Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. My name is Victoria and this is a collaboration between Small Business Administration and its partners where we talk about small businesses in Hawaii. Today we have a guest from the VBAC of the Pacific, Dennis Kwak. Hey. Hi Dennis. Hey, nice to be here. Thank you for being here. So I'm looking forward to talk more about how to start a business in Hawaii. Sure. But before we jump into that, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Oh yeah, sure. I'm the director of the Veterans Business Outreach Center. This program is an SBA program and we've been here for about three years now. Prior to me taking the job as a director, I was actually a business advisor with the Small Business Development Center here in Hawaii for about seven years. Yeah, and you know I've been in economic development for about 10 years and I just really love and enjoy working with small businesses and entrepreneurs and helping them start and grow their businesses. Nice. Me too. I enjoy that part. So can you tell us more about VBAC of the Pacific? What does it do? Oh well yeah, we're a program like I said. We get a grant from the Small Business Administration. We're housed under the University of Hawaii at Hilo and although you know that's our sponsor, I mean that's our host, my office is actually at the Manoa Innovations Center above the University of Hawaii in Manoa and we work primarily with military installations providing workshops and trainings called the Boots to Business Program where we showcase, we do two-day workshops in military installations across the islands. We also cover Guam and American Samoa. When we're not doing workshops, we do one-on-one business consultations for veterans and military families. So you have a lot of experience in small business consulting, so you're the best person to talk about how to start a business in Hawaii. I guess I don't know. So how do I start a business in Hawaii? Oh well that's a kind of a that's a simple question but a kind of a long answer but first you have to determine what kind of how you want to start that business. Most people think starting a business is about creating a business. There's other avenues that you can take. One of them is obviously purchasing a business and the other which is kind of popular in Hawaii is taking over a business from your family member or from an employer. Creating a business, a new business is everyone's idea of starting a business. So if you choose an avenue you have to do due diligence and make sure that your idea or your business model makes sense. That's how you start a business. So that's how you get it down on paper. You got to first determine the avenue you want to take. What about franchising? Oh franchising is definitely one of them and I forgot to mention that. It's another one. It's definitely another one. It's you know, franchising has a lot of benefits and one of the benefits is that there's already a built-in process and people like that they can actually work on the craft of the business and the process is already in place. There's huge market potential because you have like a big corporate backer for marketing and you know it's a proven business model. One of the risks going back to creating a new business is that when you create a new business the biggest risk is that it's not a proven business model. So with you know risk there comes great reward but on the flip side the risk is quite big. The downsides of franchising is that you have to pay royalties, you have to pay franchise fee. Yeah for sure. We have to have some money to start it. Of course yeah I mean there's a lot of downsides of starting a franchise too but if you have a good franchise or you have a good franchise model it definitely helps you start the business especially if you're new to creating your own business. But you're right franchise fees can be pretty big and as well as royalties so depending on you know what your profit margins are, even though they seem little whether it's two three percent that really dips into your profit margins at the end of the year. So there are a lot of different ways to start a business and one is not better than the other. It really depends on your goals. Of course of course and you know buying a business in which you know we talked about a minute ago it's a it's a good way to actually start a business as well. If you feel like you can buy a business and improve on the existing business model that's a great way to actually you know grow that business. But just be aware when you buy a business you have to do due diligence. You have to make sure that the business isn't good standing because ultimately you're going to inherit the good and the bad of that business.  The good being that you know they already have an existing client base and hopefully you can build on that. I would always say that when you're buying a business you know you look at their tax returns for three years the best way to get that is having the owners issue what's called the 4506T form which is an IRS form that kind of gives the profit and loss statements of that business to the potential buyer. And very important to have good advisors. Oh yeah I think so yeah and it's you know a lot of people when they start a new business they kind of want to remain kind of under the radar they don't want other people to steal their idea but I always think that's kind of paranoia and I don't think that's a good way to actually you know go into researching about a business you know because having feedback is a you know really good validation for your idea. I always say if your business is great sooner or later somebody will copy you so you just have to accept that if your business idea is not great you're safe. Yeah that's true that's true. So no need to worry about that. Yeah no need to worry I mean there's always gonna be people trying to emulate you but you should take that in you know good stride and try to improve on what we already built. Great so the most popular one is actually the new business creation right? Yeah. So let's say I have an idea how do I know I got it right how do I know my business idea has potential? The first thing you need to do like we were talking about is you need to do some vetting to make sure that the idea resonates with your potential customers. There's really nothing better than getting validation from your potential customers and making sure I mean for them saying hey it's a great product it's a great idea and when I say potential customers I'm not talking about your auntie and your uncles but people that might really purchase your product or service. I also think that your idea has to relate to some kind of friction or bottleneck and when I say that I mean like your idea has to have some kind of value proposition where it helps you know basically or improve somebody's life. There's got to be something that it makes a situation better for your potential customers. Is either you solving a problem or you providing a solution to someone's need? Of course yeah and if you look at all the great businesses that's been built in the past ten years it's always about addressing issues where there's bottleneck or where there is friction you know and you talk about you know the companies or like industry changing companies like Uber you know they saw kind of a friction or bottleneck in transportation logistics and they kind of change that around in technology you know but I always think that if you have some kind of value proposition where it matters to your potential customer I think that is a great business idea. There are so many businesses out there already how to be unique. That is a good question. Yeah it's definitely hard and being unique is it can come in all different kinds of you know factors I mean it could be unique in product and service but it could be also unique in location it can be unique in you know price points too I mean you might have the exact same product as somebody else but you know you're at a better price point you know you're gonna have that edge and that's gonna be your niche you know so I mean I don't think one is greater than the other but you definitely have to be different if you just are among the crowd you won't stand out and in this competitive environment you definitely need to stand out. So you mentioned market research and that you have to talk to your customer just to validate your idea do you have any ideas how how can I do market research for my business idea? Yeah I mean when you're talking about market research you know we're talking about understanding your customer base I always found the census has a lot of great data especially when you're kind of honing in on you know what the population size is demographics and geographics are your potential customers and when you're talking about industry data I always like IBIS world I don't know what IBIS stands for I know it's an acronym or something is IBIS but they put up very comprehensive industry reports where you can really do some research on the industry and whether that industry has legs whether it's an upward tick or a downward tick and I would always advise clients that it's hard to be a superstar in a downward spiraling industry you know I mean certain industries just have you know a downward path and no matter how good of a business person you are if you're fighting against that kind of momentum of a downward industry it's very hard to kind of come back and thrive in that industry just like retail business well yeah like you know I mean we hear every day that retail is dying and you know a lot of times point their fingers at Amazon I mean that's retail too but yeah traditional brick and mortar retail it's you know it's seen better days and I think that you know retail will it'll always be there but I don't think it'll thrive like it did you know 20 30 years ago it will definitely it'll definitely change that's why I have to do market research that's why you have to do market research yeah for sure yeah and we should mention that to get IBIS World Report you can actually contact VBock yeah because we have access to market research yeah so if you're a veteran or you know military spouse and you're thinking about starting a business and let's say you want to do like trucking or let's say food and beverage it's a great way to actually just reach out to us and say hey you know I want to know more about this industry does it have legs we can provide you a