Episode 184 - In Defense of the Forums

Published on Wed, 04 May 2022 23:11:07 -0700

Synopsis

This episode features a discussion with Nick Sita, also known as Los Angeles Timer on WatchUSeek or Pacific Standard Time on Instagram, about the value of watch forums. Despite their reputation for toxicity and gatekeeping, Nick argues that forums offer valuable real information, technical knowledge, and niche interests that are often missing from watch blogs and social media. They delve into the pros and cons of forums, including the toxic personalities, cults of personality, and data management gatekeepers, but ultimately defend forums as a valuable resource, especially for those looking to make informed watch purchases or delve into the technical aspects of watchmaking.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. You're listening to 40 in 20, the watch clicker podcast with your hosts, Andrew and my good friend Everett here. We talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and there are things we like. Everett, how are you? Yeah, I'm good. I smell like booze. Yeah. That's not entirely unusual for when we're recording, but you know, there was a, A mishap, shall we say.
Everett You know, we talked about it, and I think that that is the first spill we've had. I think you're right. In a hundred and now 84 episodes. So through 183 episodes with many, as you know, as you at home know, with many, many beverages drank. That's our first spill, I think. Yeah.
Andrew That's pretty good. I mean, it was a good spill, I suppose, but it's pretty good that we've only spilled. Given this amount of space that we work on, Like we have a normal, a normal desk with like all this like normal people desk shit on it. And then all this podcast stuff piled on it and that we haven't spilled more is impressive.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. You know, it says somebody is going to be like, no, no. Episode 14. We heard it. Uh, no, I'm doing really well. Uh, I am, I am feeling healthy. I'm feeling well fed. I stink like booze, but other than that, I'm great. Andrew, how are you?
Andrew Also good and well-fed. I had, uh, some toxic chicken wings for dinner tonight. I was still eating them when you came over. So not only did I get to eat several before we recorded, I'm very much looking forward to finishing them afterward.
Everett And just to clarify for the people at home, the, the wings are toxic by way of their branding and not, not by way, although.
Andrew Not poisonous. I do, I do get their radioactive sauces in air quotes.
Everett uh the toxic lava and the um what did i get the reaper were my choices tonight and they're spicy but yeah yeah no they've got some good sauces uh i'm a fan i think we've actually eaten toxic on or just after a show before certainly just before because i know i've touched my eyeball with toxic sauce while recording Well, enough of that, because we do have a guest today. Uh, we are, we are very, very, very glad to have joining us today. Nick Sita from Los Angeles. You may know him as Los Angeles timer on watch you seek or Pacific standard time on Instagram, formerly Pacific standard time on YouTube. Although, um, the last time I've looked this up, that that is no longer a going concern. Nick Sita. Welcome explain yourself.
Nick Sita Wow, that's tough. I mean, how much time do you have? But, uh, first of all, thanks for, thanks a lot for having me. Uh, yeah, like you said, my name is Nick Sita. I live in LA. I work in the entertainment industry and like the two hosts of the show, I am, uh, I spend entirely too much time thinking about wearing and buying watches. So yeah, that's pretty much it.
Everett So I've known Nick, uh, for several years by way primarily of WatchaSeek, uh, and, had the opportunity by way of my friend Wes Kwok at Notice, had the opportunity to actually meet, sit down, had drinks in a purple, like a purple lit hotel bar lobby to have drinks with Nick.
Andrew They let you into a cool place like that?
Nick Sita It was quite clubby.
Everett It was clubby.
Nick Sita Almost off-puttingly clubby.
Everett Yeah, they told me I had to unbutton one of my shirt buttons if I was going to stay, which was fine. I'm fine with that. I had the mustache, so at the time, that seemed like an appropriate move, so we did it, and they let us stay. It was good. Nick actually didn't have a shirt on, so he was fine.
Nick Sita No, I rarely wear shirts. I like the barracuda jacket over no shirt look. It's like the drunken, homeless Steve McQueen.
Andrew Well, I do. I like that look. I think you're on to something.
Everett So, as discussed, Nick, I've known you via the forums now for quite a while. I'm putting finger quotes up when I say that. I hope everybody at home realizes that.
Nick Sita I've known you via... Wait, we're not best friends.
Everett Well, I think we are at this point. But you've been in watches for quite a while. So why don't you just give us a background on you, um, how you got into this crazy, crazy fun hobby and, um, yeah, we'll start there.
Nick Sita Yeah. Well, uh, I come from a watch wearing family. My grandfather, uh, my dad's dad was a big watch guy and you think like jet age stuff, because that's the time he kind of became prosperous in. So anything that matched like, uh, you know, large tail fin Cadillac. So He wore an original Hamilton Electric. He was big into Rados, the Diastar, that crazy egg shaped watch. He had like three or four of them. Yeah, and he had a bunch of Midos too, which I don't even understand how he had because they weren't really sold in the US. So but he was a watch guy. And my dad and mom were too. Dad, his daily wear was a Rolex Submariner, like pretty much every dad in the neighborhood, but, and he had a Piaget Polo as his dress watch, which couldn't be more 80s. Where the pattern of the bracelet went through the case and dial. I don't, you could, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very much of its time. He had like a grandfather tuna though, too. He had some, he had some cool watches. And my mom alternated between a, Santos as her kind of sports watch on bracelet and Tank as her sort of going out for the night watch. So I was surrounded by watches as a kid.
Andrew And good watches.
Nick Sita Yeah. The first legit watch I owned, we were on vacation in Bermuda and my dad bought me a Heuer 1000 Quartz Diver, which is basically a sub rip off on a Jubilee bracelet. About 38 millimeters, I think.
Everett Yeah, those are great watches. That's actually on my short list.
Nick Sita It's going to be a rebuy for me. I have a thing about I don't wear copies, but for that I would make an exception. I just, it's, you know, it just means a lot to me. And I just remember being super proud, being out with my dad and I had a watch that looked like his. And like a lot of things for me, I got it. I was obsessive with watches and then got out of it and got back into it. Had an original Bond era, Brosnan era Seamaster at the time, I'm that old, sold it. Um, and then smartphones came out and kind of, you know, lost interest. And then about five or six years ago, I got back into it. And, uh, I think the first watch I bought getting back into it was a combat sub, um, which is, you know, it's a fine watch. It's kind of totally inoffensive. I had it for about six months, figured out what I liked and what I didn't. And, uh, yeah, now I've just spent entirely too much money on watches. I kind of reshuffle the collection every six months. Cause I get bored easily. Um, And my current favorite, I've got to say is what I'm wearing right now, which you guys might be able to see, but obviously the people out there won't. It's a Oris big crown pro pilot, uh, caliber one 11 hand wound 10 day PR. So, um, you know, it violates the 40 and 20 rules. Certainly it's 4422. It's a, I mean, it's a big, but, uh, you know, I've got a relatively large flat wrist. I can pull it off, but I still bang it against the door knobs and such, but you know, or door jams and such. And, uh, but yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty great. It's proven to be strangely accurate too. So, which it's not really known for.
Everett Yeah. Those 10, those 10 day movements are not known for their precision, their, their cost accuracy, as it were.
Nick Sita No, but I'm getting like plus two and a half out of it. So, you know, can't complain.
Andrew Are you letting it run the full power reserve? Have you, have you seen full power reserve exhaustion.
