right now, it's more about, okay, I want to learn the games. But I love the pride that people have in collections, and you must too. Yeah, like if it wasn't for people like Mike Dimas who are purchasing machines and make them look beautiful, people like myself who are not at all good at fixing up machines, not very handy that way, couldn't have beautiful machines to purchase. I consider myself, first and foremost, a competitive pinball player and every other type of pinball player in the middle at the very end a collector because I would always rather purchase. I am half Dutch, by the way. I'd always rather purchase a player condition machine just to get to learn it better. of course in good working condition, than maybe an expensive, really high-end collector's edition of a great game. That's just me personally. Now, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd be getting all collector's editions. But for me, just to keep rotating in and out like I have, I don't have a lot of money. I'm not a super wealthy person, but I managed to make a good connection with Mike Dimas here in the city. I've now rented, I think, seven machines off him. So every three months or so, I rent a machine. He brings it over. He sets it up. He helps me level it. We play a few games on it. He teaches me the ins and outs. And then I have the next three months to just enjoy this game. And if something breaks down or has some issue, he comes over and helps me with it. Nice peace of mind. Oh, it's incredible. Now, when I go to the East Coast, of course. That's what I want to get to. I'll have to find a Mike Dimas. If you follow Albert on Facebook, you'll know that he and his wife have bought a place out in Nova Scotia. And Nova Scotia is a beautiful part in the Maritimes. I love it out there. I have family out there. And I saw the property that you're going to be purchasing. I guess you've already purchased, you're going to enjoy that huge, huge spacious place and a lot more pinball opportunities, I believe. I like to tell people I'm moving out there 25% for my sons. I have a 14-year-old and 10-year-old, and we're in a two-bedroom house. So the 14-year-old's been in a bunk bed with his brother for like eight years since we moved there. So he's going to get his own bedroom now. He's got his own bedroom. It's on the other side of the house. He actually has his own stairs. They used to be like the servant stairs or the maid stairs or something, you know, So you can even sneak in late at night, like I said. And when we get out there, I also get to expand from having two pinball machines to I've done the measurements, everybody, six to eight machines if I switch the way the door comes in. So now, of course, with me doing live streaming on Twitch, I would love to have more pinball machines at home. And the only way for me to financially get the seven acres I'm getting, the three bedrooms I need, and an extra room for pinball streaming is really to move out there because that would be $300,000 to $400,000 here somewhere in Ontario. and significantly less out there, which gives me more money to come to Pemburg and Louisville and Texas Pinball Festival. It just should provide me with some extra funds to be able to go do all the awesome pinball stuff I want to do. So, Albert, what are some of the shows that you're going to be looking at going to? Well, this year for sure, thank God, I'm coming to Pemburg. So I'm extremely, extremely stoked about that. I want to do Expo, of course, in Chicago. And then really anything I can afford to go to where I can meet some of the Pinball Nerds podcast fans, Maybe give them some stickers, some high fives, do mini-pinterviews. I don't know if you heard my expectations for Pemberg, but I want to do 100 mini-pinterviews. Wow. So depending on if it's an EM or a newer machine, you'll either get three questions or five. But just something fun, enjoyable, really quick. I might put like five to ten interviews per episode and just literally record them. Stockpile. Boom. No, I'm just going to record them and just hit go. not even pre-listen to them, just let them off into the world and hopefully people like them. Albert, I love what you've done. When you first started this podcasting and blogging, did you think it would get to where you are today? Now we're almost at 200 and it's really grown. You've got some fame across North America as people reach out to you and enjoy your different take on pinball. I am extremely shocked. What I thought would happen is a couple of the local people would like it. And for the first 100 episodes, I did not post it to a single link on Pinside. I didn't put anything on Facebook. I didn't tell anybody except for my best friend. I didn't even know about it. I know. And then I saw you at Mike Dimas' house for Loppel. And you said to me, Albert, did you hear they gave you a shout out on Slam Tilt? And I said, are you serious, Jeff? Someone knows about my podcast. This is incredible. That means Jeff Teolis knows about my podcast. That means Bruce and Ron know about my podcast. And then I listened to it. And