pretty comprehensive report yeah for free yeah I like yeah I think everybody likes free so that's industry research and then market research is talking to customers doing surveys do you suggest some specific ways talking to customers yeah I mean surveys seems to work and you know we're talking about that you know getting in touch with your potential customers it's a great way to actually just get some honest feedback and we call that like primary market research is when you actually are on the floor talking to potential customers whether that be you know on the street or you know getting a survey done about focus group focus group is another great example sure yeah there's definitely a lot of ways you can do you know online marketing or online surveys but I always thought like that you know personal face-to-face with a potential customer has the has the most potential and the most honest feedback but what we see actually in real life a lot of small business owners skip that step even though we think it's very important yeah and you know I think that is I don't know I think it's just that people are a little bit hesitant to share their ideas and it's really about like oh I don't want my idea to be stolen you know I want my idea to be protected but once you start selling and once you start manufacturing or you know you know market start marketing your business and if it's a great business people are like we said they're gonna try to emulate you and that's you know you can take that you know as a pride point you know rather than you know trying to push that back because any great idea is gonna be copied in some form or fashion yeah I agree yeah so we talked about validating your idea market research what about economics of a business what are the key things to consider in terms of economics oh well you know I think everybody goes into business for some kind of financial gain you know if you're not doing that then you probably shouldn't go into business but you should be aware of like an economic model that makes sense for your business there's some key levers that you should really pay attention to and we teach this in boosted business but one of the key levers is revenue streams you know or you know sources of revenue that is probably the biggest just because you might have one product or one you know service but you ultimately have to build on that it's very hard to kind of thrive in this business if you just have one product one service we were currently working with the food and beverage a restaurant recently and you know your primary source was actually you know selling food but you know they found a market where you know a lot of customers were coming in and these customers their market base were you know tourists from overseas and they wanted some kind of like a gift that they could take away with them so they started selling little trinkets key chains t-shirts and you know this is a great example of how they added a revenue source and now that accounts for I believe like 12 or 13 percent of their total annual sales which is you know something that they didn't just they didn't really recognize an opportunity but you know adding these kind of little revenue streams can really bolster companies financials the second lever I believe is obviously you can't take one without the other but it's really margins and margins and volume but yeah I mean you got to have some kind of margins from each sale you know if you're making just one dollar out of you know 10,000 you know 10,000 units you know it's not as much as obviously you know making a little bit more so you got to be kind of cognizant about you know your margins and your volumes and given time frame that's totally makes yeah thank you so we're gonna take a short break and we will be back in one minute. Hey hello everyone and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studio my name is Andrew Lanning I'm the host of Pretty Matters Hawaii we air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies the folks we work with please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Aloha I'm Mellie James host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays every other Tuesday from 11 to 1130 this show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Aloha welcome back to Adventures in Small Business my name is Victoria and today I'm talking to Dennis Kwak from the VBock of the Pacific and we are talking about how to start a business in Hawaii. Yes. Welcome back. Thanks. Well thanks. So we talked about market research and we talked about business model and economics. What about legal entities? I feel like it's a big question for a lot of small business owners. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. It's one of those big questions that we always get asked. You know what kind of legal entity should I have. Well you know them knowing that they have to have a legal entity is a good starting point. But there's a lot to choose from. There's sole proprietorships. There's different kinds of partnerships. General partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships. But it seems like the most popular one for small businesses is what's called a limited liability company. Limited liability company is recognized by the state but the IRS doesn't recognize it so we'll have to kind of choose a different entity for filing with the IRS but every state has a limited liability company option. One of the great things about limited liability companies is that it gets funneled into your it's a straight run through so basically it gets funneled into your personal access when you file. But it's actually considered two separate entities in that state. So it's kind of a you know separating those entities your personal and your business and which kind of provides a lot of protection for that individual that is the owner of that limited liability company. But LLCs or limited liability company seems to be the most popular. I just want to say that you know because we're not attorneys we don't really give legal advice. But from what I've seen limited liability companies. Yeah. Yeah. What about corporations? Yeah of course corporations is a big one you know C Corpse but you know we don't because we primarily deal with small businesses and small businesses you know it's a big it's a big portion of why small business I'm a wise businesses but it also is you can be a small business and have you know 100 employees or 90 employees and there's a lot of small businesses that are C corporations but I'm talking really more about starting out when you're starting out I think in the LLC is probably the better way to go and then C corporations you know one of the you know one of the good things is you are offered more protection as a C corporation and you can it's much easier to raise money or raise equity in a C corp. But the flip side of that of raising money is that you know you're gonna have what's called double taxation.  So a lot of people are kind of swayed away from that because of the double taxation and it's much easier to go from an LLC to a C corporation rather than going from a C corporation down to a C corporation. So just start with LLC and then as you grow maybe switch to a C corporation. Yeah I would always say yeah LLC is the best way to start just because you want to make sure that you know you're giving the freedom to kind of move about your money and if after the year or two you feel like your company has legs and it's got financial legs and it's doing well then you can kind of migrate toward filing as an S corporation an LLC with a state but an S corp. An S corporation is basically putting yourself as an employee of that said business and that kind of you know mitigate some of the kind of tax obligations that you might have or you know your business. Once again this is not illegal twice. This is just talking from experience. Yeah and what we've seen exactly from all the clients that we work with. And would you say I need to hire a lawyer to register a business or no? You know you could hire an attorney and I always think it's good to speak to an attorney. I don't think it's a necessity. In Hawaii through eHawai.gov it's kind of a fairly easy process to register a business. So I would say that you know you can try a gander trying to do it yourself. If you kind of run into troubles you don't understand what kind of questions they're asking. Maybe seek assistance from a resource partner or an attorney and they'll can hopefully provide you some good advice. That's what I really like about Hawaii. I think it's pretty cheap to start a business especially all C and pretty easy. It's all online such as Department of Commerce and then IRS and if anyone needs help we have SBA, SBDC, VBOC, Women's Business Center. So a lot of resources to support small business owners. So I totally agree with you. Yeah it's good to have a lawyer but not a necessity in terms of registering a business. But then some other legal issues like contract and maybe patents or trademarks that might need some assistance from a legal attorney. Yeah I mean if contracts definitely you want to make sure you're protected as well as your business and as well for like intellectual property like patents and the things like trademarks you should definitely seek advisement from an attorney or from an IP attorney. And that could be expensive but again we have business law court. Oh yeah yeah we do yeah. So you know we partner up not we but the Economies Women's Business Center and the Small Business Development Center and as well as us we partner up with the business law court and the business law court has been a valuable resource where they kind of offer legal advice for free. And it happens like every week right? Yes every other week. Okay yeah. Great so we talked about legal entities now another important topic is how do I finance my business. So most small business owners they don't have enough money to finance this startup so where do I go what do I do? Well I think it really depends on the type of business that you want to start and the type of person you are in terms of you know what kind of financial backing you know each different each is it's hard to kind of say this is the best path to go forward but we've seen people the most successful ones are that utilize a lot of different sources of financing options. The first and primary is owner savings that seems to be the biggest and it really should be you know the biggest just because it's hard to start a business and leverage and a new business and try to get financing for that. But owner's financing is the biggest. People do use credit cards and I have kind of a love hate with credit cards it's good when you start out but if you can if you know you can pay that back before the increase your APR then definitely you can use credit cards and of course small business loans is definitely an option. Banks are weary about giving small business loans to startups but it definitely does happen and people can utilize you know lending institutions and of course SBA loan program. A lot of options but the best would be just to save money. Yeah I would use some. And the reason I say that is because you know paying back a loan when you're starting out can be cumbersome for a small business so it's good to have combination of everything you know your own personal savings some loan maybe not the bulk of it but some loans can come in form of a term loan or a line of credit and maybe some equity injection from you know some friends and families and using some credit card to you know finance your business but kind of a mix of financing is probably the most risk averse. So here again depends on your goals I guess if you're okay with losing some of a control you can go with investors route because sometimes they want a part of your company a lot of times they want a part of your company. Yeah business loan you really have full control of your business but you have to start paying back the loan right away. Yeah so there are pros and cons and depends on.  