Nerds On Tap

Retro Rewind: Navigating the Golden Era of Tech and Gaming with Jimmy Guest

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Dive into a nostalgic tech journey with "Nerds On Tap" and special guest, Jimmy Guest, as we traverse the golden era of 80s and 90s gaming and technology. From the enchanting arcades and the charming Commodore 64 to the pioneering days of PCs and video conferencing, we’ll explore the evolutionary steps and discover how they influenced today’s Digital Boardwalk, where Jimmy presently contributes. Amidst our tech-talk, we'll bask in light-hearted 80s movie trivia, discuss the culture of service centers, savor some German brews, and glean insightful and inspiring perspectives on the importance of human touch in technology from Jimmy's storied career. Grab a brew and join us for an enthralling trip through tech history!

Sponsors:
Digital Boardwalk Managed IT Services
Smarter Web

Special Guest:
Jimmy Guest, Technical Escalations Manager, Digital Boardwalk

Beers in Order of Appearance:

  1. Yuengling
  2. Wernesgrüner Brewery Pils legend
  3. Gaffel Kölsch

Mentions:

Other Mentions:

  • Tron
  • Tandy 1000
  • Commodore 64
  • Atari 8
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Procomm Plus
  • Bulletin Board System (BBS)
  • Karate Kid
  • Revenge of the Nerds
  • Terminator
  • Back to the Future
  • Ghostbusters

Thanks for listening!
Visit us online at www.thenerdsontap.com
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Tim Shoop:

Today we have special guest Jimmy Guest See what I did there on today's show and we'll dive into the following topics the path to technical mastery, where we'll discuss Jimmy's influences as well as inspiration, such as arcades of the 80s and 90s. We'll also take a trip down memory lane with nostalgia, nintendo and emulation. We'll talk about 80s tech, the precursor to today's innovation, and we'll wrap it up with an 80s movie trivia challenge. Jimmy, I hope you're ready for that, buddy.

Jimmy Guest:

I'm ready. Thank you for having me.

Tim Shoop:

Good, and in between, we'll be sampling some great German brews today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nerds on Tap. I'm your host, Tim Shoop, and I couldn't be more excited to embark on this nerdy adventure with all of you. So grab your favorite brew, because things are about to get exciting. Three, two, one go. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Nerds on Tap, where we talk business, entrepreneurship, with technology being a key focus in all conversations, and in between, we taste some tasty brews.

Tim Shoop:

I'd like to thank today's sponsors again. Digital Boardwalk provides comprehensive technology management and consulting services for small and medium sized businesses across the country, helping customers achieve reliability, security and peace of mind through award winning support, cybersecurity, cloud computing and backup services. Also, smarter Web, an exclusive marketing partner of Digital Boardwalk, providing data driven marketing solutions to businesses across the world. So before we do our first beer tasting, let me introduce Mr. Jimmy Guest. He is the escalations manager at Digital Boardwalk, specializing in server and network repair and finding issues in quick situations with root cause resolution. Growing up, he had the motto no machine will beat me." Sounds like something from Terminator Jimmy the Terminator too actually I got it from.

Tim Shoop:

His father was a computer specialist for the city of Lakeland Police Department and his uncle was also an inspiration in his technical life. He was a child of the 80s, so we'll see how he does, as we have a special sound bite trivia segment in today's podcast very exciting and I think we're gonna stump him on at least one out of the six audio segments. So I wanna welcome Mr. Jimmy Guest to the show. Thank you and thanks for being on. I'd like to also introduce my co-host, tim Schaffer. Hi, how you guys doing. And Mr Suds, our producer, sitting behind the. He's the face behind the screen, behind the screen, hello. So, suds, why don't you introduce us to our first now? First of all, we only have two beers on the show today because a little wizard I think Jimmy's actually drinking a Yuengling, aren't you, Jimmy? That's correct. But a little birdie told me that Jimmy actually likes sangria. Folks, that's correct. Awkward silence, crickets. Just kidding, Jimmy, Suds, take it away, let's talk beer.

Suds:

All right, our first beer is the Brewery Pils Legend. It's a brilliant golden color with discrete hops taste and has a note of bitterness. It's from the Verna Scruiner Brewery, founded in 1436 in Steinberg, wernersburg in Germany. 4.9% ABV what's?

Tim Shoop:

that this is very good. I actually had one of these last night because I brought these from home. So what do you think? Suds, is that your kind of beer? Yes, jimmy, what are you drinking? Yuengling All right, jimmy's having a yingling you guys want to know about yingling.

Suds:

No, yes, no, ok, it's America's oldest brewery, established in 1829. It is now also the largest wholly American-owned brewery. It was founded by German brewer David Gottlieb and is still family-owned. Hey, I didn't know it was the oldest brewery.

Jimmy Guest:

No.

Tim Shoop:

I didn't know that either.

Jimmy Guest:

It was popular during the 1980s.

Suds:

And now because Budweiser and Miller and them sold, that's now the largest American brewery.

Tim Shoop:

I thought the oldest brewery was the Old Moonshiner Distilleries up there in the mountains of Tennessee. You're probably right, but let's say official. So let's kick off today's show and let's give Jimmy the floor. We're going to dive into Jimmy's early inspirations In our first segment, the Path to Technical Mastery. Let's kick it off, jimmy, and talk about the influence that your father and uncle that we mentioned earlier had on you as a child of the basically a child of the 80s tech revolution.

Jimmy Guest:

Thank you for asking Tim. My father not only being my hero was a big influence of mine. He back probably 85, they started getting into computers at the Lakeland Police Department and started doing going from ticketing books to actual computers. The first thing I can remember is he brought home a Tandy 1000. It was like a little brick like this and I had a laptop on it and loved it, played with it. Every time I could get in trouble with it the whole nine yards. So probably about you know he would take me up there, show me the large printers that would print off the whole nine yards. So I got into computers at an early age. Remember the first day we got a Commodore 64?

Tim Shoop:

Cause they use that there as their Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you were a commie.

Jimmy Guest:

Oh, commie, yeah, commodore 64. First day we had it, I remember, cause they were gonna get it for the police department, so he wanted to get one. I watched him load it. The next day my mom asked me what I was doing and I said I'm loading the thing. I watched him, was able to gasp on it, and that's I took off from there.

Tim Schaffer:

How old exactly, would you say? I was probably eight seven Okay okay, so I was a.

Tim Shoop:

I was an Atari 800 guy. That was my first computer that I talked to my dad and finally getting me. He figured it would change my life and it did. It did. But I had a little program on my Atari that I kind of coded where it ate a Commodore logo. Oh, I'm sure.

Jimmy Guest:

I'm sure we could talk more about that. Go ahead, buddy. My uncle, at the same time when my dad was in the police department, was computer technician at Lakeland Regional Hospital I think it was called at that time and I remember my grandma taking me up there and showing me the tape machines that would go back like this, the line and the mainframes. I can remember all that. So at early age I was exposed to electronics. I mean, they both have been very influential in my life, my dad for the whole, exposing me to electronics, exposing me to new technologies, and my uncle taught me my service ability.

Jimmy Guest:

It kind of also, when you mentioned my motto, I kind of also got that from him because, as he always would say growing up, he'd like if God put it together it's a machine, it was put together, I could take it apart and put it back together. He was known as the printer God. He would take like a box of parts they would give him, like when he worked for a computer land he moved over. The story, he would tell me, is that he would take a box of parts, put the printer back together and be like how did you do that? Just looked at the books I put it together. So I mean that's the same thing I did when I was younger is I would reverse engineer in my head, and that's where I got it from too, Like I mean a quick long story about my father, since you mentioned it too is when they went over to UNIX at the new police department. I'm sure you know about bulletin boards, when we used to have bulletin board.

Tim Shoop:

I would love to talk about bulletin boards.

Jimmy Guest:

Right. So I watched him sign in to use a program called Procom Plus the first home computer I think I sent you the picture. The first home computer we had was a 286. And I watched him sign in so of course I used Procom to dial it back out.

Tim Shoop:

I remember Procom.

