Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, joins the Uncast Show to discuss his background in tech and gaming and his career at Microsoft on the Xbox team working on Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Kinect, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and much more.
Larry is also a fellow Unraider and discusses how he found Unraid, his main use cases, and other tech and homelab interests.
Later, Larry discusses his departure from Microsoft after 23 years, what he's up to now, and his new role as Director of Community at Unity.
We hope you enjoy this very special Uncast Show. Thanks for listening and watching.
Other Ways to Connect with the Uncast Show
Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, joins the Uncast Show to discuss his background in tech and gaming and his career at Microsoft on the Xbox team working on Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Kinect, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and much more.
Larry is also a fellow Unraider and discusses how he found Unraid, his main use cases, and other tech and homelab interests.
Later, Larry discusses his departure from Microsoft after 23 years, what he's up to now, and his new role as Director of Community at Unity.
We hope you enjoy this very special Uncast Show. Thanks for listening and watching.
Other Ways to Connect with the Uncast Show
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Uncar Show. Now I'm incredibly excited about our guest today, someone who needs no introduction in the world of gaming. Joining us is Larry Hurd, also known as Major Nelson. He's a legendary figure in the Xbox community and a driving force behind many of the innovations we've seen in gaming. Larry's been a pivotal voice for gamers around the globe and it's an honor to have him on the show. Welcome, larry, and thank you very much for taking the time to be here.
Speaker 2:Ed, thank you for that wonderful introduction. I have to tell you I'm actually more excited to talk to you because we're going to talk, obviously, a lot about my background and we're going to talk about Unraid. But you're one of the main reasons that I chose Unraid and we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1:Oh well, thank you, Larry. I'm genuinely touched by you saying that it's incredibly encouraging to have someone of your caliber actually watching my videos, so thank you so much for the support.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:I really, really appreciate it. So currently you're living, I believe, in Washington State at the moment. That's correct. I live right outside Seattle, but originally you hail from Connecticut.
Speaker 2:yes, that's correct. Yeah, you did your research. I grew up in New England and that's where I or you know you live in old England, I lived in New.
Speaker 1:England and you attended Syracuse University in New York, where you earned a degree in television, radio and film production.
Speaker 2:That's right. I attended Syracuse University, which is in upstate New York. I mean, everybody thinks New York is New York City, but there certainly is massive. It's like saying London is England. It's not the case, it's just a little part of it. New York City is a small part. But yeah, I went to school in upstate New York and went to the Newhouse School of Public Communications where I learned basically how to do things like this.
Speaker 1:Right, and your first job, I believe, was in Westport, connecticut, where you were a DJ for that radio station.
Speaker 2:That's actually not right, I actually worked for a station in Hartford Connecticut. Well, there's two things. When I left Syracuse I started working for a cable company doing the local cable commercials, the video commercials. So you know, I don't know if they had them over there in England or in other parts, but in America it was always like you'd be watching something. And then there'd be this local commercial of hi, I'm Ed from Ed's Used Cars, come on down and buy my used cars. So I used to write and produce and edit and air those commercials. So I did that for a little bit before I went into radio for a station in Hartford Connecticut called WKSS Kiss 95.7, which wasa hot hit radio station.
Speaker 1:I used to play the hits at Awesome Cool and, if my research is correct, you also worked for Clear Channels Communication before moving to Microsoft.
Speaker 2:That's correct. And that station that I worked at in Connecticut was in the middle of the 90s, when there was a lot of independent 90s, before you know when there was a lot of independent owners. And then Clear Channel, which is a big company in the United States, came in and started buying up all these stations in all the different markets. So I worked for them. But one of the early things we did, ed, there's two projects that I worked on that were really early. One of them was and this is going to blow people's mind, but we were streaming our radio station. So I used to have a 286 computer that would encode it with RealPlayer and send it out over this thing called the internet to people with 288 or 56k modems Don't bother me with the 1200 bot and we did that. And then the other thing was I helped build a system to automate basically the music and bring digital into the studio, because at that point it was all analog, you know cartridges and records and things like that, but I helped digitize it.
Speaker 1:So I assume that's how that kind of led on to you joining Microsoft for MSN Music.
Speaker 2:Precisely they came and tapped me. Microsoft for MSN Music. Precisely they came and tapped me. Well, actually I had a side hustle when I was working in radio running communities when and Ed, I'm going to date myself when Windows 95 launched. So when Windows 95 launched they used to have this thing called MSN, which was kind of like an AOL or a CompuServe or it service, and I was, my wife and I had a company and we were running community services for those for MSN, for part of MSN, you know running. So that was kind of where I got started. So I was doing radio during the day and working, you know, for Microsoft as a contractor in Connecticut. And then when they, in the early 2000, they came and said and said, hey, we're going to launch a music service. You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Would you come join us? Now, you have to remember it. This is before spotify, before itunes, before everything, um. So it was one of the very first streaming uh services online. So I helped launch that wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Um, and then from there, you obviously everyone knows you joined xbox live yeah, yeah, what happened was is I was, you know, working in this, you know, microsoft at that point was we only had about 20 000 people on campus at that point. I think it's something like 200. When I left, 200 000. But the next set of offices right next to mine, ed, were the Xbox team and they were working on, obviously, xbox and Xbox Live. And I looked over and I was like I got to get in on that Because I'm a gamer.
Speaker 2:I love games. I mean, I grew up with the Atari 2600 and Super Nintendo and all the rest of those. So I was like I got to get over there, so I knew some folks and then when they launched Xbox Live, they came and said, hey, you understand community, will you help us manage the community? And I said absolutely. So I went over there and it just was one of the best decisions I ever made. I just I had such a great time because I'm a gamer. So being able to build the platform ed, it's a dream oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:So, um, larry, can you share some kind of key moments in the development of Xbox Live that you're a part of? How did those milestones shape the platform how we know it today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's it's, it's shaped us. There's a lot of key milestones. I mean one. When I joined the team, xbox Live had just launched. So you have to remember, xbox launched in 2000, xbox Live in 2001. Xbox launched in 2000, xbox Live in 2001. And we had, in the back of the Xbox was a network port which in 2000 was like what is this thing?
Speaker 1:Before that it was just modem ports, Like the Dreamcast had a modem port and the Xbox, and wasn't it one of the guys on the development team? He really pushed for having an Ethernet port and there was a bit of pushback saying it wasn't needed because people modems will be around for a while nobody has internet in their house.