What about crowdfunding? Yeah crowdfunding is an idea but you're not gonna get the bulk of the money from crowdfunding and you know crowdfunding is really about exposure as well as raising a little bit of money but I think the facet of marketing and exposure has a greater impact than actually raising money but there are some ridiculous campaigns that went out on crowdfunding sites that's done tremendously well but I think those are kind of one-offs not like a standard bear. There are a lot of maybe IT or art type of for sure yeah sure okay so crowdfunding and we can consider but probably very small businesses not gonna bring the bulk. Yeah and it like you know crowdfunding casts a wider net you know you can it's out on the web so you know you have a wider net you know they're investing maybe fifty seventy five dollars at a time but it's not really substantial to I guess you know getting a loan and you're kind of on the behest of these people that you don't know and you don't know you know you don't know where that money is coming from too so you know a lot of people are kind of have a love-hate relationship with crowdfunding. Yeah but that could be also a good market research opportunity to see how people are reacting to your idea. Definitely I definitely agree with that like we were talking about it's a marketing effort and to see kind of you know validation points for your business idea. Okay so business planning and business plan how do I start writing a business plan what are the must-have sections for a lot of people this is kind of a difficult topic and intimidating do you have any advice in terms of business plan starting on it. Well I think a lot of the things that go through your mind when you're starting a business has to be put down because you know your mind works in a million miles an hour so best way to do it is actually putting it down on paper and the business plan is kind of that form. There is no real right format there's a lot of great software out there like live plan but you know it's the must-haves of a business plan is like the executive summary you know you got to have financials you got to have marketing you got of all those things basically kind of and I know you're giving me the signal that I got to stop but there's definitely a lot of things but you should check out people can check out the economic developments organization like the SBDC and VBOX and these women's business center or the MIG Center for Businesses and Leadership to kind of put their business plan together and it will definitely help. And what I personally really like is business model canvas yeah I think that's a good first step because it's all in one page so start with that and then move on to business plan there are templates on the SBVAP site and then again we can help you through the process. So thank you so much I know you have an announcement. Yeah I do well I want to say that you know National Veteran Small Business Week is coming up on November 4th through the 8th it's kind of a great week where we celebrate veteran entrepreneurship and small business owners and I would love for everybody to get involved and we're gonna do our third annual small business veteran small business awards here in Hawaii and it's going to be on November 8th the location is yet to be determined but when we decide that please check us out on our website and you know hit us up and I hope everybody could nominate some veteran owners as well as new veteran businesses and veteran advocates for the awards. Looking forward this should be a fun event. It definitely is every year we have a lot of fun. Yeah so thank you so much Dennis for sharing your wisdom and thank you for watching. Please follow us on social media, look for VBock of the Pacific on Facebook and Twitter and follow our YouTube channel Hawaii Small Business. I'll see you next Thursday at 11 o'clock at adventures in small business. Stay tuned and thank you for watching aloha.


In the previous class, we are discussing about an example problem in which we are wanting to find out the displacement response of the structure using modal analysis technique. The problem was that of a cable state bridge in which this cable state bridge we had solved before for finding out the value of the R matrix and in that the degrees of freedom those were considered as the degree of freedom which are dynamic or dynamic degrees of freedom that we identified are these two displacements at the top of the tower and a vertical displacement at the middle of the deck. There were 4 support degrees of freedom and 3 rotations. So, we condensed out the rotational degrees of freedom first and then formed a 4 plus 3 7 by 7 matrix out of that again we took out the 3 non support degrees of freedom that is partition that stiffness matrix. So, that the 3 non support degrees of freedom are identified and from there we obtained the R matrix that is the influence coefficient matrix we describe before. Now, using that influence coefficient matrix now we are wanting to solve this problem using the modal analysis technique and one can see here that the matrix K for the 3 degrees of freedom are these matrix that is 3 by 3 matrix and the mass matrix again is a 3 by 3 diagonal mass matrix. The R matrix that we had already obtained for this cable state bridge that is shown over here 3 by 4 R matrix the 3 frequencies that we obtained for this structure was omega 1 omega 2 and omega 3 corresponding to each frequency we had a mode shape that is phi 1 t phi 2 t and phi 3 t shown over here you can see that the first mode shape is such that the two pylons are having displacement in the opposite direction that is one in the negative with the negative sign other with the positive sign, but by the same amount and the deck is going up rather than the rather than going down. The second mode is a mode in which both the pylons move in the same direction and there was no displacement at the center of the deck. Third mode is such that in which the two pylons again move in the opposite in the opposite direction and the deck instead of going up goes down. So, these are the three mode shapes for the structure. So, using that mode shape one can obtain the three general modal equations the first modal equation is written in this form and here we have phi 1 t and this is phi 1 t m phi 1 that is we take the first mode shape and here this R basically would be the first column that is the first column of this R matrix. So, with this we obtain the phi i t m R and we get this as the quantity that we obtain once we multiply m into R when we multiply that then we get this quantity and with this quantity we form the p g 1 matrix that is informing the p g 1 matrix we multiply 1.474 into x double dot g 1 plus 0.008 into x double dot g 2 and so on and add them together to get a the load at a particular time t for the p g 1 load. So this p g 1 is a time dependent load which is called the generalized load and at every instant of time t one can obtain a value for this using this equation delta t is taken as 0.025. So far as the accelerations at the force supports are concerned we construct these time history of acceleration at the different supports from the 30 seconds of actual earthquake record. Since we have 4 supports so we have got 3 spaces in between and if we assume that 5 second is the phase time lag between the 2 supports then the total record of the excitation would be 30 plus 15 second that is 45 second x double dot g 1 will have first 30 seconds as the actual earthquake record and rest of the 15 seconds will have 0 values. Similarly x double dot g 2 will have first 10 seconds as 0 values then there will be 30 second of the actual earthquake record and the last 5 second will be again 0 values that way we can obtain the time histories of excitation for all the supports and then we perform the analysis using the modal analysis technique. The results are shown over here this is the first generalized force the time history of that is plotted over here this is the second generalized force it is plotted again over here and one we have taken a plot up to 35 second. In fact you can see that after 30 second these values of the generalized load are very small. We have the first generalized displacement time history like this and we can see that after again 30 second the displacement decreases and continues up to 45 second that is the total length of time of excitation at each support. Therefore, we have the responses up to 45 seconds this is the second generalized displacement that is again shown over here we solve the problem both using the time history analysis and the frequency domain analysis using modal analysis technique. So, the results were compared for the generalized displacement z 1 z 2 z 3. So, we took all the 3 modes as a result of that the modal analysis and the direct analysis would not show up any difference if we had taken less number of modes