[00:00:06] Speaker A: Are you in a constant fight with your technology?
And does it seem like the technology is winning?
Well, you've come to the right place.
It's time for Battle Born Tech with your host, Christy.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Even though you are trying to get AI to tell you how to unfold that giant skeleton for your yard, rest your bones with Battleborn Tech now and every Tuesday at 8pm Pacific right here on KNVC FM 95.1 Carson City, Nevada and streaming everywhere on knvc.org and available anytime on your favorite podcast app.
Wondering if you're on that new reality show Candid camera unfiltered call Battleborn Tech 775-241-3571. We'll tell you how to watch out for the watchers.
775-241-3571. Opinions on Battleborn Tech are those of the hosts and callers this week. We welcome Stephen, Rachel and Jay. The opinions expressed on the show do not necessarily reflect those of KNVC or Computer Corps, who are carving WI Fi pumpkins out of raspberry pies for their holiday gatherings.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Well, Christy, we took a look at last week's show along with Anthony, our ex post facto checker, and we found some errors that need addressing.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Oops.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: They're nothing major, but enough that we at least need to tip our hat to the errors and acknowledge them.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: When I say Internet Explorer last week I meant Microsoft Edge Internet Explorer. Don't be using that anymore. Not in 2026.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: You mean it's time for me to finally delete Netscape?
[00:02:02] Speaker C: Yeah, way past.
And cookies I kind of look down on. They're still used and important. They keep us logged in as we go from page to page shopping on the news site or whatever we're doing.
And the tracking with them is old news. Most web browsers sandbox them so they stay at their own website and don't get to talk to other if you have BitLocker recovery key either written down saved on a USB in your Microsoft account, you might want to remove the data drive and then use the key to unlock the data on a working reliable machine. We talked about spilling water on a laptop and what to do about the data. You might want to take that data off if you have the BitLocker key already.
We talked about Stargate and their 500 billion for data centers. That was as of 2025 in January, not this year.
We said three ways to pay for data center told you two rental of computer processing capacity. Colocation is the other one. Where companies have their equipment hosted in the data center like Tenants in the apartment building. And that was added to the other one.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Subscription payments.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Well, we got three phone calls today. The first phone call of the day. We're going to visit with Steven and he wants to find out more about routers and other boxes of mystery.
[00:03:28] Speaker D: Go ahead, call on battleborn Tech.
[00:03:32] Speaker E: Hi, Christy, this is Stephen.
We had some issues here lately with modems, replacing modems.
Routers. When should you replace a router? Do routers get slow?
We've had a few issues. So I was wondering what some of your thoughts on that were some of the things to watch out for.
[00:03:57] Speaker D: Oh, wow. Well, the thing of it is that you.
A router is.
Well, there's a modem and sometimes they're all in the same box. Sometimes they're in three boxes around.
A modem is a modulator, demodulator, which funny, funny thing. They don't do that anymore, I don't think. But as your first. The first box, the cable or something comes into the house or office and that. And that takes it from what's being transmitted, fiber optic cable, whatever. And then makes it into networking, makes it into IP protocol and that. So that's the first box.
Next box is a router and that keeps track of who's got what, where, when, which, and throws it to the right machine and make sure that somebody
[00:04:46] Speaker F: asks for something more.
[00:04:47] Speaker D: Then we'll give it back to them to that same machine. And if someone didn't ask it, we're not going to give it, give it to anybody. That's the router part.
And it's also a switch because there's more than one connection. And then the last part is the wireless. The wireless is like a little radio station, but transmits and receives and sometimes two of them in our box or all three are in the box.
So what kind of problems you having?
I imagine it's something with speed, but could be other things.
[00:05:21] Speaker E: Yep.
[00:05:21] Speaker D: Got.
[00:05:22] Speaker E: Got a new modem from AT&T the office and then went to connect it to my computer. And all of a sudden my ethernet was not connected. I was connected wirelessly, but then I couldn't talk to printer, fax machine, other things that are connected by wire.
