A few years back, I lived in a fairly small neighborhood. I lived next door to a lovely little elderly woman, and one day she asked if I could help her clean the spare room in her house. I agreed to do it, and I was surprised by the amount of old technology hidden in it. Old toys, a child's computer, you name it, it was there. What truly caught my eye though was a box of VHS tapes labeled PBS. When I asked her about these tapes, she said that she used to record episodes of shows like Barney so that her grandson could watch them when he came over to visit in the mid to late 90s. I was curious, so I asked if I could buy the tapes off of her so I could watch them when I finished cleaning up the room. She agreed to this, and after I finished cleaning I handed her a crisp $10 bill and carried the heavy box back to my house, and set it down on my couch to examine the multiple tapes that sat in touch and dusty. They were organized by the order in which they were recorded, going from 1 to 24.  It was around 3 am when I decided to watch one last tape and then hit the hay. Since there were 24 tapes and I had already watched 11 of them, I grabbed the one cleanly labeled R for 12, and wiped the dust off of its spine with my hand and popped it into my VHS player. It started out with the usual sponsors and commercials that played on most other PBS shows. The sound coming from the tape was distorted from age, giving everything a robotic slightly staticky tone. This was the only tape that had this issue so far, and I sighed, assuming that every tape from here on out would have the same issue. The episode began, and the intro was different than I had remembered. The animation was choppier, and the music was less memorable than the classic rasta that accompanied most episodes. I gotta get excited at that point, thinking that maybe I had discovered an early episode that could be sold online for a pretty penny. I turned the volume up a little as the main episode started.  The animation was still choppy and low quality, but when D.W. began to speak, I was confused. Her voice was deeper and sounded like it had been recorded in someone's bathroom. Her mother walked in and began to speak to her in a harsh voice that sounded similar to the voice from the normal episodes, but not quite perfect. She was saying something about how much trouble she was in, and that she was grounded. D.W. pleaded with her mother, begging her not to ground her, but she was sent upstairs to her room. There were a few frame interruptions at that point. I gently hit the player to get it back to normal, which worked. The tape played as normal again and directly went to a strange, silent test of D.W.'s walk cycle. This lasted for maybe a minute before another frame skip occurred. When next it played, D.W. sat in her room with her arms crossed. She looked a little solemn as she proceeded to talk to herself. The girl conjured up a plan in order to still have fun despite being grounded. A slight look took over her face as she stood up and walked down the hall to her parents' room. Once again a skip occurred, and she was now looking under her parents' bed for something. The sound grew scratchy and I couldn't quite understand what she had said. The only word I heard clearly was play. After this, the episode took a huge turn. The same few frames of animation played for a couple of seconds before it showed her pulling something out from under the bed. The camera zoomed into her hands, which were shown holding a strange blue gun of source. She smiled and lifted it, pointing at a wall and making a pew pew sound with it. She then ran around the room, continuing to make the gun noises. After that D.W. sat down, tuckered out.   A generic giggle sound clip from stock was played whilst the one frame of her with the closed eye stayed on the screen. I assumed that the videotape was stuck again. As I leaned over to tap the player, my ears were met with a piercingly loud tone similar to the tone played when a broadcaster is testing their emergency system. A black overlay was placed over the episode, and it had a bit of text on it. From what I remember, it said the following. The Public Broadcasting Service of County 4. We apologize for the inconvenience. Your regularly scheduled program will return in a minute. Thank you for your patience. In case of accidental airing immediately stop and remove from line up by January 1, 1996. A very loud pitchy bang sound was then played, and the tape word to a stop. I sat them founded by what I had just seen. I didn't know whether or not to be scared or confused, but either way, I didn't know what to do. I decided to take the tape out of the machine. It was hot when it was removed, and I dropped it in order not to burn my hand. When it cooled off, I checked the tape inside of the casing to see if there was some sort of explanation for the odd skipping throughout the video. The magnetic tape had been damaged by the heat and stuck to the lid of the casing. I was feeling a bit hopeful, so I decided to stick the tape back in the player, hoping it would play once more so I could capture a picture of the episode, or at least the black overlay. I managed to take one photo on a poor quality disposable camera I had lying around. After I took the photo, the tape completely broke, and would not play again. I threw it away, and that night I tossed and turned, wondering about the story behind the episode I had just watched. The next day, I spent most of the day googling every little detail I remembered about it, and there was only one website that had any information at all. It was a virus-laden old form that was closing down within the week. One of the discussions was about the episode I had seen. The creator of the thread had stated that they saw this very broadcast as a child, and it had stuck with them for years and years. According to multiple users in the thread, the best explanation for what they had seen was that it was a possible animation test made at least a year before the final show began to air. The intro and voices were placeholders, and the plot might have been about gun safety. PBS did not like the graphic nature of this plot, and so the only use of it was this test animation that accidentally aired on a Friday morning in January of 1996. It should have been destroyed by the first of January, but that didn't happen, either by accident or on purpose.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports, guards, ribbon 23, Bowman, chrome, baseball, HDA choice, 12 box, case break, number 10, random division style. So looking down at your random results as always, you can find those on the website under the results tab. It was linked, it's in chat. It's good luck everybody, let's do some choice. Hell yeah. Yes sir. Oh geez. Now we're just losing it. Now we are losing it. All right, got what, 36 autos to the break here? Not too bad if you ask me. 36 autos you really can't complain. No base? There you go. Yeah, not bad. All gas, no base. Yeah, yep. All autos, no base, all the no, yeah. All gas, no base. Yeah, it does work. AL East starting us off, Johnny Perone. Nice one there, off the Patron. Grats on that there, AL East. AL Central now is going to be Christian Mena. AL Central, first base auto Christian Mena. And then going to the AL West is Joey Estes to 250 on the purple, first purple auto. Grats on that there. That is a Christopher Torren, NL West. Christopher Torren, NL West. That is going to be a Sam Revers, the Revers first, Revers, Revers. Grats on that, AL East. And Refractor is Reuber Salinas, NL East to 499. NL East, Reuber Salinas. All right, NL West, Vladimir Restituya. Nice one there for the again, NL West. Got a first of Daniel Guillarte, NL Central. Base auto, congrats on that, NL Central. And NL Central again to 299. Luis Rodriguez, nice Lurad. Lurad on the white speckle. All right, we've got Adon Sanchez, first base auto, NL Central again. NL East is going to be Marco Vargas, again first base auto. And a purple, NL East. Javier Sanoa to 250. Congrats on that purple foist. Yeah, we hit a green auto and an atomic auto in two separate cases, Rob. Yep, two big autos for Salas for sure. Let's get snagly red in this, dude. Imagine. Nice, Brandon Maia, first base auto, AL East. Congrats to Harper. There you go, buddy. Nice one there, Brandon Maia. That'll work. That's a green, wow, that's a good box. Green Lava is going to be a Mike Coyoto at 99. No, unfortunately not for Alvin. Unfortunately not. Mike Coyoto or AL Central. And then NL East is Brian Rincone to 25 on the orange wave. Congrats, NL East. Taking mag this one, too. Now, base auto, Ethan Salas. NL West. Carla, congrats on