Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast some brand new video interviews that are happening here specifically for YouTube So I want to thank Vincent Ward of vitalizer drums and at junk rock in West Chester, Pennsylvania for joining me today Vincent. Welcome Hey, thanks Bart. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm glad you're my guinea pig for this because I got a you know, this is the first one So I'm probably gonna enhance my background a little bit as time goes on and fix some bugs But as I mentioned, I want to put things up on YouTube because there's a really great community on YouTube and some awesome Video creators like John de Christopher. I always see his and think man He's just doing such an awesome job and it looks great. So I figured why not do it and You and I have known each other for, you know a number of years now And you were a really early guest on the podcast talking about speed king pedals, which I still get comments saying oh, man I love that episode. So so yeah, again, thank you for Coming on and letting me test things out with you. Yeah, thank thanks for that episode and I get a lot of people who Have heard the episode and then they they come to me and it's sort of It gives them a lot of the information that that they need to know it gets people interested in it Started doing speed kings in 2014 so it's been it's been quite a while now But yeah vitalizer Over the past couple of years Ludwig reissued the speed king that they announced at the beginning of 2020 and they kind of landed a Little bit later that year. So once that happened Immediately started figuring out how to pivot because I realized you know the markets gonna get flooded with these new speed kings and It's really gonna the business can't be that narrow anymore So I started restoring other stuff other pedals other hardware and I started looking for You know somewhere to land basically Yeah, so in the process of when when vitalizer was was going full steam I would travel to all these drum shows. I will buy every speed king in the room. Literally. I mean I rarely left one behind Because that started to become the only cost effective way to get them As speed kings became more popular and Ludwig put a lot of money into advertising in 2020 and Got a lot of people thinking oh, hey I really used to like that pedal or I used to have one I want to get one again and some of that business came to me because the time period from when they announced it to when they actually landed was A long time like eight months or more so It became a lot harder to get speed kings at a reasonable price online But in the process of traveling to these shows I started to meet people when I was traveling I would always stop by whatever drum shop was there and One of the drum shops that I I started visiting was junk rock in Westchester, Pennsylvania and Junk rock was started by Michael Windish his main business is live entertainment production it so basically Piring and training musicians for for different things like cruise ships theme parks stuff like that so during the pandemic it kind of came to a halt and He he was he kind of didn't really know what to do so being a drummer first he used to He's an excellent drummer. He used to tour with chubby checker Oh So he can really play and he basically started selling off some of his own stuff and Because other business was on on pause it really kind of evolved into a hobby and then a business and He kind of just fell into The rabbit hole as as a lot of people do when they get into vintage drums, you know You start learning about things you start meeting people and it's just incredibly fascinating So yeah, when I first met him a couple years ago, it was basically it was in this building So behind me now is the main showroom were kind of you can see there's a lot of stuff in here but where it's being transitioned into a proper drum shop and It was basically just a big room full of stuff and you know people would dig through and find things and Yeah after talking to him, you know as the pandemic started to Loosen its its hold on on the United States his other business started back up and he needed somebody to come here and Basically be a shop manager, I guess it would be called but doing all the different aspects and with my background in restoration It just it was it was very serendipitous because yeah, I Needed to pivot anyway. So vitalizer still exists It's currently on hiatus just because I can't spread myself too thin sure but Eventually vitalizer will exist here in this building and vitalizer will now be Restoring everything so everything that comes in the building is going to get the same type of Process that was developed with vitalizer, you know really yeah Diving into things and not just restoring them or flipping them getting them ready to sell but really Looking into the history of it the information. What can be gathered looking at the date stamps? What are the anomalies, you know with Ludwig especially when stuff comes in you're constantly learning something you could you could be Dealing with these these drums for years and all of a sudden something comes in that challenges What you thought? Yeah, really. Yeah, that's what I found very interesting with doing a lot of these episodes as things almost I don't want to say contradict themselves sometimes But that happens where you think one thing and then someone else says another thing and they can both be Correct more or less and that's awesome. I can't think of a better person Than you to be in that role I'm sure he trusts you completely because you know your stuff And vitalizer it's just like I mean you're you're a young guy and to have created a business that did well and now you're smart enough to kind of transition and and See what's happening and then now work with a shop. I think it makes a lot of sense and and one thing you said before about Going to the drum shows and stopping and buying pedals. I remember Going to like the first Chicago show I went to which I think was in 2018 Where we shared a booth and just hearing your process of oh, yeah I drove whatever 12 or 14 hours to get here and then I'm stopping along the way at drum shops And it turns into like a pilgrimage.  You're like, oh, and then I'm going on the way back I'm gonna stop it like Steve Maxwell's and pick up things there it like coming from being just a drummer and not really being in this world of like You know drum nuts basically who are obsessed with it, which I now very much am It was just so cool because a lot of people do that where they take a van And they hit shops along the way and they they pick things up to take back to their shops or for you like speed kings or five thousands It just really was eye-opening to see that and what a fun way to do things but Obviously as things changed, it's nice that you found a shop kind of home base which looking behind you It looks it looks awesome. It looks like you guys have some great equipment available Yeah, this is just the this is just one area off of this room. There's there's two other rooms There's a second floor, and then there's a third floor to and it's the awful with drums So this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of stuff here it to restore, but yeah We're back to what you're saying about traveling to the shows. It's It's really it's very easy to justify if you're also a collector because your If it was just business and just money, I feel like it would it would really lessen the appeal of it, but some of the Moments of purest joy are walking into a shop and just seeing something and knowing wow That is so incredibly rare, and I'm gonna try to buy it and then you get it One time that the my best example and memory of that is going into Al Druze which is in Somewhere in Rhode Island In Rhode Island, it's beautiful. You get to see the country too, you know, yeah, so Rhode Island in the fall I think this was for the Pennsylvania show run by Jack Lawton, and I walked in there And I'm looking around in that room. It's it's a big long room.   Yeah Yeah, he just said he just threw out a number and I was like cool and then I got three other pedals And yeah on the way back, you know, I wasn't I was excited about the speed kings I picked up on that trip and the and the people I met and the networking But I was really excited about that pedal and putting it next to my other one and seeing the differences and sure Yeah, that's I mean just that the The hunt is so and you you're doing it obviously for a profession But we all have that where if you're looking on I don't know It's like midnight and you're just kind of looking through like Facebook marketplace or something and you just like are kind of oh my god Like there there's something special It's just like is this like rush that like is so it's addicting I mean you want to just keep looking for stuff and it's even more so when you like you're doing when you hit the road and You get in shops and you walk through and you find stuff But let me ask you this though So so when you're kind of doing your hunt like on the way to a drum show a drum show Do you also maybe look on Craigslist or are you stopping at garage sales ever or thrift shops? I mean, I realize it's harder to find stuff there, but then it's like it's more I don't want to say pure, but it's not been Already found by another drummer. Do you like doing that sort of stuff too? I'm kind of odd in that aspect where I actually don't even look anymore online for anything Certain things that I'm looking for like another thing that I started