So the Ethernet connector suddenly was disabled on.
[00:05:52] Speaker D: So this is on the computer, on the laptop or what are we talking?
[00:05:55] Speaker E: On the laptop? Yeah.
[00:05:57] Speaker D: Okay, that's odd. Well, sometimes the WI fi would. Will override the network connection.
And sometimes it hides. If you're on WI fi, it actually hides a network connection. You got to turn off the WI fi just to see you got a network connection?
I really don't know. There's probably a setting that does that. I have to check that out.
But you want to check in. You can right click on the little network thing.
[00:06:23] Speaker F: And I'm always assuming Windows. We're talking Windows, right?
[00:06:27] Speaker E: Correct. Yeah.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Okay, so you right click on the little network icon down the bottom right. Sometimes a globe, sometimes wavy wet lines, arcs going up, arc, sometimes a little square with a tiny bitty wire. And you usually get diagnosed network problems or some sort of network connection. It differs what it says depending on the version of Windows and you can see what your network is there. Or you could just type into the search box Network Settings and find View Network Connections in the old control panel there and see what. What you got. I'm looking at mine. I got a bunch. But if you got a red X or a circle. A red circle. Anything red is bad that's kind of turned off or not used. And you can click on that and put it. Put it up to speed.
Interesting. So when the WI fi came, you. You probably. If you're connected to a wire, you probably want to turn off the WI fi, Is that right?
[00:07:32] Speaker G: Yes.
[00:07:35] Speaker E: I went into computer settings through the control panel thinking I needed to be in Internet options, but I didn't. I actually needed to be a network and sharing center.
Once I found that, then I was able to realize that my Ethernet was disabled. So just enabled it again and. And everything was hunky dory.
[00:07:58] Speaker D: Yeah, there's actually two. There's actually two. There's a legacy one that Control panel, network connections, which may be what you're looking for. And then there' the gui. Nice, pretty one. In later versions of Windows, which is where you were, the network sharing either one will do it. But yeah, you go in, you turn on the Ethernet. It may want you to just turn off the WI fi and then it will surface the Ethernet. Say, well, if you don't want WI fi, I guess you want this.
I've seen that happen.
But it should not use both, actually.
[00:08:33] Speaker E: What's your thought on age of equipment?
It seems like the equipment doesn't last as long as it used to.
Our modem was actually 12 years old at the time.
[00:08:47] Speaker D: Yeah, that's too old.
Yeah.
If you do five, they come up and they give you an award and put a plaque up, give you.
And it's not. So maybe it's the equipment. I mean, yeah, they get little beeps and bops of power over the line, but maybe it's. But most likely it's the protocol, the changes in the upstream service provider, actually how they're talking to modems and how they like it, provision it, and all these things.
And what happens is that the network changes on them and the box doesn't change and they come out and bring a new box. They almost, they almost come walk. And whenever you call them, they pretty much walk in with the new box.
The technology keeps changing so quickly.
If you get three years out of a router, you're doing well.
I mean, it will last longer, but you will start having performance issues and not working quite the right way.
And it's pretty quick, you know, you pretty quick want to buy a new one just for the performance and reliability, even though it's still technically okay to work with.
All my years, I've always rented, if
[00:10:05] Speaker F: you will, the box from my isp. Even though other people tell you to buy one just for that reason, because I have no control what mischief they're getting up to on the other end. And I'd rather not support that. I'd rather have them support it. Hey, make it work here.
And so that's, that's.
[00:10:28] Speaker E: And the service tech was actually quite complimentary on how clean the dinosaur looked.
[00:10:37] Speaker D: Yeah. And how patient you were. What a patient customer you are to wait this long before you complain.
[00:10:43] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, yeah. You want to, you want to nag them to get the new modem. And now you may not want to plug everything in and use it as your own, as your router, but yeah,
[00:10:54] Speaker D: for the motor now, router, you would
[00:10:56] Speaker F: expect, you know, depending on changes in specs and changes in technology.