Jimmy Guest:

Procom Plus. I watched what he did as a key logger so I could get in. The problem is, when you get into UNIX you can't just exit the session, you have to say kill session, dah, dah, dah, dah. Well, at the time being, you know, in junior high school, I thought I was cool about it. So I logged in, looked around, hold on nine yards and I get this phone call from my dad asking me if I signed into the system. Of course, being the precocious teenager that I was, no dad, I never did. And how was it signed in with that? Yeah, so, long story short, wasn't a good evening at the house that night. But again, they both have done a very big inspiration in my life.

Tim Shoop:

Let's talk about that. I mean, my dad was a big inspiration in my life. Not from it, definitely wasn't because of his technical prowess I was. I mean, I had to hook up his VCR form. That's how technically I don't wanna use the word dumb- because my dad's not with us anymore.

Tim Shoop:

But yeah, he was not very savvy but he knew I wanted a computer. So bad that he went out on a limb. It was a lot of money for him at the time to buy a computer. They were a lot more expensive back then. I ran a bulletin board system. Speaking of BBS, I ran a bulletin board system for several years out of my parents' house Phone call ringing all times of the day and night until my mom was like this has gotta stop, Pull the plug. And I was like I can't pull the plug, I have customers. So she got me a phone line, which was really unheard of for a kid to get a phone line in their bedroom back then. So of course my brothers and sisters thought I was spoiled. But I ran a bulletin board system for probably five years called Rampage BBS. The only reason a 14 year old boy wanted a BBS back then wasn't just to play around and play with the software. It was to get free software because I would have people upload software to give them access levels.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, one story in particular and this kind of goes back, because in episode one we mentioned this but I didn't actually go into the story. So one of my customers, my BBS, was positioned outside of Fort Rucker, Alabama, Enterprise, Alabama, and all the guys that came on my BBS were pilots. They were helicopter pilots. I was just a kid, I was a skater, the name of my BBS was Rampage BBS. I mean it had a picture of a skateboard that drew out on the screen and Red Baron was one of my regulars on there and he said, hey, maniac, that was my sysop name. He said I would love to do a software swap with you. I need flight simulators. And I said, well, hey, I have flight simulators, but I need all this other stuff. And he had it. So I had my dad drive me to this guy's house one day. On the base I had all the software. My dad said how do you know this guy? I mean they were clueless. I mean, think about that today, dropping me off at a stranger's house that I met online.

Jimmy Guest:

I'll tell you mine in a second. It's about the same so real quick.

Tim Shoop:

I'm going to get to the punchline here. I show up at the house, my dad waits out front. I walk to the door, the man's wife answers and she said can I help you? And I said, hey, I'm the maniac here to see the Red Baron, and she lost it. She was like, honey, the maniac's here to see you. Anyway, she made me a sandwich. Totally nice people. Red Baron, if you're out there and you're listening to this show ping me, I would love to chat about that story, because I tell that story a lot as it was a pivotal memory in my life.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, it reminds me of the same thing, tim where back in that time frame, guys, there was things called copy sessions and basically what it was is that you would go and like I mean literally like he just said today's day and age you'd be like what the heck Literally go to, like this library or convention center and there'd be hundreds of Commodore 64s in there and you would like OK, there was a company called Epyx that used to make it was out of Tampa, I believe, at one point that used to make games called California games, summer Games and Winter Games.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't remember.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, you could go to the drawer. As long as you brought Floppy's with you, you could go to the drawer, pull the drawer open, find it, go, take it back to your system, copy it and bring it back. And there's just so many people in this room and it's not like today where you would think it. I mean, there could have been any kind of thing back in the day, but this was the 80s, it's OK, you could go in here and do that. Yeah, I mean, nobody thought any different. There was no cell phone. I mean, I could put my cell phone Now. Granted, the guy I went with was a friend of my dad, was the sheriff, was the sheriff, but I went with him to a unit that met all these sorts of people. There was no cell phone for me to say hey, mom, come pick me up, right? No, it's just, he's correct, that's, that's how it was back then.

Tim Shoop:

Things were a lot looser back then and, and you know what's funny is the talking about users groups or copy groups. My dad actually Came to me one day and said hey, I know a guy at work. When I told him about your interest in computers because he saw me reading basic from front to back, all these different books he said, with your interest in computers, I told him about it. He said there's this user group and I I didn't even know what a user group was yet. And he say he explained it to me and I said, well, he was willing. My dad took me To this user group, everybody he spoke to there. He was like I know nothing, I know nothing, I'm bringing my son, he's, he's, he's. I think I was 14.

Jimmy Guest:

I laugh 14. That was the time and yeah.

Tim Shoop:

I think I inspired my dad because I think my dad was impressed by the fact that I actually had a passion in something other than baseball. So anyway, he took me to that, and he actually drove me to Rockville, Maryland, which was about an hour or so drive from where we live, to get my first five and a quarter inch floppy drive. I'll never forget the day we went shopping for that.

Jimmy Guest:

It was one of the best days in my life the sound of a five and a quarter flop in it out yeah, or or would have load in commodore 64. It had a lower drive motor guys for you young ins here, that it would be like and like they could hear and you can hear the sectors on it going because it go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And that's how you get around the copy protection is you would put like a weight. They, the cops, figured out that you could take empty shell casings and put it to the bottom to like set the drive up and you could cut a hole in the top of the top of the drive, weight it down. So the sectors went and jump when you're doing it would copy the disc.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, let's dive into something else, Jimmy. Let's talk about the 80s and arcade magic, and I mean I really miss arcades. I mean I'm actually going down to a Saints game this weekend and I take my son and we're actually going Dave and Buster's the night before. Yeah, just to do some arcade stuff, because I want him to know what things were like For us growing up and that's the closest we can get to it nowadays. But let's talk about 80s arcade magic and the allure of games From that era. Let's talk about some games. Let's talk about those arcades that we really miss and what went on in those arcades. Do you remember going to every slot and trying to find free quarters?

Jimmy Guest:

free quarters, how the machines worked, how I can remember another thing kids won't remember these days Chuck E cheese. Chuck E cheese was the hey, I still open, right.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, that's cool.

Jimmy Guest:

Oh, but back back in the 80s they had their own little, they had many. I mean they had arcades. Everything was arcade you could go to like a. They had like family fun center arcade. Everything was coin off. And I never will forget hearing the sound. When you come up you hear the machine. That's like. The sound is like that anybody. You've seen tron? Have you seen the movie tron?

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, oh yeah. Do you know? Do you know that movie? Yes, very well you do know it very well cool.

Jimmy Guest:

I know tron very well. Tron is a great movie to wear like that. The first game I heard Again I don't remember my age when I was young and we went around the corner was I had already known of star wars when I was a kid and I'd actually remembered the movie. God was very into it because sci-fi my dad liked it. I remember turning the corner and seeing this arcade machine and hearing, hearing, uh, blue. You saw a lot of blue Right and saw obi one and saw here and obi one saying the force will be with you always. And you see this machine, it's just blue sitting there and it just was like, oh, you know, like you're looking at this thing, like oh my god, this is amazing, what are you going to do? There's, there's nothing else of Like course, you're asking your parents for five bucks, ten bucks, throwing the quarters in the so are you talking about star wars?

Tim Shoop:

Are you talking about tron? I think we're talking about two different things here two different things.

Jimmy Guest:

I'm talking about tron being the arcade tron was blue. I remember it being blue and black was blue, but the game I'm talking about was also blue and black.

Tim Shoop:

Okay. Okay, here's the thing about tron. When tron came out, I lived in Munich, Germany, and we found an arcade off base or not an arcade, it was like this little place off base that actually had the tron machine. And when tron came out, I remember that move, I mean it was like oh my god, look at this, this was a cgi, you know, and it, it was amazing.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, it was not where you could.

Tim Shoop:

It.

Jimmy Guest:

It was amazing. He was right. There's no other words for it. I mean for being that time.

Tim Shoop:

That was the neatest thing in the entire world tron is one game that comes to mind, my favorite game of the 80s, especially the early 80s. I lived in Munich, um. My parents used to go to a bowling alley on the base and in that bowling alley there were maybe 9 or 10 video games, one of them being centipede, one of them being Q*bert , uh, several others. But when donkey kong showed up, donkey kong.