getting into Vintage symbols, I found one a couple years ago and it was it was you know when you're collecting old zildjans specifically they do not all sound good you could take five of them and line them up and and You know one's average to sound bad one is okay a little better And then one is like oh You know when you do that first the first thing, you know I found one of those symbols and then every other I tried to build a set around it And I wanted to get rid of my modern symbols, which were Istanbul egg ops and you know have all old zildjans and I looked and looked and looked and That's another funny thing about searching for something you could say wow this must be so rare I've been looking for a year and a half two years. I haven't found one all of a sudden Here it is and then all of a sudden a week later. Oh, well here's another one so I kind of I Started getting a lot of symbols and what I like to do is a AB stuff so you put them right next to each other and To find a full set that sounds good together is quite challenging for old symbols because there's a lot of variants between them and Yeah, so I do still look for I like 24 inch and larger old zildjans that's what I'm that's what I'm looking for and Trans stamped is the era that everyone loves that's like mid Early to mid 40s to early to mid 50s and that's kind of the last era where they were made by hand So they've really got a special sound to them. It's much different than The air is afterwards which are hollow block and then late 50s and then they get by the time you get into the 60s They're they're much more uniform sounding you know now you're in the Ringo era and Everything is streamlined. Yeah, there's no long. There's no longer. There can't be a person there anymore who's You know taking the time to hand hammer something everything needs to be a lot a lot more streamlined Yeah, just by this the sheer nature of mass production and meeting supply and demand It just kind of makes sense. So it's a special thing to get those earlier I also wanted to just there's because there's some avid camco collectors out there And I know you have a beautiful camco set or at least you did last time we were talking I know that's kind of your baby talk about that a little bit I got for now. Wow. Okay. So talk about camco for a little bit Camcos incredibly rare There just is not nearly as many of them as as other brands So of the four that I have one of them I'm probably gonna get rid of it because it's more of like a player's Set it'd be perfect for somebody who actually wants to be able to love their camcos around and play them And I just don't play music with other people. I don't rehearse. I don't gig So it feels like it should be passed on and I have a friend who's interested in it Who I'll I'll probably I mean he just started looking for camco But he's he's in the business of finding drums. So he's in the time period that we've been talking about He's found like three other sets. So you can find you can find them if you're looking for them They're just really well made. They sound really good. And I have I have My two main sets, you know, they're they're lifers I would I'm holding on to those for the for the long haul but yeah as a younger collector and for younger I Invintage drums like consider that anyone is on under the age of 45 basically You're considered a young a young guy if you're under 45 Yeah, you have to be pretty strategic about it So there's not a lot of supply of some of these certain things the things that I like they're really rare So I still look on reverb and ebay for the big symbols because they just don't come up that often Most of the time when I find something a shop has already gotten it and I end up paying, you know Full retail for it, which is fine because I'm not in the business of buying these things and reselling them I'm buying them for personal use. I don't personally care if they go up or down in value I don't like paying a lot more than retail. That's kind of like a limitation I've put on myself just It just it just doesn't it doesn't feel good to pay more than what something's worth But a lot of times it ends up being like that. It's either in the hands of a collector who has overvalued it or they overpaid for it or Wherever the circumstances are it's just Sure, they're just extremely Expensive, but yeah, I'm really happy with the stuff I have now as far as my pedal collection I Did stop looking online for them because that's a very slippery slope, you know You end up getting a lot of stuff and you pay a lot of money for it I'm to the point with the pedal collection where I am only adding things that I find organically So when I'm traveling or now working at junk rock, this stuff just comes in in the door, you know, many times per week Windish will come back and I'll have a carload full of stuff that comes in and we'll look through it and see, you know, what's You know, what the stuff is and evaluate it and in there. So this is a perfect example This is a Ludwig, Jr. With a little later. Yeah This is something that just came in with a bunch of other stuff and you probably won't be able to tell But it has like a homemade repair. Yeah with like a little wire Interesting. I love this stuff. This is incredibly common pedal but it's so interesting to me that this guy had this pedal and He played it and Actually replacing it later with a better pedal, but when this piece broke, he didn't go get a new pedal He just took a piece of wire from something Maybe it's a paper clip and just twisted it all up and the pedal the pedal works now It works. He fixed it and that's me that to me is so incredibly fascinating That's the kind of stuff that I want to collect and eventually display You know, yeah in in nice cabinets and stuff and you can look at it and you remember maybe where you got it or Absolutely a little story of why it's interesting, you know, it's it's this is more interesting than finding one that's in Very good condition because it's shape. It tells a story. Yeah, what year is that one? Oh Probably park probably 30s. Okay, probably 30s. It came with some other stuff that was a Lot of the hardware was from the 30s, but the drums themselves were from the 50s. So it probably Maybe the guy had a drum set and then he traded it in for a new newer model in the 50s in the early 50s But he kept all of his hardware for whatever reason smart. We've all done that where it's like, oh, I'm gonna sell This drum set, but I'm keeping the snare or I'm keeping the throne because you always you always need a throne It is absolutely fascinating. I've always I kind of knew once once I realized vitalizer wasn't gonna be viable For a lot longer. I knew I wanted to land at a drum shop because it's it is so incredibly fascinating to see the stuff come in and We're in a special time period where In in 20 years, it's not gonna be like this where you're getting things from the original owners or the original owners Family and it's intact. Everything's going to be split up and and and spread out so being able to document during this time period for someone like me is I Mean the information is is incredibly valuable to me. Yeah, opening up a trap case or yeah, somebody's like I Opened up a a little briefcase and in there this guy clearly played timpani was every single thing he brought to his His job as a as a timpaniist or whatever. It's called All of his mallets sheet music a little note that says this is not a table Because people I guess used to set stuff on his timpani. He's like, this is not a table. Don't wow Don't put your stuff on this. Um, it's just a glimpse into his like his this guy's process I mean, that's just unbelievable absolutely fascinating to see this stuff and So, yeah, I've gotten a little a little experience with that already and stuff like that will continue to come in and It's awesome. Yeah, I mean one thing that that comes to mind too and I spoke about it recently on The episode with Terry Keating, which I want to say thank you to Terry for sending me this Mug which I think he sells them on his Website or through YouTube because people asked about that so there you go, but I was talking to Terry about The younger generation of people and how impressed I am which with with the amount of knowledge that people such as yourself have And actually when I talked about him, I was referring in my mind to you about, you know, a 35 year old guy Has so much information about vintage drums and it's not just you it's a lot of people of all ages, but It's the amount of information that can be retained and and and about every single little item I think is only possible if you're super passionate about something like you're it's like, you know in school I hated math. I'm not really I wasn't really good at it. I didn't retain, you know, I can obviously do Basic math, but or French. I was taking French in school. I can't speak a word of it I took it for like 13 years. It's like It the passion I think leads to this sponge like Absorbing of information which like just you can you can walk into a room and know everything and going to these drum shows I think is like a candy store for guys like you guys like me at girls everyone where you just you don't see all this stuff at at any one drum shop which kind of leads into the discussion of Of drum shows which I'll speak a little bit about me because I know we kind of a couple bullet points We want to try and talk about and I just want to say that me entering this scene in 2018 With with no real like I mean obviously I'm a long-time drummer But no real