that. All right, that's the fourth Salas auto of the day. We'll say we may not have hit a super. We did a number on Ethan Salas autos today. Joinda Rivera going to the NL East. Nice one there. And then blue ray wave is Luis Torres. AL West by way of the Angels to 150. Yeah, there you go, Rob. Right in, dude. Right on cue, man. Good Lord. On to the next. Are they base auto, Connor Stain and AL West? I joined in a big hit. Let's go. All right, Rob, leave and then come back again then. Choice exclusive. Torren Montgomery to 150. NL East. At least doing well here. Refractor. NL East to 499. Joander Rivera. Joander Rivera. Now a base auto fell in Celestine. The three biggest names in the product we hit three autos of. Congrats on that. There you go. AL West. Work as well, man. Jeez. That's a base auto. Ben Metzinger going to the NL Central. Yeah, there you go. Honestly, it works out well, Rob. NL Central to 499. Lou Rod. Nice one there. Congrats. NL Central. Luis Rodriguez. NL East, Javier Valdes. NL East, Baysar. Another base auto is Brennan Malone. Going to the AL West. Brennan Malone. And then AL East is Peyton Williams to 299 on the white speckle auto. Congrats on that. Peyton Williams. First, if I had to fall asleep. There we got a Jesus Galiz. First base auto for the NL West. Nice one here. It's going to be a Gold Shimmer. That is going to be a Geraldo Cantero to 50. NL East. Gold Shimmer auto. And then Refractor again to 499 is Eddie Beltray. Going to the NL West. Sleeping at your desk equals not okay. Another Eddie Beltray base first auto. We've got a base auto again. That is going to be Peyton Williams. AL East. Beltray was NL West. Peyton Williams. AL East. And NL West. Ruben Santana. White speckle auto to 299. Queen one there. Last box over the break. Base auto. Mike Coyado. AL Central. NL Central is Gordon Graceffo. Nice one there. And true green Ludwig Espinosa to 99 for the NL Central. Congrats on that NL Central. All right, quick recap. We've got a base autos of Gordon Graceffo, Mike Coyado, Peyton Williams, Eddie Beltray, Jesus Galiz, Brennan Malone, Javier Valdez, Ben Metzinger, Connor Stain, Joanne de Rivera, Marco Vargas, Aiden Sanchez, Daniel Guiarte, Vladimir Restituto, Sam Revers, Christopher Torren, Christian Mena, Johnny Perron, Refractors to 499, Eddie Beltray, Roy Vercellinas, Joanne de Rivera, Luis Rodriguez, to 299, White speckle, Luis Rodriguez, Ruben Santana, Peyton Williams, Purples to 250, Joey Estes, Javier Sinoja, Choice exclusives to 150, Torren Montgomery, also to 150 is Luis Torres, Greens to 99, Ludwig Espinosa, Mike Coyado, goals to 50, Jorago Contera. Really good. I mean, literally the three of the chases, all base autos, Maella, Salas, and Celestin. So congrats on that to the AL West and NL West. Yes, Alvin. And to 25 is Brian Rincone. That'll do it for the break, everybody. Thanks again for the fill. Up next, Plates and Patches.


It's something that I describe as a marathon, not a spring. The drought is a very serious situation and given the fact that we've never seen this level of drought in California before, it's really something that we've been taking seriously. This unprecedented slow-moving natural disaster is a high priority for California officials. Their goal is to try to stay one step ahead of the drought by closely monitoring the impacts to water systems, agriculture and industry. That's why the State Operations Center in Sacramento began working on the drought even before the governor declared a state of emergency. We activated it in early January because actually what people don't realize is that the drought conditions have been going on for years in California. And it's just this year that the conditions have become so extreme that we've needed to implement some mitigation measures. This may not be a typical natural disaster like a wildfire or earthquake, but it does require a wide range of personnel from the Office of Emergency Services and many other state agencies. We're kind of like the agency that kind of brings it all together. So when a big emergency hits, our agency helps to bring all the resources together that are in California to make sure we can cover costs and need and make sure that things are okay and back up to speed. The Department of Water Resources, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife and many others, they're all working together to give the leaders of the Governor's Drought Task Force critical information for decision making and taking emergency actions. We're trying to anticipate what things may be and how bad it may get. So in some ways it's looking at the worst case scenario with problems with drinking water, problems with lack of water for agriculture, compounded by a drain on our resources, perhaps for firefighting, for power shortages or other things that could happen in California. Dried up creek beds and barren hills that resemble a hot summer day in August instead of February are already happening. So what can we do? How can Californians help in these unprecedented dry days and months ahead? Individuals, citizens need to understand that they are the first line of defense. The more they do to conserve, the better it's going to be. I've been talking to my kids, we've completely ended all the landscape watering and I've talked to my kids about lessening their water use and treating it as the precious resource that it is and not use any more than we absolutely have to.


Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. But I knew, I listened to a couple of your episodes with Bishop Eli, is that him? Yeah. That was a good episode. I like that episode too. Yeah, I like that. But because, yeah, he talked about his transformation and he did, how many years did he do, 40? He did like 38? 30 years I think. Was it 38 or 30? 30, I think it's 30. In total you did like what, 28? 28. 28. I did 18 years flat. I did 10 years free. Y'all got papers and everything. I done did everything. Yeah, yeah, so. What made you not go back? What made you not get in trouble again? Because when you come back out, we've always talked about this. Yeah, but he's older now too. No, but people were talking. People were sure. People knew who you were.  It happened. Because I came home with a different mindset. I got an opportunity to hug my mom and daddy. You did? Yeah. When I came home, I hugged my mom and daddy, right? Lucky for you because a lot of people lost their mom and dad while they were gone. They lost them. And I seen guys that, hey man, now I'm good. I'm all right, I'm chill, I'm good. I was, I put myself away for a minute. Before I even came out and really started communicating with people in the hood. I put myself up because I was on a mission. My nephew was at this electrical company. I started working before the new parking that's been, that's built now. I worked at Parkland when it was straight dirt. Okay. We ran out of electrical for Parkland when it was all dirt, the big panel. I worked right there. You see what I'm saying? When they finished that job, you know what got me was when they finished that job and they told me, I had to, you had to go back and go through it. But my background. So I probably working at Parkland Hospital now having in with the electrical. But whenever you go for a hospital, they gotta do a dirt or background check. Background check and when they found out. They found, so what happened was the dude was telling me like, man, don't worry about that. I got you, I'm gonna make sure you. So I'm like, I ain't dead. So go ahead and go through with it. Man, can't be like, man, that ain't nothing we can do. Boom, that was my first, that was my first knock down. That hurt? That was my first knock down. Yeah, that hurt. You gotta realize I'm fresh out. I'm doing electrical work. I'm making like $25 an hour. Killing. Come on, man. I'm talking about it and all I'm doing is running. Man, I'm running. Why I just, man, I'm talking about every week we getting a check. Come on, man. I'm talking about like, yeah. And it's legal. And now, they finna tell me, I finna work at the Parkland Hospital and they tell me how we're gonna be doing it. All I'm gonna be doing is making sure, checking the, making sure that everything was right. If something break down inside the main thing, we'll just go in.  So to get that, it kinda hurt. Disappointment. You see what I'm saying? So now I'm going back to, man, what I'm finna do, bro? Other jobs talking about $10 an hour. I went from making $25 an hour to you telling me $10 an hour. How long did that go on for before you actually got a stable job? Man, I'm, when I did, when I left, I'm gonna be on the streets. When I left, I had to make some help.