Tim Shoop:

Oh my, I spent quarters, yeah, and I could still. Every time I go to a retro arcade or pinball museum and they have donkey kong in the back corner, I always find myself gravitated towards. I want to talk about another game. I want to talk about a game that showed up after I moved back from germany. Would have been 1983 or four, think it was 83 when we landed back in the states and I went to the mall in Frederick Maryland, Frances Scott Key mall in Frederick, Maryland, and there was a game in there that, unlike any game I had ever seen before at the time and let's see if Jimmy can guess what game this is fully animated, hard as hell. Already know, oh, I already know hard as hell to play. It was a dollar or it was like I don't know if it was 50 cents, because a normal game was a quarter at the time. It was either 50 cents or a dollar and let me tell you something, yep.

Tim Shoop:

That was the hardest freaking game and I dropped dollar.

Jimmy Guest:

What is the name of it, Jimmy? What is that? Dragon's Lair? Yes, Dragon's Lair. You know why, though? There was a big thing about the shift. Looking on youtube, there was a laser disc. When laser disc technology first came out, there was a laser disc player that was playing the scenes, and they were pre done. There was a hard.

Tim Shoop:

There's a whole controversy on that you had to hit the stick At the exact time correct, and you're just always either pick and left or right, and that came out during the same time and that was like, oh my god.

Jimmy Guest:

The reason why it was clear is because there was a video player and they're playing the game, the scenes. Okay, and then you would you would change your eye.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, I kind of cheat in there, but yeah, I watched this this, uh, a youtube thing on arcade classics or something like that, where they rebuild them and they take them apart and the motherboard and all that. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Think about how arcade paved the way through for technology today. I mean without that, with the birth of the home consoles and going into arcade, that paved the way for what we see today.

Tim Schaffer:

Well, home consoles didn't catch up to about 2005. I want to say that's correct. There was a long period there where they were just always on top, yeah the fantasy, the new hot thing. You had to go to the arcade you know the consoles today.

Tim Shoop:

I mean everything's cloud right, cloud and high speed internet are the key. High speed internet, the internet and cloud obviously all not in that order Happened and it paved the way for the future of video games. Now it put arcades out of business, basically.

Suds:

It changed the the whole model for arcades, because now it's all ticket based for the most part. Yeah, you do, is there's get tickets.

Jimmy Guest:

I know I'm gonna sound like the old man here, but this is there's something to say. When kids actually went to an arcade and you got out of the house and you actually went to an arcade to play a game and you took your friends, there was a simple, it was just part of cult, I mean just it was.

Tim Shoop:

It was that social interaction.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah and that, and we're not on facebook hey the high score which is why I'm happy on the age.

Tim Schaffer:

I am because, yes, like you guys, older got experienced even more, but still in the 90s it was still big enough to where I still got to experience it and I still have plenty of memories.

Tim Shoop:

So you were interested, you you played for the high score.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, okay, I still have many memories of playing donkey conga playing now, now but the difference for you, bud, is now it's called classic arcades. Back when we were, there was an actual arcade. No, no, no in the 90s.

Tim Schaffer:

Those are still arcades. The 90s had some good arcade. Yeah, you're correct, like street fighter, I used to play that, that's operation wolf.

Tim Shoop:

That's seen in stranger things. Where she's, what's her name? The, the one character, no, not 11 the red haired girl.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, oh where she, I can't.

Tim Shoop:

Uh, she's in there. She, she had a name and they're like who is this? High school? Yeah, she had that name on the high score and they kept trying to guess who it was. Look at her and they're like who is this?

Tim Schaffer:

Oh, it's great you brought falls in love with her stranger things is a really good representation for the time.

Tim Shoop:

Really.

Jimmy Guest:

Oh, that's why I love that I died, that loving that and I love that.

Tim Shoop:

My kids and they asked me a lot of questions Dad, is that I go? That was my childhood. That was my childhood, yeah. So what we're gonna do next, Jimmy, is we are going to have another beer dig dug, dig. I remember dig dug, it was max up, max max, you know what? And of course, they would name her with three letters, right to fit into the high score, because that's all you could do, you can only put your initials.

Tim Shoop:

So, we're gonna have a beer tasting and then we're going to go in a segment two where we're gonna talk to jimmy about the Nostalgia of it all, we're gonna talk nintendo and we're gonna get into emulation. So, suds, take it away.

Suds:

All right. So the next beer is the Gaffel Becker colch. I'm just gonna read what they put on their website, which I think was translated, so it's probably not the best. English Says uh, this superior beer, cologne's finest, is pure, clear and light. It is delightfully refreshing, made from specially selected hops and barley, making it most agreeable and supremely drinkable. By maintaining the oldest Brewing method, we ensure the distinct fragrance and aromatic flavor that distinguishes colch from other beers and which has made it popular among beer connoisseurs. Now, colch it can only be brewed in cologne, or cologne, as you would say it there, and that's protected by law. So if you try to brew it outside of there, it's against the law.

Suds:

That's interesting, and it's generally served in a tall, thin cylinder glass, and that's the only way they're allowed to serve it, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

I've had colch many times before and I'll tell you it's. It's a probably one of my favorite German beers. I know when you travel. This is considered a. What is this again, Jared? This is considered. What type of beer?

Suds:

colch, yeah that's the beer type Only brewed in cologne or in the region you know you'll have advertising, be like refreshing coca-cola, whatever.

Tim Schaffer:

This is the actually. This is actually the.

Tim Shoop:

Okay. So we should know that we're not beer specialists, we're just beer lovers. So, um, that's awesome. So let's get into Nostalgia, nintendo and emulation with again with mr Jimmy Guest let's dive into the power and impact of nintendo during the 80s. Jimmy, my video game console days, for me personally, kind of stopped In the late 80s and began again in the 2000s. In between, the only thing I played On nintendo was when I visited my nephew and techno bowl.

Suds:

Oh yeah, I was, everybody remember all the time with friends, and now.

Tim Schaffer:

I played madden on xbox and, and that's probably my favorite- no, it'd be neighborhood friends coming together and we all just playing all day long.

Suds:

It was even at a franchise mode in the second one.

Jimmy Guest:

Think about it, though a nintendo went through and changed the landscape of gaming and how it was done, if you think about it. Right at the time there was the Atari 2600 and the 5200 lost a lot of the share of the marketplace.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, they're falling down, and just they were falling down.

Jimmy Guest:

Nintendo came in and swapped it up. Think about the nintendo game boy. Yeah, the game boy changed how portable gaming was done.

Tim Shoop:

Yep, you named the Atari 2600 and the 5200. I had 52 atari 2600 cartridges. That's how many I had at the time.

Jimmy Guest:

That's what I started out on as a console was atari 2600, then we bought the 5200, then for my birthday I begged for a nintendo and I got actually I still have the uh Hold on the uh, the uh instruction manual super mario brothers.

Tim Shoop:

That's uh, that's cool.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, I still have the instruction manual for it, but like I was telling you before the show, those instruction manuals are really hard to come by. They're worth a lot. Everyone tossed them when they just cared about the game and I kept them.

Jimmy Guest:

I don't know how I kept them, but I found it in a box recently going through there. Oh my god, that's amazing. I mean there's so many things. It changed the playing field. I mean nintendo was. I mean that was it. It's the bees knees, right, you might. We're migrating from the arcade and then we're moving into the house, and that's kind of where we started down this path, expecting us today.

Tim Schaffer:

The theme of the 80s was that right making anything where you could have it home instead of having to go somewhere else to do this or that.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, intervention, a lot of the stuff the 80s is intervention is where it came through.

Tim Shoop:

What was evolutionary about the Nintendo? What? What would you say?

Jimmy Guest:

is the one thing that they for a child of like mine? I mean, you're going from pitfall that had like a little graphic.

