Episode 853

Snapper Boat Latch
Watch the demo of today's gadget.



The GizWiz Gets Slammed
Dick has had the same telephone number with Verizon since he moved to Manhattan, but recently he got "slammed".  Without his authorisation, his number got sold to XO Communications, which doesn't do residential telephone service anyway, and has apparently sold the number on to Vonage.  Dick has had to make numerous telephone calls to totally inaccessible hotlines on which you need to wait forever.  It's against FCC rules to slam a customer.  Finally after 8 days of telephone hell, Dick's Verizon service returned.

Forbidden Gardens
Leo is looking forward to seeing the Terracotta Warriors in Xian on his China Tour.  Jenny Vincin tells Dick that he need not feel left out.  He can head off to Katy, Texas, to visit the Forbidden Gardens which has 6,000 one-third size replicas of the terracotta soldiers.

Episode 852

BlueAnt Q1
For a direct comparison of new bluetooth headsets including the Q1 and Plantronics Voyager Pro, see a review by Phil Baker (whose book was referred to in Episode 795), and his follow-up review of the new Jawbone Prime.

BlueAnt Q1

Ask And Ye Shall Receive
On the last TTTT (Episode 847), which was the first show recorded on the same session, Leo was stumped as to why the Daily Giz Wiz podcasts have made their way into a listener's Music Folder on iTunes and got played in Shuffle mode along with the rest of his music.  Matt Pokky (for his previous letter to Leo, see Episode 652) happened to be listening to the live stream and managed to send in an answer before the end of the recording session, and Leo was astute enough to have taken notice of it.  Matt had the same thing happened to him about 18 months ago, when Apple decided (in iTunes 6 or 7) to include podcasts into Music, which maxed out his iPod's capacity.  Matt's workaround was to make a smart playlist called iPod Music, with the parameters "Genre is not podcast" and "Podcast is false".

Episode 851

Previous Clickfrees
For previous products of Clickfree which Dick talked about, see Clickfree Backup Drive (Episode 629), Clickfree DVD Backup (Episode 639), and Clickfree Transformer (Episode 753).  And here's a demo of the DVD Transformer.

Backup, Backup
Leo has 14 hard drives installed in various computers in the studio, over 30 just scattered around, and even more in the rest of the TWiT Cottage.  After he lost the video recording of Episode 600, he now makes sure that everything is recorded and backed up.

Game Show Memories
Since Dick was involved in game shows other than Match Game, listeners have requested Dick to do another show in the style of his earlier Match Game Memories.  He might just do that.  A small number of Match Game Questions are still left for sale.

A Petaluma Nobody
Jim Driscoll from Atlanta, who was looking forward to Episode 7795 in his last letter (Episode 534), met recently in the San Francisco Bay area a colleague who lives in a little town called Petaluma.  Jim asked her if she knew Leo.  "Leo who?"  Jim went on to astonish her with his intimate knowledge of the Butter and Eggs Parade.

Episode 850

Dick's Model 604-C
Dick's version of the Altec Lansing Model 604 Duplex Speakers is the 604-C.  At the time of writing, there is one available on eBay.  For pictures of some Voice of the Theatre models, see Episode 137.

More about the Gadget Warehouse
Dick's Gadget Warehouse is a 10' x 10' x 10' room, complete with floor to ceiling shelves, with no windows and no doors (well, there must be one door), at Sofia Bros Storage Center, 475 Amsterdam Avenue, New York.  You can see some pictures of the warehouse taken by Leo when he visited it back in Episode 246.  For a look inside the building, see Sofia Bros' video:

Keeping One's Sanity
Chris Lind Hodson, from Richland, Washington, started working last August as a high school graduate.  Listening to the Daily Giz Wiz and other TWiT shows helps keep his sanity and dignity, as he stacked pop bottles and juices in the cooler of 7-Eleven and filled oxygen tanks in a different business location.  If Dick and Leo should one day hear about an explosion relating to oxygen, it might have been Chris.  Fatalistic thoughts, but understandable when you know where Chris lives.  Richland, Washington is sandwiched between the US Army's Umatilla Chemical Depot to its south and the Hanford Works to its north, home of the atomic bomb in World War II.

Episode 849

Altec Lansing iM237/Orbit MP3 Speaker



Companion Drug and Endless Disclaimers
Dick and Leo are baffled by some TV ads, including one (called Abilify, thanks to DrMom, the chatroom's resident doctor) which is a companion drug to the anti-depressant drugs you are already taking, and those ads with endless disclaimers that spill over to the next ad.

New Home Office for TWiT
G' Day from over-the-road truck driver Kevin Cameron-Parks, an Aussie who has lived in the States for 11 years who has a Swedish wife who does not speak English with Leo's Swedish accent. He heard that Leo is looking for a place for the TWiT Home Office, and he is more than happy to offer his humble abode at Gassville, Arkansas to Leo.

Read about all the other suggestions at Answer Giz Wiz Questions.