Summary
This week Chris gives a vague review of a film called ButtBoy, while Sam has an update on his car window being fixed, he also answers a listeners question.
Scientists have worked out that hippos can get airborne, ground breaking stuff. While the Japanese government has finally stopped using floppy disks.
Has Chris found Sam’s new business idol? Are ammunition vending machines a good thing? And what is up with a secret society involving gnoms?
All this and much more. So come have a listen and tell a friend.
Links
ButtBoy
Spain trialing a new passport
Hippos can Become Airborne
Japanese government finally stopped using floppy disks
Sam’s new business idol
Gnomes get stolen and then returned
Ammunition Vending Machines
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:21]:
Hello, and welcome to episode 489 of the Chris and Sam podcast.
Chris [00:00:25]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:00:26]:
And I’m Sam. Welcome along to your weekly fix of randomness technology in life and being disappointed in other people. I’ll get onto that later. Okay. What’s been happening?
Chris [00:00:35]:
And I’m like, I hope it’s not me. No. No. The only person I’ve disappointed this week is Adam. I’m sorry, Adam.
Sam [00:00:42]:
What did you do?
Chris [00:00:43]:
I, made an appoint well, we have a standing appointment to meet up every Wednesday. Last week, he said, something to the effect of, I’m going away Thursday. Can we meet early? Because I’ve got to get the kids ready and all that, so we’ll meet Tuesday. So I said, sure. And I put in my diary for Thursday and made other appointments on on Tuesday.
Sam [00:01:02]:
As you do?
Chris [00:01:03]:
He was waiting for me and
Sam [00:01:04]:
It’s the life of Chris. The life of Chris has struck again.
Chris [00:01:07]:
But while we’re on that subject, so we did catch up with Adam, and he said, oh, I’ve got a film you should you’ve definitely got to check it out. I’m not I’m not saying it’s a great film, but it’s a film you it’s definitely good topic for discussion for, the podcast.
Sam [00:01:21]:
Now Chris has seen it. I don’t even know what this is. Yeah. So he has not told me Adam ahead of time.
Chris [00:01:26]:
No. So I’m gonna tell you what it is now. And I’m not gonna tell you much about it because you have to go and see.
Sam [00:01:32]:
Okay.
Chris [00:01:32]:
Okay. So it’s on Tubi, which we talked about last week, I think tubi.com yep so it’s like a YouTube for old movies that’s free type thing yeah it’s free so which is cool And so this particular movie, Adam says he’s heard of it from the festivals a while back. Oh, that’s cool. Bad things. Good and bad things. Said, you gotta check it out.
Sam [00:01:57]:
Okay.
Chris [00:01:57]:
And he goes, but but it’s not sexual. Just so you know, it’s not porn. And I’m like, what? No. What? Okay. And so he said, it’s called Butt Boy.
Sam [00:02:08]:
Okay. Butt Boy.
Chris [00:02:09]:
Butt Boy on Tubi.
Sam [00:02:11]:
And it’s a feature?
Chris [00:02:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I I it’s got some slow bits in it, but I tell you what. Hang on. I wrote some notes here when I when I watched it. I said, first of all, it goes from 0 to a100 before the title credits.
Sam [00:02:26]:
Oh, good. So it it grabs your attention.
Chris [00:02:28]:
I’m like, what the hell’s happening?
Sam [00:02:31]:
Excellent. That’s what you need. You need that.
Chris [00:02:32]:
And then the title credits come up. Okay. Oh, we haven’t even started yet. We’ve done it.
Sam [00:02:37]:
Okay. I’m looking forward to it already.
Chris [00:02:40]:
And then it gets weirder.
Sam [00:02:41]:
Yep. Of course.
Chris [00:02:42]:
And it’s one of those movies that as you go and to be fair, I was watching this while I was trying to work, which is never a good thing any night. But it’s it’s one of those things that you go, I shouldn’t be watching this, but I can’t stop. I have to see what happens. And, yeah. It’s a pretty deep I think it was worth sticking to the ending. I I do. I I will say one thing. Be warned, it may impact your suggested videos because the next one that showed up for me because
Sam [00:03:15]:
Oh, yeah. No no
Chris [00:03:16]:
no no. Just picks up the next one was Rick Tuma.
Sam [00:03:20]:
That sounds like a winner too.
