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Simplifying Life Through Technology
SoundVision LLC is a lifestyle technology company located in Mooresville, North Carolina. We interview vendors, clients and staff with the purpose of demystifying the capabilties of new technologies for your home or business and sometimes highlighting local content that is important to our community.
Simplifying Life Through Technology
Jon Show: Cornelius Today
On this episode of “Simplifying Life Through Technology,” Mark and Andrew sit down with Jon Show, the new Owner and Editor of Cornelius Today.
When John Show moved to Cornelius eleven years ago, he never imagined he'd one day own the local newspaper. Yet his diverse background—running printing presses, covering sports for national publications, and managing PR for professional golf tournaments—uniquely prepared him for this unexpected role.
"I see myself as more of a curator," Show explains, describing his relationship with Cornelius Today, a 22-year-old publication he recently purchased from founder Dave Yoakum. This perspective reveals his deep respect for local journalism as a community asset rather than merely a business venture. In an era when metropolitan newspapers have drastically reduced their coverage of smaller communities, publications like Cornelius Today fill a critical information gap.
Show's journey reflects the changing landscape of local media. Growing up delivering community newspapers as a 12-year-old fostered his lifelong appreciation for local news. His path to ownership began with writing unpaid columns about his family adventures (including one about his daughter that would later come back to haunt him when she discovered it years later at school). When the opportunity arose to take the reins, he saw it as a chance to preserve something valuable.
The newspaper employs a hybrid approach to reach readers—arriving monthly in mailboxes throughout the 28031 zip code while maintaining a digital presence online. Show balances tradition with innovation, using AI tools to streamline administrative tasks while maintaining a commitment to human-written journalism. He's expanding coverage areas based on community feedback, recently adding high school sports and planning to introduce restaurant reviews.
Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the Lake Norman area, Cornelius Today offers the essential local coverage that major media outlets no longer provide. Visit CorneliusToday.com to read articles, learn about community events, or connect with the team behind this vital community resource.
To learn more about Cornelius Today:
https://www.corneliustoday.com/
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https://www.instagram.com/cornelius_today/
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Joining us in the podcast studio today we have John Cho, the new owner and editor of Cornelius Today. Welcome, john.
Speaker 2:You didn't tell me about the live studio audience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the crowd's going wild. We got sound drops. Do our favorite, eric. Sound drop. That's ridiculous and it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:Is that my wife?
Speaker 3:She from Philly. That's an off-the-air joke that we were just having. John, welcome. How are you today Doing great. How are you guys doing Very, very good? We're very excited to have you in here. You are the first newspaper editor, owner, print, media person that we've had, isn't that correct?
Speaker 2:that's correct, and we're excited to have you. Thank you. There's not a huge pool of us to pull from. I will say that.
Speaker 3:So it's not not as much as it used to be right, it's not negligence on your part. Well, we'll hear more about that as we go along. But uh, john, as is every single podcast, we like to start with you. Actually, every single podcast probably out there does the same thing, right. So tell us about you. Tell us about where you came from, how you got into this crazy business and how you are now the owner of Cornelius today.
Speaker 2:So I have, I guess, what you said. I've been in the Carolinas for 30 plus years. I grew up in the small towns in Minnesota and Massachusetts, came to college and went to Clemson in the nineties and then ran into a friend at a party after I graduated. He said he was moving to Charlotte. I had nowhere to live. I said sounds good to me. He called me a week later and said his aunt died, he had to go to San Diego and he'd be back in a week and I haven't seen him in 26 years.
Speaker 3:You followed this dude from Clemson. You knew him from Clemson.
Speaker 2:Good friend of mine, very good friend of mine, at Clemson. It was before cell phones, when this guy had to go back to San Diego because his aunt died. I don't know if he ever came back. I've never seen him, I've never heard from him and I've oh my goodness, if you're out there, we hope you're okay.