[00:11:03] Speaker D: But normally if you got three years
[00:11:05] Speaker F: out of it, you probably are shopping for one at five, you're definitely ready for a new one. I would say, of course, always the newest is usually the latest and greatest and gives you more, more oomph. But it is, they get, they do get pricey.
[00:11:24] Speaker D: The little, the little purple box for
[00:11:26] Speaker F: under 100 bucks that you just can't find those anymore.
[00:11:29] Speaker D: No, no.
[00:11:30] Speaker E: Routers are 189 to 500.
Talking about giga. Giga Mexico megapixels rather than megapixels.
[00:11:40] Speaker D: And a lot, a lot of competition is on the WI fi end. So, you know, you may want to look at that close.
[00:11:46] Speaker F: A lot of the, A lot of the WI fi is for multiple connections and big connections. And if you're not streaming games on WI fi and if you don't have 20, 30 wi fi connected things, maybe you don't need to get the best because that's that's where the edge is. The edge is lots of connections, lots of fast connections.
[00:12:10] Speaker D: But, you know, a couple ultra high TVs throughout the house, you're going to want some, some, some fun.
[00:12:19] Speaker F: The. On your router there and on your WI fi. So.
[00:12:23] Speaker E: Right. Yeah. 500 coming in. 80 at the TV is not, it's not good.
[00:12:28] Speaker F: And that's under WI fi.
[00:12:30] Speaker G: Yes.
[00:12:32] Speaker D: Well, if you're a handy person or
[00:12:33] Speaker F: if you know someone. I just go wire. I just.
[00:12:37] Speaker D: I'm sorry.
[00:12:38] Speaker F: WI fi is very, very, very easy and looks like you should do it, but no one, especially if you're doing. I am famous for nagging people about their zoom calls on WI fi because
[00:12:54] Speaker D: the way of WI fi is they
[00:12:55] Speaker F: just throw a bunch of packets in the air and hope people catch them
[00:12:59] Speaker D: and put them back together.
Well, that's not the, that's okay for
[00:13:03] Speaker F: if you're watching a Netflix movie, you know, because, you know, it's a stream if things are coming straight. But video, and especially interactive video, back and forth, audio and video, that really doesn't take well to throw it at. Cutting it all up in little packets, throwing it all around and hoping that the WI fi assembles it correctly on the other end.
[00:13:23] Speaker D: Sure, it works.
[00:13:24] Speaker F: But yeah, you really be happy if you do. If you run a wire wherever you have some, like your tv, I think that's worth a wire. And definitely, if you, wherever you're going to zoom, you definitely want to wire in for any kind of video calls.
[00:13:43] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:44] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:13:45] Speaker D: And also that, you know, there's WI fi. WI fi's got interference problems if somebody else is talking on it.
[00:13:53] Speaker F: You know, I don't know where you are, but sometimes you, you're in this apartment complex, you open up your WI
[00:13:58] Speaker D: Fi and there's like pages of WI
[00:14:01] Speaker F: FI broadcasting and they're all fighting for the same different bits of the spectrum.
You don't have that with wired. If you do a wired. Well, then you got the expressway, you know, no off ramps. And that's a lot preferable than trying to get through the traffic jam of the WI FI bandwidth in an apartment building or even close in housings.
[00:14:26] Speaker D: Okay, cool.
[00:14:27] Speaker E: Good to know.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:29] Speaker D: All right, Well, I hope you get that all sorted out. Wire is best, I guess, is what we're saying. And update the equipment's even better.
[00:14:37] Speaker E: Yep, gotcha.
[00:14:39] Speaker F: All right, thanks a lot for calling Battle Born Tech.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: The router is where everything starts and stops at your Internet. It's at the edge and edge device, if you will.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Some people go ahead and do that.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: And there's some people that still call it a modem. And as we talked about the call,
[00:14:55] Speaker B: there's three parts of the modem.