Nick Sita I have, and it'll do 13 days, which is pretty incredible. It will do three more days than stated, but by then it's, you know, there's no amplitude and it's, you know, not running very great. You'll get a general read at the time when it's at the very bottom of the PR.
Everett You know, one of my good friends, one of my good local friends here recently bought a Panerai, a Panerai 8 day. And which is a beautiful watch. I actually think it's super cool. And if you knew this guy, you'd know it was like the perfect watch for him. But he was concerned he was buying it used and he was concerned about it being fake. He bought it on Chrono 24 and it was guaranteed legitimate.
Nick Sita I bought this on Chrono 24 as well. Yeah.
Everett And I say, you know, you can have a fair amount of you can have a fair amount of confidence in Chrono 24. And he's like, yeah, but how will I know if it's real? And I was like, well, when you get it, wind it all the way up and don't touch it. And if eight days later, it's still running, you know, what's real because there's no fake in the world. That's got that movement. And sure enough, good point. 10 days later, it was still running. So, uh, hooray is real. Yeah.
Andrew Um, which only works in like authentication or authentication for long power reserve watches. Any normal power reserve, you're on your own. Find a new way to authenticate. That's right.
Everett Take it to an expert. And even then, who knows, right? Well, so we asked, so I met you, as discussed last weekend, and you had the audacity, Nick, to tell me that we had said something on the show that you took umbrage with. But specifically, I had referenced... He has a whole book of it.
Andrew It's like everyone else.
Nick Sita I'm racking my brain and counting the bourbons I had.
Everett I had referenced on the show, and I think further in our conversation, that the forums, the forums, the watch forums, as it were, were dead. And that's a hard stop statement. I think in some ways it's true as I sit here today, but you took umbrage with that and said, I did. Hey, look, I don't agree with you. We asked you to come on the show today. I asked you to come on the show because I thought your thoughts on this were really interesting and I thought this would make a good show. So thank you for being here. Oh, it's my pleasure. But that is what we're going to talk about today. Andrew, what do you, what do you think? Well, I mean, what's your initial, so Andrew, you're coming in this a little bit cold because you weren't part of the the W San Francisco purple bar light shirt open conversations.
Andrew And you're saying this like I missed out.
Nick Sita Well, we're leaving the best parts out. They're not safe for podcasting.
Andrew I mean, my initial thoughts when you talk to me about this idea, my initial thought was kind of an agree and disagree. Part of the reason this show exists is because of the forums. For better or worse. Almost the inaccessibility of the forums. If you ask a question on the forum, you're going to get hit with, at least in my experience, because I didn't ever post on the forums because I saw what people responded to questions that I had. Asked and answered. Bump. Why would you even ask this? Fuck off. It was just vitriol. And I was like, well, this isn't very inviting. Here's a link to the search function.
Everett Yeah, exactly.
Nick Sita It's not inviting at all. I mean, let's just, that's the resolve, right? I'm going to agree there. I spent three hours on there today and it's not inviting.
Andrew It's almost a barrier to entry, is just being able to tolerate the forums and then having the boldness to ask a question and full well-knowing, I think, if you spend any time on the forum, that you're not going to get the answer to said question. You're just going to get beat up. Um, but then with that said, there's a lot of really valuable information there. Like there's a ton of questions that are also reasonable that for some reason the forum people have decided that they're going to collectively think through and answer.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew But it's, it's this weird, so, so you've got weird open shirt, purple club that you have to like, I had too many buttons buttoned to get into.
Nick Sita Let's be clear here when I met Everett and then he realized who I was that sounds pretentious but you understand what I mean when when he realized what my forum name was. The reaction was oh you're the only guy on there that's not an asshole and I did I was like I am I flattered am I vaguely kind of sideways insulted by that I don't know big.
Andrew Am I missing, like, is he not understanding me?
Nick Sita Thank you, Andrew, because I was like, I'm sure I'm a pretty big asshole. But yeah. It's a tough environment. I think there is no denying that you have to have a certain amount, your skin has to be a certain thickness. Yeah, your skin has to be a certain thickness and you've got to be willing to wade through a lot of bullshit to get what you want out of it. You have to be willing to ask questions in a way that are going to get the answers you want, I think is another trick to it. Because like a lot of cliquish environments, people can smell the noob and can kind of smell stupid and they just go after you. I mean, my first couple of posts on there, I was eviscerated and essentially just told to go home.
Everett Um, well, so, so you and I, we, we spent some time talking about this more, more in depth between wind up and now, and, and we broke down some bullet points, Nick, uh, you came up with some general ideas. We flesh these out a little bit. I think what I'd like to do here is just kind of go through. I've highlighted some key points based on our conversations. And I think I'd just kind of like to go through these. point by point, and we can talk about them as we go. So the first point, so we're going to now make the case for the forums. If I had a better radio voice, I would have said that, like, the case for the forums. We get a little... the case for the forums. So the first point that you highlighted to me and I thought, well, this is the most obvious one. Yeah, duh. But I think there's some meat here. So real information versus hype. And I think that the secondary part of this, the versus part of this, is sort of where we start this conversation. Because you mean something specific or you meant something specific when you said hype, which is the general nature of the blog, the watch blog, the non-forum watch blog, perhaps like watch clicker, perhaps even like us, like 40 and 20. And I say that with no, you know, I'm not embarrassed to say that there is a certain amount of softball nature to this type of, I hesitate to say journalism, because certainly we're not journalists, but media.
Nick Sita I think media is probably the better way to refer to it. Yeah, if I may. So when I got back into watches, I consumed the blogs and the media quite a bit. I was on Worn and Wound every day. In fact, I can track my first few purchases by reading their reviews and buying the watches. PODENKI as well. And I kind of soon realized that I was just consuming marketing. And there's nothing wrong with that. We all do. And the same with Instagram. It's, you know, you post a watch and it's just a lot of like fire emojis. And, you know, that's a beast. And there's kind of no critical thinking and talking about it. And I think it depends on the kind of person you are. But for me, that didn't I think I mentioned this to Everett was, you know, I, I ran into a couple of publications and podcasts where they said, well, we only review watches we like. Not to fault the people saying that, but that's not a review. Once you state that, it's an endorsement. That's technically what that becomes. Even if you're saying something slightly negative about the watch, that's an endorsement. So that sort of drove me to the forums in a certain way. I mean, don't get me wrong. I still read the blogs. The watch I was talking to you guys about that I bought today, I read an article on Fratello, and 20 minutes later, I bought the watch. So I still find value in that, quite a lot of value. But yeah, going to the forums just kind of opened up a world to me where, again, the barrier to entry is high and people can be rude. I mean, there's just no doubt about it. But if you develop a callous for that, I have learned so much in the last five years of posting regularly on Watch You Seek that there's no way I would have come within 10% of learning that much if I was just consuming media as opposed to participating, which is what I'm doing on Watch You Seek.
Everett Yeah. Well, so that's, that's a good point. Uh, you know, we've got this, this world that, that Andrew and I play in regularly weekly at the very least, um, which is sort of, and I'm sure we, I have said, I review watches. I like, um, and, and frankly, I tend not to review watches. I don't like I've turned down reviews for watches that I look at. And I'm like, gosh, this just is not, this isn't a good fit for me. Uh, and, and furthermore, when we, when I have reviews in for watches that I don't dig, it's just harder to get the review out because it's hard to do that thing. It's hard to write even a meh review. You know, if I get a watch and I'm like, this just isn't it. Um, it, it doesn't interest me for whatever reason. It's hard to do that. And so there's this. That's a limitation. It's not just for us. You know, you see that on WatchaSeek, you see that on Hodegi, you see that at all levels of what we do.