Speaker 2:But it was. You know. My parents moved down here at the same time. They retired down here in 1999. So I lived in Cornelius for a brief time with them, as quick as possible, while I looked for a place to live and a job. And then I moved down to Charlotte and lived in Charlotte for about 15 years. I met my wife, got married, had kids and we were ready to move to the Burbs with the kids. And the school is the lake, everything about Cornelius and the general East Lake South Lake area. So we moved here 11 years ago, love it, great place. Wish we didn't have to wait in traffic as much, but it's a great place to raise kids. It's a great place. Just it's an easy place to live.
Speaker 3:How about journalism? Were you a journalism major at Clemson, or how did that come about?
Speaker 2:So it's funny. Somebody asked me the other day my son's looking at colleges and asked what his majors ideas were, and I said you know, I'm 49 years old, about to turn 50 next month and I've had five different careers.
Speaker 2:So you know I majored in commercial printing. I moved here to work in commercial printing so I used to run printing presses. I was in sales for a little while before I completely changed careers and became a writer. I worked at a publication called Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily. I wrote for Sporting News covered all kinds of things. I did that for seven years.
Speaker 3:Is Sporting News still. I remember Sporting News really well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was on its death knell when I was around and I think it still exists as a website, but I don't know in any sort of journalism capacity. I think it's mostly links.
Speaker 3:Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2:So I did that for seven years. Then I started a PR firm and I worked in the sports industry, ran a lot of professional golf tournaments, LPGA and PGA Tour events, worked with a lot of different businesses to help promote their brands.
Speaker 3:Hold on, hold on. Let me stop you there. Back up. So you ran a company that did what with P, pga and lpga tournament so I was a publicist, basically for businesses.
Speaker 2:So I was in pr, communications and marketing. So you know, I my job was to promote professional golf, the tournaments that I worked for, but then I also my business was it was a communications business. So I worked with a lot of sports business companies because that was my media experiences. I worked with a lot of different pr people that really didn't understand the sports media landscape or the media landscape in general. So I did that for 16 years.
Speaker 3:You know I was. Is that? Was that? It's probably a naive question, I just don't know. Was that local here or were you talking about like all over the country?
Speaker 2:So I was local here but I really worked all over the country. I mean, the sports industry is. It's kind of a sneaky big industry in Charlotte that people aren't really aware of. You know, besides the teams, it's home to NASCAR and, like 180 different other agencies, support companies, race teams. That's a huge industry.
Speaker 3:So you did, cause you were talking about golf just a minute ago, but then you threw a NASCAR so it was all encompassing Panthers, Hornets, NASCAR, golf, like whatever. Didn't didn't matter, it was professional sports professional college.
Speaker 2:You know I did a little bit of Olympics. I worked with a Bob Sletter one year during the Olympics. So just, I mean, it was all kinds of a crazy. I loved it because you know, my wife uh, she works, she's very busy, she's got a great job and you know, when I decided I didn't want to be a reporter anymore, it was basically, if you know, if I went and got a job like she had, then we were going. I love doing, I did it for 16 years.
Speaker 2:You know, after COVID things changed a lot. It was, you know, you didn't travel as much. Uh, you know, the events weren't as much fun. It was great crew of people that I worked with I go, a whole bunch of different crews. You know, some of the greatest people I've ever worked with in my life. But you know I was going to be traveling three, eight weeks upwards of sometimes depending on what the schedule looked like, and I didn't want to miss my kids. They were, you know, at the time they're eighth and eighth grade and 11th grade now and I think the time they were probably in the seventh grade and third grade, something like that, and I didn't want to be gone. You know one two months out of the year. So you know I've been for the last couple of years just trying to figure out, you know still doing the same, trying to figure out what that act for is.
Speaker 3:So, andrew, here we go off the rails. Tangent, let's do it already. You mentioned bobsled, uh. Did you know actually you may not know this, andrew, fun fact did you know that one of our customers, who has also been a podcast guest, his company, which is right here, uh, designed the olymp Olympic bobsled and luge? Maybe not the luge, it was bobsled and skeleton. I know it's the bobsled, but did you know that?
Speaker 1:What's the name of the company. I don't know, is it Debo.
Speaker 3:It is Debo Tech. Hello, hans hey.
Speaker 1:Hans.