Speaker 2:You know, like always on internet broadband and absolutely so. We basically had to convince, not not just the microsoft that I wasn't involved in that part. I knew to other people that were involved with that part, but like, hey, let us put it in there because it's going to cost extra money, even though customers can't use it for a year. It was one of the rare times where customers believed a company that said trust us, we're going to build it. And we did it. And so a year later we lit it up and then everything just happened. At that point we had those magical multiplayer experiences being able to hear your friends play playing Splinter Cell and being able to hear your friends play, you know, playing Splinter Cell, and being able to whisper in somebody's ear and say you know anyway. So it was a lot of fun in those early days.
Speaker 1:And weren't you the first service to have a friends list as well? So you know. So everyone copied that later on. Yeah, there's a couple.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of firsts that we did with Xbox. You know, when I say Xbox, I mean Xbox, xbox 360, and so forth, xbox Live One of them was always on. You talked about the broadband connection, this persistent friends list, this dashboard concept where when you take the disc out, there's some things to do, you can have your friends list and things along those lines. We had all that. But then we also realized there was a lot of really cool things we could do, and that's when I joined the team. We were already planning for Xbox 360, which wouldn't launch for another three or four years, depending upon what region you were in.
Speaker 1:And you know, just speaking of your kind of like journey going back to that, yeah, I'd just like to ask you right now you know, how did the major Nelson Monica come about and what inspired you to choose that name for your kind of gaming name?
Speaker 2:that was. So it was such a weird thing and I never knew that it would become what it became today. And what happened was is you know when I, when I, got hired on the xbox team to run community, they're like hey, we're going to want you to interact with the community, so you need a gamer tag that people can talk to you about. Okay, well, I already had a private gamertag, but I was like okay so, and I came home one night and back in the early 2000s, there was this thing called tivo, where tivo would recommend things. Basically, it was one of the early.
Speaker 1:It was not even ai, it was just like it was just a suggestion engine sorry to interrupt, larry, but, um, being from the uk, I'm not sure what tivo is. Is that like a recording device for broadcast TV, was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was essentially a smart digital recorder but in addition to just being a standard DVR where you could pause, rewind, record and so forth, it had a layer of smarts on top of it which was like, oh, if you'd like to show you, there was a thumbs-up button on the remote and it would recommend other things. So I came home and it had recommended and recorded the show called I Dream of Jeannie, which was from the 60s, and I started watching it and there was an astronaut named Major Nelson. I was first. The actor's name was Larry Hagman and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, he's an astronaut, he lives on the beach, he's got.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, that perfect Major Nelson next and that was it. It was no more, no more or less thought put into it than that. Yeah, oh, awesome, that's. That's an interesting story. So thank you. And just I'd like to sort of switch gears into developing games consoles. I wondered can you take us behind the scenes of kind of developing major Xboxbox consoles like you know, the 360, the xbox one, series x and f? What was some of the most interesting and kind of surprising stories you know in the development periods that you can remember, you know?
Speaker 2:the. There's so many. But you know, when I think about the story arc of xbox, you know, I talked a little bit a moment ago about xbox live being the foundation, and that was always our. That was the foundation to have people connected, and that connectivity allowed you a different thing, a series of different things to do. You know, for the first time you could log in, see your friends list and I could see Ed was playing Splinter Cell or Halo and I could invite you into my game of something else. Or we could even talk and you were in your game and I'm in my game. We're doing two separate things, so that was part of it.
Speaker 2:The other part that we brought and a lot of people forget this is that Xbox 360 was one of the very first purpose-based consoles that had a marketplace, and what I mean is you could download digital games, which Steam had started doing early in 2000, but nobody else had really mastered it. But now we were doing it to a managed device, in other words, a device that was single-use and specific. It wasn't open like a PC, but it was specifically for gaming. So shipping a digital platform or a digital marketplace on that was a huge moment, and then as a result, one of the other things we came up with was the Achievement System, which I was part of the team that helped. So every time you got a little In like I think I've got one here and you get something that sound so we all know what that is. So it was. You know it was great to be able to work on that because we had this always connected line. When you unlocked an achievement, your friends would see that you I unlocked this achievement. So it was kind of this weird social, cool social effect where I could see what you were doing to a certain degree. So that was a lot of fun. But creating the consoles was just a magical moment.
Speaker 2:I was involved creating so many consoles and the through line is just great games. At the end of the day, nobody cares passionately about a piece of plastic. They care about the great gaming experiences they have. But we had a lot of challenges with Xbox 360, shipping that globally. It was the first time we scaled out and did it in so many markets. We had some challenges there and we took a lot of the learnings and we brought them into Xbox One and then Kinect. A lot of people remember Kinect, which we thought was the future at that point and it just didn't get the uptake and adoption that we. We thought it was going to be good.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, adam sorry why do you think um, like motion gaming, like isn't a thing anymore? Do you think kind of vr killed that, or I.
Speaker 2:You know, I think there was, there's, there's a sense of that. I mean the with the we. I remember I was at the, the announcement of the wii u in japan, uh, and I remember looking at that and going, oh, wow, okay, how okay, how's that going to work? Or the Wii, I should say and it was. Nintendo did an amazing job executing because they have such a fantastic stable of intellectual property with Mario and Zelda and so forth, and they also did some really cool things with, you know, wii Sports.
Speaker 2:On the Xbox side, I just didn't think we had enough titles that really leaned into it. We had one of my favorite development houses is over there in England and that's Rare, and Rare did a great job with Kinect Sports, which was amazing. But beyond that, beyond those first-party games when I say first-party, that's a term that we use in gaming, for as a console developer, developer, we also develop the game, because the goal of first-party games, that is to showcase the platform, things you can do on this platform they can't do anywhere else, and we see that time and time again with. Sony does it with some of their first party games, certainly nintendo does it with some of their games and xbox did it as well. Um so there's a lot of things that um that we did, but a lot of the gamers really just wanted to shoot stuff and circling back to the 360 um.
Speaker 1:Is it true that um, for gears of war, um epic games, asked microsoft to up the ram from 256?
Speaker 2:yeah to 500. I mean, I wasn't in that meeting, but that's a legendary story that I have since you know, know, I've since heard is proved, and that was the head of the team.
Speaker 2:They needed more, which doesn't you know? I don't remember. You know to your point it wasn't a lot of VRAM, but back in the day it was a lot of VRAM. And when you're writing games for a console, we call writing to the metal. In other words, you don't have really an operating system in the way you kind of do, but you're writing, you can unlock the full potential of the entire platform by writing directly to the metal and really getting some low-level APIs that get right in there and can unlock the maximum power of the console.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if that hadn't been the case, then the Xbox wouldn't have had the capabilities.
Speaker 2:Maybe that it does today, yeah, yeah, it's possible. Then it would have been a very it's possible.