Andrew I've found it harder to, um, like, cause I've reviewed a handful of watches that I wasn't a big fan of. Um, and I felt like I was, it forced me to find the things that I did like. Cause I don't feel like for me, it's unfair for me to write a critical review of a watch simply because it's not for me. And I've, I mean, in, in a couple of my reviews, I've written like, this just, this isn't my jam. This, I'm not a big fan of this, but these are all good things about it. Yeah.
Nick Sita I don't have to like it, but I, I think that comes along with like, in a lot of review spaces, people come from, a journalism background, right? And you've, it's like any other skill that you learn at J school or you have a mentor kind of hammer into you where it's being objective, right? And that's, a lot of it is, this is not for me, but I'm going to write a positive review because I can see the merits, right? And it's also when you write a negative review, it's not trashing something, right? It's offering a perspective as to why you didn't like what you liked, or didn't like rather and finding what you liked, right? Because that's really important in a negative review is again, not to just trash something, but to find something that you liked or hopefully more than one thing and speak in detail to that as well. Um, not only is that healthy, but it also reinforces the idea that you're being objective. Right. Um, and again, I, you know, I wasn't seeing enough of that. So,
Andrew And to your point, there isn't. There is a ton, a ton of paid reviews, which aren't really reviews. I think you used the right terminology in calling it an endorsement. If I'm getting paid or compensated to write a review, there's some obligation that I feel to be positive about it and to endorse that product. And that's rampant in the industry.
Nick Sita And I think it can even go more subtle than that because I don't want to like that those people are easy to condemn if we want to put it that way, right? Like you're taking money to endorse something. But there's also like this industry is so incestuous. We know a lot of the same people like I've met we mentioned the folks at Laurier who you know, I've had drinks with Lorenzo a couple of times and I know Wes and Colin pretty well at notice. And what happens when you're tasked with reviewing their watch, right? And you're like, those guys are my friends. And it's Again, that's where like this weird training comes in where you're like, it's a muscle that's exercise and you understand what you have to do. Right. Um, and, you know, again, I think there's a dearth of that in the in the space. So, um, and the other thing if I if I may segue into it, which I've found was kind of follow on reporting, there's sort of none of it. I mean, there are some long term reviews, right. But A couple of things. One thing I brought up to Everett was issues with the Black Bay GMT release, where when that watch came out, everybody was going gaga over it. It's a fantastic watch. It's a beautiful watch. But within weeks, the reports of movement failures were rife. None of that was reported on the popular blogs. I think we know the reason why, because you don't want to put piss off the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation because you'll probably never get a review sample again and then IWC will hear you did that and you won't get review samples from them either. So I get it. But that information was only available on the forums and it wasn't an isolated incident. There were multiple users reporting, I bought this watch, it's now gone back two or three times, it's come back with the same issue. And that would have been a great story. That would have been a great story, at least as far as I'm concerned, important, important. Yes. And even reaching out to tutor for comment. You know they're not going to get back to you, but just saying we reached out to tutor, they have not replied to us speaks volumes, you know there's something being said there. That's similarly with the recent, uh, Zenith Chronomaster sport release. There's been a bunch of issues with that watch. A lot of them are going back as failures. Um, and you only find out about that on the forums. So the value there, you're about to drop $10,000 on a watch. Uh, you want that information.
Everett Yeah. And, and you know, you, you talked about the Hans Wildorf foundation and that's a, that's a reasonable thing to talk about because they are, You know, you, we can talk bad about, about Rolex all we want. And, and Rolex is such a big brand with so much power that I think by and large, people don't feel bad about talking smack about Rolex. Even, you know, even the publications, if you need to talk bad about someone, Rolex is a safe bet. But, but these feelings, these feelings run all the way down and perhaps even deeper at the micro brand level. Right. Uh, I attended an event, this has been two years ago at this point. Um, I attended an event with several micro-brand owners and this was an event that included owners and bloggers. Um, I remember Adrian of Bark and Jack was there because, uh, well, so, so, so what happened is these two owners, basically owners of brands, you know, these are, these are players in the micro-brand world. And they basically took the position that bloggers, YouTubers, et cetera, are not a value. to them, to the owners, because the, the bloggers are going to pick out the one thing they don't like, they're going to hammer on it. They're not going to talk to the owners about what happened or why that decision was made. And it's basically just no value added, right? You, you, you send this out, it maybe gets to their thousand readers or listeners or whatever. And beyond that. Nobody reads or sees it and worst case scenario, they pick out something that they didn't like and that spreads like wildfire. And the reason I remember Adrian from Bark and Jack being there is because he was like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Like, A, we don't work for you and B, this is what we're doing. This is what we're supposed to be doing. This is the value added. So the sentiment runs all the way down to the very smallest brands. And in some ways it's even harder because like you said, these are, you know, oftentimes small business owners, sometimes dinner is dependent on them being successful. And you realize that in a very real way you can affect that. So it's hard, I think is the point. Being a brand unto itself, 40 and 20 is a brand unto itself. That's a hard position to be in. You don't have that with the forums.
Nick Sita No, okay, that that's a really good point, right? I mean, there, there are people on the forums, frequent posters who have this image of themselves as a brand, which is pretty damn silly, as far as I'm concerned. Um, but yeah, I mean, that burden of kind of reputation protection and protecting your brand, whatever the heck that may be, is not a thing as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I post there, You know, granted, there are sometimes I think I've gotten maybe a little too brutal, but it happens with me. I'm that kind of guy. I can be a bit blunt, but there's something freeing about that on the forums where, and don't get me wrong, if I am brutal and blunt, 90 seconds later, I'll get like a little notification that somebody has called me out, right? So in a certain sense, it's a self-regulating system, which I appreciate. there's a certain, I mean, certain, there's a high level of chaos there. Um, but yeah, so, you know, like I mentioned, you're, you're figuring out what, uh, kind of long-term issues there might be with a watch that you can't find out anywhere else. Um, and just follow on reviews after, you know, six months, which I don't think you follow find anywhere else. And just certainly back to the Hans Wilsdorf foundation, I'm about to buy a Tudor tomorrow. So I have nothing against them guys, if you're listening, you know, Please. I already own a Pelagos. I think it's the greatest watch ever.
Everett So don't, don't ask Pacific Standard Time. Don't add him.
Nick Sita No, they don't care about me. Who am I kidding? But, uh, yeah. Um, I think they make lovely watches. I just would like to see a bit more transparency, I guess. And movements that don't break.