Speaker 2:So, my brother-in-law. So I've had three brothers-in-law who were USA bobsledders. One his name is Chris.
Speaker 3:You've got three brother-in-laws that were bobsledders for the US Olympic team.
Speaker 2:Well, they all grew up in Salt Lake City and bobsled. Besides the driver, what they're really looking for are guys that are huge and fast. That's looking for are guys that are huge and fast, and that's right. That's right. Limited body type, so that start is so incredibly important, you know so, uh, my brother-in-law was, uh, they're all super cool guys, but yeah, the one that won, he won a. He placed last place in the 2010 olympics in vancouver. We all went up there for like 10 days.
Speaker 2:He placed last place, last place, he flipped the sled on his first run. Uh, I missed it because I was snowboarding. My mother-in-law, forgot the ticket.
Speaker 2:So I gave him my tickets. I went snowboarding because I was excited for day two and then he wrecked. And I'm not, I don't even think he raced day two, if I recall correctly. But then he came back four years later and last run I think it was the last event of that olympics uh, they won, uh, a what was at the time a bronze medal and it was elevated to silver after, I believe the r, the Russians or the Germans were accused of doping. So he went from a bronze to a silver medal winner.
Speaker 3:Wow, you know, I've always wondered about that too, and I know we're way off topic, we're coming back here in a second. But when you win in this case it was a bronze medal and then there's something happens, and so now you get elevated to the silver medal. Two questions One would be do you get the silver metal? And two would be do you have to give back the bronze medal because someone else is going to win the bronze medal at that point?
Speaker 2:yeah, I will say you're, you definitely get the silver. They sent it to you. I don't remember if he kept the bronze or not. Uh, you know I'm a pretty ethical guy. I told him there's no way I would ship that thing back like may come to come find me and take this metal away from me, like that's's the one they handed you. Yeah, you know it was um yeah, exactly, his name is Chris vote.
Speaker 2:It's F O G T. And if you, if you want to Google his, there's a story written by I think it was Seth Wickersham that wasn't Seth uh in ESPNcom at the time of the Olympics and it's. It's an amazing story. It's all about Chris and kind of his journey and going from last place to third place in the Olympics and you know him calling his wife at the time to tell her that he had won. I mean, it was just it was really cool for all of us to watch.
Speaker 3:So no disrespect to John Candy, but was Chris pissed that Cool Runnings came out like pre him Cause I could have been him?
Speaker 2:It's funny Cause, like the bobsledders, like they get that joke all the time. It's like you know, I made it and I was like, ah, Cool Runnings.
Speaker 3:And he's like, ah, we hear that joke so much, chris, sorry, because there's actually not a lot of content or bobsled jokes that the normal human can go with, so you're kind of resigned to Cool Runnings.
Speaker 2:To give Chris a little plug, he just started a company called the Podium Athlete that does really great podcasts with athletes and kind of what it takes to be a professional collegiate athlete.
Speaker 3:Oh, that is so cool. So cool, all right. Well, let's get back to you, and we can have Chris anytime, but we got John today.
Speaker 1:Yes, we want to know about John.
Speaker 2:I can derail a conversation very easily.
Speaker 3:I see that. I see that so kind of talk about the transition from writing to ownership, because you now own, like what was the thought process, why'd you do that? And kind of, how does that work?
Speaker 2:So I grew up, my first job as a 12-year-old was delivering a community newspaper. I've always lived in small communities. I love small to mid-sized towns and I've always been a reader I just love. I've been a voracious consumer of news my entire life I mean, even when I was kind of dorky when you were a kid but I just love reading newspapers. You know, when I moved here I'd written a little bit, you know. So I had two small kids when we moved here and I'd written a little bit for this publication or for this website called the Charlotte Agenda, which is now Axios. And you know the guy, ted Williams, is another awesome dude. He's got a great podcast called tiny money and he and he batted 400 for the.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, but he, you know, he just asked me. He's like do you want to write a column? Uh, you know it's, we can't pay you. And I was like I don't care, Like I just like to write. And my first kid, kid number one, the second one, kid number two, Hopefully they have actual names, they do. Yeah, but it was funny because then my daughter, about three years ago, came home from the bus and she gets off the bus and she goes Daddy, did you write a story on the internet about me pooping on a twisty slide? And I started dying laughing and I just went honey.