Hey mom, go now. Okay, keep the volume down, remember to fasten your seat belt and when you get there, give me a call. Okay, bye. Okay. Love you. Have a good time. Thanks. We're almost there. We're gonna take good care of you, okay? She's got a motor vehicle accident. Put pencil and grade a quarter right now. At last, I love her. Okay, parents should be here. Yes, she's starting to drop. Stay with us.


If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Michael Bassett and I had a wonderful look at the history of our parliament before the election and in that discussion he declared that the Ardern-Hipkins regime were the worst government in living history. I'll check in with him to see if he still thinks that and then I'll ask him about the challenges that Christopher Luxon government faces. He joins me on the line now. Welcome back to The Crunch, Michael Bassett, it's good to have you. Pleasure to be here.  Do you still agree with that? Yes I do. I mean it was just a terrible government. They've done no work prior to coming to office. They had more than 200 committees trying to devise things for them to do after they got to office. They had some baggage and nonsensical ideas about the treaty and a bit of an approach to welfare which if they'd known anything about Labour's tradition they'd have known it was wrong. Namely that the best way to fix welfare problems is to shower them with money and I mean the evidence has been there for donkey's ears that the more money you shower out the more people become dependent upon it and decide that free money is easier than having to work for it and I mean that government was so badly prepared intellectually bereft and had read almost nothing about their Labour Party antecedents and therefore I think they deserve that appellation the worst government in modern history. If you look at Grant Robertson he took New Zealand's debt from $5 billion to something like $95 billion with the media cheering him on like he was God's gift to accounting and then we see in recent weeks this huge uproar over $13,000 worth of entitlements for the Prime Minister's accommodation and they've written more words about Christopher Luxon's accommodation than they have ever written about Grant Robertson's financial prowess. Well that's absolutely right but then what else do you expect from the modern media? Most of them have so little academic training they don't read much they are sort of born lefties they think that the world owes everybody a living and therefore they're not inclined to believe anything that comes out of Luxon. I think to be fair to everybody that Chris Luxon handled that business of his entitlement for his apartment very stupidly. I mean the obvious thing was that he should have just taken the same entitlement that all the other ministers and MPs took. Namely I forget what the actual sum is but it's specified there was a little top up if you were Prime Minister and I mean he was entitled to the same sum as anybody else. We see this pervasive attitude within the media. I mean Duncan Garner wrote last week about the Warner Brothers discovery decision to let News Hub die and he said did Warner Brothers Discovery HQ make every effort to save News Hub letting it die is not the Kiwi way and it seems that he thinks that the Kiwi way is the state paying the huge salaries he's earned when working for those organisations. And if you watch the media all the time and I think you're as good a watcher of it as I am, that's the prevailing thinking any problem that anybody has the government should fix. I mean get real don't people have a responsibility for their own lives and the same goes for business. That's a private outfit TV3 News Hub why on earth should the government come rushing in to prop them up when they foul their nest? Well and I don't think TV3 has ever made a profit in its entire existence so you know it's shoveling good money after bad. TV1's not doing much better either by the look of it. Well that's probably why Simon Power quit as the chief executive he knew what was coming. Like will be. But the media I guess are a bellweather for the challenges that Christopher Luxon's government faces.  I mean he should have just held his ground and it would have died but once he vacillated once he turned around his position in the media and then knew well we just have to put some pressure on Christopher Luxon and he'll do a runner. Yes that is always the danger with that but I mean the real thing is that he hadn't thought it through before it came up and became public. Of course he was entitled to the same amount that all other ministers and MPs are entitled to when he has to live in his own accommodation in Wellington and pay the upgoings on that. But he didn't think that through he decided that the amount of money that was paid to the prime minister which was substantially higher than the others got was all okay and above board and I mean if he'd gone for just the same entitlement everybody else had who could second guess it but instead he backtracked on the whole thing and now he is the only minister living in his own property who isn't getting any. It was bad politics all around from Luxon to the media to the opposition growing about it as well and now we've got the ridiculous situation where this Ardern created board that's supposed to look after this property is telling us all as taxpayers there's 30 million dollars which we know will be 50 million dollars. It needs to you know in repairs well if it was a business looking at that proposition we've got a house it's dilapidated it needs significant repairs to be brought up to stand we just make the decision to bold the stupid thing and build something else for much less than 30 million. Well the trouble is that you're talking to somebody who actually is responsible for a premier house in the first instance and that being my ministerial house was actually in the grounds of premier house and I used to have to drive past this thing every day and slowly it was sort of crumbling and it was the first prime ministerial house in New Zealand Julius Vogel had it in the 1870s and in fact it was inhabited by all the prime ministers through until Mickey Savage who had no family and decided he didn't want to live in it in 1935 whereupon they let it be used as the dental clinic and came the sort of murder house was what it used to be called until the need for dental nurses got so low that they no longer needed the training facility and pulled out whereupon the house started to crumble and here am I going backwards and forwards every day looking at this thing and discovering that Fran Wilde when she became an associate minister of conservation in 1987 had banged a preservation order on it as an historic house so clearly pulling it down wasn't an option and I thought right I'm chairman of the 1990 commission we're going to be making grants to for various purposes around the country Auckland Wellington Wanganui in particular and Auckland and so I put up a million dollars from the lottery grants board and said this will be a present to Wellington to have this house restored and we did and it cost a little bit more than a million but the thing was functional and Jeffrey Palmer moved in as Prime Minister early in 1990 the notion that it's 30 million dollars is frankly just ridiculous to fix it I'll bet my boots that for two or three million dollars you could get that place completely functional again it is an historic house it's probably I mean you've no idea what we discovered in it I mean there'd been a fire in the place that had all been boarded up I remember going and having a look at all these burn things dating back to Vogel's time that would be pulled out the place so anyway don't let's spend too much time on Premier House maybe it needs another fire a good long one no well it's it's in the historic house I mean I well they burned down probably yes they do but if they can be preserved I don't think they should be they should be allowed to burn down no and if for a relatively small sum of money that's fairly significant place and it's it's a got very good entertainment facilities in a time when I launched a couple of books at Premier House a couple of my political biographies and I've been to lots of functions there and it's worthy of preservation so long as it doesn't cost 30 million well you know it's it's a little known fact that in 1992 I lived for about eight or nine months at Vogel House in lower hut oh really yes yes well Doug Graham lived there at the time and I was moving to Wellington and so I needed some accommodation and I stayed there you know it was an interesting insight into how ministers live and that the other time of day that they get up and go to work and you know like I can remember Doug having his boulder cereal in a cigar at something like five in the morning I've been in the morning that sounds awfully early for Doug he didn't nothing moved him very rapidly oh well no he was always up around 5am having breakfast and that he was gone by 6am yeah so you know you don't get to know these things unless you're actually in the household so but that was an interesting experience living there with the ghost apparently yes I went there on a number of occasions when Longie was first and but Longie wanted to come back to town to be closer to his lover and well he had crown limousines to car tour around I don't know why that was a problem oh a drive your own car was better well it's a famously apparently Robert Muldoon used to drive his Triumph 2000 down the Hut motorway