Chris [00:03:22]:
I was like, nope. I’ve had enough butt stuff today.
Sam [00:03:26]:
Fair enough. It it sounds like there’s a great combination of films on tubebee.com.
Chris [00:03:32]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. Anyway, check that out. Butt boy.
Sam [00:03:36]:
Last week, I said my car got broken into. Oh, that’s right. Yes. So Monday, I go to Smith and Smith Glass. 8 o’clock. I’m standing there with 4 other customers at 5 past 8. My ride is waiting because I’m working Cambridge that day. So I’m like, oh my gosh.
Sam [00:03:51]:
And, some young guy turns up. Just drives in. Oh, hang on. It’s gonna open up. And then, this old guy’s talking to me and we’re all just standing there and he goes, do I give you the keys? And I’m like, what? Like like, for some reason, he assumes I work there. Yeah. Don’t know how he gets from point a to b. And I’m like, no.
Sam [00:04:14]:
We are all waiting for this one guy who’s turned up late. We’re all in the same boat. Oh, okay. Cool. Give them my keys, all this. I said, I’m gonna leave the car here all day. They’re like, oh, okay. Cool.
Sam [00:04:25]:
And he goes, oh, where’s the rubber? I said, I don’t know. I can’t put it in. The rubber seal’s not there. I’m like, cool. So in between these guys break into my car, the rubber’s fallen out on the road or they’ve ripped it out completely because I don’t remember seeing it when I got to the car. It’s definitely not in the car and now Smith and Smith can’t attach this piece of glass.
Chris [00:04:48]:
Now I would have thought rubber was part of the things they get with glass.
Sam [00:04:52]:
You would think so. Yes. Thank you very much. Or you think they might ask me on the phone and go, hey. Do you know if the and then he’s like, oh, well, I can’t do anything. I said, I’ve gotta go. I’m leaving my car here. He goes, oh, well, I I had a piece of MDF that I’d fashioned into this piece of Yeah.
Sam [00:05:11]:
Yeah. I
Chris [00:05:11]:
remember you saying that.
Sam [00:05:12]:
Anyway, so he goes, oh, well, pull that out and I’ll put a piece of plastic in there. It’ll be a bit more secure, like, like, more than the wood, but people can still break in. Cool. So, yeah, Tuesday coming up. They may be able to fix it.
Chris [00:05:27]:
I I’m I’m surprised. I thought when you order the window because they had to order a right hand window for you.
Sam [00:05:33]:
I think they are getting these pieces from scrap dealers. Yeah. From dealer, like secondhand dealers. Because he opened up the package, like, that’s what he was rummaging around with, when I got there and I was just like, oh, what are you doing? And, you would assume it would come with it. When I didn’t have the rubber in the door from the panel beaters, they got that in almost overnight ready to go. These guys, Tuesday next week maybe. And the woman on the phone who booked it in, she they’re really good, but she’s like, hey. If we get it in sooner, we’ll let you know and you can bring it in.
Sam [00:06:07]:
And I was hoping it was gonna be today or tomorrow. I’ve not heard anything, so I don’t know where this piece of rubber’s coming from. So I’ve been catching the bus all day every week. Yeah. Sarah drops me off at work in the morning because it’s school holidays at the moment, so she’s not working. And then I catch the bus home.
Chris [00:06:23]:
Yeah. It it bus isn’t too bad. I don’t know what it’s like where you are. Like, it’s pretty good where I am.
Sam [00:06:28]:
I mean, they run on time. It’s just you just don’t know what weirdos are on the bus.
Chris [00:06:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. It should be a a segment of the podcast. What I saw on the bus today.
Sam [00:06:38]:
No. It’s not it’s not that exciting. I do have the ability to catch 3 different bus routes, and I still end up near my house.
Chris [00:06:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got 2 basically. Orbiter and the, metro, metro meteor. Meteor.
Sam [00:06:53]:
Oh, yeah. I’ve got the comet. I’ve got the other one on my side. So, anyway, that happened. So annoyed. So I drove the car here tonight because it’s parked right outside.
Chris [00:07:02]:
Cool. Right. Sweet.
Sam [00:07:03]:
Oh, I do have to say Jamie Oxley did send us a message and he had a question. Thought I’d cover it.
Chris [00:07:09]:
Right. Yep. Sure. Shoot.