Jimmy Guest:

I love pitfall to these graphics that had real time music and you could save the game and you could do all this fun stuff that you couldn't do before. You had a light gun, that you could shoot ducks, all it was in it. Now come to find out, knowing now that you could just have a light gun here and shot the whole thing would work because it went off signals. But that wasn't OK back then. I mean, you literally break. Come on, jimmy's got Nintendo, let's go over to his house and let's play Super Mario Brothers.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah you know it was really innovative, because I mean you don't have that no more. I mean you got PlayStation 5 and you got like that. But hell, you could do what we're doing here, talking to you from Lakeland Florida, pensacola, florida you could talk and play a game online. Back then you couldn't.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

Can you imagine playing Super Mario Brothers from what you all know on a headset? Hey, I'm going to roll day one. Well, you got to go past three one to get to the warps.

Tim Schaffer:

I mean, you know and I want to emphasize on one key thing Before the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, there was a lot of people trying to make this or that and it could never take off right. And if the Nintendo never released, I feel we would be in a completely different reality right now.

Tim Shoop:

True, like putting back at least 10 years in tech, if we look at a lot of the new novelty, little game sticks and you know consoles that are out like the. They brought back the Atari 2600 and those things and basically that brings me to emulation, that's what I think. All right, let's talk about emulation. Jimmy, tell me your thoughts on emulation and how it has has refaced the industry in regards to products.

Jimmy Guest:

Emulation and virtual machines are not an old really technology. They've been around since the late 70s and early 80s. It's always been a thing to where I mean back when they had crane supercomputers where they would take a room like this, they had emulation. So you are virtual machines that you could run different programs. Emulations recently come back to the whole thing where the 80s are making a comeback. Vinyl is still a big thing. Emulation lets you bring back those arcade machines that we talk and play them.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

So basically the computer runs code that basically is looking for commands and simulates the command of what it's supposed to expect from the motherboard. So now you could actually play these things. You could play Nintendo, like Tim was just saying, you could buy a box that has 900 games on it and all it is is a Raspberry Pi emulating a Nintendo. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing I mean their games. It just kills me.

Tim Shoop:

You know it's funny with, you know, emulation and processors being what's the word. I'm looking for micro.

Jimmy Guest:

Micro yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah. But, basically made smaller Micro processors.

Tim Schaffer:

Is that what you're looking for?

Tim Shoop:

No, it wasn't, but it's something like that. Anyway, so making everything smaller, emulating things. It has spawned a thousand products out there that are just basically, I mean it's kind of like movies. They're making all these same movies over and over again using modern technology, and it's the same thing we're doing in the tech world. So you can't talk emulation without talking VMs, right, and virtual machines. Jimmy explain to the audience what a VM is, what a virtual machine.

Jimmy Guest:

Does A VM a difference between emulation and a VM and a virtual machine? A virtual machine has a host that it's getting that resources from, versus an emulator that's simulating those other things. So for a virtual machine, even back in the seventies, had to have a host that had the microprocessor power to actually convert things and run the machine as it was intended. So a virtual machine is the machine as it originally was intended. An emulation is a simulation of that machine and AI has bought through that too.

Tim Shoop:

One thing I can think about in regards to you know, in our industry kind of geeking out here a little bit in regards to VMs is security. I mean in the health care industry, specifically in the nineties and say the 2000s, all the way up to probably still currently, a lot of health care organizations use VMs to emulate desktops and be able to, you know, kind of create a desktop as a service type product. We don't do that here because we use different technologies to. I think it's better, in my opinion. But and why don't you explain to the audience you know why VMs were so important in regards to those industries and why they're not as high priority anymore in regards to the new technology that's out?

Jimmy Guest:

So for the difference between the two. So a lot of these industries now are smaller location no more brick and mortar. There's no more you know things where you actually could take a server that has twice the power and run six devices on it. You can pick up one of those pretty good now and run six servers. Run it from a centralized location and you're not running over overhead infrastructure, having a huge server rack security, having somebody there to watch that nobody's going in all these servers you have it. So where you have one thing and it's secure and you're locked down. The other question that I like that is running virtual machines. A lot of the stuff is going cloud based now but there's still a thing of having a hardware piece of machine to you actually log into your resource. That's where the security is at, not where you can compromise for your past year a virtual portion of it. So it's two different things but it's a little bit together.

Tim Schaffer:

They work together in many ways they work together.

Tim Shoop:

One thing I know you do. You know, when digital boardwalk on board's a new customer and they have, let's say, 20 servers right, and usually the old IT guy or whoever was managing that network had a server for every single thing One of the first things we do is go in and consolidate those, using VM technology right.

Jimmy Guest:

That's correct. We go in there and we evaluate the, evaluate the environment, find out what's the loose pockets of it are, and combine the customer's technology and their software into a single server. So, whether that be, they had five app servers and maybe they'll use three pieces of software on each of those and three of those. Like that, we decommission those ones that aren't there, make it more operable, but in the long run, save the client more money.

Tim Schaffer:

So let's talk about that. A lot more secure, a lot more efficient, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

So you're consolidating, so you're definitely saving the customer a lot of money. You're creating a. It's very much like managing a fleet of vehicles. You have less to manage, you can standardize the operations and it's easier all the way around for the people maintaining it, as well as the customer and the burden of that cash impact that big server farm has All right Great.

Suds:

All right great.

Tim Shoop:

So VMs obviously were a game changer in the industry for a lot of different reasons. Let's talk about the interplay of technology and the culture during the eighties and its transition coming into the nineties. I'll kick this off with a famous quote that Bill Gates made. I think it was in the either the eighties or early nineties. He's I think it was the late eighties. He said you'll never need more than 640 K of memory. Is that true or false, Jimmy? False now, but let's put. Let's put ourselves in the mind of Bill Gates at the time.

Jimmy Guest:

No, because everything that you needed was going to be involved in that one spot. Back in the eighties you had floppy disk in Microsoft windows, one of the first things that paid. From the 1980s version, I think two or three could run under 640 K. You'd basically would start it up. It would come up and run into MS-DOS. You'd run your config sys and your auto execute. Those things would run your basic, like your CD driver and stuff like that, but it all fitted under that thing. So he was correct. As times changed. There's also a great video and article on him. The Xbox was being developed when they wanted to do that thing and where he actually talked about his original saying and they asked him how much ram is you know? He went back and said well, I guess I can't do that. Got to work more memory. But it is very interesting the time frame. Think of Polaroid cameras. We wouldn't have digital cameras on our phone if we didn't have Polaroids back in the 80s.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, and we're going to we're going to get, we're going to talk.

Tim Shoop:

I love this, I love this. So you're talking about Polaroids. So let's actually stay on that topic and let's talk about what we watched as a kid in the 80s, where the writer actually, as we fast forward to now and we look back at those movies, it makes us think that the writer could actually see the future. One thing that comes to mind is the Jetsons. Talk to me about the Jetsons a robot that cleans your floor, cleans your house. What Roomba? Yeah Right.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, what Video calling, video conferencing.

Tim Shoop:

Video calling Flying cars. Still not there, but well, we're prototyping, we're electric cars. I mean prototype.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, yeah, I mean even another TV show, star Trek, that's a big star treck. Hey, when they come to the captain his report, he would sign off on a thing. That's where PDAs come from. Oh, PDAs, PDA to tablets was back a PDA.

Tim Schaffer:

Back in my day, did y'all have a palm? Did you have a palm? I did. I had a palm pilot OK.

Tim Shoop:

I had a palm pilot.

Tim Schaffer:

Anyway.

Tim Shoop:

I hated it.

Jimmy Guest:

But it was stupid. He's right, you like that?

Tim Shoop:

You'd be like yes, do you remember Microsoft's first phone? Yes, oh. I had it. It popped up like this I loved it when it came out, and then I quickly began to hate it.

Jimmy Guest:

And it ran like a window C and E or something like that. They still can't do something.

Tim Schaffer:

They've tried so many times and they still can't.

Tim Shoop:

Well, I wish they could, because, I mean, if you think about it, one other movie that comes to mind and if they could get it right is the Terminator. I mean the Terminator you've got a robot that looks like a human.

Tim Schaffer:

Ok, Think about that for a minute. First of all, A-R Terminator. That's what A-R is. Right, it's just an interface. Yeah, it was, it was.

Tim Shoop:

A-R right, Using camera technology and sensors to be able to sense its surroundings. Hello yeah, Today's cars right.