inebriated you know basically surrounded by police making sure he didn't crash well on the night when he called the snap election in 1984 the chief whip ran down into the basement and let the tires down on his car yeah to stop him from going home they thought hell with an election coming up it'd be just our luck for him to be caught speeding or doing something crazy yeah and they're totally so anyway let's get on to these challenges that you think that the Luxon government faces well they're manifold in my view uh probably the biggest single one that is the bureaucracy yeah uh I think I mean we've noticed that there are leaks taking place all the time I mean that's a terrible thing to do to leak a cabinet paper before it's even been seen by the minister let alone seen by the cabinet is a high crime and misdemeanor in terms of how civil servants should operate and they have clearly gotten ahead of steam on and I think it's because they had so much to do with the policy of the Labor Party when they were in office that six years they were there that they've come to trick the Labor policies as though they were their own and they don't like the thought that they're going to be unraveled many of them have been unraveled now more will be and there's a substantial change of direction but worse than that there's nearly 16 000 more of them on the payroll all enjoying quite luxurious by comparable standards in the private sector incomes and they don't want to lose their jobs and so consequently they're determined to make life as difficult for this government as possible and there seems to be as yet I don't think there's a new head of the civil service I think the public service commissioner was was going to retire whether he has I don't know he's announced his retirement but he's he's still there yeah and and they haven't got a successor as far as I know and I mean that successor has one tough job he's going to have to convince a very unprepossessing collection of heads of departments several of whom should have offered their resignations when the government changed to actually behave and make sure that their employees follow the rules like supporting the actions not out campaigning for them but doing what the new ministers want you know I mean a classic case of that is this repeal of the rather stupid smoking legislation that labor brought in and we culminated in hipkins screeching across the house this policy will kill people you know there was never any screeching when other policies that he did that would demonstrably kill people but it was just ludicrous because the smoking rates were dropping anyway they were below the targets that were set many years ago for smoking rates and it was an ideological burp to paraphrase I think it was Michael Cummins David Longy David Longy yeah it was either one of the one or other of them the only two brains that they had between them you know so it was a ridiculous policy that there was no need for it at all and now we've got this claim that oh Maori are going to be disadvantaged as they smoke more than others and that they ignore the logical conclusion that you come to which is well if Maori are going to be so terribly affected by this well why don't we just legislate to say no Maori can buy cigarettes can you imagine the outcry if that yes I can imagine the outcry quite easily oh I was the first Minister of Health to introduce the tobacco tax to lift it in the budget of 1984 at that time about 28 percent of the population smoked and as the rate of tax has gone up the number of smokers has fallen substantially and it's down to six percent now yeah we have to say that that policy is working I mean you don't see many people smoking these days it's rather rare and if they are smoking then they've had to pay a fortune for it so the policy that the Labour Party had introduced a huge sort of a sledgehammer to crack a nut and besides it hadn't come into force yet anyway exactly and it was ridiculous and so the the new government kicked it and the problems I mean there's even a full of a cartoon in the herald this morning that has somebody holding a fag very sad and unnecessary nonsense but that's the media you see there is much agitators as these embedded civil servants who think that the policy ideas are theirs and they're sacrosanct but what we saw with the Labour government over the last six years or the preceding six years was this locking in of spending with no accountability for a where the money is going to come from in the future and b no accountability for is this you know effective ways to spend taxpayers dollars and in the moment the new government comes in and says right we're going to remove that spending or we're going to remove that it's calamitous the world's ending you know the spending means that kids are going to starve you know before we had free lunches at schools how did the kids get to school and what did they eat then well I mean you know it's not enough the appearance actually accepted some responsibility for parents I mean and even if you're a beneficiary the benefit is actually paid for the kid and for looking after the child not for lying in bed and bonking or whatever it is you're choosing to do when you up making your kids lunch and sending it to school making sure it goes to school I should say but I mean the the money that is paid on behalf of the child is treated as though it is a parental entitlement by far too many people and I am of the opinion that until such time as you follow the money you're not going to get parents doing their job properly it is possible to marry up attendance rates at school with benefit payments and as soon as you started to deduct money from benefits because the kids weren't sent to school they all of a sudden turn up at school didn't they I think you they certainly will and I think the parents will have and will suddenly realize that they have a vested interest in getting the kid to school but life has just been made too easy and I blame Carmel Sepoloni we were talking earlier about the worst government she is unbelievably the worst minister of social welfare this country has ever had she doesn't even begin to understand what the welfare state was about well I mean the welfare state was always designed as a safety net yes and this last government turned it into a trampoline that's right I mean it was it was a what do they say a hand up rather than a hand out I mean you made the comment earlier that we're creating a society where people expect the government to solve all of their problems and that comes back to welfareism in a large in the way that it's been extended and extended and extended I mean working for families is a classic example and John Key railed against it said it was communism by stealth and then when he was elected not only did he keep it he expanded it you know and and that's the thing is that people then once they're getting something from the state they expect that to come every week and it becomes a death cycle for the taxpayer because there's less and less people inclined to become taxpayers and more and more people who become tax takers yep absolutely I mean that was some of the reforms that you and Roger Douglas oversaw was to recalibrate this so that working people were rewarded for their hard work and effort their nows their intellect and all of those sorts of things rather than continuing you know under the Muldoon regime where you had some people you know paying 66 cents in the dollar yeah taxation absolutely well the trouble was it didn't last long moreover we need to acknowledge that it wasn't just ordinary folk who had their fists into the till and were taking taxpayers money farmers especially farmers and business people I mean remember all of all the import protections and things that existed and there was a license to print money especially in motor vehicles if you could get the import license for something you know that was you know waved across the desk of Robert Muldoon you ended up having a license to print vast sums of money well that that was true right from the word go and the awarding of import licenses was something of a scandal I was told once by somebody who was present when Walter Nash was prime minister prime minister for god's sake was still deciding on import licenses and there was a meeting and though all these things that had put in applications for licenses and Walter would say no no no and then there came tinned Canadian salmon Walter said no hang on a minute minister says one of the officials lots of working folk rather treat tinned Canadian salmon as a special treat at the weekend oh said Walter oh oh well okay we'll allow a certain amount to come in so indeed they did and I mean that was the scientific nature of import controls they were chaotic moreover some of it was it was one of the few examples of corruption I had a relative who made elements for water heaters and so on oh yeah he used to have to get import licenses and they all tracked down to Wellington regularly to see the industries and commerce department to make applications and my uncle made inquiries of a friend how did you go about things oh well if you see Bert somebody or other if Bert's the official you see this is the technique you'll make your case to him he'll then say excuse me I've got to nip out the back to the toilet you'll discover that his top drawer of his desk is slightly open if you drop a 10 pound note in there you'll get your license and my uncle said indeed he discovered that Bert had his drawer open a little bit and he thought