Speaker 1:That would have been a very different um future gears of war must be one of my favorite all-time games. I do, I do love that game.
Speaker 2:I'll let cliff blizinski I still talk to cliff who was one of the design directors on and, of course, rod ferguson, who's working on diablo. I'll let them know that.
Speaker 1:Ed, Wasn't there a bit of pushback from the Lancer from the chainsaw in the demo? They didn't want to put that bit in, but Bill Gates liked it. I saw a clip of Bill saying that that was pretty cool. The chainsaw yeah, there was a lot.
Speaker 2:What you're referring to is you're referring to a weapon that is incredibly violent and, if you remember correctly, what you're referring to is you're referring to a weapon that is incredibly violent and, and you know, if you remember correctly, even on part of the screen you would get, you know, blood effects onto the, onto your, you know. So it was very, very visceral and I know there was a lot of concern about Ooh, is this going to be too far? Yeah, you know, you know that's a conversation that consistently happens in this industry, because you know violence is such a worldwide issue in real life and you know how much of it do we really need in video games?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because even the older games kind of like the very first Killer Instinct. There was big debates about how terrible that was. So that was a lot further down the road in that department, really, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now we're dealing with. You know, when we went into the Xbox 360, it was now in. We made the transition from what we call the SD era to the HD era. So now it was now 16 by 9 and glorious 720p.
Speaker 1:So you know, let's dive into a bit of fun. I'd like to ask some of your personal favorites. So over the years, Microsoft, Xbox have made some pretty awesome consoles and I'd say, do you have a favorite out of all of them?
Speaker 2:Well, without a doubt, it's the Xbox 360, for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know I was involved so intimately in that production. It was a smaller team back then. I remember taking our consoles home and plugging them in before anybody else had them and testing the different versions of the hardware. And then also that generation had a specific beginning and end, and so that one will always have a place in my heart because of not just my involvement with it, but some of my favorite gaming moments came out of that, and I'm talking about Halo, I'm talking about Bioshock, I'm talking about Grand Theft Auto, about Bioshock. I'm talking about, you know, grand Theft Auto. So there's so many amazing gaming experiences and you know it was just. It was such a pleasure and a privilege to be part of that generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the 360 was an awesome one of my. I think the 360 and the original are my favorite.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1:But I do like the Series s as well. Um, that's my current console it's a little guy it's, but it's got a lot of power in it. It is like my son's got the the x and he always says it's better. But I like that little s it's nice and compact.
Speaker 2:You want to know why and you could probably play it on. You could probably have it in your office under your monitor. You could just play it right there in your office you're 100, correct there, larry.
Speaker 1:So, um, moving on to games, I know you've mentioned before in um podcasts and things kind of like. You've got a few favorites, but what I'd like to do is I'm going to kind of put you on the spot and ask you if you could choose your top five xbox games. Um, what would they be?
Speaker 2:halo one for a lot of different reasons. Halo two because I was involved in that production. Bioshock is one that I just absolutely adored, uh. Grand theft auto because of what they were able to unlock with it. And then, probably, you know, red dead, red dead, uh. Redemption is such a amazing I mean, nobody tells stories but almost better than rockstar in the way they execute technically, uh, and emotionally. More importantly, in the game is is unrivaled yeah, yeah, I've.
Speaker 1:I've got to agree with you with halo as well, being up there, that I think my favorite ever games has got to be half. This isn't the next one half life one, half life two, half-life 1, half-life 2, halo, halo 2, and Gears of War Probably my favorite all-time games ever.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you. There's a couple more I want to add in there, because you said you can't limit me to 5-ed. You can't do it. You know I look at things like Portal. Oh yeah, you know, portal was just when the first moment you start understanding the game mechanics, your mind's like boom. Another one that I really enjoyed and I know if they haven't done the re-release, I think they're about to do the anniversary release is Braid. Braid is such an amazing game. I've never played that.
Speaker 1:I've never played that.
Speaker 2:Ed, you need to go back and play it. Play it on PC, Play it wherever you can, but it is such a mind-blowing game in terms of the mechanics and how it works and the ending it's just.
Speaker 1:It's so delightful, oh wow, I'll give that a shot. I'll definitely have to check that one out there, larry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's coming up. I think it's got an anniversary re-release coming up soon, cool.
Speaker 1:Obviously, you have a lot of involvement with the community, so I'd like to say how? How important has the community interaction and feedback been in shaping the development and evolution of Xbox?
Speaker 2:It's been critical, Ed. I mean, you know, when I joined the team, there wasn't really anybody talking to the community and engaging with them on a regular basis, and once I joined the team, I started taking this feedback and bringing it in, and a lot of the features we did with Xbox Xbox 360, Xbox Live, upwards and beyond have all been directly from the community. I helped develop a community program where people it was called the Insiders, which now has gone over to Windows, and that was where we found out what mattered to our customers and they helped us stack, rank and here's what's important upvote and downvote and help us define what the roadmap looks like. So the community has been incredibly important to helping uh, helping us buff out what what xbox is in terms of some of the feature set what examples of feature sets would you say that user feedback have directly influenced?
Speaker 2:oh boy, there's one. It's funny. There's one that just shipped last week that I actually had a bug log for seven years, which is now with your Xbox. You can take it, it'll remember different wireless networks fit and finish things like that that we really, you know dark. Dark mode is one that people let dark and light mode is one that obviously everyone does. It now, um, but things like that are exactly direct feedback from the community staying in the key of community.
Speaker 1:You've had many memorable moments interacting with fans on like major nation radio and the xbox podcast. Can you share a few standout experiences or stories that really resonate with you?
Speaker 2:well, you know it's when I started doing the podcast. Uh, what became the official xbox podcast? I started doing in 2005, ed, when nobody understood podcasts, and I was like and to your point, you know, to our conversation earlier, I spent a decade in radio. I'm like, I know what this is. This is just radio with the people download, listen to. So I started doing it before anybody really paid attention at xbox um, and that you know, I didn't get.
Speaker 2:I didn't go up and say, oh, I'm gonna do this, I just did it, and that was part of the fun of early xbox is. Sometimes we just did stuff because it was the right thing to do, um, but I mean taking taking the show and going to doing it from japan or doing it from gamescom in europe, or coming over to UK or going to one of the PAX gaming festivals here in the United States and Australia was always a lot of fun, but I just my favorite part, though, is meeting gamers, because everybody has a favorite game. Everybody has their own gaming story to tell, whether how they got into games or what their favorite controller is or what their favorite game is. So I just it's. It's kind of like this, this universal thing that combines everybody, at least us as nerds, right yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:um, I'd like, I'd like to kind of like just switch gears away from the tech and, yeah, ask a question that maybe you know, some people don't know, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. I recently learned you had a silent role in the 1996 movie Sleepers, starring Kevin Bacon and Brad Pitt. You, I wondered? No, you're absolutely right, I did yeah um, how, how did how did that come about and what was the experience like?