[00:14:56] Speaker C: The router, the switch. I got three out of three there. And sometimes they're all in one box.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Most likely, they usually are anymore.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: I like to get that straight from the provider. That way, at least you get that far and it's not your problem.
There's nothing worse than having a problem and not knowing what to do with the box. You gotta.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: And, Joe, one of the great things
[00:15:19] Speaker C: about calling your Internet provider and it's their box.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: They almost come into the house with a new box. So you get the latest equipment when
[00:15:28] Speaker C: you call for service.
I'm not saying that doing it for
[00:15:32] Speaker B: nothing, but you maybe want to do it sooner than 12 years.
Like our friend Stephen waited before he upgraded his router.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's practically Paleozoic. I think in an age. 12 years is a long time in computer years.
So, anyway, we've got another phone call here.
This is Rachel. Well, we haven't heard from Rachel for a while. Hello, Rachel. It is always good to hear you on the other end of the line.
This is all about what happens when you suspect that the children, those dear children in your classroom get their sticky fingers all over your very expensive projector.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Go ahead, caller.
[00:16:23] Speaker G: Hello, this is Rachel.
[00:16:25] Speaker D: Hey, Rachel. Welcome to battleborn Tech. I forgot to say that when I answered the phone. Oh, well, what's up?
[00:16:33] Speaker G: Well, I'm a school teacher right now, and I'm in a bit of a pickle. My kids are out at recess, but I cannot get my.
My projector to display my computer screen.
[00:16:45] Speaker D: Okay. Was it working before?
[00:16:49] Speaker G: Well, it stopped working yesterday, and I shut everything down and I started everything back up, and I hope to work today. And it is not working today.
[00:16:59] Speaker D: All right, so you got a. So what, you got a computer?
[00:17:03] Speaker H: You got a what?
[00:17:03] Speaker D: A Windows computer? A laptop?
[00:17:06] Speaker G: Yeah. Hp.
[00:17:07] Speaker D: Okay, so you got a.
What do you. What do you got plugged into the laptop?
[00:17:13] Speaker G: And HDMI cord.
[00:17:16] Speaker D: Okay, so we got HDMI cord. Where does that cord go?
[00:17:20] Speaker G: There's, like, this box that it goes into in my closet.
[00:17:26] Speaker D: Okay. A box in the closet.
[00:17:28] Speaker H: Okay.
[00:17:28] Speaker G: It says Epson on it.
[00:17:30] Speaker D: Okay.
And then that, I imagine, goes to an Epson projector somewhere in the classroom.
[00:17:37] Speaker G: Yeah, yeah. And then on my wall, there's a projector.
[00:17:40] Speaker H: Okay.
[00:17:40] Speaker D: And the projector's turned on.
[00:17:42] Speaker G: Does it.
[00:17:42] Speaker D: Is it set to pick up whatever.
Whatever connection the laptop cable is plugged into? Can you see where the Laptop. Yeah, it's plugged in.
[00:17:54] Speaker G: Yeah, I did one even. I even did a source source search. Nothing. And I clicked HDMI1.
Nothing.
[00:18:02] Speaker D: Still blue.
Okay.
[00:18:04] Speaker G: And it's plugged into HDMI1.
[00:18:06] Speaker D: All right, so. Okay, so let's go back to the computer, and on the Windows computer, are you familiar with the Windows key? And it's like a shift key, but fancy.
Okay, so hold down the shift window, the Windows key, and then tap the letter P.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:18:28] Speaker G: Oh, no.
[00:18:30] Speaker D: And what do you see?
[00:18:31] Speaker G: I see project.
[00:18:35] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:18:36] Speaker G: Screen only. Duplicate, extend.
[00:18:39] Speaker D: Oh, which one's lit up? Which one's outlined?
[00:18:43] Speaker G: PC screen only.
[00:18:45] Speaker D: Well, there you go. I think. I think we found our number one suspect. So do you want a duplicate, or do you want, like, an extension of the laptop?
[00:18:54] Speaker G: I like the same thing. I like the same thing.