at the very And they said, and have a good day, Albert Agar. So what they do at the end of Slam Tilt is they just thank the last person who liked them on Facebook. Which happened to be me, but they didn't say anything about the Pinball Nerds podcast. And when I was disappointed from that, I thought, well, I'm going to start telling people. And that's when I actually started sharing it with people. Why didn't you share right away? Were you nervous? Were you shocked? Very nervous. Really? Very nervous. Because you don't come across that way in person and in listening to the podcast. I think it's because I started by listening to yours, of course, because I found out someone in my league had one. And then I started, you know, you give a throat to Head to Head, and then I started listening to all the different podcasts out there. And I thought these people sound like either they're in radio, television, production of some way, shape, or form. They know what they're talking about. It sounds crystal clear. You know, there are people with millions of subscribers on YouTube, and their videos don't sound nearly as clean and as crisp been as well done as a lot of the pinball podcasts. I thought, maybe there's room for a blogger. But if I call myself the pinball nerd's blog, it doesn't have the same feeling. So I wanted to be like a video blogger. And I actually recorded two episodes for YouTube. And they were god awful. So I deleted them. They're not even on my one terabyte. I had a whole terabyte on my computer, and I got rid of them because they were that awful. And I couldn't even stand watching them. And then I recorded a blog, like through like audio version of a blog, i.e. a podcast kind of. And I thought, this is okay. I mean, I guess if I was really bored, I would listen to it. and from there I think I've got better. I think by episode 100 I was kind of figuring out what I like to talk about and for me my most exciting episodes are to record. I did one that's so boring that no one listened to but it was the top 10 nudges you need to learn. I heard that one, yeah. Was it okay? Yes, yes, yes. It a little slow I get that But when I nerd out the most I enjoy doing those episodes but the ones that get like 70 listens in 24 hours are the short two ones So okay who do you do the podcast for Do you do it for you or for your listeners? Originally, I would say the first 30 to 50 when I thought it was just me as a listener and I was getting four to five listens, it was 99% for me. And slowly, I would say by episode around 100, once I did the one for Mark, that was my very first podcast that got 100 listens. And, of course, got a showdown this week in pinball and such. So I was extremely excited by that. And then all of a sudden the pressure comes in a little where should I make it kind of for the listeners? And I think from like 100 to like 110, I don't even like those episodes because I was maybe a little grumpier than usual or trying to be more, you know, Howard Stern-ish and be a little bit like judgmental and stuff. And I thought, that's not me. I want to be the fun guy who just talks about falling back in love with pinball, doing cool competitions, talking about the enjoyment of playing pinball and making pinball more popular instead of tearing it down and pointing out minor mistakes in manufacturers. That's interesting that you say that's not me because I've been doing this almost three years now, and I have good days. I have bad days. I have opinions. and I think one thing in the other days, maybe with a little more education, I think something different. So once you put it on a podcast, yeah, it's in stone, but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to change your mind and have different feelings. Right. So if I were to go back and listen to my older episodes, I probably would cringe because that's not what I sound like right now or what I'm thinking right now, but it was at the time. So I'm okay with it. Do you have difficulty with that? Because I think you just said, I don't want to be like that. That's not who I am. I was angry. I only have deleted two podcasts that I've completely recorded ever. And both of them, the one, three people out there have heard it. Because I finished recording it and I hit upload before I edit or touch anything or listen to it or check the audio qualities or anything. Afterwards, sometimes I listen to it. But my wife came home from work and I said, I think I was too angry for this podcast. I was angry at a certain pinball situation. And she listened to it and she said, it's funny and it's interesting if that's your whole shtick is being angry and rude and mean. Like if you're the Howard Stern of Pinball Podcast, great. But that's not you. You're the fun-loving, you love pinball, you love talking to people. Every pinball competition I've ever been at, I always chose to socialize over learning more about the game or reading my phone or asking people about the game. I'm just so interested in seeing my friends who I maybe haven't seen for a couple weeks. And then I always prioritize the enjoyment