Speaker 2:so, this, you're right. So what happened was is by the way, let's talk for a minute, because you've, we've all seen the, you know, seven, six degrees of kevin bacon, right? You've heard of that, right, dad?
Speaker 1:um, I'm gonna have to say now I'm sorry, I haven't no.
Speaker 2:So there's this kind of this meme that's been around for many, many years, where where Kevin Bacon has worked in so many movies that you can connect Like within six steps, you can connect back to Kevin. The good news is you are now two steps away from Kevin Bacon, because I was in a movie with Kevin Bacon, but in any event, this was in the mid-90s. I was working in radio and this production company came to the radio station. I was working in radio and this production company came to the radio station. I was running marketing and communications for the radio station. I said, hey, we're doing this movie with Kevin Bacon and Robert De Niro and a bunch of actors. Would you help us cast it? And so I went out and I had a meeting with the casting director and he looked at me and said you're perfect, we want to have you in it too.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Me, okay. So I remember we went out. It was like it was like a. It was a very cold november in connecticut. It was about a week before thanksgiving. We shot this scene.
Speaker 2:It's a pivotal, pivotal football scene at an abandoned, you know, with a reason to shoot a. Uh, it was a. I think it was a children's hospital or children's school in rural connecticut and um, I, I got there and they fitted me up with an outfit because I was to play a guard, because it was in a boy's school. And I got there and I got fitted with my cap and my outfit. They're like well, what role would you like to be? And I looked at it. I looked at the set. It was out on a soccer field or, I'm sorry, football field, american football field and I realized I'm just going to look like everybody else on the field. So I said I'd like to be at the score table because there's only one person keeping score. So anytime you see the scorekeeper, you knew it was me. So if you go in there and I spent all day shooting the scene, which I think it was two days actually, and that's all I did was sit at the table- and sit at this so anytime there's a very it's like.
Speaker 2:Seriously, it's about four frames of me. As the camera pans by, you'll see me sitting in a hat with a table and a little clock on it. I'm just sitting there and I sat there was freezing for hours. Oh, man.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome and I'm gonna have to ask is that your only ever movie appearance or have you? Have you appeared in any others?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think, I think, that is it.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is it for now for now Okay, but we don't know in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who knows, in the future I may get into Hollywood, may come knocking, I don't know. Anyway, have you been in a movie yet?
Speaker 1:Um, I haven't.
Speaker 2:I haven't, I haven't, no, no not yet.
Speaker 1:Not yet and any film producers out there see this I'm available anyway. Switching gears, larry. Um, if we can move on to unraid, yeah, obviously many of the audience. They love their home servers and they're running Unraid and we'd love to hear about your experiences with it. So I just wondered can you start by explaining how you discovered Unraid and what drew you to use it for your home server setup?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what happened was it's an interesting story I had an old I think it was a QNAP NAS and I was outgrowing it and I was like I started to really get into Docker and the management and I have. I wanted a bunch of smart home stuff plus, and you can see Plex behind me. I was like I have all these DVDs because I had collected over 20 years, because DVDs were big in the 90s and early 2000s. I want to have them digital. So I was like, what do I do? The QNAP wasn't working. And then I was doing some search. There was a couple of different options out there and then I saw Unraid. I'm like, wait a minute, I can use my own hardware, any hardware, because I had so much hardware, probably like you, ed, I can't even imagine what your workshop looks like. And then I was like, well, let me figure this out.
Speaker 2:So I had an old gaming PC and I just stood it up with with, with Unraid, you know, I built the, built the USB stick, dropped it in and I was like this is amazing and I threw some more hard drives in it and started building out and kind of. But it was this big. I mean it was a big old school gaming PC and then I started, you know, moving my Plex content onto it, or my digital content that I had ripped and some of my music, because there's music that I enjoy that isn't available on any streaming service. So I put that on there. And then I was like, wow, I've got some home automation stuff I want to do. So I put on Home Assistant and scripted and then I was like, oh, let me put AdGuard on there. It just started ballooning because you could do so much with Unraid.
Speaker 2:And then I realized I looked at my energy bill one month ahead and I was like where's all my what's going on here? So about two years ago I've been on Plex excuse me, I've been on Unraid for about four years now. About two years ago I was like you know what? I'm going to build? A new server and that new server, the profile is going to be low energy, low heat. So I ended up building all the parts, or getting all the parts, and I built it during one of the summers of COVID and I had the neighborhood kids over because a lot of it, they all wanted to learn how to build a PC. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which that's all a server is.
Speaker 2:So I sent an email out to their parents and said, hey, I'm going to let the kids know. If they want to learn how to build a PC, I'll be doing it in my garage. So for about four or five nights the four or five kids came over in the garage and we built. I said okay, I laid all the parts out and I started explaining here's the GPU, here's the CPU, here's the RAM, here's the storage, here's the power supply, here's all the cable. You know, just kind of put everything out, and then every night we would start assembling it piece by piece and building it up accordingly. And then at the end was that of course, of course. I mean, I don't have to tell you how it ends, ed. I turn it on and it doesn't boot. So then I got to go unwind and it was actually one of the I'd let the a lot of the kids do the install.
Speaker 2:One of the ram uh slot was in sideways so we just kind of put it down, booted up. Everything was great. So it's been running two years since in my garage and I I love it.
Speaker 1:Uh, I feel your pain. When you build something, you turn it on. It doesn't work. So many times I've built like a computer, put it all in, I think, to myself, before I actually fit it all. In the case, let's just test it and see if it works and I think it'll be all right. It'll be all right every time I think that it never works on the case yeah but yeah, so you know it's, so it's it's.
Speaker 2:it's one of those things where I just I'm such a fan of oh, I'm gonna try this now. Click download the docker. And the funny part is I got a couple of friends on it. One of my good friends our kids go to school together. He had a QNAP as well and I'm like you have to download Unraid. He said, well, I got this old PC, I'm like you have to download Unraid, just try it out. There's a demo, it's really easy. So he downloads it. He calls me back like two days later. He's like I downloaded it. I can't figure it out. I said, nick, go do a web search. Here's Space Invader videos. Go watch them.