[00:18:57] Speaker D: Extension. Okay.
[00:18:59] Speaker G: No, duplicate. Like the same.
[00:19:01] Speaker D: Like duplicate. Okay, well, then use the cursor keys to move it up or down and to duplicate, and then enter or select it, and it should flash and then be both places.
[00:19:20] Speaker G: Didn't it? Come on.
Oh, it's still stuck on that. Hold on.
Okay, I clicked it again.
Hey, there we go.
[00:19:33] Speaker H: There you go.
[00:19:35] Speaker D: There you go.
[00:19:36] Speaker G: Pick my lesson today. I didn't know what I was gonna do.
[00:19:39] Speaker D: Just. Just lock the door and leave them out at recess all day maybe.
[00:19:44] Speaker G: I don't know.
[00:19:45] Speaker D: But sorry, kids, you still have your lessons.
[00:19:49] Speaker G: Sorry I can't show you what the book looks like, and you don't know how to find page 142.
[00:19:55] Speaker D: So that's gonna be.
How old are the kids? What grade are they?
[00:19:59] Speaker G: They're first graders.
[00:20:00] Speaker D: Aww.
Okay, well, have a. Have a better day, and thanks for calling battleborn Town.
[00:20:07] Speaker G: All right, thank you.
[00:20:09] Speaker E: Bye.
[00:20:09] Speaker F: Bye.
[00:20:10] Speaker G: Bye.
[00:20:12] Speaker C: Well, it's almost like plumbing.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: When you got a picture going from a laptop through a box up through the wall and wiring and into projection, you got to get everybody working together all pulled in the same way. Everything connected, and that's what you do. You just start at one end and go to the other and see where the missing part is, what's not working,
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Rule them out and change that. And that's what we did with Rachel,
[00:20:34] Speaker B: and we found out it was your basic Windows.
Where do I send that video? Single. You got to tell it. Another thing to watch out for is the sound. Whether the sound goes out through the laptop speakers or goes through the hdmi, I don't know which one you want, but you do want to choose which one you want, and that's down at the bottom Right on the little sound speaker, you right click it and say, where do I want to send the sound? Once you got the video going with a good old Windows key, P.
Although
[00:21:06] Speaker A: I do find that every so often the audio wants to be sent to the HDMI of one of my monitors. And my monitors don't have speakers, so my computer is mute. Sometimes it pays to go in and look at where Windows decided to send the audio. And no, the monitor doesn't count.
So that's always good advice. When there's no sound, Windows probably decided to send it to the wrong place.
We got another phone call here. It's our last phone call of the day. And this is Jay, and maybe it's Double Vision, but he's finding that there are 2Ds in his file Explorer. He's got a case of the Double D's Matterborn tech.
[00:21:54] Speaker D: Go ahead, caller.
[00:21:56] Speaker H: Hi, this is Jay.
[00:21:58] Speaker D: Hey, Jay.
[00:22:00] Speaker H: Got an issue with my Dell Latitude computer. It's about three years old, and I have been using it now for about four or five months. Bought it as a used computer. Dynamite Computer laptop from Computer Core.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: We don't say store names.
[00:22:19] Speaker D: I should have told you that before.
[00:22:21] Speaker H: Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:22:22] Speaker D: From a local. A local Real. A local agency. There you go.
[00:22:26] Speaker H: A local. Yeah, a local agency. Okay.
Either way, great computer does exactly what we need most of the time.
Now of recent, it's gotten a little bit more cranky as I go.
And I finally did some cleaning up and it's getting a little bit better, but it still shows 2D drives.
And when I put in my thumb drive for our church service to display on a video system, it shows two times.
And it has caused complication because sometimes we choose the right one, sometimes we don't. And come to find out, doesn't matter. It's not. There isn't a right or wrong. It just doesn't want to work.
[00:23:13] Speaker D: Hey, good, good news. That's the way it's supposed to work.
[00:23:17] Speaker H: There you go.