well why is everybody else getting licenses and I'm not so he dropped his 10 pound note in and I mean scarcely a prince's ransom you wouldn't call it corruption on a grand scale except that that official clearly was doing quite well out of regulation yeah I mean people have you know long said that there's no corruption in New Zealand and I've always said every time the Transparency International report comes out with these guys running around with blindfolds on there's so much corruption particularly at local government level I mean there was a famous case where a lot of the footpaths contracts and things like that were going to this little flea outfit that suddenly became a multimillion dollar turnover company all of the basis of fixing footpaths in Auckland well the only case I ever saw when I was actually a city councillor which I was in the early 70s involved the only corruption involved contracts and we formed the impression the works committee that the particular engineer that had signed off the awards of contracts was a bit corrupt and he didn't stick around much longer his position was made too hot to handle and he cleared off but I wondered sometimes as to whether the works area is an area where corruption still exists like I know some good examples personally having been involved in tendering for some contracts particularly in defense and that is absolutely rife with you know the only word you can use is to call it corruption but nobody ever seems to do anything about it but there's these cosy contracts that keep getting led to you know guys who you know were never any great shake as an officer in the in the military and now have resigned their commissions gone out on their own they've obtained you know their exclusive rights to a particular product or something like that and all of a sudden that's what gets selected all the time it's like this cozy little arrangement it's all right you can go out into the private sector but we'll look after you by ordering all of your products well maybe but remember New Zealand is a tiny society and when it comes to finding people who will contract to do things it's quite difficult sometimes I mean councillors I remember the councillors when I was on the works committee saying well who are you going to get to do this job that we had that we wanted done and the truth was that contractors went running around barefoot and sometimes a little bit of corruption crept in in order to get a job done but when I say New Zealand is a little society I think everything is little you've cited some examples I've cited some examples but it's small scale stuff compared with overseas corruption oh yeah it's not it's not it's not endemic and it's isolated but it it's particularly lucrative for those involved but you're right about New Zealand being a small society and New Zealand is even though they travel overseas it's like they travel overseas with blinkers on and they don't see that New Zealand is a total population of around five million people even if you add the those who are New Zealanders but live overseas which is thought to be another one and a half million people even at six and a half million people that's the size of an Australian city you know Melbourne and Sydney yeah and Brisbane's approaching I think Brisbane's approaching five million as well so we are tiny but we like to think we're bigger than we are and we're like trying to live a first world lifestyle with really a second world income and in some respects a third world income and a fourth world income approach to working I mean if if ever there's an opportunity not to work you can count on Kiwis putting their hands forward yeah I mean we look at some of these roading projects so they're a glaring example because and also the rail projects they're eye watering sums of money that cannot be sustained by the population of New Zealand in total and much less just Auckland city but they they seem to be these gold gilt edged projects that are mega billions of dollars and no prospect of ever returning anything to the ratepayers or the taxpayers who have to fund these massive boondoggles just on that count the number of jobs that have been finished within the contracted amount could be counted on the fingers of one hand take Auckland the city rail link which is now almost ruined a sizeable chunk of the city just slightly west of Queen Street and when it was first mooted as a Len Brown project it was 2.8 billion by the time they got round to signing the contract it was 4.4 billion and last sign of accounts it was 5.6 billion and it'll be well over 6 billion by the time it's finished now what on earth has gone wrong I mean how how can a country like New Zealand operate successfully if it can't calculate its infrastructure costings properly there's any number of of projects that you can look at that you know again a Len Brown one the whitewater rafting and canoe center at Manukau build it and they'll come you know they didn't nobody's come it's it you can drive past there on any day of the week and you won't see anybody there you could fire a shotgun across the water and not hit a single thing it's insane we had Michael Wood you know the Labour Transport Minister proposing a cycle bridge that was going to cost as much as a replacement for the Harbour Bridge they were going to build it beside it was insane they spent something like 25 million dollars scoping it like how on earth do you get to those sorts of money you take the northern busway extension from Constellation to Otiha Valley it's a distance of three and a half kilometers it took seven years to build it it's five lanes on either side but what's ridiculous at either end of that five lanes on either side it's two lanes on either side so all they succeeded in doing is moving the traffic jam from Otiha to Constellation 3.5 kilometers closer to the city you're quite right I drove it just the other day and it's bizarre you come sweeping down the new piece and then you get near to Constellation Drive and it all falls up because cars are fluffing in from the left off Constellation Drive and everything is blocked then until Milford. Yeah it is totally an appalling design they go from five lanes to two lanes and it's the same the other way around for the all those heading home to Whangapura each night they get to Constellation they spread out across five lanes and then they're back into two at Otiha and crawling all the way to Silverdale just ridiculous but it cost moonbeams to do it it's a good idea I mean the busway is a brilliant idea I'll support busways all day long over and above trains because as soon as you get something happen with the train line that's it the whole system's closed down because nothing can move at least with buses they can drive on a side road it's much more maneuverable yes I mean that's the problem with trains and yet Michael Wood that same sainted Michael Wood was going to give us a 30 billion dollar centre of the city to the airport light rail no but it wasn't going to go to that this is the big lie that he told right it was never going to go to the airport it was only going to go to Mangary town centre and then you caught a bus from there to the airport that's how insane it was I hadn't picked up on that but of course its origin was so suspicious I mean by the time Len Brown had done the CRL and Phil Goff had narrowed Queen Street to nothing so that there's a whole lot of shops on either side of Queen Street with four lease signs in them and there was nothing really substantial left in the centre of the city Michael Wood was going to funnel this rail link in I mean just bizarre no thinking no sort of lateral thinking the best idea for rail to the airport I mean it's a silly idea at the best of times but the best idea was you know ironically from from a left leaning counsellor who said that that should put a spur off Pua Nui and head to the airport that way it's very short it was rural land all the way through apart from a little bit at Manukau and that would solve the problem for a fraction of the cost and of course he was held down and told he was stupid and didn't know what he was talking about but you know Mike Lee actually had a very good idea and it's a shame it's never been picked up you know it would be there would have been a lot of good ideas and the cause of his life is some I don't agree with that sure but you know that's the thing about Mike Lee is that it doesn't this is the problem with the polarization in politics just because somebody from another team has a good idea doesn't mean you should howl it down it sometimes they should be investigated and Mike Lee's one of those people who actually thinks logically about these things and says well this is ridiculous spending this much in this amount of billions of dollars wrecking the communities between the city and only hunger and then from then on he's saying no let's go out we've already got a rail line that goes through Pua Nui put a spur off that there's only about 200 houses that we need to bowl to to make that happen and then the rest of it's all rural land in a straight line directly to the airport you know well I was I've always thought that a couple hundred more of those little vans with a trailer hooked on behind that goes to your house and picks you up and trundles you off to the airport for a fee would have solved the problem anyway and sure as hell wouldn't have cost 29 billion even if he wanted to have a dedicated method of transport to those areas then allow those vans to go on a busway that you've built to