of the night over even doing well in the competitions. And that's probably, you know, I probably could have done better in a couple competitions had I not had an adult beverage or two or prioritized speaking to so many people I hadn't seen in a while, right? The self-enforced count to ten rule, all right? You know, you're angry, you're angry, just count to ten. Are you still angry after ten? Then maybe, okay, you've settled down a little bit. That's interesting that you say that. If it gives context, I was known for some period of time as being a little bit hot-headed, right? So I try to go out of my way to be more of a peaceful, zen type of pinball player now. And I found it really does help. I tend to get angry far less often while playing pinball. I usually do a mantra in my head or some type of thing while I'm playing that kind of calms me down. Do you know what's interesting about who you are on the podcast and who you are maybe in real life, let's say? Hopefully in real life. On this podcast, this one right here, I try to have not even an interview, not even a question and answer thing. I try to have conversations. Right. Really, to get people to know who my guest is, if they don't know already, or maybe some insight. But when I go on other podcasts, I kind of change my role a little bit. I'm much different on other podcasts because maybe I'm asked an opinion, or maybe I want to goof off a little more and tell some jokes or be a character, whatever the case may be. But they're still both me. It's just I'm conscious of what this format is on this podcast. Now, earlier you just said that Pinball Nerds is more of a blog, but you called it a podcast. To me, Pinball Profile is not a podcast at all. It's not in the title, but it's under that guise of podcasts. But really, it's just pinball conversations with people. That's all it is. It's interviews. If I had to call it anything, it's an interview show. Right, because you're not doing the typical news each week and reviews and updates. Pretty much never. Because there are other people that do it way better than I do, and that's what their format is. And that's who we go to to listen when games are launched and whatnot. But mine's more about people. It's always about people. So is it a podcast? I guess maybe. But you said you wanted to call it Pinball Nerds Podcast because the word blog doesn't really associate. But really, it is a blog. I think it's more of a blog cast. So I've been trying to joke around with that term. But podcast was just what people were familiar with. So I think I went with that. Maybe for the place to find the audio. Is that why? Because people know where to find podcasts? Right. I mean, if you type in pinball podcast, no one's typing in pinball blog into Google. So they're never going to find me that way. Do you know what I mean? Sure. And I've said this several times. I got to, with our friend Ian Hayward, I got to live stream on Total Nuclear Annihilation. And I told this to Ian. Five minutes into doing that live stream, I said, I don't want to do a podcast anymore. And what I meant was, I don't want to stop podcasting, but I enjoy streaming, I think, either equally or even more because you get direct feedback from the people you're streaming with. They can ask you questions right there as it happens. And so I have told all of my listeners, now that I'm streaming more, I love streaming so much, I'm not going to have as much time for podcasting. I may no longer be your daily dose of pinball, but hopefully I'm still going to do a couple a week. And for me to go down from seven a week to two or three a week, that gives me so much more time for streaming. Now, if I come up with an idea for pinball or a brand new machine like when Willy Wonka came out, yeah, I did two or three because I had a lot to talk about. But I'm just not going to feel like I need to podcast every single day, especially when I'm streaming four or five-hour live streams two to three times a week. And you're almost up to 10 now. By the time this airs, you probably have your 10. Although moving and stuff, maybe you're going to be putting that on the back burner for a little bit. Yes, and I know this isn't exactly about pinball, but from May 25th until Canada Day, I will be hiking the Bruce Trail. Oh, yeah, you've got to talk about that. Yes, so it's almost 1,000 kilometers, 600 miles for any non-metric people listening. for seven weeks. I'll be back. I'm coming back Sunday, Mondays. I get to do what's called a zero. So my wife is picking me up on Saturday nights when I'm finished the last day. I have five different friends which are walking with me from Tobermory until around Toronto. And then I'm filling in holes or walking by myself, which is totally fine. But I planned this out for a long time. And yes, Pimble Nerds, I will still be putting up podcasts from time to time while on the trail when I can actually get data or non-roaming. And if I ever come into contact with a rattlesnake, I will do a cool podcast. There's tons of them up there, and I'd love to do one in listening distance.