Speaker 2:And he didn't listen to me and he's tried to do it by himself. And then two days later he's like. I watched Space Invader videos. He made it so clear, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:But wow, that's amazing. But you know, seriously, your videos actually helped me as well when I wanted to set up I think it was what was before tail scale. I think we're just doing a vpn. You had a whole series of how to set up the vpn and do that, so I learned how to do that. Now I'm running tail scale, which is way easier it's just so great tail scale yeah so, um.
Speaker 2:So there's that, and you always, it seems like whenever I have a unraid challenge, that I want to learn about your video's right there, and so I want to thank you On behalf of the Unraid community. I want to thank you for all the work you put into your videos, because they're so clear, and what I love about your style, that is, you assume we know nothing, or just enough to be dangerous, because you're always telling us, hey, do this, don't do that, because this will happen. So I want to thank you.
Speaker 1:Oh, larry, you've made my day saying that to me Someone of your caliber appreciating my videos.
Speaker 2:It blows me away, it's fantastic and you're such an industry resource and a legend on YouTube, so you keep doing the great work. So that's why, when you reached out to me and said come on the show, I'm like I got to do it. I got ed. What what you and and unraid have meant to me and my family, um, so it's been. It's been such a delight to be able to have this stable server and, like I said, it's been running for two years and I have no problems. It keeps the. I mean I I should log into it right now, actually, and I'll tell you what it's probably consuming like 50 watts right now because it's, like I say, designed for low power.
Speaker 1:So what components are you using? What CPU?
Speaker 2:You know what I'm going to log in right now, because I had that available and unfortunately it logged me out. The one thing I do have to ask you, Ed I have my array encrypted and I need to figure out how. It's an extra step at the beginning. Do you think it's worth it?
Speaker 1:I think it's very worth having the array encrypted. The reason being is if you buy a new drive and, say, a month down the road it fails and you RMA it back. When you're RMAing it back, you know that because the data's encrypted, no one's going to be able to see it. So yeah, I don't encrypt mine because I've got kind of super secret information on it. But um, right, if I said, if I send the drive back, it's just an added piece of mind yeah, I just know that.
Speaker 1:You know, I haven't had to zero it, it's just encrypted.
Speaker 2:So so that's my main reason to answer your question.
Speaker 2:I this, so this is interesting. I know some people are going to laugh at me, but when I you talked, I talked about the reasons of what my design goals were low power, low heat. I'm running an intel core i3 10, 105 cpu with 3.7 gigahertz oh yeah, nice. So I wanted to make sure it had quick sync so I could do the transcoding. Yeah, which is, by the way, that the way that is an underestimated. I know that you talk about it. It's an amazing feature, but a lot of people really don't think about it as well they should.
Speaker 2:I've got 32 gigs of RAM and I think I've got. I don't have it in Because I'm looking at the system information on Unraid they. I think I've got. Actually, I can look at it right here and I wish I should share my screen, but I'm not going to. I am dealing with. I've got two six terabyte drives and then one 10 terabyte parity drive, nice, cool, so, and it's sitting at 59% full and I've got. Probably I can't even imagine I don't rip into MKVs, I kind of try to use H.64 or H.265 um, so I've got quite a few movies on there and a lot of tv shows and some videos that I've done and things like that. So it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a nice archive yeah, so basically you're using your server mainly for me media. Do you run any game servers?
Speaker 2:so you know I've, you know you've so it's interesting you say that no, and here's why I specifically chose not to have a GPU on this device, because of its low heat and low power. I think I'm going to build another server that's going to have a GPU, because I want to experiment with some of that stuff that you talk about all the time on your channel, because I keep looking at it longingly, going, ooh, I want to do that, I want to do that, but I just don't have this particular rig is not? I know that if I set it up, it would kind of be disappointing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you say you're a home assistant fan as well. Yeah, I've got.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go over here and take a look at my dockers. I've got running, I've got Benhex, I've got Firefox Portainer. Homebridge scripted uh engine proxy um adguard cloudflare got vault warden. I'm doing a self-hosting on vault warden. I've got crafty 4 on here because minecraft uh, you know, you worked.
Speaker 2:I worked actually worked on minecraft when I was at microsoft, so it's nice to be able to do that, and I've got a couple of other things on here that I'm experimenting with, like a youtube downloader, and then of course, I have plex and and things along those lines, wow.
Speaker 1:So that's quite a lot of things you're running there, larry.
Speaker 2:Am I a power user? I don't think I am Ed.
Speaker 1:I think that's a fair amount of things running there. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's really good, and I've got it hooked into a UPS. In fact, I'm looking right now. It's taking 74 watts is what it's taking in and I've got it hooked to a UPS and the UPS automatically does the power down. What am I using for the UPS? I think I'm using Nut instead of the onboard stuff. I'm using Nut instead. But it's been great. I have all the. I have Plexstream, tailscale, the unassigned devices, intel GPU top. I'm looking at my plugins right now. So yeah, I go deep on it.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to ask you a slightly different question. Is there anything you wish Unraid could do that it doesn't, and are there any aspects of Unraid that you find challenging or maybe less favorable?
Speaker 2:I think they've answered a lot of my problems with the Unraid Connect, because that was always the problem is oh my God, if my server goes down and I'm out of the house, how can I bring it back up? And I you know, because then if it's not running, it's not running tail scale. So I think unraid connect solve a like I would say 75 to 85 of the not problems but some of the desires. And when I leave my house now I feel much more safe that if my wife calls me when I'm overseas that she's like, oh, what's going on and I can can tailscale in look at it.
Speaker 2:But to be honest with you, a lot of that worry is unfounded because I've never had a problem. That's the funny part about it. I was always worried about it, but I'm like, wait a minute, it's not really a problem. Like I've never had any corrupt issues. The only thing it did do once was when it it powered itself off. I it was my fault, it was user error. Most of the problems on the server are user error and I went out and I accidentally shut it off and it did a hard shutdown.
Speaker 1:I had to do the the parody dance for a few days, I mean it came back fine let me, I'm gonna switch gears again and I hope you like my pun gears, um, I love it. Um. So I'd like to do a little section, um in my podcast that I call quickfire questions. They're basically some short rapid fire questions, so we'll do that, then go on to kind of talking, some nerd and game talk, um. So my first question you kind of answered this already, but I'm going to ask you again. Anyway, halo or gears ofars of War? Halo Single or multiplayer.
Speaker 2:Oh, good question. It's kind of hard to describe because both serve very specific purposes. If you have kids, single player is great. Pause, go talk to your family, come back on pause. Multiplayer is great for the social elements. I got to say both PC or console gaming. Um, pc or console gaming, you know um, as somebody who's developed a bunch of consoles, they're. If you are, if you just want to play games and sit down and not have to deal with updates, go with pc or, excuse me, go with console. If you want to have, you know, collect all your millions of steam games you bought for 4.99 on sale. Obviously pc is the way to go yeah and vr or ar oh, um, I haven't seen a killer app for either yet, ed.