Sam [00:07:11]:
I I’ve talked about this in the past a little bit, but I’ll I’ll go for this is it. This is the last one. I know Tom will talk about it. He said to me, in your last job because he’s quite fascinated, I think, in what I used to do, which was working with speed cameras.
Chris [00:07:22]:
He works on the on the roads all the time, so I imagine.
Sam [00:07:25]:
So in Australia, he said, look. They are parked in stupid spots or they’re parked sort of in between speed zones, and they seem to be catching people.
Chris [00:07:32]:
Yeah. We we’re at the zone changes. Yeah. Because that was always a
Sam [00:07:36]:
Yeah. So, he said to me, in my opinion, doing it for so long, do you think that they actually reduce crashes, reduce harm, and actually make a difference? That’s the question.
Chris [00:07:46]:
Okay. Good question.
Sam [00:07:49]:
So I will start by, Waikato Uni actually has a, department run by a guy called Sam, I think it is. I can’t remember his last name. He’s a scientist, and he does a lot of, studies around traffic and how to minimize speeding. And I think he might be one of the go to people for when they do city planning for that sort of thing. And, he said that the number one thing is a marked police car slows down people and the number 2 thing is a speed camera vehicle. And, he said time and time again they can prove that. And he’s put people in simulators for months on end, months on end, months on end, and he goes, we literally change everything in the simulator to Russian science and the people do not know because they’re driving They
Chris [00:08:34]:
don’t notice.
Sam [00:08:34]:
They don’t notice. They’re driving the same thing over and over again. So he said, when it comes to planning, which is a bit different to the speed camera thing, he goes, we have to do physical things so people will understand. So if you drive into a small town in New Zealand, there’s bigger signs that say welcome and they sort of stick out a little bit or you may have
Chris [00:08:53]:
The color of the road might change. They got it looks like a speed bump that is not
Sam [00:08:56]:
Yep. Yeah. Or you might have, sort of trees that look like they’re coming in on an angle and that’s all the perception thing. So if you’ve got stuff next to you, you automatically wanna slow down because you think something’s gonna happen. Yeah. So that’s a big part of that. As for do I think? I don’t know. That’s the big question.
Sam [00:09:15]:
Like, when I left, my big boss said, you know, farewell and just remember you don’t know how many lives you’ve saved. I was like, okay. Like, I don’t know if I believe in that. I think that there’s dickhead drivers everywhere. You can’t do anything for that. I do think and I think this is I don’t have the article on me right now. One of the states in Australia is doing some really intensive driver training now for people learning to drive and stuff. They brought it in as legislation.
Sam [00:09:43]:
I think that’s the only way everybody can get better and there’s less harm
Chris [00:09:47]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:09:48]:
Is to have really good driver training at the start. I’m sure Scandinavian countries do it really well.
Chris [00:09:52]:
You’ve you’ve heard my my theory on this.
Sam [00:09:54]:
What’s your theory?
Chris [00:09:55]:
My theory on this is everybody needs to get a motorcycle license before they get a car license.
Sam [00:09:59]:
Imagine that.
Chris [00:10:00]:
Because you change your perception about speed when you are riding a motorbike and you’ve got nothing around you.
Sam [00:10:07]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:10:07]:
Yeah. So because I obviously, I I learned to ride a motorbike. I had my license for a motorbike.
Sam [00:10:13]:
When he was 5?
Chris [00:10:14]:
5 or 6 years before I got a car license. So, yeah, it changes the way you you do things.
Sam [00:10:20]:
Totally. So with the speed cameras, for us here, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, We have the ability to go almost anywhere within certain things. You gotta be a certain distance from the end or a start of a speeding lane and all of that. And time and time again, there’s some operators that will park at the bottom of the hill. Here in Hamilton, it’s River Road. Someone was talking to me the other day and I was like, oh, yep. I know where that is. It’s right next to, the road off to, Chartwell there.
Sam [00:10:45]:
They’re like, yeah. I was like, yeah. Yeah. That’s a dick. Dick move. So the guy that trains everyone, he says, you can park in speeding lanes. You can park at the bottom of the hill. You can do all this stuff, but he goes, it’s a complete dick move.
Chris [00:10:57]:
Just to clarify, legislatively, you’re good. Yeah. There’s no problem with doing that.
Sam [00:11:02]:
It’s just a dick move.