go to the airport you know yes certainly well so they should go on a busway just as I think Ubers ought to be allowed to go on busways if taxis can let's just get back to Luxon you've said that it appears that he's short of solutions as well I've picked that up as well and it seems that nationals been caught flat footed on some policy areas particularly in transport with the announcements on Monday of this week where they're going to hike particular rates and you know road user charges and things but they're going to wait till the second term to do that oh that's because of because of the promise that was in effect that we won't do this in the first term and they didn't qualify it that way but of course when it comes to the second term you deal with that when that election time comes around that's why they've done that I'm sure but the essential point though which again they can't explain properly but which is understandable the user should pay there's no reason why my aged aunt who doesn't go anywhere much except in her little fliver should have to pay huge sums for bus transport if she never uses a bus or vice versa the bus user should pay the petrol tax when they never drive a car I mean a user pays is how it should be and I think that's what the government is reaching towards I don't think they're going far enough though we've got all these cycle ways and the user doesn't pay for the cycle ways oh I agree I mean I'm stunned that they've only cut that in half why I mean the cycle way stuff I mean for a kickoff most cyclists don't adhere to the cycle way policy they'll drive on the road go along Ponsonby road and how many times do you have to just about bounce a bicycle because they're not on the well interestingly I was driving down Ponsonby road yesterday I didn't see a cyclist at all and that's the thing with these cycle ways you never see any cyclists on them no no I go every every every Monday I go out to Manukau for lunch with my mates I drive down Kevin to strive which has got a cycle way built into the side of it never seen a cyclist on it not once we'll take the waterfront drive where they've done an elaborate cycle lane thing and I've several times recently encountered a cyclist on the main drag on the main tarmac yeah and the thing is with cyclists they've got their little helpers in the media people like Russell Brown and Simon Wilson and they scream blue murder if a single millimeter of cycle way is removed they're almost more entitled than MPs are for entitlements yes yes and yet they don't pay a bin except through their rates in as much as they pay rates yeah of course everybody pays rates because they pay them even through their rents if they're renting so what do you think Luxon needs to do I mean I've often said when taking office in the first hundred days literally like perhaps in the first week they need to line up all the heads of departments on the front steps of parliament and metaphorically shoot one of them in the back of the head and then say to the others now let that let that be a listen to you well they certainly need to be told Kirk did that in 1972 when I was first elected Kirk was sworn into office as prime minister and he summoned all the heads of the departments around and showed them the Labor Party's manifesto this red glossy thing and said this is what we're going to do and this is what you're going to be asked to do and follow the bureaucratic rules and do it so that was as good as what you've just suggested it didn't involve shooting anybody but you know what I mean is pick a senior civil servant someone who's who's a bit mouthy and has commented on things and get rid of them and then say to the rest if you don't follow our instructions that's going to happen to you well several should have been pushed out I mean the head of social welfare the head of education police police health of course has been subjected to so much chaotic stuff rather hard to find out who it would be that you'd be getting rid of but there should have been substantial offers of resignations but ministers they're not a particularly strong set I have to say I don't think the minister of education is great I think the minister of health is good showing some real class because he knows he knows a few few things about but coming back to the prime minister the first thing is you need excellent people in your office and judging by the quality of the press statements and the speeches that have been given so far they haven't yet found the best person if a prime minister even a new chum has a good speech writer he or she can be a hell of a lot better than otherwise they might seem I don't know if you've ever watched the original office TV program with Ricky Gervais in it and he has a portrays a character called David Brent who who sits there and intones his knowledge of management and you know human resources and all and he's singularly hopeless at everything I get the distinct impression that Christopher Luxon has studied at the right hand of David Brent and is it exhibiting a lot of Brent like characteristics and it doesn't fill me with any confidence well I I haven't seen that program and I don't know it but he certainly needs better office staff than he's got and I think it's very important that he has some people around who are old hands and who can point to the dangers of things I mean a prime minister gets caught on the hop it's in the nature of the job something suddenly blows out and left field you haven't been schooled up on it and you need somebody who's an old hand and who can say oh well I wouldn't say too much about that just yet there are two sides to that story and so you instead of waiting in and making a statement that you'll do this or do that or you you hold off until you've gotten yourself properly briefed yeah I mean there's been a huge hiring frenzied swapping out staff you know since the change of government but I've noticed a lot of familiar names turning up and you know they're less than average journalists who are now sitting there in ministers offices tuning out press releases and I'm thinking what were you thinking hiring that person did did you not read all of the things that they wrote about you when you were in opposition most certainly not yeah it's nuts and there's no sort of like there's no Heather Simpson type person in the government that all of the staff and the ministers quiver in fear at seeing that number pop up on their phone you know and you're getting a summons to that office no good is ever going to come of that summons and so you quiver in fear there doesn't seem to be anybody like that in the in the Luxon led government well too many of the ministers are quite new to parliament I mean the minister of Māori affairs has only been there for five seconds in parliament won a by-election in 2022 I think didn't they and the minister of education has not been there very long Paul Goldsmiths one of the longest serving ministers he'd done a little bit between 2014 and 2017 enough to sort of have a bit of a handle on some of the people but too many of the other ministers just are quite new chums yeah and Mark Mitchell's had a bit of experience and I understand not from Mark Mitchell himself but from people that are close to what's going on there that there's been a bit of a Donnybrook between him and the police commissioner over all of these sort of ESG type woke jobs that the police have created and the minister has said we'll get rid of them we don't need that we need people on the street and there's been quite a Donnybrook around that but I'm not sure how Costa thinks he's going to win against the minister well his cost is term his five-year term comes up next year I think doesn't it and I'll be very surprised if he's reappointed yeah I think the government is missing you know a Heather Simpson type person or from the TV show the thick of it a Malcolm Tucker type character I don't know if you've ever seen that it's a British comedy show and Peter Capaldi with his broad Scottish accent plays Malcolm Tucker who's the enforcer of the government there's some just brilliant lines from there but there doesn't seem to be anybody in the government that's doing that no no no no toughies well you know we we voted for a change of government anything's better than the Ardern Hipkins regime but but you and I are perfectionists and we like to see even people that ostensibly are our team to do better than they're currently doing and and that's the I get the tone of your article was about that that you were disappointed that they haven't done better yes well I mean I don't remember I don't come from a national party or I made no secret of having voted for act this last time but I just don't think that this government looks to be any better than most of the other national governments that promised the earth and did precious little and I mean John Key's government was terrible disappointment they were going to get us an economy the equivalent of Australia and when they get a template put in front of them about how they might go about this they backed off immediately and it was the same with Sid Holland's government the same with Keith Holyoaks the national party is always the government of the status quo I've been saying that for for years and years and years it's why I'm no longer a member of the national party apart from the fact they didn't want me because I kept pointing at them and saying you're just the government of the status quo all you do is manage Labor's reforms well that's that's absolutely right and that's more