Speaker 2:That's the problem. I mean, I worked a little bit on hololens, which is ar, and I'm gonna hope I'm gonna be getting an apple vision pro in a few weeks. Um, I think ar, because it allows me at least to interact with the environment. Vr is so closed off. I've done v VR. I love VR, but for me, I just like the edge of AR just a hair better.
Speaker 1:And what did you think of Half-Life, alyx? Have you tried that?
Speaker 2:I haven't had a chance yet. I know some friends that worked on it, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
Speaker 1:I think you might change your mind with VR games. When you play that one maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's the beauty of some of the. I have a lot of friends that work at Valve on things like that, so I've been texting with them and I do need to check it out.
Speaker 1:And what scares you more in a horror game zombies or clowns Clowns? You know why I asked you that question.
Speaker 2:Because it's well-documented that I'm frightened of clowns.
Speaker 2:Now here's another little bit, ed, that a lot of people don't know. When I was in primary school high school as we call it in the US I tried out for clown school. Oh, really, yeah, it was. I'll never forget it. A friend of mine came and the Ringling Brothers of Barnum Bailey Circus, which was the big circus at that time, was in Hartford doing a. They had open auditions for clowns and a friend of mine came to me when I was in high school and said, hey, let's do it. And I was like okay, we're not going to school today, we're going to go play. Yeah, let's go. And I went out and tried out and it was. Obviously I wasn't chosen, thank God, because it was frightening and that was. I'm glad. I'm not a carny. I'll just say that Carnies are great.
Speaker 1:I have nothing against them, but that's not the lifestyle for me. Most relaxing activity playing games or watching movies.
Speaker 2:Probably playing games with my seven-year-old daughter and my wife as well. Because when I watch because I, you know, you started. My background is television, radio, film production and, of course, I worked in game production when I'm playing a game, I'm always dissecting it with like why are they doing that? Or when I'm watching a movie, I'm like why are they using that shot? Or what's going on here? So my, my professional mind is always going. So being able to sit at the table and play a nice board game with my family is is, to me, is much more relaxing, because it's just about us being present at the hands of the roll of the dice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what is your most anticipated game release currently?
Speaker 2:I think we've got. You know, we talked about GTA coming up. Xbox had a showcase which, for the first time in 15 years I wasn't involved with a couple of weeks ago. I saw some great games coming out of there, probably like a GTA. Or we saw the Gears of War, the Gears of War tees, which I know you saw. So I'm really looking forward to that, only because I like to see what my friends are doing and a lot of my friends work on those games. So it's fun there. You know I love, I just love.
Speaker 2:You know, and as we record this, I recently started at Unity. So I'm now the head director of community at Unity, which is amazing because, you know, unity is not just one platform, it's, I mean, it's not just one gaming platform, it's all the platforms. So I get to work on Xbox and Switch and PlayStation and AR and VR and Apple Vision Pro, whatever mobile. So I'm just so excited to be able to branch out and work on all those different things. So there's so many games out there that I'm excited about but are all different platforms.
Speaker 1:Wow, and same question, but for a TV show or movie, anything you're looking forward to.
Speaker 2:I wish I did, but I'm so disappointed with the quality of films right now. I've talked about you know it's. I've talked about this publicly, so this is not a surprise. I'm not a fan of superhero movies never have. You know. I didn't grow up with a comic book in my comic book store in my town, so that I don't have an emotional connect.
Speaker 2:They're fine, but I love a good story. Um, there's a movie that came out last year that won some won some awards, called the outsidersutsiders. I'm sorry, the Over, what was it? Holdovers. That was the Paul Giamatti film. Love that movie because it took place in an area that I grew up in. But I also just love a great story, ed, and so I'm really into that type of thing. I mean, I love Ted Lasso because of the story and the characters and hopefully we'll get another season of that, who knows. I just love going back and revisiting. I watch Breaking Bad all the time. I've got the DVD set because that's just masterful storytelling and acting. I was just watching one of the episodes last night. So I love anything that has a really great story. Effects to me, aren't? They don't do it for me because I know that it's not real. I want to see real human emotions, great acting and great storytelling. That's what I, that's what I yearn for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you there, larry. Um, anyway, my last quick fire question. It's one that I ask everyone. Um, it's my favorite one. If you could go um traveling in time, would you choose to go back in time or forward in time, so traveling?
Speaker 2:in time. Would you choose to go back in time or forward in time? That is an excellent question. You know, I would probably go back in time so that I could relive all the wonderful times with my family again and maybe make slight corrections to do things a little bit better.
Speaker 2:You know, the future is going to happen and the last thing I want my daughter to do is to grow up faster. So I just think I would like to go back in time, Not because I yearn for that, but because there's some things you know I could make better decisions perhaps. Yeah, I guess I think I would go back in time. Nice, I have a question for you, Ed. Sure, what's your favorite Star Wars movie? I see Han back there.
Speaker 1:My favorite Star Wars movie. I would say is a new hope.
Speaker 2:Um that did you see it originally in the theater I did yeah I did too yeah, so so you're one of the few people that I can talk to. I mean, there's certainly a lot of people, but there was something magical. I remember my mom bringing my sister and I to that and the crawl happens and then the destroyer comes in over the screen and you realize, oh my god, life has changed right in terms of the what you were seeing on screen. So I, for me, I completely agree, and I've had a chance to meet, uh, mark hamill and and chat with him frequently, both in in real life and on twitter. Um so, twitter, so that one will always hold a special place for me. So I'm with you on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I did like Rogue One because a friend of mine, Gary Widow who's a friend of mine, was one of the screenplay writers and one of the story writers, so the fact that I have some even remote kind of connection to the Star Wars universe makes me giddy as a nerd. Rogue One was an awesome out of all to.
Speaker 1:The star wars universe makes me giddy as a nerd rogue. One was an awesome. Out of all of the new movies of star wars, it's by far the best one, I mean come on, I mean, this is not a spoiler, I hope.
Speaker 2:But that last scene where vader in the hallway you're like because vader, you know, over the years was kind of like less and less scary. But that moment you're like, oh my god and I'm assuming you've watched andor- yeah, loved it loved it.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of andy circus's hair.
Speaker 2:I wish I had his hair I wish I had any hair yeah, I loved andor. I thought it was great. My concern with the universe, though and I tend to say this to a couple friends is I hope they just and I I think they've said this they're going to tap the brakes a little bit because there's just so much going on in the universe and they're they're reinventing stories sometimes. You know, there's some things that don't need backstories, gang, you know just let's enjoy it.