Chris [00:11:03]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:11:03]:
So what happens in that case is you’ve got people that get excited. So for the New Zealand police, there is no targets for tickets. If we got no tickets for the whole day, it did not matter. That was just part of it because it was all about being visible and around the different places. Some people really like getting tickets, so they’ll park in these dick spots. The guy that trained us, he said, you know, it’s a dick move. All you’re doing is you’re agitating the people, so when they finally lose the plot, they’re gonna take it out on any of the vehicles that they see. And, yeah.
Chris [00:11:37]:
Yep.
Sam [00:11:38]:
So, long story short, I don’t know, Jamie, but they I think they need to perceive to be doing something because if they didn’t have that, I guess I just have lots of pole mounted ones. I don’t know. That’s what’s been happening.
Chris [00:11:53]:
So I I wrote this you know, I said I said the other week, I don’t know if it’s last week or the week before, I like writing my own little, like, headlines, little headlines for myself. So It
Sam [00:12:03]:
brings him great joy. He’s smiling. He’s smiling so much now it’s creepy. Carry on.
Chris [00:12:08]:
I love this. So I wrote Spain to semifinal in youth for cup, but are limiting semis elsewhere. What does that mean?
Sam [00:12:16]:
As in trucks or something else?
Chris [00:12:19]:
Something else. So so first of all, UEFA Cup, the European Union Cup. So Spain is through to the finals, and today as we’re recording this, England got through to the finals.
Sam [00:12:32]:
Okay. It’ll be
Chris [00:12:33]:
an English Spanish final. So Yep. I’ll be rooting for Spain. But yeah. But I thought there was a cool little headline because Spain’s new porn passport is, coming this summer. So heavy users will receive alerts, but will they really be cut off after 30 sessions? So basically, you get 30 sessions a month.
Sam [00:12:55]:
Oh, so look at it’s adult content.
Chris [00:12:57]:
At adult content.
Sam [00:12:58]:
Okay.
Chris [00:12:58]:
And you’ve got to be proved that you’re an this is the passport thing. You’ve got to prove you’re of age to to to go visit these sites and then you’re only allowed to go there 30 times a month. Okay. Which seems like a lot anyway to me, but then I don’t know. So
Sam [00:13:15]:
Depends on the person as well.
Chris [00:13:16]:
I guess it is, but it what do you think about that? Like, I I’m like, if somebody’s totally porn addicted, I, like, I don’t care. I don’t want to know. I mean, but I don’t think necessarily the government should be telling you what you should should be doing.
Sam [00:13:35]:
I think, people that are very motivated find a way to get around things anyway. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. Other places I see
Chris [00:13:41]:
more of a issue with gambling than I do with porn. Probably. You know what I mean? Like Yeah.
Sam [00:13:46]:
I don’t know.
Chris [00:13:46]:
More of an impact like you’re more likely to lose all your money and steal it off.
Sam [00:13:51]:
Well, I think I think the I think the aim here is to stop young people accessing it. And I think I think there’s other parts of the world that’ll be looking at this to see how it plays out because I think Australia’s spoke spoken about it or some states maybe, some parts of America. I don’t know what our stance is here. I think we’re not really saying it.
Chris [00:14:06]:
Yeah. Well, in America, they’re really prudish. You can’t do anything. Unless you’re president, then you can do anything you want.
Sam [00:14:11]:
That’s right. That’s right. Hey. I got I got an email today, and, we haven’t had a good spam email. I’m assuming spam. I don’t know. You tell me. It’s written very well.
Sam [00:14:23]:
It’s from miss Janet.
Chris [00:14:25]:
Miss Janet. Yep. It’s already sounding dodgy.
Sam [00:14:27]:
You don’t know. You don’t know. Anyway, she’s from the First National Bank of Africa, and she came across my file which marked the x, and, your release disc was painted red. She took time to study it and found out that you have paid virtually all fees and certificates, which is great, but the fund hasn’t been released to me. Now there’s no mention of the fund, which I think was a nice little little tweak there. The most annoying thing is I cannot tell the truth that no account, blah, blah, blah. She doesn’t wanna work there all her day. She’s sick of her day job.