or less the thrust of my book on the state in New Zealand that's a terrible state and we're not going to get ahead until politicians get brave but even P doesn't reward bravery sadly no no in fact it rewards people that want to slide off and do their own thing and that makes life more difficult piecing a coalition together MMP forces mediocrity and indolence on parliamentarians yes I agree you and I should start a campaign against MMP I think it's it I didn't support it at the time I thought it was nuts and it's proved to be nuts but we can't get rid of it because every time we try and get rid of it the incumbent prime minister screws the scrum and loads it up with lots of other choices and everyone gets around arguing about the merits of this or that and that and that and all these other things and they don't actually vote to get rid of it and it wins by being the status quo donkey did exactly that yeah I mean I agree he was a disappointment as a prime minister someone with so much ability and his government existed so that he could get a knighthood and that's about the size of it yeah well not not as successful as it could have been which is a great pity or a friend all right well I think we've covered quite a lot of ground there Michael pleasure as always having you on the crunch and we'll get you back again whenever something historic or momentous arises and we need your sage wisdom well happy to chat and good luck with your life the next in the foreseeable future thank you very much appreciate it okay I think Michael Bassett is a national treasure he still thinks the Ardern-Hipkins regime was the worst government in living memory but he also singled out Carmel Sepoloni for a special mention and he didn't hold back let me know your thoughts about my chat with Michael Bassett by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 thank you for tuning into RCR Reality Check Radio if you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to either way we want to hear from you get in touch with us now you can text us with your message to 2057 that's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio we would love to hear from you so connect with us today


If there is one question I received a lot since I published, I mean since the floating panels actually got released in Plasma 5.25 is how do I customize them? Which is a fair question. I've been asked as an example how to change the height of the floatiness, the transparency of the panels and their roundness. So all of these things are customizable through the Plasma theme and I'll show you how. But the most simple way you can approach this is to actually open settings, go to the Plasma style and try out new themes and see how they actually adapt to the floatiness. Maybe you have some more rounded ones that you might prefer or more transparent. This as an example is way more transparent and I think it fits well the floating panel. If you need a more rounded one you can very simply just search for rounded in the Plasma styles, pick one that you like. This one as an example seemed to be very rounded and then we close and we select it and as you can see it will be much more rounded compared to the default one. So this is the easy way. What currently Plasma themes do not quite customize is the height of the floatiness but I'll teach you how and I'll also teach you how to make your own Plasma style. I actually did a series of videos about this so you can actually already go to my playlist in my channel and see how to make your Plasma theme without any lines of code so you can check that one out. Anyway, if you go to the your usr share folder you will find one folder called Plasma and inside of it one folder called the desktop theme. Now by default the default theme is used which is usually usually breeze breeze and then here inside of here you actually get all of the SVGs that customize the appearance of the Plasma theme and it's all SVGs. Now the important folders to keep eye on are widgets because inside of that there's the panel SVG and also translucent solid and opaque. Translucent is the one used when you actually enable contrast effect. Solid is used when something is maximized and the panel becomes opaque and opaque is used when you have compositing disabled and when you have compositing disabled you need an opaque SVG. Now with this theme with the default breeze let's switch back to it. I do have the contrast effect enabled so we were interested in editing the translucent one and again widgets panel background so we open this up with inkscape and first of all we see that we have this element here which is the actual panel and it's called center, right, top, right, top and so on. If you want to change the transparency of the default panel you can just select all of these elements and you will see that they do have by default a transparency better if you select them with this tool which is 85% so you can just change this one just like that and then you save. Then to actually change how much the panel is floating so the high well you can see that you do have this element here which is called thick hint right margin thick int left margin and so on and then a center element called thick center you need to do the same thing but instead of thick you need to use floating so we can just copy with these elements again if you're very confused about what i'm doing i suggest you to go check out at least the first video about my plasma theming playlist just for sure so now it's called thick center 3 and we'll call it floating center this one becomes floating hint right margin and so on when you've done this it's very easy to actually finally change the height and you just do that by resizing the elements the bigger the elements are the bigger the panel will be right now i'm gonna say i would suggest against using super big values as i'm doing right now as an example because it doesn't handle those very well remember that whenever you actually maximize a window the panel deflates and covers the floating space which means that it will become bigger but if you don't like that i'm trying to see how it could be improved as an example it was proposed and i think it's very very reasonable not to deflate the panel when you have a outright windows can cover and such so now that we have actually edited the svg we can apply the effects by switching to another theme and then back to breeze or you know reloading plasma shell with plasma shell replace or i don't know rebooting and it works okay i've done that and you can see that the panel is now much more floating a lot more floating and it's also more transparent if i open up like dolphin and maximize it you can see that the panel becomes gigantic again i warned you so it's up to you to choose how much floating as you would like to see uh still if you maybe use always like a auto hide then you can make sense to have such a thing so the cool thing about uh the floating panel is that it actually requires no changes in the plasma theme of existing plasma themes which means that any plasma theme that you see on the store is actually compatible with floating panels and you can just download any that you'd like uh if you don't think that the default is enough front transparent you can go ahead and pick anything from the store and believe me there's like hundreds of themes i've done some of myself mine i think is called painting yeah this one which is like default but a bit more transparent if you're into that i haven't showed you how to actually change the radius of the corner via the plasma theme and for that i would suggest generally to refer to the other plasma themes uh with bigger roundness but one thing that i've heard is that sometimes just making the element bigger works just like that i actually never tried it so it's one trick that i've been told but you have to figure out how it works exactly and in general it's better to take a theme that's already more rounded and base on base your theme on that uh unlikely roundness is not as easy as it seems and i've also been asked and this is very fair why can't i just make an options for this kind of things so i've been asked for three three options basically which is the transparency amount the corner radius and the floatiness now the first two so the opacity and the roundness of the corner are actually impossible to implement because they're implemented in the plasma theme in the svg and you just can't edit the svg before rendering it so the only way to actually make a slider with a corner radius would be that that slider actually edits the plasma theme and it saves a new version and that's completely invisible so corner radius and transparency cannot be you can just can't have an option for that you have to use a different plasma theme hopefully this is something that could be fixed in the future with a theming system redesign but currently that's the situation we're in about the floatingness the actual value of how much the panel is floating this is something that could technically be implemented with a slider however i'm not a fan for the simple reason that we do already have way too many options in the panel settings and before i think any i would like to take off some that are already there as an example i don't think that windows can cover and windows go below are that useful though i've seen some people disagree so probably they want to go away although i don't think they're that necessary and in general i would like to redesign this dialogue because it is becoming a bit of a mess so my priority is actually