Everett Well, yeah, that's right. And sort of in that line, the next thing we talked about that is something you really only get by way of the forums. Sometimes you'll get the occasional article. In fact, just to toot our own horn today, one of our writers, uh, Evan, I. Cortman today posted you guys, if you haven't read this, you need to. He posted a fantastic article on watch clicker about his journey, rebuilding a vintage, it's a gold, it's a plated gold watch, I believe. Um, It, he bought this thing for like 35 bucks and he rebuilt the movement. Well, I think technically he rebuilt three movements, uh, or, or, or scrapped three movements into one. Fantastic. But you do get this kind of information sometimes through the blogs like watch clicker, but oftentimes the thing missing from non-forum watch media is the technical aspect of how watches work. And we talked, Nick, you and I talked at length about how that information, how the depth of that information is just incomparable at the forum level. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Nick Sita Sure. I mean, part of my passion for that or interest in that side or aspect of the forums was when I got back in my earlier experiences and watches was more about, hey, this is cool looking. I mean, I knew it was an automatic, but I didn't really know much more than that. And this time, I need to know. This time, I wanted to do more of a technical deep dive, not to say I can strip down a movement, take it apart and put it back together. But, you know, I know roughly how a mechanical or automatic movement works now. I understand the difference between a balance spring and a mainspring, et cetera. And that sort of information is readily available on the forums. There are regular watchmakers, I should say, there are watchmakers that regularly post there, regularly answer questions. I'll name, or name drop, call out a guy named Archer. He is, I think, I believe a certified Omega. He's mostly an Omega guy, works out of Canada. And his depth of knowledge is, I mean, incredible. I'm routinely floored when someone posts a question about a technical aspect. Hey, I stripped down this movement. What is wrong with it? And you'll post a couple of pictures and the guy will just say, well, you know, you're missing this piece, whatever. And it's just, it's the amount I have learned about how watches work, how they can be repaired, et cetera. It doesn't put me in a position to want to do it, not even sort of, but it puts me in a position where if something breaks, I'll understand. what part of the watch is not functioning, I guess. I mean, it's like when I used to work on cars, my own cars, quite a bit as a younger man, I never had the knowledge to diagnose problems, right? I could do the basic work, but when something wasn't working, figuring out what wasn't working was a challenge that I never quite rose to. And You know, I think one thing Watch You Seek offers is if you're in that position, something is not working, I've taken this movement apart, you take photos of it and post them, the odds of you getting a response are pretty good. And like actionable information that will help you are pretty good. Now, granted, if you do that, I suggest you do it on an inexpensive watch and don't take your Seamaster professional ceramic apart, but yeah.
Andrew Is that from experience? Because that sounded, that was oddly specific.
Nick Sita I've been tempted to look at that display case back and you just want to yank it off.
Everett But yeah, the coaxial escapement looks great out of the movement, just so you guys know. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a great point. And this is not this is sort of watch adjacent. But, you know, I think everybody at home probably grown. So anytime I mentioned that I'm a Lexus owner, I drive a vintage Lexus owner. Yeah, I drive a vintage Lexus. I recently bought a new Lexus. after crashing my old Lexus. It's 2003. It's 2003. It's new. New to me. New to you. And when I bought it, I wanted to get like a full top of the line, all the dude at stereo installed. He wanted to pimp his ride. I pimped my ride. I wanted to pimp my ride. And I did. And I would not have been able to do that but for a forum. It was an internet forum. And You know, many cars, you can just go buy a stereo and you, you know, it's plug and play Lexus because of how much engineering is in a Lexus. You can't do that. And it was a difficult, it was a difficult process to make that happen. And, and I did make it happen and I was able to order all the right parts. I talked about buying parts from Japan via a Japan Yahoo auctions broker and yada, yada, but I did it. I was able to understand what part needed to go in. That's the kind of thing that you get from forums that you cannot get elsewhere.
Nick Sita Oh, totally. And, uh, again, even as an armchair enthusiast, I don't see any myself ever doing a movement rebuild, right? Not even on a $35 watch. I just, I don't see myself doing it, but just knowing for me, I'm just one of those people that just a nerd for knowledge and just knowing that if I want to learn, there's probably a thread somewhere that will show me. That's fantastic.
Everett If you ever get the wild hair, the information is probably there.
Nick Sita Exactly. Exactly. And little things even, like my sister, who's also a watch person, she and I bought the first iteration of the Laurier Neptune, and she wears hers every day. And the crown fell off hers recently. You know, the stem broke. Oh. She called me up. She's not a technical one. She didn't even know it had a screw-down crown. I had to show her a bunch of things, which is fine. But the crown came off, and I thought it just came unscrewed. And I posted photos, and it didn't take long for me to get a response. So even little things like that, something I would do, which is pop the back off a Laurier Neptune, look at the NH movement, remove the stem. I found that in the watchmaking forum, whereas in the public forums, you'll get a lot of, you know, that's a stupid question. That doesn't really happen in the watchmaking forum. People are a lot more forgiving and eager to help you out.
Everett Yeah. Yeah, well, that does seem to be the case. The more sort of technical the question is, the more friendly people seem to be about providing information.
Andrew Well, because you've crossed that barrier to entry. You've demonstrated that number one, I know enough about this watch to recognize that I shouldn't just change the battery because there isn't a battery. I then was brave enough to take the case back off and say, good Lord, what have I gotten myself into?
Everett Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. You know, there are some famous tropes in the army. You know, the tales of telling the private to go to supply to get a box of grid squares or Chem light batteries. Yeah. We need you to go to supply and pick up chem light batteries, but it's this kind of thing, right? Where if you can demonstrate, I have a basic understanding. Um, but, but what of, so what of the person that says, Hey, I want to watch, I have $250 to spend. What do you recommend? We know the answers that that guy is going to get immediately. He's going to get. Some, some answers that are helpful, maybe, but, but we know that there's going to be a set of answers he's going to get. So one, the search function, try the search function to buy what you like. Um, you know, three, you haven't given us enough information, which is, which is maybe true. Uh, but the way it's presented is probably not going to be, uh, Not going to be as productive or as polite. What does that guy do? So that guy really knows nothing about watches. I mean, frankly, when Andrew and I started this show, we were in some respects that guy, or at least not that far removed from being that guy. And, you know, that is our experience coming in. And what do we do? What do we do for that guy? What do we say to that guy? Or how do we help that person understand this landscape of this What I think we've developed as a valuable resource, how do we develop that resource for this guy?
Nick Sita Okay, I think part of it is you get what you give, right? So, I think part of it is you kind of have to be as articulate as possible. Now, that's difficult when you don't know what you don't know as the scenario you're laying out, right? As I have this amount of money to spend, I know watches are a thing. The other thing you didn't mention is you're going to get Vostok. Vostok will be the answer to everything. Um, which kind of drives me nuts when I, you know, um, I have $4,000 to spend and somebody will recommend getting me getting an amphibia, which drives me a bit, drives me a bit batty. But I think the two keys there is you get what you give. So it pays to be just as articulate and throw as many parameters at your, at your request as possible, even if you're not sure about some of them. Um, and I think you also have to be prepared to fail and get, useless information. I mean, my first few posts on watch you see, we're like, Hey, and I did the horrible, like, what are these worth? Which is nothing will raise ire more than the, what are these worth posts? And they were horrible redialed, uh, uh, universal Genevs that probably were worth nothing and looked like they have dials were redone with a Sharpie. And I think I was rightfully eviscerated for them. Like, uh, Maybe people could have been kinder about it, but the manner in which I posted them, I wasn't aware of the context that this happens so often that people, you just get sick of it, and I get sick of it. And you'll have some people, like there was a long thread the other day where a fellow was saying, hey, what is a good Rolex alternative, Submariner alternative? Now, he didn't put any parameters in, so we all assumed he had Rolex Submariner money to spend. So everybody was suggesting Blancpain 50 Fathoms, you know, you know what the usual suspects would be. Glazuta Original, CQ. And then it took like 75 posts for the guy to say, oh, I only have, and I shouldn't say only, because again, you develop a callous to spending money on stupid things. I have $1,700 to spend. But it took him 60 posts to say that.