Sam [00:14:55]:
Right? But she can release it if I can certify her of her security. And the only thing that will she needs from me like, this is easy. She needs from me a special hard disk. It’s an HD 980 GIG gig. She needs 2 of them and that’ll recopy my information from the corrupted one, destroy the previous one, and punch the computer to reflect in your bank within 24 banking days. She’s gonna clean up the tracer. If you’re interested, just get in touch. Yeah.
Sam [00:15:25]:
That’d be all good. Thanks.
Chris [00:15:26]:
Shit ass.
Sam [00:15:27]:
Regards, miss Janet. That’s really good. That’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen.
Chris [00:15:31]:
That’s terrible. I got this I got this, headline. I’m still on my headline thing. I this wasn’t one that I wrote, but this is the headline. I’m like, yep. This is my headline. This is a compelling headline. This is the headline that you go, what? Alright.
Chris [00:15:47]:
Well, at least I do. What do you think? Headline. Oh, and it does say hippopotamuses. I thought it was hippopotami, but anyway.
Sam [00:15:55]:
I no one knows these days. They just write whatever.
Chris [00:15:57]:
Yeah. Okay.
Sam [00:15:59]:
Chat GPT wrote it.
Chris [00:16:00]:
Hippopotamuses can become airborne for substantial periods of time researchers discover.
Sam [00:16:06]:
Oh, yeah. I saw some people talking about this, but I didn’t really read the article, and they’re like, yeah. Anything can get airborne except for an elephant, I think it is. Yeah.
Chris [00:16:12]:
There’s because it’s like an elephant and rhinos, I think, can’t. Oh. Sort of similar to hippos. Hippos are heavier than rhinos, but not as heavy as No.
Sam [00:16:23]:
But hippos kill more people than bloody
Chris [00:16:25]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:16:26]:
Yeah. Animals combined, and they can run really fast.
Chris [00:16:28]:
Yeah. And I think it’s that running that means they
Sam [00:16:32]:
They’ve just got 4 legs off the ground all at the same time.
Chris [00:16:34]:
Airborne. Yeah. Exactly.
Sam [00:16:36]:
Yeah. It’s not like they’re jumping up.
Chris [00:16:37]:
Yeah. They’re not doing somersaults. No.
Sam [00:16:40]:
No. I’m disappointed in these scientists.
Chris [00:16:42]:
But yeah. No. It’s the headline you just got to read.
Sam [00:16:46]:
I hope they got a big government grant to work this out. Nothing makes me feel better than that. You’ll be happy to know, talking of governments, Japan’s finally decided to get rid of the floppy disk. Well, stop using the floppy disk, actually. Now we talked about a guy that was selling floppy disks in America a couple of years ago.
Chris [00:17:05]:
Faxes, right?
Sam [00:17:07]:
I think so. Yeah. So I thought we’d talked about this, but I can’t find a record of it. I think I was getting confused with the guy that was selling $1,000,000 worth of floppy disk every year. Right? Probably to the Japanese government. I’m not sure. So up until last month, more than a 1000 regulations required a floppy disk to be used to send in the data to the government. And then 2021, this dude, mister Kono, declared war on floppy disks.
Sam [00:17:34]:
And he said finally, almost 3 years later, we finally stopped using them. Weird, They
Chris [00:17:41]:
just love it. That’s weird, because you just think, well, just send USB sticks.
Sam [00:17:46]:
I don’t know. They just love sticking with whatever they do. I mean, it holds 1.44 megabytes of data.
Chris [00:17:52]:
That’s why they use faxes, because the company needs to use their chop to sign things.
Sam [00:17:57]:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Chris [00:17:58]:
You know, those stampy Yeah. Okay. Stampy stampy things? Yeah. And, and you can’t do that on a computer, so you’ve got to send a fax. And then you chop it and send it back in a fax, which is not that much different from getting a, you know, image and stick it on a PDF and sending it back.
Sam [00:18:15]:
That’s that’s what I do at work. Every day, my little crappy signature that I drew with a mouse.
Chris [00:18:21]:
I wrote this one too. Sam’s new business idol. So this is what you want to aim for, Sam.
Sam [00:18:29]:
Yep.
Chris [00:18:30]:
The Spanish civil servant Yeah. And his job was to supervise the building of a wastewater treatment plant.
Sam [00:18:39]:
Okay.