background and going to shows and collecting beyond, you know buying a Ludwig set here in there Was so welcoming and inviting just right off the bat Even before going to a show just through the internet, which we all you know are lucky to live in an era where we can Just talk to each other like this or check out what a shop has from our couch But the drum shows in general I think the best thing I ever did is go to the Chicago show in 2018 where You again, we're just like hey you want to join my booth and I was like yes, and I think it was Mutually beneficial. I hope because you know, I had some listeners on the podcast You had an actual physical reason to have a booth, which I really didn't so that was just great, but Just everyone is so welcoming and inviting and I'll be totally honest that it's a little intimidating at first Like walking in the door to any shots. I'm still pretty new at this going. I've only been to you know, five or six real shows It's still a little nerve nerve racking to be like, you know, I don't know everything there is to know about vintage drums I've learned a lot over a hundred whatever 40 episodes, but Everyone is very very inviting. I do think which I think is a good thing You still need to earn your stripes a little bit. So day one you need to like kind of like show that you're passionate and Like authentic Because people don't just rush up to you and go welcome come on in it's still a little bit of like who's this guy? What's he doing in a nice way? But you still need to kind of maybe year one you don't get invited to the dinners or whatever, you know But as time goes on and as you put yourself out there I have found very much for me that like people just accept you like with open arms It has nothing to do with your playing ability. It has nothing to do with your Collection that you have at home it's just all about your passion and just your again being authentic people love that and I think that's a great thing about the community and So that being said, let's let's let's talk about those drum shows a little bit more. It's 2022 It's January the world is still a weird place Yeah, what are you feeling about all this? What do you got coming up? Very excited for the Delaware drum show. I believe that is February 27th I have to have to double check that but that's Joe Joey McClure's or Joey boom as some people call them that's his show and That's a show you want to be at and it epitomizes the the what you're talking about There are people there are a lot of people that go to that show who are not You know diehard members of the community They're they're people who are interested in drums people who play drums and they like seeing the stuff They're not necessarily there to buy things but Yeah, yeah, everyone's everyone's there everyone's welcome and Yeah, I'll be there Junk rocks gonna be there a lot of other other people You do need to bring some kind of proof of a vaccination So there was a little bit of waves about that But you know Mechler's just doing what he yeah, he's doing what's best for the community trying to keep people safe Because unfortunately, we've lost a lot of people in in the in the community. It's it's it's like it's really tragic Because you're talking about the idea of Knowing everything or not knowing everything the truth lies in between you know what you know and you don't know There's a lot that you don't know and there's certain things No one is going to learn as much as I've learned about speedkings No one's going to learn as much about World War II drums as Joe Mechler and You know Mark Cooper that the guys who have really taken an interest in that So thankfully a lot of this information has been recorded in books by Rob Cook and others people he's collaborated with and others Steve's emineck, you know wrote his book and yep, sorry, sorry Steve not everything in there's correct But but it's the best it's the best that he could deduce you're dealing with imperfect information and I'm Yeah, it's the information needs to be passed on if everyone who knows everything right now never tells anyone never records it Then you can't build on that it would have been so incredibly difficult for me to figure out vintage symbols Which is my current? You know special interest The first thing I did was check out the the amazing resources that are online that tell you all of his other stuff that people and then I build off of that and Always question everything you hear Especially with Ludwig nothing is written in stone. There's always exceptions to the rule and there's always a mystery to figure out but Getting a younger generation Anyone who's interested don't be intimidated come to these shows ask questions Look up look up information do your own research find your own information and don't be afraid to be part of the community I I really sincerely hope that that What exists right now with vintage drums with a lot of people being interested in a lot of people? Caring about them and a lot of people playing them. I hope that exists forever and I'm doing my part to To perpetuate that working at a drum shop is a great opportunity To further that that agenda, you know, you're taking in these items a lot of them are broken You're fixing them figuring out what they are doing the research And then you you add that value and then you present it to the community so you're gonna pay more at these drum shops, but They're doing a lot of the work for you Of course, you can look and try to find your own things but as time goes on it's gonna be the vintage drum shops that are your resource for information to get these items and Also, I know very few people who Find exactly what they're looking for on the first try if you want to try something out sit down and play it take it home change your mind bring it back trade it and Find out some more information a vintage drum shop is is where you want to be for that Yeah, and that's that's a lot of the fun and really that that Kind of rewinding a little bit to the show stuff, which I think leads directly into that These shows are typically Pretty regional where I know for me in Cincinnati, I can get to I know there's I mean even going to the music city drum Show in Nashville, which we were both that last year Like there's typically one I would say within a four-hour drive of most people unless you live in like Alaska or something I mean, there's typically one that's like Pretty pretty regionally, you know, Chicago and Pennsylvania and St. Louis so And then you can go there and pick things up and try things and meet You know from from from coming in as an outsider years ago to now being kind of on the I guess the inside I always feel weird saying that it's To be on the inside to meet people who you see on On social media is just sort of like a cool thing Like Bryson Nelson or like you or Rob cook or there Steve Maxwell walking around or any of these guys It's just like it really makes it more real Because we're all real people and then then you can actually pick up the gear there and say what's the story with this? And I think I think people like Sellers collectors really enjoy in my opinion when someone is curious and Very nice about it instead of saying picking it up and going oh, this is this and saying something that might be wrong asking questions and And being really kind of happy and let's talk about it, especially I remember with if you go and check out Joey boom set up He's going he's it's great. He'll tell you everything you want to know about it so that's just another great thing about those shops and or I should say shows and shops is you can just go in and pick Things up and put your hands on it and learn and maybe you don't need to spend $2,000 on a drum set, but you can still touch it and feel it and learn about it and oh Okay, these lugs look like this and this is this hardware. Yeah, so it's just a really cool thing to get out there and And and do the do the shows So now where will you be this year that we can all kind of look for Vincent Delaware for sure Chicago for sure You'll see a lot more shows popping up once the Once the pandemic it and who knows how long it's actually gonna last but right before the pandemic hit There was supposed to be a Las Vegas show. There was a New England show that that Don Macaulay was going to do yeah, and and Jack Lawton he just kind of he stopped You know, he said basically until the pandemic is in a better place I'm not doing the Pennsylvania show anymore. So if that I go to any show that exists, you know, yeah I mean up to Chicago. I'm not gonna travel across the country usually but The shows are also, you know that first year in 2018, you know, I was on the outside, too No one knew who I was I was sitting there at the booth and and John Aldridge came up and I was like, oh my god that's John Aldridge and At the time, you know, you weren't as well-known either but at the music city show when we were talking, you know, you've got a very a very distinctive Loud, you know Voice that people have heard for hours and hours.  