improving what we have for panel settings right now if any options people really want to see added on it then that can come later but keep in mind that it's not like i'm taking away any choice from you you can actually customize it i've made it so that you can customize it but you have it you have to edit your plasma theme or use a third-party plasma theme that actually edits it finally the very last thing i want to say is that i've seen this post that i did one year ago in the arcade community and i'm just so impressed by it because it was the video that i did before i had anything on the floating panel because the first thing i did when i wanted to implement the floating panel is i went i did a video saying so and i went to reddit and said hey can anybody help me actually make this can you donate anything to actually give me enough time and resources to work on this and people stood up so i was super happy and one year later i'm happy to say that the floating panels have been indeed been released on plasma 5.25 so my part of the promise is kept i'm super happy and if you'd like to donate to thank me of that or you know if you like my channel or if you like anything of me i guess if you have the possibility that would be nice but it's not like a necessity i'm happy as i am currently so thanks everybody for watching and thanks for everybody who is currently donating to my channel is a pattern because i'm doing this in my free time and that's what actually allows me to do all of this so thanks everybody so much and see you tomorrow with a new video


Hey guys, welcome back to another week of what's for dinner. My name is Andrea with food and entry adventures in food in My household. There's me my husband and our adorable one-year-old little boy Hey guys, it is mother's day and so Howard picked me up my favorite pizza today. It is from a place called Gramaldi's and I got the Margarita pizza. So there's no meat on it. It's just tomato sauce Basil and cheese and it is so good and then he also got me a cupcake from small cakes and I got the strawberry. There was a piece of strawberry on top, but I already ate it off So I got a strawberry cupcake and then he got the wedding cake cupcake So this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight, I am cooking from my freezer I have had these chicken meatballs in my freezer for a while and wanted to use them up there chicken meatballs They're already cooked so what I did was heat them up in the skillet. I browned them and then to it I added some teriyaki And that's Harrison. I added some teriyaki sauce and some hoisin sauce to it And then I'm serving it over white rice. We are also having chicken spring rolls from Trader Joe's Here they are. I cooked them in the air fryer And then I have been craving green vegetables. So from Trader Joe's I sauteed some organic kale And then some just shredded cabbage I fried about six slices of bacon that I chopped up very well and then to it I just added the veggies and sauteed them with some garlic salt and onion powder So this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight, I am using up some stuff for my pantry So in my pantry, I had this one pot simmer sauce that I got from Walmart a while back ago They still have it at Walmart in case you're wondering, but it is an authentic African recipe and as you can see You add chicken to it and it has roasted bell peppers tomatoes onions, etc In there here's a screenshot of or a shot I should say of the ingredients and so you can either make a rice recipe with it Or you can use it as a simmer sauce, which is what I did, but I did not cook it on top of the stove I roasted my chicken legs in the oven Then I poured off the fat then I added the simmer sauce and continued to cook it So I cook this chicken for about an hour And with it, I am serving some rice or zoe pilaf mix that I picked up from Trader Joe's on my last haul I will link that in the description box and also in the cards above if you want to check out that haul So I made that and then I also made this non as well that I got from Trader Joe's and Oh, here it is. I just added some butter to it And then we're just having the leftover kale and cabbage mixture from the other day So this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, I am trying out a new recipe today. It is called crunchy onion barbecue chicken So in this little pan here, I have Some french fried onions. I have some grated Parmesan cheese and pepper It calls for black pepper the recipe But I am using white pepper because Howard's not crazy about black pepper and then in this bowl. I have Two large chicken breasts that I pounded out and then I cut into two pieces.  I've got my oven preheated Preheating to 400 degrees and then I have a cookie sheet here that I lined with foil paper and sprayed with cooking spray So all that I am going to do is just Dredge this chick these chicken breast into this mixture here and it says to only coat one side So I'm gonna do it like the recipe says and then I'll make sure of course to Link the recipe in the description box. So here we go. All right So I've got everything coated. I am going to pop this in my oven I think it said for about 25 minutes and then of course, I'll bring it back and show you how it turns out All right, so here is the chicken Howard and I tried it and I think it's just okay. Howard likes it. I will say As you can see it did get a little dark on top some of the french fried onions kind of got, you know, a little toasty But I think it's just okay I don't know that I would make it again unless Howard is just, you know Craving it and then with that Howard wanted some good old basic macaroni and cheese so that is what I made and then I also made some fresh broccoli I stir-fried it in oil and then I used this to season it with I had mentioned a while back ago That I have so many seasonings that I am not using so I'm being intentional about the seasonings that I am using So this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight, I am trying out a new recipe. It is called I think it's called chicken bacon ranch casserole I will make sure to leave the recipe in the description box But in my skillet, I have some chicken thighs that I diced up and Right back here. I have some bacon that I fried and chopped up. So I'm frying This chicken and some of that leftover bacon grease and then to that I'm going to add this package of Hidden Valley Ranch season mix seasoning mix The recipe calls for you to Drain this pan completely of the bacon fat and then in a Ziploc bag They say to add olive oil in this and shake it all up But I just figured like this would be a quicker way to do it And hopefully it'll turn out the same But I am just going to let this cook all the way through and then what I'm going to do When this casserole dish, I have some pasta. This is a nine by nine casserole dish I have some pasta That I have already cooked up and drained and set it to the side I'm trying to get the glare there you go and set it to the side and all I'm going to do is put it in the bottom of my casserole dish and then I am going to add this Alfredo sauce to it on top and then I'm going to add the cooked chicken I'm going to add some of this cheese in the cheese is a mixture of Cheddar, I know there's a glare. Sorry. That's just the way my lights are in this kitchen There's a mix of cheddar and mozzarella and then I'm going to top it with the crumbled bacon So of course I'll be back to show you guys how everything turned out Okay, so here is the casserole hot out of the oven and it looks so good We haven't tasted it just yet and with it. I'm just serving some left over broccoli That's my child and we are also having some breadsticks. I picked these up from Trader Joe's they are found in the bakery section. I think he does that on purpose All right. Anyway, this is what we are having for dinner tonight and we'll see you guys next time


What's up everybody, Jason here for JaspysCaseBrace.com. This sells off four spots in the baseball hit-packs break with this 2022, for 2022 Panini Capstones Baseball, one-pack break, number 17. So again, guys, first we'll do the break, right on my customer name, see if it should be the hits out of the pack. And at the end, we'll randomize the names, top four, what a spot in the baseball hit-packs. Number 18 is on the website, guys. That is the last one we need to do to sell it out, guys. Last one. So here we go, dice roller. Let's do the break first, guys. Five out of six, 11 times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. 11 times, 11 times. Brian Bunts down to Tim. And then 11 times here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. Send those cardinals down to the Pittsburgh Pirates. All right, guys. So again, stick to what you got. Just a quick little pack filler, so no trading. Let's quickly run the pack filler here. And let's see if you guys got a relic. Matt Barnes for Boston. Boston Red Sauce is Octavio. So there you go, a little relic there. Now switch scenes and let's do the main giveaway of four baseball hit-packs spots. Here we go, guys. Dice roll it. One out of six, seven times. Good luck. Top four you're in. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Boom, seven. One out of six, seven, seven. Just missing out with Alan, but you got Brian in. Franklin in, James in, and Jake Smith in. So there you go. Congratulations to the top four. You guys are now in the hit-packs. And we just have to sell out the last one there, guys. The number 18 that's on the website, Jatsby'sKidsBrates.com.