Chris [00:18:40]:
That’s why I said it was your your your idol. But he he he was he he, what do you call it? He became eligible for a long service award. And they go, oh, yeah. What’s his name? Joaquin? Joaquin? Joaquin? Maybe. Joaquin Garcia. That’d be right. Joaquin Garcia. Oh, mister Garcia is eligible for the thing.
Chris [00:19:06]:
Wait a minute. He hasn’t shown up to work for 6 years.
Sam [00:19:10]:
Come on. Come on.
Chris [00:19:12]:
He he was off work for 6 years unnoticed.
Sam [00:19:15]:
Doing what? Just not at work?
Chris [00:19:17]:
Yep. Just just to go to work.
Sam [00:19:19]:
Hang on.
Chris [00:19:20]:
So he He was fined 27,000, Euros.
Sam [00:19:23]:
Oh my gosh. Okay. That’s not his fault is it?
Chris [00:19:27]:
Well, you know he goes, oh, it wasn’t that I wasn’t at work. I was bullied at work, so I assigned myself to another site, and I was going to the site. There just wasn’t anything to do at that site.
Sam [00:19:39]:
Hang on. Hang on. First off, how unforgettable was this dude? So nobody who and then who’s managing or supervising these people? And how’s there no work? What anyways, living the dream. How many 6 years?
Chris [00:19:54]:
6 years. It’s €37,000 a
Sam [00:19:58]:
year Oh.
Chris [00:19:59]:
By the tip What’s he worried about then?
Sam [00:20:00]:
That’s fine as little.
Chris [00:20:02]:
Yeah. Ting me. He’s not worried about the fine.
Sam [00:20:06]:
I wanted to know what he was doing for 6 years. Was he going to the or we don’t know?
Chris [00:20:14]:
What does it say here? Oh, yeah. The Spanish newspapers have dubbed him El Functionario El Functionario Fantasma, the phantom official.
Sam [00:20:26]:
Oh my gosh. That’s crazy.
Chris [00:20:28]:
Yeah. What did he say he was doing? Mr. Garcia says he was bullied due to his family’s politics and was sent to the water companies be out of the way. He found there was no work to do there.
Sam [00:20:39]:
Yeah. He found it.
Chris [00:20:40]:
What do you think, you know, what do you expect me to do?
Sam [00:20:43]:
He found that there was no work to do. What? He hit budget? No. No. There’s no work. Just walks off.
Chris [00:20:49]:
Yeah. So, he said he did go to the office, although not for full business hours every day, and that he dedicated himself to reading philosophy.
Sam [00:21:00]:
Oh, cool. He’s a winner. It reminds me of that. We talked about it, I’m sure, like, you know, 9 years ago when we started this podcast, if not longer. That, that toll guard guy in England somewhere had the booth. He was taking the parking money for years. Even then nobody knew who he was.
Chris [00:21:18]:
Yes. He
Sam [00:21:18]:
wasn’t there one day, Yeah.
Chris [00:21:20]:
So basically
Sam [00:21:21]:
Was it 35 years or something silly?
Chris [00:21:23]:
30 odd years, people have been going to this car park by the by the council and and paying to go in. Yeah. And then somebody came in one day and goes, the there’s nobody manning the car park. There’s no Yeah. The toll booth. And they go, oh, that’s really weird. And they go and look. And they go, we don’t own the toll booth.
Chris [00:21:44]:
That toll booth had been there 30 years. This guy just made it up, built the thing, put a barrier in, and started charging people, and he just kept doing it until he retired. He just kept all the money.
Sam [00:21:55]:
There’s some,
Chris [00:21:56]:
That’s genius. He is my idol,
Sam [00:21:58]:
that’s true. There’s some real, awesome people out there doing some stuff. Oh, I’ve got a story here. The secret society now I don’t know how to pronounce this word. I’ll I’ll tell you. Hang on. I’ll figure out where it is and then we’ll we’ll come up with it. The places the town, I guess, or city is called kel0wna.
Sam [00:22:18]:
Kel. Kelowna? Kelowna. Here I’ll show you.
Chris [00:22:22]:
Yeah. Kelowna.
Sam [00:22:23]:
Let’s say Kelowna. So this dude had a run-in with the Gnome Restoration Society. So this guy who owned a bunch of gnomes has no idea who they are, how many people there are, who’s involved or what’s going on. So in June, he discovers that a whole bunch of his gnomes are missing from his front lawn and he goes, some things had already gone missing, including a canoe. So he goes, people are just stealing stuff, right? So that’s all good. He goes, man, it’s not gonna it’s weird. July 3rd rolls around. Someone knocks on his back door.