for solving the problem there would have been a difference between a direct analysis and the modal analysis because in the direct analysis we take the contributions from all modes whereas in the modal analysis the number of modes that we consider in the analysis depends how we choose the number of modes that is considered to be important. So, therefore, many a time we do not take contribution from all the modes and we may be taking the first contribution of the first few modes. In this particular example we have taken all the 3 modes and the solution obtained from the time history and frequency domain analysis they were compared over here and we can see that both in terms of RMS value and the peak value the results are matching quite well. The reason for this is that while performing the time history analysis we assumed 0 displacement and 0 velocity in the beginning that is the initial condition was 0 and 0 therefore, the transient part of the solution was not significant at all and the time history and frequency domain analysis they masked very well in terms of RMS and peak values. The crucial point in the modal analysis is the number of modes that is to be taken into analysis. For example, if we have a structure having 100 degrees of freedom then we will have 100 mode shapes and 100 frequencies and one of the objective of the modal analysis was to obtain a problem which would be uncoupled problem that is a coupled differential equation need not be solved. So, we should solve a single degree of freedom equation and we wish to also solve as less number of equation of motion as possible yet at the same time we should get a good result that is result which is almost correct. So, with this end in view the number of modes that is considered for the analysis that depends upon the nature of excitation dynamic characteristics of the trace structure and the response quantity of interest looking at these three quantities we decide how many number of modes we should consider in the analysis lesser the number of modes will require less computational time one index which is used to determine the number of modes required for getting fairly accurate result is called the mass participation factor and the mass participation factor is worked out using this expression here lambda i this is equal to the mode participation factor m r is the mass attached to the r th degree of freedom and phi i r is the mode shape coefficient in the ith mode for the r th degree of freedom. So, if we sum this over the all degrees of freedom then we get the mass participation factor for the ith mode and these summation at the top that we obtain that is of course multiplied by the total mass of the system. So, this shows the ratio between the total mass of the system and the mass that is considered in the analysis through the number of modes that we are considering in the analysis. So, that is why it is called a mass participation factor that is in the ith mass participation mode what is the percentage of the mass that is considered in the analysis. The number of modes aim to be considered in the analysis is determined by this equation that means for each mode we find out the mass participation factor sum them together over the number of modes and when we get it to be more or less equal to 1 then we decide about what should be the number of modes that we should take into consideration. Generate is found that if we take say first 5 or first 10 modes in a structure we are able to take into consideration about 95 percent of the mass of the system. So, in that case we satisfy our self by considering 5 to 10 modes of a very large structure and therefore for a large structure we benefit by reducing the calculations because we have to then solve 5 or 10 single degree of freedom equation to get the final answer. Now this is so far as the displacement response is concerned the if the bending moment shear force or any other quantity is required then not necessarily that this particular concept would work because the for example for bending moment the participation of the higher mode is very important because the higher the number of mode the more curvature we get into the mode shapes and since the curvature influences the bending moment therefore we should not miss out higher modes. So, there are these general guideline is applicable for finding out a good displacement response. Now let us say come to another method called mode acceleration approach the it was evolved because of the fact that we wish to obtain a very good response of any type that is whether bending moment shear force or displacement with less number of modes that is our intention therefore the classical mode summation approach that is the classical modal analysis technique is improvised to obtain a method which is called a mode acceleration method. Or mode acceleration approach it is found that this mode acceleration approach provides a good estimate of the response quantity with few number of modes and the reason for this is shown over here if we write down the equation of motion for the ith mode then the equation would look like this where lambda i is the mode participation factor in the ith mode z i is the generalized displacement in the ith mode this equation can be now rewritten in this form that is z i is equal to 1 by omega i square into minus lambda i x double dot g that is we divide this by omega i square then this entire thing is taken on to this side therefore it becomes negative and we have 1 by omega i square within bracket this entire quantity. Now we can have now the summation that means the z i the summation of z i for all the modes over here this summation now can be written like this that is summation of this z i multiplied by phi i that gives the true response of the quantities provided we take the contribution for all the modes. Now here what we do is that we do not take the contribution from all modes but we take contribution for say for the first m modes so this summation is done for m modes only. So therefore this summation is also made for m modes and this summation is also done for the m mode. Now let us look at the equation a quasi static equation in which we write down k multiplied by x t that is we are performing a quasi static analysis that is equal to minus m i x double dot g that is the for a single point excitation system that is the force earthquake force that is acting at every instant term time t. So for this basically if we solve this equation we will get a quasi static response of x t not the dynamic response. Now this equation can be now converted into the modal equation modal quasi static equation by multiplying p multiplying k by phi i t and substituting for x t as phi into z phi i and z i that is the contribution coming from the first mode. Then on this side also we multiplied by phi i t and divide this by phi i t m phi i by this that for the ith mode we find out the generalized mass and on the right hand side also we divided by phi i t m phi i. Now we know that from the modal equation or the modal analysis that phi i t k phi is equal to k bar i this will be a single quantity and phi i t m phi i is the generalized mass at the ith mode and if we divide k by k bar i by m bar i then we get the natural frequency square for that particular mode. So this entire quantity over here will turn out to be omega i square z i and this quantity is known as the mode participation factor for the ith mode and this actually all of you know from your dynamic analysis. So we can substitute this and write minus lambda i into x double dot g. So from this we can get the value of z i is equal to minus lambda i x double dot g divided by omega i square. So this is the if I perform a quasi-static analysis for this system then the first mode shape will have a contribution to this quasi-static response which can be described by this that is minus lambda i x double dot g omega i square. Now if we look into this equation so this equation is nothing but a summation of this quantity that is the first generalized displacements contribution to the quasi-static response in the ith mode and that is summed over for all the modes or m number of modes that is what I said before. Now if we wish to get a correct value for this quasi-static response then instead of summing it up for the m number of modes we should sum it up for all the modes. Now if we sum it up for all the modes then the response that we get that will be equal to x t and this x t can be obtained from a quasi-static analysis of the structure. So what we say is that if we wish to find out the response of the system by adding up the contribution from different modes then we can split this response into the two parts one is a quasi-static part which can be obtained by solving this quasi-static equation another is a dynamic part. Now in this quasi-static part it is possible to consider the contribution of all the modes that is all n number of modes because if we instead of solving this if we solve this quasi-static equation then we can straight away get the value of x t and this x t is the quasi-static response of the system and one can replace this entire summation of course it should be multiplied by phi i also the mode shape coefficient. So we can replace this entire thing by the quasi-static response so that is what is shown over here that is the in the mode acceleration approach we write down the response to be is equal to the phi i that is the mode shape coefficient in the ith mode lambda i x double dot g divided by omega i square so this constitute the what is known as the contribution to the quasi-static response and this is the contribution to the dynamic response. So if I sum it up from 1 to m is equal to n that is all modes then it comes to be equal to r bar t that is the quasi-static response of the system by solving the equation k x t is equal to minus m m i x double dot g so that can be easily obtained from a static analysis and then we consider the number of modes which are less than the total number of modes and we can choose may be first 5 or 10 modes of a structure over here since in this calculation we have considered one part of the response in calculating one part of the response we have taken into consideration contribution of all modes therefore this response is better than the usual mode analysis technique because in the usual mode analysis technique we consider only the first few modes for obtaining the solution but here we have divided the response into two