That's the drum history guy and that's that is so cool. That's like that makes me so happy to see You know again people who are younger that are coming in here and Picking up the torch asking questions your podcast. I feel like it was it's the biggest thing for helping people with that and Being on YouTube. I think it's gonna help it even more. You're getting a different a younger audience. You know, the next thing is Tic-toc, I guess Dancing on tic-toc to get that. No, no, but like, you know Instagram just introduced these reels or whatever totally you have to you a lot of people are not gonna come to these shows especially with COVID, you know people a lot of people are just they're not gonna come to these shows anymore and And until that is in a better place, but yeah, yeah It has to be a source where people can actually access it, you know, yeah YouTube podcast social media and get those gears turning people. Well, what is the big deal about vintage jobs? How are they different than my Maypex set? Okay, here's how they're different. Um, maybe I am interested in this Maybe they start looking start asking questions Yeah, and then Yeah, it's it's there. Yeah. Yeah, and I want to say too. Thank you very much about what you said but so Obviously people are probably watching this on YouTube and it's an interesting thing because a lot of people watch I put up a still image and they'll watch the podcast which is just a still image for an hour or whatever and just so people know that Like the primary listenership of the podcast is on like Spotify and Apple Um, where you can download it on your phone and all this stuff, but I realized that a lot of people Do listen slash watch these still image just kind of a you know, an hour of one image so they can see it on YouTube but if you Want you can also listen on your phone. You can search for drum history anywhere That's just kind of a thing where I found people on youtube Maybe didn't know that that it is actually just like on on Stitcher and these podcast platforms But my goal here with youtube is to share more videos Because I am a youtube like I know I think you you are too vincent where I watch it like every night Like I treat it almost like Like sometimes you're like netflix and hulu It's just like I get sick of it and I just want to go to youtube and watch videos of like um You know computer reviews or like uh Anything just anything anything even things I watch videos on um Sports card collecting. I don't have any any sports cards. I love Getting a window into another collecting community. It's the same thing. They have shows and things like that I watch it on video game collecting. I don't I mean I have some retro video games now because that's a perfect example I watched I was like, why do people collect these you can just get an emulator or whatever or and then After you know meeting some people and watching some of these videos like well I'm going to go into the attic and dig out my old stuff and and then I ended up getting some new stuff And I even went to a show with uh my neighbor who's super into Video game collecting so it's cool. That's the process for getting people interested in these things in these communities So yeah, I I commend your effort and I I really I really hope to see See that continue absolutely, um and uh Why don't we as we wrap up here first off? I want to say thank you to everyone for watching this and for listening again If you want a new episodes of the podcast come out every Tuesday Um, I released some Monday night at midnight eastern standard, which I've you know, there's people all over the world So there's different time zones. Um But uh, you can listen there There's some new merch that I just put up for drum history where if you go to the website and click the shop button It's through t-public, which is which is one of those sites where like they make it they ship it I get so this is kind of funny. I get a dollar Like if you buy a t-shirt, I get one dollar Which is not great, but uh, it's better to have shirts and mugs and pillows And if you want a drum history laptop case go ahead and buy it. It's on there. Um, so I'm kind of trying that out Um But that being said, uh, I hope to do more of these videos Um, oh and about merch before I forget I'm gonna say thank you to hose from um Revival drum shop in portland He just sent me a bunch of awesome swag because I think he's really enjoying the podcast and he also sent This is just how nice of a guy is he sent two of everything so my wife could have some like he sent her a sweatshirt He sent her a pink shirt with the revival logo. He sent uh sticks a book a lowboy beater Um stickers a sizzler. I mean just an awesome Just beyond nice package. So thank you to hose at revival Um, I can't wait to hopefully make it out to portland and check out the shop, but um me too. Yeah So yeah, that's that's going further away than chicago than your line So you got to make it out that way and go more uh to the west and although I mean it becomes like a like a pilgrimage Um, I mean I will for sure go there one day Hose has got a really wonderful brand a really wonderful business that he's he's built there and um, yeah, I'll definitely visit Definitely visit someday Totally. All right. So vincent is we're like finishing up here Why don't you say where people can find you and junk rock and promote that kind of stuff and then we'll uh, we'll wrap it up Yeah, so, uh, the website still exists for vitalizer.  Um, so this will be the source for for getting for getting things as time moves forward You're welcome to come by and um Phone is the best way. Uh, if you go to the website, you'll find my phone number And that is that is the best way to contact me now. Um Yeah, that's sure that's that's it. That's cool. That's great And you're in westchester pennsylvania, um, which is pretty close to new york I I used to live in scranton pennsylvania, um home of the office. So i'm sort of nice familiar with pennsylvania, but um Okay, vincent. Thank you again for taking the time to um to do this and thanks again for everyone on youtube for subscribing I feel like I have to say that because i'm a youtuber now Remember to subscribe smash that like button smash the like button leave a comment. Um Tell us about your collection. Maybe like things that you're collecting. I think that's really cool. Maybe what's your Specific thing that you like like vincent has he's going in pedals now. He's going in symbols What are some things that you guys uh are enjoying and um, and we'll go from there and like I said, this is the guinea pig first episode So things will get cleaner. I'm in a this is you know, where I record the podcast is the third floor of my house Which is like sort of unfinished um, but Things will get cleaner and better as I go. So uh, thanks everyone for watching And thank you vincent for being here Yep, I wanted to dedicate this this first episode to some of my friends that have been lost in the last couple of years. Um, Neil Longo, he made solid shell drums wonderful person. He was always at these shows. It's where I met him um, he passed in the last year and um, this is super recent mr. Sticks all his real name is john marr and um Man really really tragic. I really I love seeing him at these shows Connecticut and Delaware just a wonderful person such a such a great energy to him So he's passed in the last week and just say rest in peace. It was wonderful to get to to meet these guys and um You know, it's yeah, there's still there's still plenty of plenty of people from from that era who are coming to these shows sharing their information and um You know get out there and meet these guys That's great. What a good way to end this episode. I appreciate it vincent. Thanks for being here. Thanks Bart


Okay, hopefully everybody online can hear me. All right. And I'm sorry for the people in person that I'm facing away from you. The camera's over here. So welcome to this session. It is called Opening a Communication Channel with the ETD Librarian. And this session will be presented by Kelly Rowan. Did I pronounce that correctly? Rowan. She's the Digital Archives Librarian at Florida International University. We will leave some time at the end of the session. Probably just a little time since we're starting late for questions. If you do have a question online, please make sure to enter that in the Q&A. And I will read that out as we receive them. And we'll get started. Rowan. I'm from Florida International University down in Miami. And a quick agenda. So I'm just going to give you a few seconds worth of information just for context about FIU and how we do our workflow. I know hearing about somebody's random stats at their university is not the most interesting. So we'll keep that for a few seconds. And we'll talk about the project I embarked on. The process I went through. So if you have any, you're feeling like you want to recreate it, you have a feeling for how what I did and how long it took. And then we'll look at the results to see if where the successes are and aren't. And then I have a Q&A. So just to give you some context of how we do things at FIU. First of all, we're the largest Hispanic serving institution in the country. We had about close to 60,000 pre-pandemic. Our numbers have dropped, obviously. We're usually tied for like second, as far as size of our student body. I have to admit that our librarian to student ratio is abysmal. There's no way around that. I mean, that's terrible, right? It's about 30, that's awful. So part of that undoubtedly is simply Miami is now, you know, Silicon Valley priced. So when we hire a librarian and they come down and they find out that we're not paying Silicon Valley salary. And now 85% of their salary is going to a studio apartment. They're a little upset. So we do have a retention problem. All right. So and then just some points of pride about FIU. There are Carnegie R1, preeminent research, university. All right. So we have an odd workflow, which I think is worth mentioning. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense why I have no communication with students. So our students work with our graduate school coordinator, Brandy, who is in the back of the room waving at you. And she works with them to get it, you know, revisions, get it to the point where it's ready. The students do and they go to digital commons, which is what we're using as our institutional repository. And they submit the metadata themselves, their name, emails, you know, all that stuff department. And when they've got the revisions working with Brandy and they've got that ready. Brandy assigns me as editor, and then it, the process shifts over to the library. So I work in the libraries and I do the publishing. And right now there is no, I mean, digital commons preserves to it has multiple servers, you know. So, but right now we are actually out a preservation system, but it looks like we're getting one soon. We had lost a previous one hosted by the state. So that kind of explains why I don't have communication with students. I'm just the one publishing. Brandy is the one working with them, right? So what I wanted to do was kind of threefold. I wanted to, because I was getting random emails occasionally from students, but they would, they never came to me. They came to the library or our institutional repository manager or just the DCC or digital collection center, which is the part of the library I'm in, just our random DCC email that we look at every other day. They were all over the place, right? So I wanted to kind of clear that up. I had looked at our ORCID stats. They weren't going anywhere, so they weren't increasing. I was hoping to do something with that and get that up. The universities put an emphasis somewhat on ORCID as a way hopefully to kind of track alumni, you know, and see how their career goes and be able to write that up in newsletters and things like that for their statistics. And I wanted to go ahead and encourage open access as much as possible and we'll talk about the why of that. So the communication I have had with students historically has been things like finding, eventually the email gets forwarded to me that they'd like to add an embargo. I do that or it goes to Brandy and then she forwards it to me. They want changes to an ETD. The most recent was somebody published their, they did their thesis. I don't remember if it was a thesis or dissertation, but somewhere in the text they had their mobile phone number. And so we had to go back and remove it. I don't do that. So then that gets, goes back to Brandy. So I have a little panic button here because most of my communication students is centered around extreme urgency and panic and anger. So I get a lot of questions about the publishing timeline. We had two semesters where I just got a bunch of these emails of like, I graduated last week. I'm going for a job interview tomorrow. I need this published so that I can give them a link to my thesis.  And then this is, is anybody else using digital commons? So we just learned this. You guys probably already know this. You can laugh at me. That's fine.  Yeah, we just left that at the default. And so all of a sudden I started getting these really hate filled emails because I think the first thing it says your thesis or dissertation has been published. And so rather than go look at like, go into digital commons and look at it, I would just immediately get these emails that said, I, I especially put an embargo on that. I don't understand how could this happen? This needs to be changed immediately. This is just like out of the blue again, just suddenly in one semester I got a bunch of these. And so we played around with it and we realized you can change that default message. So it now says something like it has been updated. However, the very next sentence is like, however, if you placed an embargo, it is still in place. I have had no more angry emails. So that's that's, that's like the bulk of my communication with students. That's all I have. I've also done some past orchid research trying to understand how well students understand orchid, which came to the final conclusion of that was they really didn't. They didn't understand what it was. Or in my mind, if I'm going to go forward with a publishing career, I want the orchid to identify myself. And maybe I already have published stuff. So like embargoing seems more likely right to me in my mind, like these two are probably connected, but students saw no connection. Anyway, that's past past research that I think I've actually presented here before. So our orchid usage has stayed at about 30%. And there'll be a semester where it bounces up to 42. And I've been fooled and I thought, oh good, it's trending upwards. And then it goes back down the next semester. It was up to 44% this semester. I'd like to fall for it again and say it's trending upward, but I have a feeling, you know, next semester, we'll just be back to where we were. All right. And so the other part, so communication orchid, and then the third part I was trying to address was to bring down our embargo rate. At one point we were up at like 48, like hovering around 50% of our students embargoing on an occasional semester. So we had a really high embargo rate. Now, do I care if you embargo? Not at all. Go embargo. That's does whatever. What I do care about though is the benefits that the students are missing out on. I feel like they're really missing out in just a common, especially with this plum X metrics where you can see not only your downloads, you can see who's reading your abstract and the number of people not who. And I feel like they're really missing out. I've had people find my own presentations in here from our like state consortium and then call me to come speak about privacy in a webinar for the state. This is like a really amazing tool. And I feel like students that are embargoing are missing out on these citations, but down, they're missing out on a talking point, you know, at a job interview of like, well, you know, my thesis has had 235 downloads. It's very, you know, high impact or probably a few more before you say high impact. But you get you get the, you know, the drift of what I'm trying to say there is that this is a great thing to be able to share with people. And I feel like students are missing out on that part. So I wanted to encourage open access unless they just absolutely really have to embargo because a publisher has put that, you know, on their plate. So when I started this process, the first thing I did is I wrote a letter and just so you know, this entire presentation is already up in digital comments at FI so you can just go search for it right now. If you want to steal the letter, go for it. Absolutely. And I wanted the letter to sound very, like, positive, very, I wanted to start with congratulations, you know, to grab their attention. Because students at this point, right, they're, they're, they're over the process.  But if somebody sends you an email, you know, and now with office, you know, it says congratulations will balloons go out. Thank you. So anyway, I've had good responses to it. I put spaces. I know this sounds kind of like ridiculous level details, but I pretty much put a space after every sentence to keep their eye flowing through because I don't think anyone wants to be confronted with a full paragraph they have to read. I put in a direct link to orchid to get them to sign up. I did have to add. So it's a sign up should take about a minute and then you can add the identifier to your digital common submission or send it to me or send it to me part I added after the first few responses where every single person said would you add those for me. And I realized they're never going to go back in and touch that submission again. So I'm like just send it to me. So that's what I did. I threw in a sentence here about licensing because I'm kind of warming up to doing something. We have the option in our digital commons to choose a creative commons license. So I'm kind of warming up to doing something with that. So I'm kind of tracking it and throwing it out there. I'm not doing anything with it at the moment. Then I wrote the embargo letter. So if you didn't have an orchid, you've got that letter from me. If you embargoed, you got this letter from me. And if you didn't have an orchid and you embargoed, you've got both. So back, I think in the second paragraph here that you may have heard from others that you should send it should not be there. So I just made a list for them of pros and cons. You know, I tried to say things like open access helps break down economic and cultural barriers by making your research available to everyone. I don't think they care about that. But my results I've seen so far. I tried to do some myth busting. Like I've heard some students say things like, well, if it's here, I'm never going to get published. And that's that's not true. So I tried to bust some of those myths with my letter. And if you've got both the orchid and the embargo, there was like a kind of a stop in the middle and a great big bold red with three dots after this. I've also just to draw their their eye down because I know nobody wants to read this much. So anyway, any, I'll stop for any questions so far. Nothing available. Nothing available. So we have a six month one year and a two year. Yeah. So you go to digital comments, you can read the abstract, but it says not available for download until. And that's so you can't actually read the paper. You can just see the abstract. Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's, that's hard as words. All right, so in tracking, you can see just again, this is like a timeline issue like you're thinking of recreating any part of this column A was their name. Obviously I've deleted that for privacy reasons. I've removed their email, things like that. But I track the data defense just because we have a couple of semesters in the queue and I need to be sure I was only focusing on one semester. The degree was, I did not, that was just made extra work for myself. 95% of people graduating had a PhD. So the discipline was interesting and we'll look at that that gave me a chance to find out who's embargoing. And then I track the organ, you know, the stuff I need to embargo the organ, the licenses, because I see something in the future. But again, just kind of making extra work for myself. And then the date I emailed them, the date they responded and some notes about how they responded and what they said. I did realize later, there's a column after this that I had to add. I put in their orchid identifier because I also wanted to be able to go back and look at did they fill out their orchid. Like they got the number, but did they actually fill anything out? Otherwise, I think it's useless. So, and that's something we can talk about. So, all together there were 151 students. So I had to go through in digital commons where, you know, you manage it and open up each one. Choose the correct letter, look at whether they had an orchid and embargo, you know, put that letter into an email, copy and paste, but then add their names to make it personal, tracking the responses. I went back and entered orchids for everybody that responded. And even if they just responded with like, here's my orchid, I still sent them a thank you just so they have all, because it's also about like having another point of communication, right? So they work with Brandy and this is the person that's asking to revise and meet these requirements. I just want to be a person they can reach out to. So if they have questions in the future, there's somebody they can talk to. I'm not asking them to do any hard work, you know, in that sense. All right, so some starting stats right before we look at the results of this whole endeavor. 151 students, I ended up sending 97 letters all together for the summer. Students with no orchid. Anybody else see that? How many were there? Okay. Students who already had an orchid, people had signed up for, or it was a very high orchid semester. So 66 already had an orchid. I didn't have to send them a letter. 53 of our students embargoed. And out of the 97 letters they sent, I got 25 responses. Now normally, I can get a 75% response rate by putting things in like I had in that letter before I publish, meaning kind of implying that I'm not going to publish unless you respond. But it did not work this way. I got 25 responses. So let's look at those embargo results. Not a single person, not one, removed or lessened the length of their embargo. In fact, one person asked me to please increase the length of their embargo. One student attempted to put in a seven-year embargo, which we do not offer. One person did write to me and explained why they were keeping the embargo, that they had works in there that were, had been published in a journal. And when I, I didn't respond to them. I just left them alone looking back. I've done some research and I realized I should have asked them, well, did you give up your rights? Like what, you know, I should have engaged them in that. So, but I had to do some research about that first. So going forward, you know, I, that needs to be addressed. So I did go back and look at who embargoes. It's, it's basically our hard sciences. As you can see, chemistry, biology, medicine, computer science. And then our others up here, education and finance. They've, they've obviously got some professors telling them they should embargo. And then the others were just the top line is just everything else that was there. There was religion, business, psychology, you know, just everything else. So 57% of our science graduates embargoed. They were only 45% of the graduates, but 57% of them embargoed, whereas only 20% of all the other disciplines embargoed. So it's definitely our sciences who are embargoing. And that may have given me a clue as I think about this a little more, because I really just ended this project. It'll give me a chance to think about, you know, what I want to do going forward, knowing who embargoes. Okay, so I think one lesson from the embargo part of this is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding what librarians do, right? Because I say in the letter, like we are experts in this. And I think they remember story time at the library. I think they think, you know, we're in the library, we have some puppets and on the weekends, we still do story time or something. But I feel like they're, they don't trust us the way they trust their professors when we're talking about publishing and copyright. And I think without a whole change of how the librarians are viewed, you know, that they come to understand that we are experts in this stuff. I think it's going to be really hard to affect anything with embargoes, right? Because they're hearing this from their departments and possibly from publishers, but they may be going to publishers without having information about what they can negotiate, you know, and retaining rights and things like that or retain, like the publishers that I have worked with have all been perfectly happy with me posting a preprint version of an article in our institutional repository. And I don't know the students know to ask that when they go to these publishers. So, and this is where the librarians are experts, but I don't think they think that way about us. All right, so our orchid results. So embargo is a failure. To learn an experience. Let's rephrase that. It's a learning experience. So we started out with only 44% of our students having an orchid by the time we were done with this project. 60% now have an orchid. And I will say during the time it took me to drive from Miami to here, three other students did email me with their orchid. So we're a little over 60% now of our students have an orchid for this past summer semester. So the orchid went well overall. I mean, I only had 25 responses, but we did up the usage of orchid. We did increase it. The question comes in with this part of it. So 79% of students who received a request to register for an orchid did not enter any content. Now I'm looking over the upper right hand corner. So I get that. I just asked you to register. You haven't had time to input information. I get that. Now, 37% of the students who already had an orchid before their submission of the ETD had no content. So that means that 63% did. So they did go back. The people who had an orchid for a while had gone back and added content, but it was still only up to 63%. So I'm going to hope that the people who I just kind of bullied into getting an orchid will go back and add content. But if they don't, I don't know that orchid is very useful in any way. And that's a whole other problem. So what I learned from the orchid part is that students are done, right? So it's up to me at this point to offer to put in their orchid. I only got 25 responses out of 97 letters. So they're really, really done. So now I will say for this semester, I was kind of catching them at the end. They were done. They were graduated. And then they were getting these letters, right? So starting this semester, I can catch them the moment they put in their first submission where they're still working with Brandy on revisions. So this may be more useful, you know, catching them at the beginning rather than after they've graduated. So, all right. And so for the communication part of it, I got 25 responses. The majority of people thanked me. They seemed really appreciative. And the one who wrote back to me was like, thank you for reaching out. You know, they were genuinely pleased to have a contact. I had several conversations. Went back with emails back and forth with people over like finding, which I don't know much about. So I had to forward them on to Brandy. But we still talked about it. We talked about what a couple of people asked me about licensing. What this means? What is, what are like creative commons licenses? Somebody we went back and forth. He's like, how do I put this in a resume? Do I have this now? Where can I put it? You know, we shared some screenshots back and forth of where it could go in a resume, how to use it and things like that. One person thought I was just reaching out to immediately publish it and told me not to, but never providing an orchid. I'm kind of used to those panic emails, so it's fine. One person responded with an email that just had their orchid. No other text. So they were not interested in conversation. And of course, 75% of the students did ignore my email. But again, I caught them in summer after they graduated. So I'm hoping to turn that around by catching at the beginning of the process during the semester. So I feel like we've upped our, our orchid usage, right? So if orchid is going to be useful, let's go with the premise that it will be then moving it from, you know, 30% to into the 60s. I think it's good. And I think providing them, even if it's only a few people that really want to converse with me, I think it's good that they have this contact. So I will go ahead with some parts of this process into the next semester. So next steps. And this is where kind of we enter the, the Q&A how we do it. I would love to