Jimmy Guest:

If you, if you get into a thing and this is like a quick thing about the Terminator, one thing that always got me, and I'll go back to my whole little motto Terminator 2 had three different versions of the movie. Terminator 2 had the theatrical cut, the extended cut and the director's cut. Yeah, the director's cut was over two hours more long in the movie and there's a scene where they actually take a cut his head off, open, open the side up, take that and take the chip out.

Tim Shoop:

Wow, I've seen it.

Jimmy Guest:

That always got to me because it was like oh my God, this is like a computer.

Tim Schaffer:

I love that whole thing. Now you're forgetting one major one here. Blade Runner, I feel, did more than any of those guys in terms of protecting the future.

Jimmy Guest:

I still remember watching on my dad.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

That pretty much the movie. I still have that on my. I have Blade.

Tim Schaffer:

Runner. Is he human? Is he not Jimmy?

Tim Shoop:

I can't wait to test you in segment four. We're going to jump into segment three. There should be a beer tasting right here. Instead, we're just going to see if there's no more of these cans, we're going to have to get suds to fill us up here in a little bit. So we're going to jump straight into segment three, because it definitely ties into what we were just talking about. This is the segment three, the precursor to modern innovation, right? So let's talk about technological advancements of the eighties and their evolution and how they created the technical and digital landscape of today. I'm going to go ahead and name some things and then you guys talk about it, right? So the first thing I'm going to talk about is the one thing in the eighties that definitely became a thing of today, and that's the PC. We can't talk about the eighties without talking about the PC, guys.

Jimmy Guest:

I mean, yeah, the first thing I had was an 8086 to a 286 to a 386, 486, 2, three, four, and there I am at today, Go like that, so you can't do anything without talking about. They started out being really expensive, but then they came down to the average thing. That's what we are at today. I found a book back here, one. It was like $1,300 just for the monitor. I have like an eighties sales manual.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah Me being younger Pentium four was my first PC.

Jimmy Guest:

I worked at a computer store in the 90s where I actually would build computers.

Tim Shoop:

So I started with an Atari 20 or, I'm sorry, atari 2600. Atari 800 through the eighties I mostly use that and then I jumped into a 486. I want to say it was a 25 megahertz 486.

Suds:

And that would have been right around 92.

Tim Shoop:

And then I use that for a few years and then I was very poor for a few years and couldn't afford a computer. And then I jumped into a PC 100, 100 megahertz machine that that was amazing. Yeah, oh my God, I was blown away and that was amazing sound ad lib, sound card and sound blaster.

Jimmy Guest:

It was great.

Tim Shoop:

And that's when I really started geeking out and combining business and entrepreneurship and taking my love of technology to the next step.

Tim Schaffer:

Well, I'm curious on you and Jimmy on this of so I've worked Apple many years. I'm the Apple guy when it comes to digital boardwalk, Because a lot of people just don't even stand looking at them, much less use them. I'm whatever on them. It's not like my preferred method. I just you know I like tech, so it's just a part of my repertoire, but where were y'all when it comes to Apple during these uptimes? Like that's what I want to know.

Tim Shoop:

I hated Apple so.

Tim Schaffer:

I hated.

Tim Shoop:

Apple, apple. Apple was for school, so Apple was for school and our computer class in school. Yeah Well, actually not our computer class, but the computer lab in school was Apple twos. I'm a little older than you, jimmy. So they came into school and they it was the first time computers came to the school and that was the Apple twos, and that was in the early 80s, okay, and I was like oh I gotta be in there.

Jimmy Guest:

they got to be giving them away to schools back then.

Tim Shoop:

And, yeah, they gave them away and I hated Apple. I actually had a shoot, even on my Atari I had an Apple logo eater.

Tim Schaffer:

So what was your first Apple? Anything that you actually own. It's in my back pocket.

Tim Shoop:

The iPhone. Which iPhone yeah?

Tim Schaffer:

iPhone 14 Pro. Okay, oh, that was the first, my first ever Apple device.

Tim Shoop:

I started with an Apple for iPhone for what is this say about what Apple has done? When Apple signed the deal with Bill Gates and basically allowed Microsoft's operating where they combine that and actually allowed Microsoft operating systems to run on Apple and emulate Microsoft, it changed the game because it opened up Apple to so many people that wouldn't have used an Apple device before.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, I forget the term they use. I mean, it's all boobing, but I just don't know what. I forget the term.

Tim Shoop:

But then Microsoft still own part they own.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, yeah. And then they think about Apple.

Tim Shoop:

If it weren't for Microsoft, Apple would be history.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, yeah. So think about this as an aspect of the segway to what you're saying. You had back then. Now you have your phone, your Apple phone, that actually, like you learn about place that, you learn about a new device, you learn about something. Back then it was the newspaper here on the evening news yeah, you would only Apple 2E for kids represented on Google Play the Oregon Trail at school.

Tim Schaffer:

I have to do. Well, yeah, first of all, shout out to Oregon Trail.

Jimmy Guest:

But I represented work, so who would want to go tell their parents?

Tim Schaffer:

hey, mom, I want an Apple to for my home Makes sense.

Jimmy Guest:

You know, I mean, it's just nobody wanted it.

Tim Shoop:

I had a friend that had an Apple and I used to pick on him.

Jimmy Guest:

I used to go, yeah, thanks you know, Apple gave away because they got tax breaks and money and there's a whole article about you can find online now.

Tim Shoop:

But here's the thing Steve Jobs he knew he was done was a visionary. Exactly, Let me just say that Steve Jobs was a visionary. And Steve Jobs was a visionary because he thought about the human element, the same thing we always talk about at Digital Boardwalk Human element Is the human element, the human element. Technology can only do so much, but without the human touch, it's just that, without a good interface. What do you?

Tim Schaffer:

have, yeah, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

The human element can change anything for anybody. So let's talk about that aesthetics. Steve Jobs said nobody wants a beige ugly thing sitting in their living room or dining room. Let's come out with this iMac. Let's make it transparently and colorful and all these things. It was a game changer, yeah. And then, of course, miniaturization. That's the word I was looking for. Okay, miniaturization.

Tim Shoop:

Miniaturization so he did the same thing and that's going to bring me that's going to bring me to some other things that I want to talk about. That were 80s based products that changed the game for today, but he miniaturized. He miniaturized all the things that were created in the 80s. He miniaturized and put into one device which is sitting right here in front of me. So let let me let me throw out a couple more buzzwords. Jimmy Sure, let let's talk about GUIs. So explain to the audience what a GUI is Graphical user interface and it came out in the 80s. It did, and how did it change everything for everybody, everything.

Jimmy Guest:

I mean a lot of things, even though we're on the space shuttle was a screen. It had like pushes, block here, pushes here, and then you would get different responses. You saw it a lot in movies, saw it in Knight Rider, but basically that brought us into the modern tech that we have today. Back then it did stuff, but now it does so much more. I mean, you have GUIs for your home entertainment system. Now you have GUIs for your automation of your home system right now. Guis were the predecessor to. I mean, it was one of those things like uh, I almost want to say like world of imagination at Disney World where it shows you all these technical advances of the things. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

GUIs were game changing. There's a lot of people today.

Suds:

They don't even realize that everything they use has a GUI.

Jimmy Guest:

They don't understand that back in the 80s you were typing in those Windows was a GUI before. Yeah, yeah.

Suds:

We were just typing stuff in, so right.

Tim Shoop:

The transition for us old school guys back in the 80s into the world of the mouse was very tough, like it was for me at least. I was used to a keyboard controlling everything, dos based commands Zork, that's what I was about to say Jimmy Zork Going from DOS to an interface.

Tim Schaffer:

Zork Zork, my favorite adventure game. I know what Zork is.

Tim Shoop:

It's the tech thing. He knows what.

Tim Schaffer:

Zork is. He knows what Zork is. It's a tech space RPG. Yeah, we played a game.

Jimmy Guest:

It was go to, yeah, go to here, open door. Take key East East, yeah, east North North, To give you a quick, quick representation. So when Windows 95 came out Windows 3.1 was a GUI, Windows 95 was a complete operating system my dad took the time when I said, oh, I'm going to, I got Windows 95. Dad's going to revolutionize, got a copy of it, I'm going to bring it over here. It'll come over at night. So he took the time to stand in front of the copier and back in the day you had your Xerox copier, which you still have today, but he would enlarge Bill Gates until it came up to like poster size and he taped it to the back of his chair with a big red marker through it. So that's how people thought about GUI's back then.