components in the first component we consider the contribution from all the modes and that we are calling as r bar t and then here we are considering only first few modes for obtaining this dynamic response and in most of the cases we see that this part this quasi-static part predominates the response quantity of interest. So therefore we obtain the response by this mode acceleration technique and we can get a better result by considering only first few modes of the structure. So the solution is obtained like this first we find out the quasi-static response of the system that is we solve the problem statically for a load of minus this will not be r this will be i because we are talking of a single point excitation system so minus m i x double dot g and then find this quantity from the modal equation and we can see that this quantity is nothing but is equal to minus lambda x double dot g divided by omega square minus z i and z i we have already obtained minus lambda i x double dot g omega i square that is already known to us. So therefore this quantity gives these z double dot i plus twice zeta omega i z dot i divided by omega i square this quantity is automatically known. So therefore this quantity that means the acceleration and the velocity that the generalized acceleration and generalized velocity need not be computed separately we can get the information about these two summations divided by omega i square by knowing z i only because lambda i is known x double dot g or known and therefore we can see that by knowing only z i we can obtain the summation of these two quantities. So that makes basically the entire calculation shorter and simpler here the main important thing is that we perform a quasi-static analysis along with the dynamic analysis. Now let us look at the entire thing that we have said before in finding out the displacements in finding out the displacement responses what we do is that either we can use mode acceleration approach or the classical modal analysis in classical modal analysis the number of modes that is to be considered is obtained from the mass participation factor but that guideline is valid for the displacement response. If one has to calculate the internal forces or the bending moment shear force etcetera then one has to take into consideration higher number of modes. If we use the mode acceleration approach then for any response quantity of interest we can obtain a better estimate of the response quantities by using a less by using less number of modes in that we perform two analysis one a quasi-static analysis in which we consider the contribution from all modes and the other is a dynamic analysis in which we need not calculate the generalized acceleration and generalized velocities by knowing the generalized displacement itself we can obtain the contribution that is coming from the dynamic analysis and that contribution may be considered only for first few modes and we can sum them together. So, that mode acceleration technique is found to provide a better results for finding out any kind of response be it the bending moment shear force drift or whatever be the response quantity that we want. Now, let us look into how we can find out the bending moment and shear forces in a particular structure because the dynamic analysis that we have talked about so far provides us the displacement and from that displacement we have to finally calculate the bending moment and shear force and each of the members that is called the internal forces. Now, one can obtain these internal forces by two approaches first approach is that once we know the displacements at every degree of freedom of the structure and since we know the member of the structure member properties or in other words the stiffness matrix for individual members then from that one can obtain the bending moment and shear forces. So, let us look at that how do you do this so if we consider a particular node over here and a node over here at these two nodes the dynamic analysis provides us say this displacement and these displacements. So, because the dynamic analysis generally condensed out all the rotational degrees of freedom and the translational degrees of freedom are considered as a dynamic degrees of freedom. So, the response analysis provides us x t that is the displacement now for finding out the bending moment and shear force in this member we need also the rotations that is taking place at the two nodes and in order to obtain that we use the condensation relationship that we had obtained before for finding the condensed stiffness matrix corresponding to dynamic degrees of freedom and if you recall the rotational degree of freedom is written as minus k theta theta inverse into k theta delta into delta where delta is the dynamic degrees of freedom or the translational degrees of freedom and theta basically are the rotational degrees of freedom that we wish to condense out. So, we substitute in the other set of in the other set of equation this theta and by the substituting that we get a condense stiffness matrix which corresponds to only delta degrees of freedom and k theta theta is the partitioned matrix corresponding to theta degrees of freedom only and k theta delta is the coupling matrix between the rotation and the displacement degrees of freedom. So, with the help of this equation we can find out the value of theta at each node because we know delta that has been obtained from the dynamic analysis. So, we now know the rotations also at each degree of freedom once we know the rotation then if I take any member then at the two ends of the members we have the displacements and rotations, but all of them are in the global coordinate. Now, from the global coordinate we convert this to local coordinate system for that we use the transformation matrix using the transformation matrix one can obtain these displacements and rotations in the local coordinates and once we get this displacement and rotations in the local coordinate which is called as delta vector then the member and forces internal forces can be written as k m into delta where k m is the member stiffness matrix in the local coordinate and delta are the degrees of the displacements at the two ends of the member in the local coordinate. So, this is the first approach by which one can obtain the internal forces in the structure after we have performed the dynamic analysis. The second approach is that we use the mode shape coefficient which is called coefficient for the response quantity of interest. Now, what we mean by the mode shape coefficient for a response quantity of interest would be clear from this the Eigen value solution that we have performed that provide us as the mode shape coefficient for displacement. So, therefore, phi that we use in our modal analysis that phi correspond to the mode shape coefficient for displacement. Now, this if we are wanting to find out the mode shape coefficient for bending moment or shear force or for any other response quantity of interest then we can obtain it in this particular fashion. If I take the ith mode the ith mode can be represented by this equation k into phi i is equal to m phi i omega i square that follows from the Eigen value problem that is that we are solving here this particular equation can be written k x is equal to m omega square x. Now for the ith mode the x becomes phi i. So, for any mode this is valid. So, now if you look into this equation then this is simply a static equation in that the k into phi i that is the left hand side of the static equilibrium equation and if I consider the entire thing as p i a load then this is the right hand side load. So, we have a static equation matrix equation which we can write as k phi is equal to p i and p i is known because mode shape is known mode shape or displacement is known omega i is known and we multiply it by m matrix. So, we get the value of p i. So, p i is known. Now, we can view the entire thing like this in the first mode this equation represents that as if the entire structure is subjected to a static load of p i and if I take analyze it then the displacements that we will get will be equal to phi i. Once we know the value of the displacements phi i then from there one can find out the bending moment and shear force for any element and we will proceed as before that is first from the displacements we will obtain the rotations and once we know the rotations then one can get the values of bending moment and shear force at the ends of any element or any member. So, therefore, the these bending moment and shear force that I will get for a particular mode by solving this equation that is solving this static problem then that bending moment and shear force is called the mode shape coefficient for bending moment or shear force or any response quantity of interest. So, we can sum up like this that usual Eigen value solution provides as a mode shape coefficient for displacement. If we wish to find out the mode shape coefficient for any other response quantity of interest then we can solve a static problem in which we apply a static load in each mode equal to m into phi into omega i square as a static load and for that we find out the bending moment shear force on any response quantity of interest and that quantity will be called as the mode shape coefficient. For that response quantity of interest. So, what we do is that then we use the usual mode summation technique x t is equal to phi i into z i i is equal to 1 to m whatever mode you wish to consider number of modes we sum it over there that is the displacement. Similarly, if I want to find out bending moment at any particular section then we sum it up for all the modes this product that is phi bending moment i that is for the ith mode the bending moment that you have obtained that is the bending moment coefficient for that mode multiplied by z i. So, one can obtain the bending moment shear force or any response internal forces by this technique as well it depends upon the individual which technique they prefer, but in the beginning of the program if one can compute after finding out the mode shapes for the structure if one can find out the mode shape coefficients also for different response quantities and store it then this method turns out to be a better method for finding out the different quantities of interest. Next week come to the state space analysis if we wish to obtain again the modal analysis or use the modal analysis technique for the state space