hear from you guys. I'm thinking of only sending out the orchid letters and just leaving embargo alone. Right. I can't change the entire reputation of the profession right this second. So I don't know that doing it, sending out embargo letters is useful. I, but I would love to hear from you guys if you think it is, or I just need to try another approach. I have thought about maybe you send out something about embargoes about like if it's embargoed, you miss out on these stats like none of the other long letter I had just like, you know, maybe a screenshot of statistics and downloads and being, you know, everything you can get from it. So that, I think the bottom one bullet point I have here, we have the digital scholar studio. That's what DSS stands for that we also manage our digital collection center. And I'm thinking of offering some kind of workshop. I know Brandy offers workshops on how to submit your thesis and dissertation. But something I kind of like the idea we heard in the, in the panel session, they were calling a meeting like a mixer and just something where I can get and let them come and ask questions about publishing. And if it's published, can I still use it? Do I have to embargoed if I put it in, you know, my, my ETD something where we can cover these things about licensing and, you know, like more of an informal discussion group. So that's a thought. I don't know if anybody have any other thoughts anything in the chat. Anything anybody would recommend. Yeah. They can, like if they are in the midst of getting published, they can recontact us, you know, with that, like contract, like a little more evidence than, hey, I'd just like to reembark. But they have to have a little more evidence than that. And we can, we can reembark. We can. Right. Did you have a comment? In Barga. 53 of the 151 in Barga. It was weighed out. It was weighed out. Yeah, it was very low this semester. I like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah, because I was thinking of the workshops directed at the students, but I think maybe do two, another one for faculty. Or even a joint. Right. And yes, I do because I used to teach in one of our departments. So yeah, I think we could easily. I love that. Thank you. That's a great idea. So if we've got some faculty there and brandy joins us from graduate school because there's there's always questions that pertain to that end of it that I can't answer. So yeah, I think if we do maybe a joint discussion. Yeah, I like that. That's great. That's exactly what I was hoping to get from coming here to present because, you know, when you're living in your little silo and you're thinking about approaches. It's hard to come up with new ideas from time to time. I think so. So the key handles. I'm the person handle. The university. I'm back with you and I'm here now. Yeah. No, I'm fine. So I think basically what she's saying is like, you're fine. Can everybody see it? Oh, yeah. There we go. All right. Right. I should see everybody. I'm the person handle. And I've also struggled with the bar. I hope to engage in it. The project will vary entirely. I do wonder if offering workshops with names of faculty, professors, even with students and faculty, I think you can ask me about earlier. Yeah. I mean, brandy, you offer stuff right at the beginning. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you offer those at the beginning of the semester, right? Yeah. Oh, a little bit more. Okay. So we'll, yeah, brandy and I will definitely talk about like timing and like what else we can, we can do. I would love if the person from, okay. So I know I'm looking at this, but I'll, I see on my slide. They don't see me. So if the person from UNLV, I'm sorry. I can't see your name wants to reach out to me. That'd be awesome. No, no.  And for the person from UNLV, I will be there November 10th. So we should meet him. I will be there on your campus in the library on the 10th. We should meet. Sorry for other questions. I'm going to hand the mic to you. Okay. So I'll stand up. Yeah. So I just had two questions, two more questions to throw out to you. Do your students fill out their orchid profiles? Like has anybody gone back into their profiles and look? Anybody know if they fill them out? Because if it just has their name and a number, I don't see how it's tracking anything. Like, right? It's completely useless. Right? If they don't fill it out, I think. I remember all these orchid workshops when we first implemented it, like seven years ago, and I think I need to revisit a little bit about how orchid works exactly because it doesn't, it doesn't aggregate on its own. You have to fill it out yourself. This might be a problem. So our problem is, or my problem personally, I guess, is that I'm in a similar role to you, but I'm not a librarian. And we have our cataloging librarian who handles orchid IDs, but she doesn't deal with pieces and dissertations. So, and I don't know that much about them. So I really need to coordinate with her. I think if we want to have students getting orchid IDs, getting orchid IDs. Like more engaged. Yeah. It's been a struggle. I don't know how long we've been doing this, but at least five years. I feel like it's more though. All right. This is some of our wildlife that you're looking at in FIU. We're sitting now all around our lake. If you have not lived in the subtropics, we have two seasons. We have very, very, very hot. And then we have the season where it rains iguanas. So once it gets into the 50s, the low 50s and into the 40s, these guys freeze. They don't freeze to death. They just freeze. And then they start falling from trees on the people. But they're fun to look at and watch it. Like little mini dinosaurs running around the campus everywhere. So we'll tip about subtropical life there. This is another guy I found on the other lake. He's pretty. All right. If you guys have had success, anybody's had success encouraging people to open access, you know, not embargo. What are you doing? Please tell me. Anybody have any thoughts on that? I know some schools just flat out don't allow it. And I find it interesting. I mean, not an interesting sort of interesting. I expect the sciences to be the embargoing ones. But on the other hand, these are also the people who will, you know, if they go on to research in their future, will likely be working with government grants and everything will have to be open access. So I don't know, you know, anybody have any? I'm happy about that. Right. Right. You know, it's one of the tips I put in my bar go letter was like, hey, you can move all of society forward at a faster rate, innovation, you know, medical knowledge, everything. But I. So. All right. Anybody online comes up with any tips? Feel free to email me. So we don't really have anything to help encourage us on this. But it kind of leads me to the question. Sorry. Do you have a creative writing program? We do. How do you handle those students? Because they're the ones at UCF who are like, you know, panicking. Right. When they're, we do a campus program. And so they, it's available. Anybody within. I think it's currently the IT range or. Anyway, but they're the ones that are panicking. Because they're still going to be available five years after they graduate. Because what's the thing? She's the five years campus on the whole. So it's openly available worldwide after five years. When they come to you guys. So wait, say that, say that first part again of the question. So it's for the creative writing students. Yeah. What are you doing? It's an MFA in creative writing.  Right. And the options at UCF that we give them are a one. We have an embargo for patents, but then they get one year, three years or five years on campus only. And worldwide will access after that. Okay. So after five years, it's, it's, it's out there. It doesn't have to please be prepped as well. And so it's out there after the five year. Okay. And they're the ones that we find, that I find in the library as the ones that are the most panicked. Because I would get. Yeah. No, I understand. Yeah. Wait, do you, how do you see that after their three years? So I think our MFA's are permanently embargoed. Right. Yeah. They never become live. Yeah. So they are MFA students to get an automatic permanent embargo. Some people don't think it. They just, they don't care, but most of them do. And so what we ask for is that they enter their metadata into your full comments and they submit a five page sample of the body text. We get the full text and we keep it and archive it. Like we don't ever publish it to different comments. But their five page sample is currently like all of this automatically open. Yeah. It's a bill. But they never get the full text. Like you've never published or published something. That's how it goes in that aid. Yeah. Yeah. Because that would create a lot of panic for them because that degree is meant for you to go on and write. I mean, it's not like, oh, I may or may not go into research after my degree. Like they went into a field that where they're going to write. So yeah, I can, I can imagine you get a lot of panic, panic. Okay. Well, um, so my contact information is here. If anybody has any thoughts, any ideas that I would love to hear from you. Um, I would, like I said, for the UNLV person, I will be there in the library. Um, so I would love to meet up. So send me an email. Thank you so much. That was, I definitely will contact you. Great. Awesome. All right. Thank you to everybody online and in person for, uh, this was a great presentation. Thank you.