Sam [00:23:02]:
An old woman’s there, gives him a blank envelope addressed to the homeowner, and there was a cutout image of a gnome with the words the Gnome Restoration Society inscribed on the back. She wouldn’t answer any questions and then said follow me to your vehicle. Wouldn’t tell them anything. She gets to it, opens the boot, and all the gnomes are in there and they’ve all been repainted to, like, how they were new. And then she just drove off. And that’s the story. And they’re like
Chris [00:23:33]:
So they kidnapped and renovated his nose
Sam [00:23:36]:
Yes.
Chris [00:23:36]:
Effectively.
Sam [00:23:37]:
And this and and I can’t work and nope there’s no record of this society or anything anywhere. I can’t tell if it’s just one crazy woman that’s done it. If there’s a whole team, I think it’s great. I love the story.
Chris [00:23:49]:
Yeah. Because that was going around when I in the early nineties. And when I say early nineties, I mean 1990, when I was in London somebody had taken a a gnome from the local house and they’ve done their OE and they’ve just taken photos of that gnome everywhere and
Sam [00:24:08]:
I remember that.
Chris [00:24:09]:
Before the Internet.
Sam [00:24:10]:
Well, yeah, I think it’s happened since maybe.
Chris [00:24:12]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s happened since. But this was the first time I’d heard it. This is well before the Internet. And so they were actually sending photos back.
Sam [00:24:19]:
It was almost like a little hostage or something.
Chris [00:24:21]:
Yeah. And they would take the photos of it, you know, on, you know, on the top of the Eiffel Tower and all that. But it was such a big thing that they put it in the local newspaper in the village or whatever it was. You know? Of course. It was huge.
Sam [00:24:33]:
Anyway, it’s good to see that. Americans are gonna be really happy. Not really, but this company
Chris [00:24:39]:
Nothing’s gonna make the Americans. Well, Trump dying might make the American.
Sam [00:24:43]:
No. No. No. No. So this, company called American Rounds, they make automated ammunition, sorry. They make ammunition for guns and stuff. Yeah. They’re really excited.
Sam [00:24:53]:
They’ve made some vending machines, and they’ve managed to get them into some supermarkets as you need it, which I guess is a thing. I don’t know. It’s it’s hard. It’s very hard for us because we don’t have a very public on display gun culture.
Chris [00:25:12]:
In New Zealand.
Sam [00:25:13]:
I was gonna say we don’t have gun culture. We probably do.
Chris [00:25:15]:
We do.
Sam [00:25:15]:
And we do. But it’s not at this level because of our laws and how things work.
Chris [00:25:20]:
Yeah. Most people would spend their entire life with in New Zealand without ever playing with a gun or looking at a gun or firing.
Sam [00:25:26]:
Yeah. It’s pretty rare to see 1,
Chris [00:25:27]:
Yeah. I mean, I I had a friend who belonged to a pistol club Yeah. And he took me down once, long time ago now, and I did a bit of shooting there. I couldn’t even hit the wall. Like, I was terrible. And that’s about it. And then when I was a kid, I remember we went on picnics with, you know, the work thing and there was always somebody had a 22, you know, from club
Sam [00:25:48]:
and Yeah.
Chris [00:25:49]:
We’d do a bit of target shooting with that or something for all the kids. But that was about it.
Sam [00:25:54]:
I did small bore rifle shooting as a sport at school.
Chris [00:25:57]:
Oh, okay.
Sam [00:25:58]:
That’s my thing. And then my last job obviously with the police,
Chris [00:26:02]:
You would have seen all the guns.
Sam [00:26:04]:
Yeah. Because they would, take them from the big locker room thing to their car backwards and forwards, so you’d always be coming across people holding glocks or Bushmaster rifles, which is a bit weird because I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just not normal. Like, you could see the room and this old stuff and the signing stuff and
Chris [00:26:19]:
So my my my gunner experiences overseas, first, the very first time I went to Los Angeles, I was transiting through, got off the plane, and I’m walking in and there’s packed airport, LAX, and then there’s this space opens up and this big burly cop, like a big black cop, just walking around. Everybody just melts away to give him space. He’s got this gun on his hip. And I I it just was so unusual for me. Like, it’s just like and you just and then you go, you do not with this guy.