Tim Shoop:

Well, let's move on. Let's talk about a few other things in the 80s that were created in the 80s that changed the future and change how we use an interface with technology. Today, everything's cloud based on demand. You know Netflix, music, itunes. But back when me and Jimmy were growing up, we had to rewind music. We had to rewind it and wait for it to rewind in order to get to the other next song.

Jimmy Guest:

Even if you want to go to a blockbuster video. You had to rewind.

Tim Schaffer:

So when I was real little the only reason I'm even here doing this show is because I became an audio geek and it's because I had this R2D2 little tape recorder down.

Suds:

Yeah.

Tim Schaffer:

Right and I would sit there and record skits on it. I would record radio, planes, whatever. I could try to put stuff together all through this little tape recorder. I have so many memories of me being a little messing with audio and it always ever stuck ever since. I've always been obsessed over trying to make things sound cooler, better, different, and it's all starts from that little R2D2 Sony Walkman.

Tim Shoop:

I want to say it was we're going to talk about the Sony Walkman, because boom boxes yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

Boom boxes.

Tim Shoop:

Boom box. I used to go out on the playground with my boom box on my shoulder. I would record from a boom box.

Jimmy Guest:

Well, that's how you record in your radio.

Tim Schaffer:

You go on a radio station you put a cassette in play and record Exactly.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, so I'm going to name a few. So CDs, it's obvious no more rewinding Walkmans is on my list. Oh my gosh Walkmans. I remember getting my first one. I lived in Munich Modern MP3 player yeah, exactly, vcrs. Come on, VCRs being able to watch a movie in your home.

Jimmy Guest:

Think about TV. You got to remember. There's no streaming. You have ABC, cbs and there was no Fox. There was like that and you went on the nightly. You'd see a movie on cable TV, you would be able to record it.

Tim Shoop:

Cable TV came out in the early 80s, I believe.

Jimmy Guest:

Early 80s it was like 82, 83.

Tim Shoop:

That revolution it was like the first table box, like switches, and then of course video game consoles, because Atari came out, you had Coleco, you had Activision.

Jimmy Guest:

Colecovision.

Tim Shoop:

Activision. Activision, so Activision Coleco and Atari.

Jimmy Guest:

What was the other one, itling and Esur?

Tim Shoop:

Sega. Well, there was one that started with an.

Jimmy Guest:

I.

Tim Schaffer:

That you would lay an interface over the controller to have different buttons.

Jimmy Guest:

So that started the whole code thing yeah, that you put the whole thing on there and you'd be, able to do different functions.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, All right. Well, we're going to wrap up that part of it. We're going to dive into Jimmy's role at Digital Boardwalk. Understand your daily challenges and the impact that 80s tech inspirations had on you and how it helped develop your current role at Digital Boardwalk.

Jimmy Guest:

Let's talk about it. I think the best thing you could say and you mentioned it earlier is the culture of the human touch. That actually developed a lot for me at Digital Boardwalk. I know, Tim Schaffer, you've heard me a lot talk to people about you got to make that phone call, you got to make that connection, you got to make that one person Because there's still a point in today's society that we miss that human touch. So the 80s focused a lot on teaching me. There's things that I mean you take for granted, things that were so simple I mean things were simpler back then on some things but a lot of times when you appreciate those things, you know of the challenges that people have of technology. So the time when people are actually calling in and speaking to you on it, you know that they have a problem and you're able to relate and actually kill that problem. So where my job with Digital Boardwalk is technical escalations manager comes is I take care of some of the clients that I have and bear me.

Jimmy Guest:

Taking another line from a movie, I'm not happy unless I'm doing Mach 10 and my hair's on fire. Top Gun. That is where I'm able to multitask and it taught me. I mean I don't think you mentioned it earlier on here about no machine has ever beat me, and that's where it comes from back. A lot of stuff growing up is that you were challenged in school. You were, I mean, you think school stuff like now, but you had like things and there was a I learned at an early age of that's how I learned and I was successful is to be able to fix and make people happy, and so doing what I do here helping other people happy, teaching our technicians, teaching things to where we go is what brings me to be able to give my gifts back to others.

Tim Shoop:

You know, as a leader here at Digital Boardwalk, you know I talk a lot about wowing the customer and how you have to talk and before you talk you have to listen. You have to listen because if you don't listen you can't identify, and if you can't identify you can't resolve.

Jimmy Guest:

Correct, and I mean that's the example I gave to the team lead to the team meeting is told them I said think about it for all you know. Look at it. You have to listen, you have to resolve If you're wanting to. I mean, we're all a bunch of nerds here. But let's take the air conditioning industry. If your air conditioner goes out in your house, all you're going to think about is, hey, when's that guy coming to fix my car? Same thing you have to be able to relate to your client and be able to talk so that you can help them. That's all they're wanting. They're just like you and me. So to do that is again my pleasure in my drive in life to help others.

Tim Shoop:

So it sounds like a really cool place and it sounds like you probably have a really cool boss.

Jimmy Guest:

I do. He's a very cool boss. He's on vacation, though, right now, but I don't. I was talking about me. I know you are my direct. Yes, I know, I was laughing, that's funny.

Tim Shoop:

Hey, there's no shortage of ego here, buddy I love picking on him. Hey, Mr Sangria, let's get into it.

Jimmy Guest:

Sangria is very good. No, it is. I like to pick on.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, it is, unless all your buddies order a pint of beer at the beer place and you ask for Sangria. That's the only time it's not cool.

Jimmy Guest:

You got to drink with the buddies that only happened when I took Suds out to see Transformers the movie. That's the whole problem.

Tim Shoop:

Suds is the one that brought that story about the Sangria back to the rest of the digital boardwalk population.

Tim Schaffer:

So you can blame him.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, he told on you. I don't know what you're going to talk about, suds, where are you? He's hiding back there now.

Jimmy Guest:

It's a funny story. We could tell it for people to laugh real quick.

Tim Shoop:

Tell the story.

Suds:

Suds. Yeah, we were going to see Transformers, was it a?

Jimmy Guest:

anniversary or just a special show.

Suds:

It was the anniversary.

Jimmy Guest:

It was the anniversary and I wouldn't shut up because I repeated every line.

Suds:

Oh yeah. And we stopped at a pizza place next door and had some drinks and we ordered our beers and then he didn't know what to get. He said I'm going to do a Sangria. And I was like I don't think I said anything in the moment but I was thinking, oh my gosh, sangria. But then we go to the movie, you go to Transformers and of course, we know I know a lot of the lines.

Suds:

I think Jimmy knows them all and we're there and it's all people who have seen the movie and we start just saying the lines out loud and there were people getting mad. And it's like when you go, see well, back in the day you would Rocky Horror picture show back in the day you were supposed to yell out with the lines, and it's the same thing when you go see an old movie.

Tim Shoop:

We're going to put that to the test here in just a few minutes. We got a couple more questions to ask Jimmy and then we're going to get into the final very short bit on Soundbite Trivia and we're going to see what Jimmy knows in the world of 80s movies. But first I'd like to ask you a couple more questions before we move on to that. So tell me about the daily challenges, and how did your past help with you tackling every day at Digital Boardwalk? What 80s tech impacted you in your current role, I guess would be my question.

Jimmy Guest:

The culture of the 80s helps mold some. I mean, it helped mold it in me and around me. I learned to learn on stuff, to reverse engineer stuff in the 80s to actually for people that didn't have anything and when you don't have anything kind of like we mentioned your BBS and stuff like that I learned how to think of things outside the box, meaning that anything I touch I want to reverse engineer it in my head and figure out how it worked. So to help me, my current role in escalations. That helps me to think Tim, you have a microphone there. It's connected by a wire and it goes back around to the corner to an amplifier. That's how I look at things, because in the 80s you're always trying to figure out how to put things together. They had Radio Shack back in the day so you could buy wires to put things together. Heck, I had a toy lab where you built projects. You don't have that, no more. Those things gave me the skills that I have now.