[00:23:18] Speaker D: Yeah. Windows has decided for your convenience to list things twice if it's a removable drive. So what they're kind of sort of saying, it says, here's all the drives on this PC. List, list, list, list, list. And then it says, you know what? I'm going to have another list of all the removable drives. List, list, list, list, list. Well, so you get it twice.
And the key thing is that you said it's the same on both, so that's as expected. And so there's no worries.
They just listed twice because they want everything kind of group, and then they want a removable group. And of course, everything in the removable
[00:24:01] Speaker F: is a subset of everything on the computer, so you get it twice on the D.
So no worries.
[00:24:09] Speaker D: It's supposed to work.
I mean, you can. You can. You can beat on it and try
[00:24:13] Speaker F: to fix and try to, you know, hack it.
[00:24:16] Speaker D: So it doesn't do that, but no.
[00:24:20] Speaker H: Oh, okay.
[00:24:22] Speaker D: Yeah. It doesn't hurt anything. And as you say, it doesn't matter which one you. Which one you click.
[00:24:27] Speaker F: They're both the same drive.
No worries.
[00:24:30] Speaker H: Yes. Well, the beauty of that is we know they're a duplicate, so we end up with exactly the same thing. Doesn't matter which one.
[00:24:39] Speaker D: Yeah, it's just two ways of getting
[00:24:43] Speaker F: to the same place, that's all.
[00:24:45] Speaker H: Okay. All right, well. And now I feel a little bit more comfortable that it's sitting there.
[00:24:51] Speaker D: That's that. That's our theme here. Feeling a little bit more comfortable. That's. That's our goal.
We may not fix things, but you feel a little more comfortable.
[00:25:02] Speaker H: Okay.
[00:25:02] Speaker D: All right, Jay.
All right.
[00:25:05] Speaker H: You're welcome. Thank you.
All right,
[00:25:11] Speaker C: well, glad we cleared that up. It's not a feature. It's not a bug. It's a feature.
It's not. It's not a problem. So, you know, wave your hands and change your mind. That's the way it's supposed to act. It looks to me like it was some kind of committee decision, like, do we put it in the. This file tree or do we put it as a removable story? And they got tired, it was time for lunch. They said, ah, let's just do both. So if you see two, don't worry about it. They're the same. And that is expected behavior on Windows. So feature not a bug, huh?
[00:25:44] Speaker A: I don't know about that. If it makes it confusing, why not just rewrite the feature?
Well, Christy, I think we've come to the end of the show. Lots of corrections, but of course, we always get things right all the time, don't we? How about some words of wisdom going out? We always get those correct.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: This has been battleborn Tech. Thanks to our callers, Stephen, Rachel, and Jay, who called us at 775-241-3571. We're in studio Saturdays from 9 to 11 and Sunday 7 to 9 Pacific. Call 775-241-3571 then or anytime and get on the radio and get your tech fixed. Wondering how to watch out for the watchers?
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Well, the app Z U C KOFF scans for those sketchy Bluetooth camera glasses
[00:26:44] Speaker C: that's zu ck off to alert you when the camera glasses are around.
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[email protected] stats. Get the links you missed there. Everything we should have said the first time is at battleborn Tech along with show notes, links that were slurred, corrections of memory lapses, explanations of old jokes, definitions of obscure tech quotes we half remember. Apologize for artificial and human hallucinations. That's our website battleborn Tech no com for us. T E C H this has been battleborn Tech, a registered service mark of Christy Ramsey. Carefully review this episode or speed listens to the ones who missed at the show's website, battleborn Tech or your favorite podcast player. Search for and subscribe to battleborn Tech. That's all for battleborn Tech where the WI fi is strong, the fonts are good looking and the passwords are above average. For those listening to our radio broadcast, go from blue screens to blue skies. Stay tuned for High Desert Music with Molly Moser, original songs, local artists and stories behind them. It starts right now. Have a neat week and tune in Tuesdays at 8pm Pacific right here on KNVC FM 95.1.