That's what I'm talking about, that's what I'm talking about.  Thank you for this and I'll have more to say about that when we get more company in here at the end of the meeting and to more fully express my appreciation. I have just received the report as of last night, last night we were in the Orient. So I haven't had much chance to do more than take some quick looks at it. So I am most anxious to hear your report and turn to you now to hear from all of you. Mr. President, first of all let me hand you a signed copy of the report. All the signatures are on the last page. Oh, thank you. We use the right names. This will be the one that I will get into more thoroughly. Thank you. Mr. President, first of all I think I speak for the whole commission by telling you that we appreciate the opportunity to serve on one of the more important problems facing this country. Let me perhaps begin by giving a brief description of how we proceeded and then state a few of the highlights. We held about 30 full days of regular meetings in Washington. That's another 12 special meetings. We heard testimony from 200 people in this country and 300 on our trips. We solicited the opinions of 170 outside experts and 200 other individuals and groups provided written material, all of which in the film as well. We will publish as appendices. Of course we have just to give an idea of what happened. I must say the attendance was amazing. We had about 90% attendance at all of these meetings. We worked through the lunch hour and if I have one complaint to make I would like to join Mike Farnes in saying that the food supplied by the State Department was a violation of our human rights. In the future you should require periodic reports. Progress that is made to the extent possible in some sort of agreed procedure.  The labor book 1984. This is our flu color strategy for 1984. Thank you. Members and Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been hearing a report on this commission. It's been six months now, it's the most arduous work and work that has been extremely well done, and I want to express to all and each of them my thanks for the thanks on behalf of all the people of America for the service that they have performed for our country. The report, when I have just received it and have not had time to read all of it, I have had an opportunity to have some summations and then to be present here for a discussion and a report by the individuals, and I believe that what I have seen already is the most comprehensive and detailed review of the issues as they affect our national security that I have ever seen. I am impressed with the depth of the analysis and the creativity of the recommendations, and Henry has told me that this was a diverse but not a divisive group, and they worked in a bipartisan manner throughout, and I am especially grateful to Lane Kirkland, to Bob Estelle, and Mayor, to others of the Royal Opposition for this, for the fact that we have a consensus recognition of the urgent nature and the complexity of the crisis in Central America, and the implications for our fundamental interests. I believe that the members of the Congress, when they study this report, will share my belief that we must urgently seek solutions and the solutions to the problems that are outlined in this study. I think that they will fully share our belief when they do look at it, that it is time for us to go to work, to set forward a program that will achieve the goals the members of this commission have set for us. And again, I can only say that I think all America is indebted to them for a job that I don't think has ever been surpassed with the particular problem we face, and it's a challenge that I am going to do everything I can, and I'm sure the Congress will do to see some of it in here. No, no, it is not. And I have here before not said anything about this waiting until the time when I had the report before me, which as I say, I will study and read, and I would think that it behooves the Congress and certainly behooves the administration to try and come together in the same bipartisan way that this commission has been together over these last six months. All right. Yes, what a way to start your first meeting. Well, as a matter of fact, I have three new members here now. I want to say hello to all of you, and I would like to thank our own Senator Jeff Smith for talking to us. Well, again, to you and to all of the others, again, my thanks to you for what you're doing here, and I love it. It's been a long, hard work, and I'm glad to make the underscore the importance of your mission. The world events today certainly demand a first-rate world-class intelligence capability. You play a vital role in evaluating the quality and the adequacy of the intelligence and how the intelligence collection analyses we have. Being a critic of people and organizations I know isn't exactly the easiest thing to do and can be a little uncomfortable, but it's still inside of it. It's necessary to keep up the good effort, and we will closely look at you. I'll say, yeah, I just told everyone I was taking the rest of the day off, and they were down for quite some length for me today. That's right. I feel really comfortable here, not that.  I think they are very pleased with us. You have the courage to go ahead, and I think it was good. I'd like to throw yourself into a swimming pool. And the swimming pool is good. From now on, you need some hot water. Yeah, a little more. A little more of the water a little bit. I think the reaction, I think it cannot be like that. I'm not disturbed by some of those who... I'm not disturbed by the leader of the National Council of Churches. No. Read with many of their statements for a long time. It's a... You see, we play all over particularly in this field of warranties and justice and development. Human rights. Now, for example, in a few days, there will be a meeting in Rome of the two foreign ministers of Argentina and Chile, and the parameters they will conclude on the bigger... The bigger channel. Mm-hmm. And that is very good. I was there the news. That's right. You were the new CEO in Argentina. Argentina in those days. It was the end of December. I remember, like today, it was the 14th of December, when they decided to go to Rome. Like they had done it for the... for the COVID-19. They decided. They had signed already the order to occupy the island, the 21st of December. And the 21st of December of the day, they were supposed to occupy it on the 21st of December, and they came home and all those islands around. And it will be more. Yes. Because... As the Prime Minister hit me. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Nice to see you. You're amazing. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. And here. Sorry, I'm kind of late, yes, good to see you.


Welcome everyone to Mortal Kombat! The best players in the business! From start to end, nothing but upsets, close matches. Just straight bloodbath. This could be the start of a miraculous comeback. Final game, final round, Mortal Kombat! I can't believe you actually did that! Oh no! The last possible hit and the room explode! Blade on the line because everything is on the line here. Oh my days! This is going to be ridiculous. That was a really serious par par. This is not over. This is not over. The mail blow is good! Let's go!


Greg has Greg's got something that he was having a weird issue where his apps were routinely being asked or routinely asking him to reauthenticate their security preferences, full disk access, things like that. And he thought it was default folder causing this trouble. And thankfully that's what he thought because he started working with John Gotau, the proprietor of St. Clair software and the developer of many things including default folder and John's a smart dude and pointed Greg in the right direction of issuing a terminal command that sort of wipes out that database. It forces you to do it for each app one more time. But when that database gets corrupted, that's often the issue is wipe it out and let that happen again. And so he gave us the terminal command, he shared that with us. And that is, this is typed out in the show notes for MaciCab 946, you can go to macicab.com and go to 946 or you can go to mgg.fm slash 946 and it'll bring you right there. But the command just for anybody following along is sudo tccutil reset all and the all evidently has to have a capital A. Who knows why. But that command is on the web, you can just go copy and paste it, you don't have to remember it, but yeah.