Andrew Which was maybe a time lapse of like eight minutes.
Nick Sita Fair enough. Fair enough. But then people were actually able to help him. And a lot of the recommendations were for Amanta Ocean King, which seems like a really good recommendation in that sub $2,000 price range. So I think, again, it's a you get what you give. If that's your request, I have $500 to spend. I really am not 100% sure what I want, but there's so much media out there. Go on Instagram, look at things, find things you like and find, you know, are attractive. It's easy to find the price of things. And if you're shocked by the price, say, I want something that looks like X, but I only have Y to spend. Help me. You know, it's the classic help me help you. I love participating in those threads. I really do. And I'm one of the people that gets burned when half the posters completely ignore the person's parameters. Happens all the time. People just like hearing themselves talk or seeing themselves type. And they'll recommend the same thing over and over again. But if you, the more specific you can be, the more eager there are going to be, there are people like me who will be eager to help you. And, you know, again, Everett saying, you're the only guy on there that's not an asshole. I will challenge that. There are a few of us that are eager to help and help us help you by being specific or as specific as you can be saying, you know, and also be don't be afraid to. Admit what you don't know, I guess, is part of it. Humility goes a long way, I think.
Everett Yeah. Yeah, well, and for my for my part, I think There's two things that should be happening. I think that one, the poster should be by way of his question and by way of the answers he receives, becoming more informed about how to answer or how to ask the question, right? So to the extent that he hasn't asked a valuable question in that he hasn't provided enough information to answer it, or he's maybe not thought through the question, he or she, I should say, The answer should be pushing him towards that. I also think that the forums, quote unquote, the forums, you know, the problem with the forums is it's not a person or an organization or there's no sort of regulating body. I mean, certainly the the folks who who hate what you see or any other forum, you know, insert forum here will say the regulating body is the problem. I tend to think that that's not a real thing. But in any event, to the extent it is, um, there, there is a community there, right? And the community has the ability to self-regulate and to sort of discourage the bad, the bad responses and to encourage the good responses. And I think that that does happen. I think that that does happen some, I'm not sure it happens enough. Um, and so As you know, I see this happen in different ways. Some communities are just naturally better at encouraging positive responses. Let's transition here. Let's talk about some of the prominent cons of the forums. We've mentioned some of these in passing, but I think I'd like to, if we can, just talk about some of these a little bit more directly. So the first one that comes to mind for me, and Nick, I know you and I have talked about this a couple of times, and so we're going to keep this vague. We're going to keep this as general as possible. I kind of have an idea of where you're going, but but I'll call this category. The toxic personality or perhaps the toxic cult of personality that become prominent in the watch forums, there are a number of threads or people, as you kind of referred to earlier, who sort of envision themselves as a brand and in some ways have a brand by way of the forums.
Nick Sita Yeah. Sometimes that's literal.
Everett They do have a brand. So there's this toxic personality that can become pervasive in the forums. And I know for me, that is a point of discouragement, right? When I engage with the forums and I see, you know, here's your updates, and it's the same handful of personalities, that's discouraging to me.
Nick Sita While I don't want to discourage people coming to the forums, I think you have to have a certain, like I mentioned this, I don't want to sound repetitive, but you have to have a thick enough skin to not be put off by that. I think this is part of just a larger trend, and I don't want to get into, you know, how society operates, but every comment section on everything has a certain level of toxicity. I'll even go so far as to say an off-putting level of toxicity.
Andrew Have you ever watched comments on an otter video? There's no toxicity there.
Nick Sita Oh, OK, fair enough. And the Dodo, that YouTube channel, which is all I adopted this abandoned pet. All right.
Everett And every single video is just heartwarming and wonderful.
Nick Sita But you're right. I mean, I'm not crying. You're crying. That's every.
Andrew It speaks to society at large that that very schoolyard bully. Everyone's out to get me, so I'm going to get him first kind of mentality exists on every platform, everywhere, everywhere.
Nick Sita So it's no surprise that that exists on what you seek now, combine that or on forums in general. But again, I can only really specific, specific refer to what you seek, because that's where I spend an inordinate amount of time. You know, it's also that it's like Archie luxury, you play a character enough and you become that guy I think everybody listening to you is familiar with who that guy is. You become that behavior becomes ingrained and you sort of feel responsible to lash out in a specific way and we we see that a lot. We also see just the same responses over and over from certain posters. You know, there are certain posters, you know, and I won't call them out cause that would be impolite. I would, who, you know, somebody posts a watch, you're going to say, Oh, that looks like a lady's watch. It's too small on you. And that's, it's the same two people pretty much every time. Um, you know, one thing I would say again is, do you know, I'm just taking notes here.
Everett Do you know what watch they were talking about? Cause I think I'd like to look at.
Nick Sita I'm not, you know, maybe it was the Traska commuter. I'm not sure. I have these dainty wrists. It's appropriate for me. You see that all the time. So again, I think you have to prepare yourself for that and learn to deal with it. And also, I think, you know, this might be leaping ahead, but there is an ignore feature on Watch Me Seek. I'll be honest, my ignore list is dozens of people long. And it's not unusual that I will look at a thread that's like 50, 60, 200 comments, and I'll just see the gaps and I'll know who's commenting because people will be lashing out at them and saying, how are you being this cruel? I knew it was you. And I can tell who that person is. I'm not reading their comment because I put them on ignore. If you're the kind of person, I'm that kind of person who's eagerly, I'm baited kind of easily and will end up typing something I regret, I found the ignore feature to be invaluable. You know, I think also since it's a text-based word platform, it takes a certain kind of person. A lot of people aren't comfortable expressing themselves that way. And I work with words for a living. So I relish that. Like if somebody comes at me, I love crafting a cutting retort. It's just something I really enjoy. You're a lawyer, right? My mom wished that, but no.
Andrew Everett has sent us like excerpts of like, this is the thought that I'm preparing. And like, this is, this is going to get him like, where to for Everett?
Nick Sita So, so I will do that and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll craft some cutting remark and then I'll, I admit, I mean, it's ego and it's embarrassing. I'll go back and look at it a couple of times, count the likes on it and be like, I got that guy. So, um, you know, it takes that sort of personality, I think, to really thrive there. There is a Thunderdome quality to it. I mean, there's, there's sort of no way to get around that. Um, And, you know, everybody out there listening, I hope this doesn't come across as the barrier to entry is so high, you don't even want to bother. Please come there, because I want to prove Everett wrong that it's a dead format. And beyond like, even if it is a dead format, I don't think it should be for the reasons I think I'm trying to lay out here.
Everett Yeah, well, so let's let's maybe let's maybe bring this in. We've got a whole we've got a whole list. I'm just going to I'm just going to read these off. These are the cons that that I think I was going to sort of say we came up with together, but I think I actually sort of identified many of these because because you you've rejected most of my arguments at some point.
Nick Sita We've talked about the cutting remarks, I hope.
Everett Right. We've talked about the traditional gatekeepers a lot, right? That's a thing. It's a real thing. We know it exists. Advice is sort of you'll be fine. Just just push through that. We've got the toxic personalities. We've got the cults of personalities. We've got the victim blamers. The folks who will blame individuals coming on for their questions or their gripes, like, you've probably done this wrong. We've got the cheerleaders. These are folks that will be so enamored by a brand that the criticisms will be hard for them to reach. And then we've got what I'm going to call data management gatekeepers. These are the use the search function, you know,
Andrew Asked and answered.