equation then we follow in the same fashion that is we use j t we write down the displacement j t is equal to phi into q where phi is the mode shape matrix and q is the generalized displacement. And then substitute into the state space equation and the state space equation is of the form of z dot is equal to A z plus F g we have seen before. So, in place of z dot we write down phi into q dot it comes from this equation and in place of z we substitute phi into q and then we add on to it the F g that is the load vector then this is multiplied pre-multiplied by phi inverse on this side. So, on this side also we pre-multiplied by phi inverse and this load vector also is multiplied by phi inverse. So, since phi inverse phi we will provide us a diagonal unit matrix and therefore, that diagonal unit matrix multiplied by q dot that becomes a diagonal matrix consisting of only q dot i and phi inverse A phi again becomes decoupled because that is the property of the Eigen value the Eigen values that is the Eigen vectors rather it is the property of the Eigen vectors and the property of the Eigen vector is that it is orthogonal to the A matrix. So, therefore, this product that means this product of this three matrices again becomes a diagonal matrix and once it becomes a diagonal matrix then there we get two n uncoupled equations where n is the degree of freedom and each equation is a first order differential equation and in this first order differential equation lambda i that becomes the what is known as the Eigen values of the matrix A. So, we can write down such equations which will be two n in number. Next for solving this problem in time domain each one of these uncoupled equation will require initial condition. So, this initial condition is obtained from that that is q 0 if we wish to find out that means this equation is in terms of the generalized coordinate. Whereas the z is the actual coordinate system or the structural coordinate system. So, since we are solving the equation in the modal coordinate system or the generalized coordinate system then we have to provide the proper initial condition in terms of the generalized coordinate. So that we obtain by this inverting that means finding out q over here q is equal to phi inverse z. So, that is what we write in this equation. So, q 0 is equal to phi inverse z 0 and from there we get the initial condition that is to be used for solving each one of the modal equation in the generalized coordinate. In fact, in the same way we should find out the initial condition for all the modal equation that we have that we have shown for the second order differential equation that we solved before. So, both in the case of a state space analysis and the usual solution of the coupled second order differential equation we need to find out the initial condition and corresponding to the generalized coordinate. And for actual coordinate we know the initial conditions. So, the relationship that exists between the initial condition of between the generalized coordinate and the actual coordinate system that relationship is shown over here. So, we require in that case the phi inverse. If we wish to solve the problem that means in the frequency domain for the state space analysis then we take up again this equation and it is as a single degree or a single state space equation and this single state space equation for that h j omega is written as i omega minus lambda i to the power inverse of it. So, that also has been discussed before while solving a state space equation for a single degree of freedom system. And in the frequency domain as before we use the FFT algorithm that is we first find out the frequency contents of the response by multiplying h j omega with the frequency contents of the load generalized load that is this is the generalized load phi inverse f g that will be the generalized load that will be Fourier synthesized. After it is Fourier synthesized we multiply with h j omega and then we add on to that the complex conjugate and the entire numbers would be given as an input to i f f t and i f f t would provide us the responses in time. So, an example is solved in which we had a problem of this type is simple frame and it is subjected to the same ground acceleration at the two supports and for that this is the k matrix this is the m matrix and these are the four frequencies of the system and these are the four modes corresponding to the four frequencies and we obtained a c matrix for that finding out alpha and beta from the first two frequencies and once we get the c matrix then we can obtain the state space matrix A for the entire thing and go for a state space analysis. The states space that is A the Eigen values of the A that turns out to be a complex number and these are the four Eigen values of the problem and using these four what to call the Eigen values we decoupled the state space equation into a single degree of freedom state space equation. So, in this case we had the since there are four degrees of freedom. So, we will have four single degree of freedom state space equation and we can also solve this problem using mode and mode acceleration approach mode summation approach in time domain as well as in frequency domain. So, the all the results are shown over here the base here is the quantity of interest over here rather than the displacement. Therefore, you can see that here we are wanting to find out the response quantity as base here therefore, it is possible to solve the problem in two different ways either by finding out the base here directly from the displacements that we get at different stories and finding out the forces at each story level and sum them together to find out the base here or we can straight away find out the mode shape coefficient for the base here and each mode and multiply it by z i and sum it over the number of modes that we consider. Since here we are considering only the it is only a problem of the four degree of freedom. So, we have considered all the four degrees of freedom or all the four modes in finding out the responses. So, this result shows that by mode acceleration approach the responses that we have obtained for the base here these shows the same response that is the base here using their state space analysis and both these analysis are obtained. This one we have used the mode acceleration method that is we have used the solution in the time domain here we obtained by the state space analysis here we have used the frequency domain analysis that is we have Fourier transform the load and use the response or obtain the responses using FFT. Now, at the end of this chapter that is chapter on the response of the response analysis for a specified ground motion the at the end of this chapter in the book I have outlined the compotional steps that are required for developing a program in the MATLAB by using all the methods that we have discussed before and the steps that are given can be what you call divided into three segments. The first segment consist of computation of basic elements required for all types of analysis. For example, you have to obtain the overall stiffness matrix then condensed stiffness matrix then from the condensed stiffness matrix again the non support degrees of freedom and support degrees of freedom matrices they are isolated then coupling matrices are considered. So, all these and then one can obtain the quasi static analysis of the system for the ground motion the mode shapes frequencies and for each mode shape one can also find out the mode shapes for the bending moment shear force etcetera. All these kinds of computations consist are contained in the first part of the program and the results can be stored. In the second part of the program the time domain analysis direct modal and mode acceleration approach and state space approach all of them are outlined and one can obtain the solution of any problem or any structure in time domain. And the third part of the last part is the frequency domain analysis covering again all the cases that we have considered in the time domain analysis that is the direct analysis modal analysis state space analysis so on.


TfNN, headline news update, here's Tom O'Brien. Hi everyone, I'm Basel Chapman, here standing here for Tom O'Brien and we're looking at the Dow futures up 103 at 26,067, but I'm looking at here says it's broken trendline in this daily chart on the left, breaking trendline resistance and there's a good chance now that it could push a little higher and probably even tried to hit the 25th of February high of 26273. The E-mini at this particular time is ESM A19, there we go, has broken out of that high that was on the 28, 25.75 and it is now up at 2851, up 10.50. So the aspect that I'm looking at right now suggests that if there is a rally and the rally holds to a plus eight or more in the E-mini futures at about one o'clock to 130, there's a good chance there's going to be a positive, a good positive close. If there's a pullback and it's only up five or less than five at that particular time, we could see, oops, we can see some kind of a pullback and that's going to be very important to be monitoring and let me just get this up here very quickly as we're about to, oops, wrong chart, sorry. And what we're also looking at is gold is up a little bit, the dollar is down a little bit, we'll talk about that more in this coming up show under the rally show straight after this news break, there's the chart E-mini at 2851. What's also very important is that the TLT that is the 20th Treasury Bond Fund hasn't broken out, it's at 121, it's at 121 right now, if it breaks to the 122.55 area, that could mean that the market is ready for some kind of a pullback as money flows out of stocks and into bonds hasn't happened yet. And let me just quickly go to gold and then we're about to break, yep, gold is up 7.1 at 1308. This is good action, not great action, this is kind of stuck in this range but it's attempting to break out if gold can get to 1322 in the next two days, that's going to be a big positive, the dollar right now, they're looking at the dollar and it is down 17, takes at 96.32, just slowly pulling back from the recent high of 97.71. And with that I believe we're about to hear the music, yep, there it is, Crudall is up 25 cents, Crudall is acting very well at testing the 200-period moving average, we'll go through that right now as I do Larry Pezzavento's show, this is Basil Chapman signing off for this news update.