Tim Shoop:

I miss Radio Shack. I used to. That was one of my favorite stores to go into that was one of my first jobs by the way, was it really yeah, I have no idea Working with.

Tim Schaffer:

Fuses.

Suds:

I love.

Tim Schaffer:

Radio Shack. I have a story. I don't know if we have time here, It'll take five seconds but this lady brought in an old TV right that had like a built-in VCR into it. The tape was stuck into the VCR player. She's like 85, 90, barely able to like walk up in the store really pressing it there, and was just begging for somebody to be able to get this tape out of this thing. And then go to talk to her more. She had an old wedding video on there.

Tim Schaffer:

So I'm like forget everything else. I just feel it's too important to like what am I going to do? Sell some headphones? No, I'm going to help this lady get this wedding thing out of this VCR. And so I spent a good hour and a half just helping her, just begging my manager to leave me alone, Let me work on this thing. And I got it out. I saved it. We cleaned it up a bit. We literally got it where I could stick it back in. I made sure everything was functional before just jamming it back in. She watched it. It just started crying, yeah, she just hugged me and was just like and.

Jimmy Guest:

I was just like.

Tim Schaffer:

This is the best thing I could ever do to somebody.

Jimmy Guest:

It's a good point, tim, because we don't have. I know I don't want to keep going on it, but we don't have. Back there we have repair shops like service centers, until you would take your equipment. Now it's so cheap, you just buy new.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah.

Jimmy Guest:

You know, and that's the culture of now, but back then you'd have service manuals how to fix something like that and it'd tell you the piece, the material and how to do it. It's funny.

Tim Shoop:

I feel sorry for all the guys that are still running break- fix shops, because I used to own one and it has. It's cheaper on Amazon. Well, with the transition of things and the prices, driving lower forced me into a new industry, and I thank God every day for doing that, because that's the beauty of technology we can create jobs If you have a good idea. You can create a job in this industry out of nothing if you put your mind to it. So let me go to the last segment. We are going to introduce our fun next trivia segment. Let's, we're going to call it.

Suds:

Name that, nerd you get it Name that nerd, all right so we're going to tease Jimmy for his love of 80s films.

Tim Shoop:

We're going to play six audio clips from iconic 80s movies and for each, I'm going to start by, you know, telling you what I need from you, for each one's going to be different, what I need from you. On each one you'll have about three seconds, which is quicker quicker than Googling to answer, and these are easy. So I purposely for the show, because I don't want to bore our customers with dead dead air, dead air of Jimmy thinking so let's see how good you really are.

Tim Shoop:

Jimmy claims to know the lines front to back for a lot of famous 80s movies. So for the first one, I'm going to ask for several pieces of data. Suds, get your stuff ready on the mixing board. If you're ready, we're going to start with a first. Jimmy, you're going to name the year this movie was released, You're going to name the two main characters that are in the scene, You're going to name the actors that played the characters and you're going to finish the scene. So the first thing I'm going to want you to do is is give me the title of the movie, the year it came out, and then finish the scene while you still have it fresh in your head. So ready, three, two, one. Man wouldn't a fly swatter be easier.

Tim Schaffer:

Man will catch fly with chopstick. I can't finish anything.

Jimmy Guest:

I think it was 83. It's the karate kid pat . I can't pronounce his name, but it's Mr Miyagi, pat Marriaga, and it's Ralph Macchio as Daniel Maruso. And they I know the scene. They're in his apartment, they're in the side where there was place where Mr Miyagi had his shop apartment building and they're just about to go back out. At that point I don't remember all the lines of that one, but I think that was All right, it was 1984.

Tim Shoop:

It was Daniel LaRusso played. Daniel LaRusso and Mr Miyagi were the characters played by Ralph Macchio and Pat Marita. Can you name Mr Miyagi's full name? No, I can't name his full name Correct, it's Nariyoshi Kasuki Miyagi.

Jimmy Guest:

Okay, and if you want to, finish the scene, I would say Mr Miyagi, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

He says, after he watches him with the fly and the chopsticks, he gets the hit. He says you ever catch one? Mr Miyagi says not. Yet he says can I try? He says if wish, Beginner's luck. And Daniel catches one, he says hey, mr Miyagi look look.

Suds:

I caught one.

Tim Shoop:

And Mr Miyagi says Beginner's luck, yes, beginner's luck yes.

Jimmy Guest:

Beginner luck it doesn't say yeah, I remember. I told you that takes me a while. I don't remember the years as well.

Tim Shoop:

The next one. I don't need you to finish the scene. All I need is the name of the movie, the year it came out, the two main characters in the scene and who played them.

Suds:

Okay, College great. It's going to be a great year.

Jimmy Guest:

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, we got Jimmy Stalked.

Jimmy Guest:

College is going to be a great year.

Tim Shoop:

Play it again, play it again, play it again.

Suds:

The animal house College. Great, it's going to be a great year.

Jimmy Guest:

Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh Is that animal house?

Tim Shoop:

No, come on. That's an iconic laugh. Jimmy, play it one more time, all right.

Suds:

College. Great, it's going to be a great year. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, it's going to be a great year.

Jimmy Guest:

I'm trying to focus on the college. It's going to be a great year. He's one out of two Tim we got him. I can't believe it. I mean I used one. You've seen my Plex server.

Suds:

That's not on there, it's revenge of the.

Tim Shoop:

Jimmies I mean revenge of the nerds.

Jimmy Guest:

Revenge of the nerds. I never watched that. I never did. What year, what year? Everything happened for me, 82 to 86. Most of these are going to be during that. You have.

Suds:

Harris, yeah, so this is 82 to 86.

Tim Shoop:

1984,. The character's names were Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe.

Tim Schaffer:

I never watched that.

Jimmy Guest:

Because it's great. It's great. My mother didn't like it, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Played by Robert Karadine and Anthony Edwards All right. So, for the next one, same rules apply. Name of the movie year it came out. The two main characters in the movie not necessarily in the scene and the two actors that played them.

Suds:

Once again, Sarah Connor, 35, mother of two, brutally shot to death in her home this afternoon. You're dead, honey. So, I'm late breaking you.

Jimmy Guest:

Tim Terminator. I don't remember the again, I'm not good on years on these.

Tim Shoop:

Take a guess, I need 84. You got it 84.

Jimmy Guest:

84. He's 84, 85. Because.

Tim Shoop:

I remember when I went to see it, 84. Two characters, one of them Sarah Connor. Sarah Connor how? Did you guess that.

Jimmy Guest:

Sarah, when I think like that, it's like you're dead honey. And she was talking to her roommate.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, she said her full name Sarah Connor.

Jimmy Guest:

Yeah, but I but I, but she was talking to her roommate. Yes, she's talking to her roommate who?

Tim Shoop:

played her.

Jimmy Guest:

Oh, you're going to ask me that.

Tim Shoop:

Where were they when they were talking, linda?

Jimmy Guest:

Hamilton and they were their apartment.

Tim Shoop:

And who's the other main actor in the movie I?

Jimmy Guest:

don't remember the name of the other actor.

Tim Shoop:

Arnold Schwarzenmaier, my head.

Suds:

Main actor Well, yeah, but you're saying in the scene you said in the scene. No, you said in the scene, you were thinking the two girls.

Tim Shoop:

No, when you rewatched this podcast when I introduced this segment.

Tim Schaffer:

I said not necessarily in the scene.

Jimmy Guest:

All right, fair enough, I'm trying to get him.

Tim Shoop:

I'm trying to get him Terminator, I get. I mean, come on, I can't wait till we get to number six because I think the audience will be impressed. But yes, it was the Terminator Sarah Connor and the Terminator played by Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That was a I loved when that movie came out.

Jimmy Guest:

It was great you had me lying. He had a lot of me lines, that movie.

Tim Shoop:

So the next one. All the same information, but we also want you to finish the scene. All right, go. This video tells you where you're going. This one tells you where you are. This one tells you where you were.

Jimmy Guest:

Back to the future. Yes, wait year. Oh God, that has to be 85. 85. Got it.