Sam [00:26:53]:
That’s right.
Chris [00:26:54]:
And we go and then, we’re in Spain. We we hadn’t been there long. We’re coming down the coast. We’ve been hitchhiking down the coast. We were lying on the beach, me and Anne, just, you know, getting some rays. And we’ve been watching these boats going zipping up and down the the shoreline. Okay. And then one came flying towards us into shore like it’s that guy out of control What’s going to happen?
Sam [00:27:14]:
Yeah,
Chris [00:27:15]:
and it backs off just at the end so it just touches the thing and this guy starts throwing these boxes, big cardboard boxes out about yay big. And, and all these kids start running in from nowhere. Like, they’ve you know, just come in. Little 10 year olds have put the boxes on their heads so they’re not very heavy Oh, yeah. And running off. And we’re like we’re sitting up going, what the hell is going on? And then the boat, like, backs off, and they go burning off. And then the there’s a lot sirens, and these guys come running down the beach with submachine guns. And Anne and I look at each other and go, we saw nothing, and just lay down like, no.
Sam [00:27:56]:
So were they trafficking something?
Chris [00:27:57]:
Cigarette smugglers.
Sam [00:27:58]:
Oh, cigarette smugglers. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Chris [00:28:00]:
I don’t know what it was at the time.
Sam [00:28:02]:
That’s crazy. So basically, at Fresh Value, the supermarket’s gonna have 2 of these kiosks so far. Terry Stanley, the chief operating officer said it’s a big hit with customers. Anything we can do to make them make their shopping trips easier and based on the feedback we’ve gotten from customers today, they are so excited about us having this ammo kiosk.
Chris [00:28:20]:
Yep. You’d have to be careful where you put it. Right? Like, say in a supermarket, it’s probably actually not a bad place. You wouldn’t want one at a gas station. Right?
Sam [00:28:29]:
I don’t think so. No.
Chris [00:28:30]:
Because if there’s a chance of a fire, the last thing you want is a vending machine full of full of ammunition. True. I’m thinking.
Sam [00:28:38]:
True. This does use artificial intelligence to, check your face against your ID.
Chris [00:28:44]:
Woohoo.
Sam [00:28:46]:
That almost
Chris [00:28:46]:
could go wrong with that.
Sam [00:28:48]:
Maybe not. That almost brings us to the end of the podcast, Chris.
Chris [00:28:51]:
Alright. So, how are we getting on with our,
Sam [00:28:55]:
I’ve done nothing. We have done nothing. I have no. I tell you what. I’ve been very tired and busy, like always. But, basically, I finished doing the, all the field days infuser out there.
Chris [00:29:09]:
Yes. That took
Sam [00:29:10]:
me a little way longer than what I expected to. So I plowed through that and, I had an assignment due for open polytechnic course that I was doing last night. They’re out of the way. Well, now we’re fully focused on the 500th episode Chris and Sam podcast, celebrational whatever. Extravaganza. Yeah. On on a very limited budget of no money. Because I’ve got no money.
Sam [00:29:35]:
I’m pretty sure you don’t have any.
Chris [00:29:36]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:29:37]:
So, we will let you know. I’ll hopefully have something next week.
Chris [00:29:40]:
Yep. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. All good. But yeah. So the date will be September 11th.
Sam [00:29:45]:
Yes.
Chris [00:29:46]:
New Zealand day, which will be September 10th in America probably.
Sam [00:29:51]:
Yeah. That’s right. Okay. That’s pretty much it. That brings to the end of the podcast. Thanks for listening. Check out the Christmas ham podcast.com. Check the random button on the front page.
Chris [00:30:00]:
Yeah. And check out the, the the interviews we did at field days. They’re all real short. They’re 2 or 3 minutes.
Sam [00:30:08]:
6 or 7?
Chris [00:30:09]:
6 or 7.
Sam [00:30:10]:
But, make sure I’m sure you’ve got us on your if you’re listening to us, you probably do have us on your phone app. If you don’t get that because everything gets delivered to you every day, every week
Chris [00:30:19]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:30:19]:
That’d be great. Okay. Until next time. I’m Sam.
Chris [00:30:22]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:30:22]:
See you.
Chris [00:30:23]:
Bye.
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