So, we're going to move into, I got two more topics. This next one is going to be a quicker one. And we're just going to talk about the Nintendo Switch. We are about six weeks or so out from when it launched. And just how we feel about the system, and about how successful it's been. And to put this in perspective, the same day we're recording this, Nintendo just released, they confirmed the MPD report, which is that the Switch sold 905,000 units in March. Breath of the Wild 4 Switch sold 925,000 units. So, if you do the math, that means it sold more copies of Breath of the Wild than actual switches existed. It's really interesting. Nintendo has a theory about it, but they can't prove it. About people just buying collector's editions and not opening it and then re-buying the game. But even then, the fact that they had more Breath of the Wild units out there than actual Switch units is really interesting. And that they sold 1.4 million total Breath of the Wild units, which obviously means the rest of it was on Wii U. And also that Breath of the Wild is the most successful launch game in Nintendo's history. And at first I questioned that because Nintendo Land was packed in with the Wii. So literally anyone who bought a Wii during launch had Nintendo Land. But again, it was packed in with the Wii. It didn't sell more copies than actual Wii's existed. Right. So Breath of the Wild has a beat, outside of the fact that also there was more Switch units available than Wii units in that first month. So we have some background now into how successful everything was for Nintendo. For Zelda, for the Switch. So we've all had our Switch. Like you got a Switch, Eric got a Switch, I have a Switch. We and Eric have had it since day one. Did you get your day one too? I did. Okay. So we've all had it for six weeks. And obviously the game most of us have played, like, might be the only game we've played Breath of the Wild. I mean, I've played some other games, but I haven't purchased really anything since that day one beyond Snipperclips. And there's some other games I want. Like I want Snake Pass. It looks fantastic. It's an indie game. If you actually go play the demo, it's so good. So there's all the games I want. But again, I feel like I need to finish Breath of the Wild before I can truly move on. Right. Yeah. And the God knows if I'm ever going to finish Breath of the Wild. So, Daren, you've had this system for six weeks. Has your opinion of it changed from day one to now? Yes. Mmm, it's kind of weird because, as I said, when I picked it up, I was going to just use it as a home console. I wasn't really going to take it places. And I still don't because I don't game on the go much, but I use it primarily in handheld mode. So my opinion of it has changed in its general usefulness because I can use the lane bed and play Breath of the Wild. Like, I don't have to set up in front of the TV or my monitor or whatever. Basically, right now it's a Breath of the Wild machine because I have no other game for it. Like, I might get Snake Pass, Legacy Undercover, might get Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but maybe not because I'm not sure if there's enough content to justify me purchasing it after playing the crap out of the game on Wii U. So basically, Snake Pass and I probably won't get Spectre of Tormen either because I have Treasure Trove on both Steam and 3DS and I'll probably just play it on Steam. So, definitely still think it's a great console. Just my opinion has changed on its usefulness. Like, it's just, I definitely use it differently than I thought I would. Playing Breath of the Wild, I thought I was just going to play it for like 24 hours straight and then die and then when I woke up play it for another 24 hours. But that's really not what I did. I just kind of played it in a couple hours of increments over the course of a couple weeks and then beat the game. So, um, yeah. Now, I've clarified, you did 100% the game. I have not 100% of the game. I have completed 120 shrines. All main quests completed. Okay, so all the shrines. And I have about half of them upgraded, need to upgrade more of that. I have like 75 Korox seeds, so I'm severely lacking with those. No long way to go with that. Yeah. So, I mean, I haven't finished the game. I haven't played it in a couple of days. I do plan on 100%ing it. It's just going to take a long time. And I'm not even scared about the Korox seeds. That's the easy part. The hard part is getting all the materials to upgrade the armor, like the ungodly amount of star bits that you need. Like, I already got all the Lionel parts. I have the Barbarian armor fully upgraded. Like, that was a piece of cake. Just go through and grind Lionel's all day. But the star bits, that's going to suck. So, Eric, you have had your switch for six weeks.  Oh, yeah. Congrats. Yeah, I know, right? I feel like it's almost essential, to be honest. Yeah. But you got convinced of the switch because of Breath of the Wild. Because you didn't own a Wii U, and if you're going to play Breath of the Wild, you might as well get the latest and greatest, instead of going to an older system, which you can't really find Wii U's brand new. Anyway, so I mean, you're going to deal with the used market, who knows what quality you're going to get. Has your opinion changed on the switch from day one to now? No, I still love it.  And you love it only in only one game? Yes, that is very, very, very true. I don't play it every day, but when I do it, I am completely involved and into it. I know. I can't get you to do anything about it. Like, we'll be upstairs. Sorry, excuse me. We'll be upstairs, and there'll be a brutal game. We'll be playing Madden. He'll bust out a switch. And I can't get him to do what he's supposed to do with his team on Madden. Like, he's so into Zelda, he can't stop. I think we all understand. People at home that have played it, you understand. Once you get into it, it's hard to pull yourself out. I do have the only complaint that I've had is that I've had it freeze on me a couple of times. The switch freeze on you? Yeah, it's a hard reboot. Yeah, we're just having to hold down the power button and then dead. Remember, I told you that happened to me once. That's happened to me at least twice, if not three times now. I've had it happen once. I don't remember anything specifically that triggered it. Like, I was playing it for too long, or had it in the dock and overheated, or I was doing a certain thing in the game that triggered it and it repeated it, because it only happened once for me. I have noticed that when I've set it down and it kind of goes to sleep on its own, and then it comes back out and it goes to sleep for a fairly extended period of time. Like, if I'll be playing it for a good chunk of time, if I set it down, it'll go to sleep and be asleep for a fairly decent period of time, and then try to bring it back up, and that's when I've noticed it's happening. There's other people that have said that they've noticed it happens when we notice sleep mode. Again, I haven't that happened. Like, my sleep mode will be something like three days, and I'll come back in and it's just fine. Maybe it's because I always come back into the home menu. I always hit the home button three times instead of hitting A and popping right back in the game. Yeah, could be. And that's always been kind of a habit of mine, I guess, with any time I turn on a console, I like going to the home menu. I know 3DS was different because you just flip it open and you're back into the game. But with this system, when it's like, oh, you need to do three button presses, I always felt like, I don't know, it just feels nice going to that home menu quick because I gotta see, do I have any updates? Right, not just that, but it shows the home button on the screen, so your mind automatically goes to me too. Oh, no, that's not, the very first time I did it was the A button. Yeah, because you could do it with anybody. So it'll say, oh, tap that button again two more times. Right, but to me, well, for me, I saw the home button, so I was like, oh, home, okay. I didn't really read it, I just went off the visual cue.  So, and then I started using A, but when I first started, it was like, oh, hey, look, home button. And that kind of gets into, so we're a month out and outside of the one time, it froze on me and I had to hard reset it, which again, not a big deal. I think all of us at some point in our lives have had consumer electronics, we've had a hard reset. How many times have we had a hard reset that Xbox with my son messes with it? And it's not the Xbox's fault, like my son really, really messes with that thing. Hitting up that home button like 70,000 times, I think it's so confusing what's going on.  But outside of like the one time I had it happen, I haven't had anything bad happen, anything negative happen. And there's been a lot of stuff that people have complained about. There's the left joy con issue, which Nintendo says is not a defect, it's a manufacturing variation. Which defect? Defect. That's what a defect is, something went wrong in the manufacturing process. It has a defect that they fix, like they'll fix it for free, you send it in, they'll get it back to you in less than a week, they'll fix it for free, they put a little conductive foam piece, which nullifies the metal that's blocking the signal and blah, blah, blah, blah, it works, sometimes even better than the right joy con does. And there's obviously been like the screen scratching, again, oversight by Nintendo, that is a mistake, legit thing, they should have put some padding in the dock, as soon as they went with plastic screens to save on costs, they should have been like, yeah, we can't have plastic rub on plastic. I don't understand how the heck they didn't think about that. No, even come across it in testing. Well, because you gotta remember in testing, they get things that are perfect. So like, here's what's causing it, okay? Cause people are like, I don't understand how it even happens. And I get it, because if you have a dock that is perfectly, like everything's perfect with it, it won't happen. You'd have to try to make it happen. Like when you put it in there, there's space, you're not actually rubbing up against that plastic, there is space, but not everyone's dock is like that. A lot of docks are a little slightly bent, either bent in or bent out, and that causes the thing to shift when you put it in, and then you can just scratch. And I bet you that Nintendo, especially when it's coming from the manufacturer, they're getting absolutely 100% perfect stuff so they don't find any issues with it, so they okay the manufacturing at that manufacturer.  