Tim Shoop:

Good, who's the Michael J?

Jimmy Guest:

Fox, Christopher Lloyd.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, and what were their characters names?

Jimmy Guest:

Doc Brown and Marty McFly.

Tim Shoop:

What was Doc's first name? Oh, come on.

Jimmy Guest:

Jerry, oh, come on, you got to get me on the spot.

Tim Shoop:

Emmett Brown. Emmett Brown, you got it. Emmett Brown, hey, google it this guy's got to go.

Jimmy Guest:

Hey, google it. So say you want to see the Declaration of Independence? Yeah, or the birth of Lord? Yes, here's the song. December, september 19th yes, of course.

Tim Shoop:

What day what?

Jimmy Guest:

day December, no November, november 19.

Tim Shoop:

55. Number, november 5, 1955.

Jimmy Guest:

And then he goes in and says, well, I happen to oh, that's the day I invented time travel. Yes, well, Jimmy, See, I remember that one. I loved that. I watched that over and over again.

Tim Shoop:

Jimmy, because you were so good at that one, we're going to go ahead and give you what you missed on two which were on the last one, which was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jimmy Guest:

So we're going to go. Oh, come on, I knew it was Arnold in the movie. That's not fair, go ahead.

Tim Shoop:

Hey, we still got you on revenge of the nerds.

Jimmy Guest:

Oh, you got me there. Mother never really watched that.

Tim Shoop:

The next one. All I need you to do is name the movie, the year, the actor and the character he played. Ok, computer, an extension of the human intellect, the Ancon 511. Oh, this is all. Center of the most calculating intelligence. Honor, this is Tron. What is it? It's Tron, yes, it is Tron. What?

Jimmy Guest:

year Tron, but 82.

Tim Shoop:

82?, you got it. Who's the actor? And?

Jimmy Guest:

the which Bridges.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, Jeff Bridges. What is his character's name?

Jimmy Guest:

I just watched this the other day and prepped for this, you know what's funny about this?

Tim Shoop:

He didn't know it until they named the computer name. And then he goes oh, that's Tron, I want.

Tim Schaffer:

That's Tron Incom Incom. The bleeps and boops alone should have been.

Tim Shoop:

I was watching the expression on his face.

Jimmy Guest:

That was the very beginning of the movie, though.

Tim Shoop:

That was the very beginning of the movie. Well, that's actually part of the trailer. It's the beginning of the trailer, but there was a part of where it tells like that God, I can't remember his name Audience just if you don't know about Tron, it's where a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in his attempt to escape great movie. But by today's standards the CGI sucks.

Jimmy Guest:

Tron, too, is basically the same thing as Tron.

Tim Shoop:

And then you got legacy. So we've got to keep this moving because we only got a few more minutes, so we're going to go into the next one.

Tim Shoop:

It's going to be the same thing, you don't have to finish. Well, actually this is the last one. So what we want you to do is name the movie, the year it came out. I want you to name the main character's names, three characters, the three actors that played them, and I want you to finish this scene and the entire movie, if you can figure it out, so go ahead. Suds, take it away.

Jimmy Guest:

Great, actual physical contact. Can you move? Ok? So that's great. Ray, say something for me. Give it up right away. I just went to a ballroom. Ok, we'll be right there. All right, if you and the others could stay right there, we'll take care of everything. It goes in Like that Dun, dun, dun, dun dun. It sees the thing and it says there is on the ceiling. That's the guy who got me.

Tim Shoop:

So what's the movie?

Jimmy Guest:

Ghostbusters.

Tim Shoop:

What year?

Jimmy Guest:

That's 82, isn't it?

Tim Shoop:

84.

Jimmy Guest:

84. No, it was 84, because I was like that.

Tim Shoop:

We played Peter Vankman.

Jimmy Guest:

Bill Murray.

Tim Shoop:

OK.

Jimmy Guest:

Dan Ackroyd.

Tim Shoop:

Played who.

Jimmy Guest:

Dan Ackroyd played Ray.

Tim Shoop:

Ray Stance Ray.

Jimmy Guest:

Stance Egon Spangler is played by Harold Ramis.

Tim Shoop:

OK.

Jimmy Guest:

And Ernie Tudson, who I actually met.

Tim Shoop:

And they were three eccentric. What? Three eccentric what?

Jimmy Guest:

Nerds.

Tim Shoop:

Three eccentric Paris psychologists.

Jimmy Guest:

Marisol Paris psychologists. Yeah, but they were three.

Tim Shoop:

Who started a ghost catching business in New York City. But the line you got it a little wrong, jimmy. Now I was impressed when everybody said you could recite this whole movie. So what I'm going to do is have Suds play it one more time. I'm going to go ahead and finish it.

Jimmy Guest:

Great, actual physical contact. Can you move? Oh, I feel so funky, I feel so funky Ray come in please.

Tim Shoop:

Ray Ray come in please. Spangler, I'm with Vankman. He got slime, he got slime, that's great Ray.

Jimmy Guest:

Save some for me, some for me, so I remember some of it.

Tim Shoop:

No, you're good man.

Jimmy Guest:

I'm actually better when I see the scene come up in my head and I can remember it after that. So I had to replay it a couple of times in my head when you said that.

Tim Shoop:

All right, here you go. This is our last little thing we want to show for you. We're not going to spend a lot of time on this these are Nintendo cartridges that Mr Schaefer brought in. We're going to pull out three or four of these cartridges. We're going to see what impact that the title has on you. So first one, Right the obvious.

Jimmy Guest:

Super Mario 3.

Tim Schaffer:

I'll play that with my brother all the time? Yeah, all right, this one was gigantic, of course.

Jimmy Guest:

Yes, that was a good one, Tetris. They played as much though.

Suds:

Tetris was good Gameboys. Were that one Gameboy?

Jimmy Guest:

was hot, that's when the movie was good on that Tetris Now, right, you can't see that one. What is that one? Mega man, mega man, oh, mega man, how are you on Mega man? I did great, but we only were able to rent those some Blockbuster video when you can rent Nintendo games.

Tim Schaffer:

OK, ok, an obvious one. This is Zelda. Yeah, yeah, now Is that the first one was saved. It's the first one was saved. Yeah, did you play and actually complete this?

Suds:

Yes, until the battery died, robin.

Tim Schaffer:

Williams shout out to him we have Nintendo power. He named his daughter after Zelda. Yes, we have Nintendo power. I think you know this. This was in the arcades as well. Double Dragon, yep.

Jimmy Guest:

Look like it Yep, yep, double.

Tim Schaffer:

Dragon 2 is what it looked like. It was Nice OK. And then one last one here. I mean I have a bunch, but see if you can make that out. Buy in a commando Bam.

Tim Shoop:

Ooh, ok, great. So thanks for bringing those in, Tim. This has been awesome. We got to stump Jimmy on his 80s knowledge, so I'm very proud of myself for putting those sound bites into the segment. Jimmy, I'm just picking you on, you got me on the revenge of the nerds. I will tell you you did fantastic and I'm very impressed by you and by what you know and definitely the nostalgia I know every time we get together and talk 80s. We geek out right. So I want to thank you for your stories.

Jimmy Guest:

Thank you for having me.

Tim Shoop:

I think my favorite part was about your dad and your uncle, and when you dove in I could tell that you and your dad were really close and how he was a big inspiration for you in this space. Our next episode, we will be bringing in a very special guest in the insurance industry and how he has taken it across the country in the public speaking events and he has combined his past experiences in the Marines with what he is doing now to teach others how to lead Cool. We'll introduce him at the next segment. Jimmy, thanks again and thank you. Thank you Everyone for helping us get this show out there. Please share it with your friends, tell your friends, tell others. These guys are bad ass. They got cool gas and they drink really good beers, Leave us good reviews.

Tim Schaffer:

Five stars let's go. I do my best.

Tim Shoop:

Cheers my fellow nerds and beer lovers. Stay tuned for more Nerds on Tap. Oh, and one more thing Help us spread the nerdy love and the love for Great Brews by sharing this podcast with your friends, colleagues and fellow beer enthusiasts. Let's build a community that embraces curiosity, innovation and the enjoyment of a cold one.

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