Speaker 1:So, um, we all know you're a huge tech enthusiast, yeah, um, I wonder, can you share some of your current tech interests, any kind of new gadgets or technology that have maybe caught your eye recently? Yeah, I mean I'm.
Speaker 2:We talked a little bit about what I'm running from home. So I love home automation stuff, you know. So I've got some digital locks on my house and trying to get things lined up based on presence. When I come home, the garage door opens and things like that. So I'm just starting to refine a lot of those areas and to me, ed, this is such a home automation is such a mess.
Speaker 2:We've got matter, we've got thread, we've got I mean you look, I mean sure I'm sure you're like me you look on your phone and you've got a whole folder, if not more, filled where it is. I mean, look at all those apps I have. That's, if not more, where it is. I mean, look at all those apps I have. There's a whole section of them. That drives me crazy. I wish we could somehow get it focused.
Speaker 2:So the home automation area is something that I'm interested in Bringing up my own Minecraft server, because my daughter will eventually be playing Minecraft. I want to get ready for that. But that's really what it's all about. But I'm more right now about simplifying. So how can I do? I need four screens. No, maybe I could buy with two. I mean, it's always great to have more, but it's also more opportunity for power consumption, things to go wrong, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I run a multi-platform environment. I've got right now I'm on Windows because that's where I do some of my gaming, in addition to my console back there. But I have two or three Macs in my house and I know you do the same thing, depending upon what the tool is and you and I are blessed because we can operate in multiple operating systems, sometimes even Linux. So it's great to be able to do that, but I'm finding the next thing to learn. It's great to be able to do that, but I'm just I'm finding the next thing to learn. And just when I joined Unity, I'm now starting to learn. You know, I've downloaded the engine. Can I build a little thing? And my daughter and I build a project where, you know, the character walks across the screen, turns and maybe the lights change, I don't know. Something simple just to get her to understand coding and for me to work to understand some of the product I'm working on.
Speaker 1:Something I didn't know is that it's actually used in the automotive industry and and in construction as well.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. Yeah, it's. It's fascinating, because that's one of the things that excites me about it is we you and I grew up with controllers or, this case, joysticks in our hand right.
Speaker 2:Just to go back a little bit. This is the classic, the new classic, atari, and we're familiar with operating in 3D spaces and the world at large. You know, the audience that's out there is growing, has grown up with gaming, so they are demanding 3D environments and experiences, whether it's in a car or elsewhere. That is like a game. They want that map, they want to go into the map and rotate the map and zoom in and zoom out, just do the things that we as gamers have been doing in games for 20 plus years.
Speaker 1:So now it's kind of coming into the mainstream and that's something I'm really excited about I think it is so cool as well, like, um, how they're kind of using it for construction to overlay what a building could look like on top of the existing. Well, it's not only that.
Speaker 2:Ed. But you're like, oh hey, what is it? Let's simulate the airflow and show the airflow in the building and oh, maybe we can move this vent over here. So there's things that can happen virtually and digitally before you even put down the first brick. So I love that part.
Speaker 1:I am so excited about that part yeah, it really is amazing anyway, so sorry to kind of go off the order of what we're speaking about things with, but, um, I just wanted to start with gaming. Um, has anything caught your eye lately? I read a tweet that you're playing ghost of Toshima on PC. Yes, I played it on PS4, but not PC. How are you finding?
Speaker 2:it. Oh, it is just delightful. I mean, there's something I even said this when I was at Xbox there's something about the Sony games, both visually and technically and emotionally, that really connect you, and they're masters in creating those single-player experiences. So I am just it's kind of like Red Dead for ninjas. I really, really like it. The game is beautiful, runs great on my PC and it's phenomenal. So I really love that. And I love the fact that when I play it, I've got 13 million people on xbox live that follow me. They see me playing it and they'll text me or they'll message me. Hey, how do you like it? Or what's this game all about? So I really, really, really enjoy it and you know.
Speaker 1:Talking of gaming again, I think I know the answer to this question from seeing the joystick a moment ago. But are you a retro gaming fan?
Speaker 2:I am. I am, you know, one of my, one of my, in fact. My daughter, who I talked about a little bit ago, is almost seven years old. She's never played a game and, you know, because we're focused on making her a great human first, and eventually she's going to come in here and we're going to I'm going to introduce her to well, not that this is what the atari joystick look like, but you know to the simple game of Pong and just kind of move on through there.
Speaker 2:I one of my guilty pleasures. I love Super Mario World. I could play that over and I've played it over and over over years, so I just love that game. So yeah, I am a retro gamer to a certain degree. Some games like that are timeless. There's other games that you go back and go oh, it didn't age real well but there's some games like that that just are picture perfect, both from a presentation standpoint. But also, now that I've worked in this games industry, I appreciate the wizards of Nintendo and how they did that in 100K or 800K or whatever. It was something ridiculous that they were able to squeeze out that power from that console it is amazing.
Speaker 1:And talking of super mario world, I saw I was watching some youtube video the other day of um where the actual mario kind of tune came from. It's kind of taken from some. I think it's from some 70s disco oh, it would be surprised like I. I was really. It just sounds so similar. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I'll have to go look for that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean there's, it's, it's and it's also, I mean the characters are great. Everything about that game is is is a snapshot of gaming perfection. I'll just say that engineering and perfection.
Speaker 1:So, beyond gaming me, is there any kind of specific technology trends that you're excited about right now?
Speaker 2:well, I mean the thing we have. We've. We're now an hour into this conversation. We haven't talked about ai no yeah, um, and I'm, you know, I worked on ai when I was at microsoft and understood, you know, in terms of what it was and what it's doing, and I'm curious to see what's going to happen. How do you? Do you use ai at all?
Speaker 1:right now. Um, yeah, sometimes, yeah, yeah, I like the google. Um what's it called notes lm? I find that useful. Chat gpt, obviously. Um, yeah, my wife gets annoyed with chat gpt. Um, she, she says a google search is easier well, it's interesting because a google search is easier.
Speaker 2:But then you've got all these like is this sponsored link or not sponsored? So for nerds like us, we just want to get to the facts, right, yeah, um, I, I, I. It's gonna be interesting to see what ai does. Um, you know, we're using it a little bit in the unity engine that we announced last year and I again, I don't know that much about it, I'm starting to learn about it. I use it like chat gpt and like the bing chat, uh, to create um thumbnails for custom playlists. I do on my spotify and it's just, you know, play make me a for this type and it just does something funny. So I'm not really a hardcore user yet. Uh, because even when it rewrites things as somebody who's been writing for a long time, it's I'm like that feels ai like so there's a certain.