Because again, the dock was a perfectly designed dock, it wasn't gonna happen. At least you'd have to try to make it happen. And I think that's what happened is that Nintendo didn't see it in their own testing because the manufacturer didn't give them a normal run. They gave them the best run they can make.  And I think now that Nintendo knows that, I could see like now they're starting to sell the dock independent. You can go to store.internet.com and buy your own dock for 60 bucks, which I'm surprised it's $30 cheaper than they said the dock cost. So that's nice.  I'm like, yeah, but again, go look at USB-C to HDMI dongles out there. 60 bucks is actually on the lower end. $90 is on the higher end.   You're paying that for the C to the power adapter and the HDMI, like that stuff's not cheap. I know people like to think it's really cheap, but it's not. Anyways, so they did, they're releasing that dock as a separate thing. And I think in these second and third runs of docks, I wouldn't be surprised if they start coming with some felt in there or some soft material just to take care of the manufacturing variation that is occurring with the docks that's causing the scratching to be more frequently happening. But again, because it has a plastic screen, I always suggest everyone go get tempered glass. Oh, definitely. It makes a huge difference.  I'm sure, you know, when they get a new, like when Hori gets a new run of these screen protectors out there, they'll probably be better because like the film screen protectors aren't usually as bad as these ones are. So the next batch is probably better. Heck, they might already be better now, but still do yourself a favor. It's a plastic screen. Don't put a piece of plastic to protect plastic.  Looks pristine, you forget it's even there.  Not that you have to worry about breaking your screen so much with a plastic screen anyways, but you still gotta worry about scratches to take care of that. And it does not add like such a big layer to it that it creates scratching problems and you put it in the dock. No, not at all. There's still give, still room. But you know, I guess maybe the biggest issue that's happened such then is what I have dubbed is switch bend gate. And again, I apologize. Someone came up with a better name in the comments for now I forgot. Where some people's switches are physically bending. And I'm actually curious to look at yours. I've already looked at mine. So I just want to see. And the bends are very slight that people have talked about. Like we're talking like a couple millimeters. So it's not always even noticeable to the naked eye. I'm just kind of laying this down flat here. See, there might be a little bend. It's either the table or just we'd have to, you'd have to, we'd have to make sure that we're on a perfect, like my desk table over there, that's not perfectly flat. We have to make sure we're on a perfectly flat surface to double check that. But you know, when I look at this, it looks like you might have a very slight bend. And the thing is, mine doesn't, I've already tested mine. It does not have a bend. And people are saying it's because like the system's overheating, it's melting the plastic and it's warping. And there's some research into that. And I did a whole video on it. I'll link that video down in the description that went over what likely is that, it's very likely the switch came that way. And it's just past manufacturing because it doesn't make a difference. And anything like, like if I didn't tell you it, you wouldn't even know. So it's one of those things like, it doesn't really matter. It's irrelevant. Now, that's not to say that there haven't been bending that's occurred. Like, I have a few commenters that did say that they already looked at their unit. It was not bent when they got it. And now it is bent. And that's very interesting to me because that means it didn't happen at the factory. It happened when you owned it. Now, there's a lot of reasons you can explain this. One person said, well, I was holding it and then my kid came and grabbed and hung off the middle of it. Well, yeah, I'm sorry, you physically bent it. You know, and then I also wonder like, are people like, when they hold it, are they gripping too hard and like pressing in?  That they, you know, when they throw it in their backpack, is it protected with a proper protector? Or is it being just like, bashed around by books and everything? Like, there's a lot of scenarios that without me knowing all the information, I can't possibly know what caused the bend. And obviously the very last possibility is that I got too hot. And for it to get too hot, the fan would have to fail. Because it's got to get somewhere around 600 degrees or so Fahrenheit for that plastic to be pliable enough to bend. And that's because the plastication process, with the hardening stuff they use, that's actually how long, what kind of heat it would take to bend this kind of plastic. To bend it with heat, that is. Like, you could obviously physically bend it. Like, you know, and yes, if you got it hot enough, you could physically bend it maybe easier. Just like, you know, heat it with a plastic bottle, of course you can bend it easier. But it's just highly unlikely heat on its own. It's like, oh, I put it in my dock and it's never been out of the dock and I took it out of the dock and it's bent. Well, it's never been out of the dock. Did you test it before you put it in the dock in the first place? You could have been bent when you got it. But it's one of those, if you have a bent switch and you know for 100% sure it was not bent when you got it, start asking yourself, what have you been doing with the switch that possibly could have led to it being bent? Like, even if you didn't do anything weird with it, maybe you have it just laying down like I do here, like normally, just sitting there and you notice how it's suspended in the air a little bit here. Did you set something on top of it? You're putting pressure on a gap. You could create a bend. I know some people said, well, maybe it's the metal inside bending. Fun fact, this hard shell, if you look at the iFixit breakdown, that's, this is what everything is screwed into. It's not screwed into the metal. The metal and everything is screwed into the hard plates. So the plastic is the frame of everything. Just like the framework of my computer. It is the case. Well, that's the same thing's true here. Everything is screwed into the plastic. So the plastic would have to bend for there to be a bend. The little metal heat plate isn't gonna make the plastic bend. And I did see someone who had a battery issue it looked like, because they up on the port up here by the switch cart, it was melting. Ooh, that's not good obviously. What are you trying to pull in Nokia? Or not Nokia, Samsung? Samsung Galaxy Tab 2? No, no, no two. Note 7. Note 7. Note 7. Note 7. No. Anyways, whatever it was. I think he had a Homo Seta battery leak. And the thing is that can happen with this lithium batteries. Not a widespread issue like it wasn't Samsung. Clearly, it was a design flaw. Because they were using similar batteries to a different product, but obviously something to do with heat dissipation was not working and the battery overheated consistently, no matter what tweaks they made, that sucks because it was a really nice device. And almost made me want to switch off of Apple until that started happening. I'm really glad I didn't switch. Even though Samsung was replacing things, who knows what I would've burned down with it before that happened. Whole house up and smoke. So yeah, month out, outside of the issues some people have had, I haven't had any of it, I love it. I use it exactly like I thought I would. Take it with me, use it wherever I want, use it when my kids are up, I got to watch Ali and he's just playing, bust out my switch, put it back in the dock when I'm downstairs on the TV, use it like that, use the pro controller, use the Joy-Con separately, I've held them out like this, I've used them sideways, everything works even almost better than I thought because holding them sideways works better than I thought it would. I'm a month out and I own three or four games and I'm happy. And there's more games that are out already that I want, but I'm waiting until I finish Breath of the Wild because I just know because of how it's happened with Snipperclips, it's happened with Just Dance, it's happened with One Two Switch, is that while I've played those games, I'm really just forcing myself to play them rather than wanting to because I know I need to finish Breath of the Wild. I'm only like 12% done with Breath of the Wild. I have so much further to go, it's crazy. So I guess my impressions is that it's obviously selling well and Breath of the Wild is doing well and the system is better to me today than it was when I bought it. All the concerns I had about it kind of went away. Even people that have issues putting the straps on and off, I've never, this never been a problem for me. And again, I keep trying to remind myself that I want to make a video guide on how to properly take the straps off because I think what's happening is people don't understand why the straps get stuck. And it has to do, it's a leverage situation. People aren't thinking about why is it so smooth coming off this heavy device but it's not so smooth coming off a thing that weighs less than an ounce? Because you have to leverage, you need to leverage it differently than you would with the Switch. Again, I really need to make a how-to video on that because I don't think anyone's done it yet.  They don't suck, actually, they're awesome. Like in Snipperclips, they are amazing. They're gonna be awesome in Mario Kart 2, so. As for games, I'm looking forward to Office of Mario Kart 8. I'm getting it. I know Darren's not. I said I might, I probably won't. Might, might. You probably, if you do get it, I see it being like a down the line thing. But yeah, I'm very satisfied with what's coming out. Obviously we talked a lot about what we like Payday 2. I really want Payday 2. And having it in portable form is just gonna be fantastic. Might be the first game if it supports it that we do local multiplayer. Well, Mario Kart might be, but besides that, like a first third party game, we might try to do a local multiplayer. Oh yeah, for sure. With two different switches, that's gonna be sweet. But it'll be even sweet when we live stream it because like, we'll, like both be sitting here playing and like I'll be playing on the TV, you'll be playing on the thing, and just be like, yeah, dude, this is sick. Right. We're both in the same game right now, live streaming on two different devices. Right. Mind blown.