Everett Asked and answered, buy what you like. It's 2022, folks. Gigabits are cheap. They're cheap. And you know, there's a few other groups, but all in all, I think what we're trying to do here is to identify these things and notwithstanding that, defend the forums as a pretty neat thing. You said earlier, you know, when you were a younger man, so I assume like 10 years ago, um, that you were a car, a car enthusiast, and that you, you spent time working on your cars. And I imagine you in a Los Angeles garage somewhere with those decorative rocks in the lawn and the garage door open and the Chilton's manual open. I have a stack of Chilton's, yes. And, and, you know, that was, that was the answer, right? It's go, go to the library or go to Walmart perhaps, or Kmart maybe, uh, and, and pick up a Chilton's and that will have the information you need to change this combo intake exhaust manifold on your 1977 Toyota Corolla. Did it, did it, did it. Until it doesn't. But that falls far short. of what we had this relatively new, I mean, relatively new as far as humankind goes, this new thing that we have, the value is so obvious. And we are very quick to pick things up and put them down in 2022 because that is the way of life. But forum is such a huge concept. The discussion forum. So we're here to defend that. And I think we can, notwithstanding these gripes that we've come up with.
Andrew I think it's easier to defend when more people get engaged. When the power of those few cults of personalities are diluted by more people who are more engaged, whether it be because of how much knowledge they have or how much knowledge they're hungry for. I think that's how things like the forums improve is by bringing more people to the table.
Nick Sita Yes. And I think they also just offer one thing we did not talk about just quickly is the options they offer. If you have niche interests, and I remember mentioning this to Everett there, you know, there's a risk check thread for Eterna alone that's six, 700 posts long. So, there's that like if you have a weird interest in minute repeaters or a brand that that maybe is not you know you're you'd be hard pressed to find them on instagram there will be fans uh in the sub forum on watchuseek or another forum so that's that's a great thing as well there's a place for you which uh you know, can't always be said in that kind of click oriented world where every other watch posted on social media is something everyone knows.
Andrew And something I think we didn't talk about, but I just want to highlight it really quickly, is that all the social media and even outlets like us are driven by algorithms and search functionality and keyword hits and SEO shit. The forums are not. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Everett That's right. I mean, some wholesome information right there. In some respects, they are just simply by way of readership. But the information is cataloged, notwithstanding those algorithms. Right. In a certain in a certain dimension, social media, Instagram is the one that jumps immediately to mind. It does not catalog information in a meaningful way. Not so for the forums. The forums are by way of their very nature. intended to preserve information in the long term. And sometimes you'll go to an old thread and the photos, the imager links will be dead or whatever. And that can be frustrating. But the root information is oftentimes still there and still useful enough that you can find, well, this person posted this and this person probably still has this information. You know, the resources are near infinite.
Andrew And not driven by marketing dollars.
Nick Sita Yes. I mean, that's not to say there's an outlet for everything. I mean, you know, if you go to the Tracer subforum or the Linda Virdlin subforum, you're really not going to get very much information, but that's probably just because there aren't a lot of people out there with those watches.
Everett And I'm going to actually take umbrage one more thing you said, Andrew, because notwithstanding the fact that theoretically we should be driven by algorithms, we not too long ago published an episode titled Hook, Huygens, and the Hairspring, which Which Will did not like. If you know anything about SEO, you know that that episode was not intended to monopolize search engine optimization. So.
Andrew Well, no, we captured everybody who Googled Huygens that week. They came to us.
Nick Sita I've said this to you guys before. Those are my favorite episodes of yours. And the responses I've gotten from you, whether it's, you know, instant message or whatever. Well, that's interesting because they are our least popular. No one likes them but us. I love those. Yeah, your history of the Swiss watch industry. I love the Sapphire Crystals one. I really love them.
Andrew Oh, stop. I love the Sapphire episode. That was like one of the coolest learning experiences of my life.
Everett You know, for me, it was Quartz. I liked the Quartz episode. Our episode on Quartz watches. So we do, I think, in our own way, we sort of try to replicate that experience here, notwithstanding the demands of Click Daddy and SEO and the SEO lords who are above us. But We still... Is Click Daddy Will? Click Daddy as well, yeah. Okay. We still do... We are constrained by that, right? And if we release an episode and it's a flop, the odds that someone will find that after the fact is pretty low. They're basically gonna have to have discovered us in some other way and be like, man, I was going through your catalog and you were talking about this Huygens guy. That was super interesting. But that's not... That's not the same for the forums. The catalog nature of a forum is valuable. And I think that we can agree that that's something to be cherished.
Nick Sita Oh, definitely. And it takes, I guess, a certain kind of person to deep dive into it. But if you just want specific information, as long as your query is framed in a way to elicit that information, I feel that you will get it for the most part.
Andrew What's the one piece of advice you have for someone who, I mean, we hope to be a podcast for people who are getting into the hobby, who are learning about it. What are you going to tell somebody who's diving into the hobby, doesn't know shit about shit, they don't know what they don't know, and they're not ready to put on armor to take the gauntlet of the forums? Where's the value for that person?
Nick Sita I think it's a two-part process. I think there's so much information out there right now that there's no excuse coming to the forums with a question, let's say. I mean, viewing as a lurker, right? You can lurk all you want. And so I would say lurk a lot. Spend a lot of time lurking. Learn, understand what you don't know. consume the watch media that I was critical of at the beginning of this podcast, read Hodinkee, read Fratello, spend time on Instagram, on YouTube, so that when you do come to watch YouSeek with a question, you can frame it intelligently. And then the follow-on comments, you can ask questions about those comments. That's how you're going to get the most out of it. So yeah, there's a certain level of effort involved. I'm not going to lie about that. if you want to really get something out of it. Lurk, read, watch videos, develop at least a concept of what you like, even if you haven't bought a watch yet. And then come to the forums with carefully phrased questions and throw in as many parameters as possible to narrow that search, because the world of watches is gigantic. And I'll even put it out there, like if you're on the forums and you have a specific question, Look for me. I'd be happy to help you if the question is raised intelligently.
Andrew It's a dialogue, not ask Jeeves. That's what I gleaned from that.
Everett And I'm going to turn that on its head a little bit. The same advice, but to people who are actively on the forums with more knowledge, which is just like Andrew said just now, it's a dialogue. Don't be afraid to engage with that noob. You're here. You're in the affordables forum or wherever you're at. Um, there's a certain expectation that everybody's coming at this, uh, at a different level of knowledge and expertise and just. Either either close the thread and go to the next one or engage with that person in a productive, friendly, happy, uh, way that, that shows a, this is fun. We're here because it's fun. And B I'm here for you and for, and for me. But also for you, let's do this. What are you trying to do again? What's your question? Okay, why do you ask that? Okay, what are you looking for? In a way that's productive, not intimidating, not holier than thou, not dismissive. Don't dismiss. You can dismiss internally without ever clicking, touching your keyboard, right? You can dismiss that person without touching your keyboard. And if that's your intention, that's probably the better way to do it.
Nick Sita Oh, I could not agree more. I mean, there are whole threads where I'll see the subject line and just be like, I don't have the heart to click on this.
Everett Nope. Instantly. No, instantly. No. Uh, well, that's, that's great. Uh, Andrew forums, anything you want to add?
Andrew I might, I might stop just lurking. That's a, it's a might.