Speaker 2:There's a certain thing about when it comes out as an AI that just in its raw feed needs to still have human eyes, work it and edit it.
Speaker 1:A lot of times I use it to help make. If you've looked at my videos, my thumbnails have changed a lot since AI have come out. Because I'll ask ChatGPT to help me make a thumbnail. Is I'll ask um chat gpt to help me make a thumbnail, but sometimes it will take a long time to try and explain exactly what I want and it will kind of do some very strange things and it has so much difficulty with words right like the actual words, it's, it's like oh yeah, it can't spell things at all no, you never want to have a word in the image.
Speaker 1:No, don't do that no, that that's kind of terrible anyway. Um. So life after microsoft, if we can talk about that um. As people know, you recently, um, departed from microsoft. Um, what prompted you to leave after such an impactful career over there?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you it was a couple things. Um, it was 23 years, ed, which when I tell people I work for the same company for 23 years, I'm like wait, what? They can't get their head around it. And I realized I love the company. I'm going to be serving on the executive board for the alumni microsoft alumni association, um, next month. And what I noticed was is I, I was starting to get, I was starting to calcify, I wanted to learn more and I love I worked some of the smartest people there. But the games industry is something I'll always love. But I wanted to go out and create more impact elsewhere.
Speaker 2:And when I you know, after I left Microsoft last year, my mom passed away and so I had to spend some time with family managing that. And that's when I saw Unity. I was like wait a minute, I love platforms. Unraid's a platform, unity is a platform, xbox was a platform. I love platform work because it's so empowering for partners and end users. So I just realized I was like you know what? Now's the time I was working on the Activision Blizzard King deal and that wasn't closing yet, it was still a few months away. I was like you know what? Now's the time I was working on the Activision Blizzard King deal and that wasn't closing yet. It was still a few months away. I was hoping it was going to close by the time I left, but it was like. You know what I said it's time. It's time for me to go on and try something new. I could be comfortable and sit back and rest for the rest of my career, but I didn't want to do that. I still have a few more laps left in me, ed.
Speaker 1:So you know, with your role as director of community at Unity, what does your role actually entail for people that don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, as you and I talk about this, it's like my first or second day, so it's you know I'm going to be managing and helping grow the community of users for Unity and making sure that their feedback gets to the right folks on the engineering side to help create the better product. What I did at Xbox the role that I defined at Xbox many years ago, but it's now across an entire platform and ecosystem, so I'm just excited to go in there and be able to work with. I love work, always love work with developers. They're such an amazing creative bunch, especially independent developers. Because they're such an amazing creative bunch especially independent developers because they're the ones that aren't make copy paste every year. You know they're making the same franchise, they're doing something different, they're innovating. A lot of them are innovating. So being able to work with them again is what really excites me, and being able to harness the community of the platform is something that really super excites me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so, larry, you left microsoft in. When was it september, or? Correct september september 23 so you've had like a little bit of time off. What have you been doing in between then and unity? Um, have you been kind of pursuing hobbies? Um, I did hear you took on a role with midwest games as an advisor to the communications team.
Speaker 2:Yep, Yep, I've been an advisor for some companies, public and private. I've spent a lot of time with my family, which I know it sounds like such a cop-out, but it's like you know. Being able to spend this beautiful time with my daughter and my wife has been amazing. So, really, I've just been learning. I've been doing a lot of learning. I'm reading a lot of books, I'm trying to become better and I like to do meditating, so I'm trying to. Meditating is really great for clearing the mind out, so doing things like that um, my tech projects I still like learning. I started. I started. I mean, this is this. May be this may be an incendiary comment, but I started learning a lot about bitcoin and blockchain.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah so I've been learning a lot about that um and what that means, because I've I think blockchain is really interesting um so that's, that's an area that I've been spending a lot of time with, and then I knew I was going to be coming to unity, so I started just preparing for that and, you know, making sure I understood the tools and the, the games that use that use, the use, the platform yeah, um.
Speaker 1:Do you have any upcoming events or appearances where fans can catch you, any special announcements or exciting news you want to share with us?
Speaker 2:first of all, thank that. First of all, follow me on x or twitter, whatever we're calling it now at major nelson or threads. I like to do a lot of things on threads. Now I'm not. I I've got some stuff I'm working on. I'm'm not ready to announce yet. A lot of it obviously will be with Unity and some of the work there, and the Unity is really for developers, but it's also a way for me to meet some fans and connect them with developers of their favorite games. So in September so as you and I are talking here, it's late June In September I'm excited to get back into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, congratulations on the new post and I hope this chapter of your life is going to be really fulfilling and very, very interesting. And just again, so listeners can stay connected with you through X Twitter threads, you have a website as well.
Speaker 2:Yep, you can find me at herbhrybco and that just kind of goes through some of the things I've been working on. You mentioned my, my major, my major Nelson, on Twitter and threads and Instagram. Those are the main places that I that I find. Of course, you'll find that Reddit as well as major Nelson.
Speaker 2:So for those of you on Reddit, you can find me there and you know it's just so exciting to be back in the game here and it was great to take because I worked for 20 plus 23 years straight, ed. I really didn't take any time off. So to be able to take a few months off there, which went by like that, it was really a dream and it was delightful. But I'm also excited to get back in it and interested to see where things are going. But I also want to thank you because, like I said at the beginning, things are going. But I also want to thank you because, like I said at the beginning, coming on your show and meeting you for the first time is just such a you're just you're so delightful and you're so lovely and the great work you do and your contributions to the community for helping people like me build the machine and understand what Unraid was all about. So, on behalf of everybody, I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 1:And on behalf of every gamer on the planet, thank you for your tireless commitment to improving the gaming world. We all really, really appreciate it. You know having you do that for us. Well, larry, I don't want to keep you any longer because I'm sure you're super busy, especially with your second day in the new job. I don't want to take up any more time. So thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show, larry. Thank you very, very much for your time.
Speaker 2:Well, I thank again. Thank you, and thank you for everything and your kind words. This conversation was, I mean. I can't believe we did it, for it feels like it was only five minutes, but it was over an hour. So I want to thank you and I want you also to keep up the great work and I'd love to come back on again, maybe sometime in the future.
Speaker 1:We'd love to have you, larry, we'd love to have you. And to all you guys listening, thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to stay connected with Larry through his social channels and keep an eye out for his exciting work at Unity Technologies. So until next time, stay nerdy and keep gaming.