Nick Sita Yeah. Please participate with your knowledge. With your knowledge, it would, it would be an asset. You would bring something positive. to the forums. Take your pants off. Just answer some questions. No one will know what state of dress you're in when you post.
Andrew Oh, I insist on posting a selfie with every post so you can see my demeanor.
Nick Sita I was going to say no one will know your level of intoxication, but we've seen plenty of those threads where people are like, how many drinks have you had tonight? You can hear the slurring in the post. Keyboards are hard.
Everett Nick, anything you want to add about the forums?
Nick Sita I mean, I think I've said it all. I just want to, uh, you know, the idea that they're dead, I won't even debate that point, but let's try to make them not dead. Uh, the opposite of dead. Um, I think it's a, it's a resource, especially if you're about to spend money on a watch, you owe it to yourself to look, I'll just say the, the, the search function on watching. So you get is not very good. But use Google to search watchuseek threads. That's what I do. That's the pro tip right there. I'm looking for watchuseek.
Everett You type in watchuseek.com and then type in your search.
Nick Sita Exactly. So that's the best way to search watchuseek. And you owe it to yourself if you're about to drop a significant amount of money. And when I say significant amount of money, I mean what's significant to you. If you're about to drop an amount of money that's significant to you on a watch, go on there, learn about the watch. In the most basic sense, is it cool or is it not? And then in the most specific sense, is there a problem with the watch that you should be aware of before you drop your hard-earned money on it? Make use of the resource.
Everett Andrew, other things, what you got?
Andrew I recently made another well-thought-out purchase. Did you use the forums? I don't know if there's forums for this. There are. You got me intrigued. So we've been looking for a rowing machine for some time. And my wife has this thing. You guys notice I'm more sniffly than usual. And you, Everett, and actually even you, Nick, can see that there's hives on my neck and my eyes are very red.
Everett My wife... I thought you were just chiefing before the show.
Andrew My wife buys things... I've never seen you before.
Nick Sita I just assumed you were puffy.
Andrew Yeah, no. She buys things on Facebook Marketplace, but then sends me to go pick it up because, and this is real, it's dangerous. Okay, so send me to do that. So we... I don't know where I was going with that. Doesn't matter. I'm all puffy because the people we bought this thing from had cats and I have a very severe allergic reaction to cats and they had a lot of them. Uh, so I'm puffy and hyphy. Um, it doesn't matter. So we've been looking for a rowing machine and I did the hunt, like just the started with the Google, like what's the best home use rowing machine? Like what are gyms using? And we settled on, I kind of wanted like the Peloton adjacent. It's like Stavier or something like that. But they're at 2200 bucks with a recurring membership fee. I don't know.
Nick Sita Yeah, you better do a hell of a lot of rowing, right?
Andrew Exactly right. And I don't know that I'd ever row enough to get the full value out of that, but maybe for the coaches. So we settled on the concept to Rower. So right now it's the Rower GS is what we got. And Concept2 does just cardio machines. They do a skier, which was a machine that I was wholly unaware of. It's like an upright cable machine and you just pull it down in alternating directions. Apparently that's a thing. They do stationary bikes and they do rowing machines. Everything I could find is these are kind of the industry standard for like CrossFit gyms, which are places that get a lot of use on their rower. Mm hmm. Everything I could find is like if you maintain this, you're going to get 40 million miles out of it.
Nick Sita That's like bulletproof.
Andrew Yeah, it's quiet. It's it's not high tech at all, but the the the display has Bluetooth capability. And there is a bucket load of apps that can integrate directly into your display. You can run off your phone, you can run off your iPad, and creates that same value you're going to get out of any of these subscription programs. Sure. Bluetoothed right into it. So every time I row, I use one of the integrated apps that's free, and then I complete the workout, and it sends me my email and is tracking my miles that way. And I'm going to get a million miles this year. Or a million meters, not a million miles.
Nick Sita That's a lot of miles. Wow.
Andrew The commitment is big. I'm going to roll a million meters this year and get a t-shirt.
Everett Yes. Is the t-shirt free or do you have to pay for it?
Andrew The t-shirt's free. Subsequent benchmarks, not benchmarks, milestones, you have to pay for. Okay.
Everett But you get your million meter t-shirt for free.
Andrew Yeah. And they fact check it against your username.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew They're like, no, you didn't.
Everett Sorry. I'm sorry, sir. You're at 997,000 meters.
Andrew You don't get a 10 million meter shirt. You've not even rode. Uh, but yeah, so it was all said and done. We ended up buying it from rogue fitness, which is a reputable fitness brand. And if, if you're, if rogue carries it, you can kind of trust the product. So it was about a thousand bucks, but I was glad to have cried once about the purchase rather than bought like a shitty one or like driven five hours to get a used one and effectively spend the same amount of money.
Everett And so now you've used this, you've, you've had this thing for a couple of weeks and I know we've talked about it a little bit. Uh, the overall experience has been good.
Andrew Yeah, it's great. It's, it's quiet. It's comfortable. It's the only thing I'd recommend is if you are going to buy one, do get a seat pad. Um, if you're, if your hiney is not in shape for just sitting on a hard plastic seat, get spend the extra six dollars and get a seat cushion.
Everett I've actually installed my own seat cushion on my body by way of hard work.
Andrew Hard work and pizza? Yeah, I replaced the seat with just a metal post. So I mean, it's fine for me, but for those of you normal people.
Nick Sita Zing!
Andrew Yeah, just get the seat cushion because, yeah, I mean, it's like it's the first time you ride a bike in a long time. You sit down and your taint is just like it's just on fire for like three or four days afterward.
Nick Sita Yeah, yeah. Me as a big guy, but Half Asian, I have the Asian ass, which has no meat on it. So I'm constantly needing some sort of memory foam insert.
Andrew The doughnuts for every chair.
Everett Pretty much, yeah. Well, so I've got another thing. Do me. It's not a rowing machine.
Andrew It's not.
Everett It's not a rowing machine. My other thing is, have you ever soldered anything, Andrew? Yeah, I'm not good at it. Yeah, I'm not good at it. I'm actually very bad at it. So I... Did you say soldered? Soldered, yeah. Soldered. Soldered, perhaps.
Nick Sita Soldered. Soldered. I've given myself horrible burns with a soldering iron. That's my experience.
Everett Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So I was at one point in my life into electric things. And so I did solder at that point. I don't think I ever owned those soldering irons. A little bit later, as a young adult, I bought like a $100 Weller soldering station and that disappeared in a move or something somewhere. So about three or four years ago, I went to Harbor Freight and I bought a $35 soldering iron and it was terrible. I was going to say fine, but actually it wasn't.
Andrew It's not even one of those Harbor Freight specials that's good for 12 uses and then fails?
Everett Maybe, yes, actually, perhaps. It was awful, right? It was never good. And it became progressively less good. So it was, it started at bad and, and got worse. Uh, so I had this thing for, I had this thing for a while. And the reason I bought that is because I don't need to solder things ever, ever, you know, once, once a year, maybe twice a year. And at the time I bought this, I was looking and, and soldering irons are expensive, right? So traditional, traditional plugins, soldering stations start for a good one at about a hundred bucks. And it just felt like, I don't want to spend this money on this thing that I'm going to use this infrequently. And so I kind of stopped there, right? You, you look, there's like a couple of the people recommend for a hundred and then, but people are like, but really you want the $240 one. Really? You just want a soldering line and a blowtorch. And it's like, no, no, I don't want that. So let's go to Harbor Freight. Um, Bad experience, wasn't good, didn't like it. So now I am gonna buy a soldering iron again. I need to buy a soldering iron. I actually had a thing I needed to solder and I know my soldering iron isn't good enough and so I'm looking at soldering irons.
Nick Sita What are you soldering? I think you've said soldering iron in this podcast more than even in soldering
Everett Yeah, perhaps, perhaps. So I start looking and I find that the landscape for soldering irons has completely changed in the last five years. Completely changed and in a good way. So what was a matter of years ago, a very difficult market with very few affordable options on the table has completely changed The recommendations now, there's two soldering irons that get really sort of hyped, non-traditional soldering irons that get hyped by the maker crowd. So one of those came out several years ago. It's called the TS-100 and its sibling, the TS-80. These are USB-C and sort of traditional alternating current powered soldering irons respectively. And I can't remember which is which. But it's a small form factor. It's a plug in the butt, either a barrel or a USB-C cable. And they kind of revolutionized this hobby makerspace. More recently, in the last year and a half, I'd say, there's a company called Pine64 who came out with a soldering iron called the PineCell. And this thing's been kind of hard to get until very recently, right when I needed to buy mine, which is just great luck, right? It never works that way. Um, I'm finding out about this thing right as it's becoming pretty widely available. This thing is fucking nuts. First of all, the $36 one, it costs $36 with a tip. It can be powered by a standard barrel connector that you might find on an old laptop plugin that you certainly have in your house that you certainly have, but also USB-C. So I've got like just a 65 watt power, you know, adapter that I can, with its USB-C that I can plug into this thing. And it is, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's tiny. It's light. It powers up to like 330 degrees in six, seven seconds, something like this. 12 seconds. Okay. I think faster.
Nick Sita Sounds to me like they disrupted the soldering iron industry.
Everett Very, very actually, that is what's happened here in a way that that doesn't normally happen when you hear someone utter those words. Uh, the crazier thing about this thing is it's got a microprocessor in it. The software is completely open source. It's flashable. And so not that I, that means nothing to me, by the way, I have no use.
Andrew I suddenly want to solder something. You're saying these things like I should know.
Everett I have no use for any of that stuff, but what I do know is it's fucking awesome. It's got an internal 128 kilobytes. Flash memory. It's got a 32 kilobyte SRAM system memory. It's nuts. Why does it have that? Because there are people that can make use of this thing. What is he doing? Who the fuck knows? Does it matter? Yeah. It's 35 bucks. And it solders perfectly.
Andrew It's an industrial tool for $36. I'm curious what could be done.
Everett And if you happen to know why you might need a 32K SRAM in your soldering iron, you know, you know why you need that at a microprocessor. If you need that, you know why you need that. And if not, it's just like, Hey, look, my son or my soldering iron has a microprocessor.
Andrew Fuck off. My watch is a thousand meters of water resistance and a helium release.
Everett Yeah. Well, there may be some of that, but I do is so. So for me, that doesn't matter. All I know is it's a $35 soldering iron that I can plug in with the same thing. I plug my computer in and it works perfectly and it's great. If you need a soldering iron, check out a pine 64 pine. So what are you soldering? Uh, I had to fix one of our, new old microphones that I took to the show that promptly broke.
Andrew Oh yeah. We talked about this.
Everett Yeah. Well, you know, I started the show with two microphones and the show with my one microphone. We now have two microphones.
Andrew And you didn't follow the age old adage that two is one and one is none.
Everett I did not. Yeah. I did not. Uh, well I did. I had two and one, which meant I had one and one was enough.
Nick Sita Well, that's, that's interesting. I, I, yeah. I always thought of that. Well, I guess it's the same thing. Twice as always, once as never.
Everett Yeah.
Nick Sita Interesting.
Everett That's right. I had two, which was the bare minimum in this situation. So Nick, other things, what do you got?
Nick Sita Sure. I'm going to recommend a piece of media, a TV series, and hopefully you guys have not recommended it in the past. It's an HBO series from, I don't know, at least 10 years ago of maybe more called Rome. which as the name implies, it's about the transition of, uh, well, that's the name implies it's about Rome. There's no implication. And, uh, the focus is the transition from the Roman empire to the Republic and the civil wars in Rome. Uh, John Milius, uh, Conan, the barbarian, uh, wrote the screenplay for apocalypse. Now this was pretty much the last thing he did before he had like a massive stroke and stopped really making creative content. And it was HBO's first attempt at doing big storytelling just before Game of Thrones. In fact, it was canceled to make way for Game of Thrones. And they reused some of the sets as far as I know. It's bloody, violent, lots of sex. It kind of set that template for HBO that Game of Thrones followed. And in my mind, it has one of the best screen performances I have ever seen. The man that plays Mark Antony, he's a British actor named James Purifoy, Purifoy, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce his name, is absolutely fantastic as Mark Antony, he plays it huge. So if you don't like scenery chewing performances, maybe it's not for you. But He chews every scene he's in. He's violent. He screws every woman he can get a hold of. He is depicted as the ultimate soldier. And the show sort of died on the vine at season two. They compressed the final four seasons into one season. And ratings shot up, but by then it was too late. The show was already canceled, which is a real shame, but it's worth watching. It's beautifully made. really over the top. It's anchored by one fantastic performance. It sort of died on the vine, unfortunately, after the second season to make Game of Thrones. But if you're a fan of that sort of storytelling, you'll see that it created a template for Game of Thrones and a lot of things HBO did subsequently. And it's the last great work by a really well-known kind of man's man, macho director, creator guy, John Milius.
Everett It sounds awesome. You know, I think it's one of those shows that Kim and I have looked at in the past and just, you know, either didn't pick up or perhaps started and didn't. So I'll have to give it a second try.
Nick Sita It's worth a second shot, I would say.
Everett Well, Nick, I just want to really sincerely thank you for joining us for the episode, just to kind of talk about the forums. I think it's something we've talked about casually and perhaps not fairly in the past. So it's nice to give actual lip service to that real thing. And I wanted to thank you for being willing to come on and talk about it.
Nick Sita Oh, this was a real pleasure for me. Honestly, it felt like just a conversation between three friends or people. So that's great. And I will assert just kind of as a parting shot, There are a few non-assholes on What You Seek, aside from myself, and they provide valuable information. And honestly, even some of the assholes provide valuable information if you have a thick enough skin to kind of deal with their, let's say, quirks. So please come to the forums.
Everett As is the fact of all walks of life.
Nick Sita Most definitely.
Everett Andrew, is there anything you want to add before we go for the day? No, I'm all out of things. As you want to be all out of things. And I'm lost without you. Well, it's been fun. Go and check out Nick if you want to Los Angeles timer on what you seek or perhaps more appropriately, Pacific Standard Time on Instagram. And thanks for joining us for this episode of 40 and 20. The Watch Clicker podcast. You can check us out on our website. WatchClicker.com, that's where we have weekly articles, reviews, including Evan's new article about rebuilding his $36 vintage gold watch. You really should log in and read that one because it's a fun read. You can also check us on Instagram at 40and20 at WatchClicker. If you want to support what we do here at WatchClicker and 40and20, and we hope you do, you can do that at Patreon.com slash 40and20. Look guys, that's how we keep the lights on, as they say. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.