Speaker 2:I am so sorry. It never dawned on me that you'd actually read that story.
Speaker 1:It's going to come back to you years later.
Speaker 2:So you know I. So I did that for a couple of years. And then when I moved to the lake, uh, same deal. The guy named Dave Yoakum, who started the newspaper 22 years ago, just kind of reached out. He'd read something that I read about. It was 72 hours in Lake, where they go to Istanbul.
Speaker 2:I wrote about throwing my kids in the pool and drinking beer on weekends with dads Very similar, yeah. So he asked me if I wanted to write something and I said yeah, absolutely I'd love to. Um, I think his idea was. I think he said he wanted a hip restaurant column and I was like, well, I don't need out, I got two little kids, Um, so I ended up writing a call about, you know, my kids, and it just kind of evolved over the years. My son I call Future man, which was originally actually Chris's nickname, the Olympian. My daughter I call the Blonde Bomber. She received that nickname by my mom's friend, Ed, that lived next door to her, because she is blonde and she is a human bomber and a Yankees fan and yeah.
Speaker 2:And then my wife. I don't even remember how we came up with this, but I call her the mother of dragons.
Speaker 1:All right. Mother of dragons.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you went from not being paid to write this column to owning the paper. I don't know that we got to the owning part. How did that work?
Speaker 2:So you know Dave is him and his wife did an amazing job kind of creating this newspaper from scratch 22 years ago. It, you know it, serves the community. When it started 22 years ago, the observer and all these other media outlets were really robust. I mean they had people that had. They had a Lake Norman, I don't they didn't have a bureau, but they had somebody that covered the area and as kind of the you know the larger Metro, not just here, it's everywhere. There's the larger Metro and news groups have kind of shrunk over the years. There's really just a glut for local news, like if you live here, you need to know who to vote for. You know what projects are the town considering?
Speaker 3:you know, actually that's a really let me interrupt you for just like that's a really cool from a outsider's perspective. The whole we were just talking offline about how, you know, writing and newspapers and stuff has really started to go away with or has gone away with a lot of cases because of the internet, but the local stuff seems to be more prevalent. I don't know if it's just that I've noticed it more or if it's kind of gravitated that way. Naturally, is that kind of what you're talking about?
Speaker 2:It is, and it's just it's kind of been that way because those large media companies that used to cover small areas, they would cover them. And now my running joke is that unless there's an algae bloom in the lake or somebody locks a dog in a car, nobody's coming up here to cover it. You know the news. The news stations don't have the cameras and the staff to send people up here outside of things that are highway crashes that shut down 77. So because of that, you know there needs to be something for people. And listen, people have to opt into being educated, right? I mean it's you, can't you?
Speaker 3:can't shout.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not the twenties, you're not standing on the news, on the on the corner yelling extra, extra. But you know, the fact is is that when you live in a place that people care about, they tend to want to opt into the news. They want to be educated, they want to know what's going on. Um, you know they want to know how to lead a maybe not a better life, but a more informed life. You know, like they want to know that the best pizza in town is, you know the restaurant, whatever, and you know they want to know those things. And we're lucky too in that we get a lot of transplants here. There's a lot of people moving. Oh yeah, Sure, Don't know a lot about the area, so you know, it's, it's, it's super fun to me. Like I'm not, I'm not a gossiper at all, Like I'm not a uh, you know, I don't like talking about, I don't like being in the know, necessarily, Um, but I just love the idea of sharing things and sharing information and making people more educated on where they live.
Speaker 3:So our listeners are astute listeners have have realized that we still haven't gotten to the ownership thing yet, so I'm gonna keep plugging it. John, living up to his his saying that he can derail a conversation is doing a heck of a job, but I'm I'm working on it. So let's get back to the ownership thing so the ownership thing.
Speaker 2:So dave, uh, you know, dave's, he's not retiring, he won't, let me say, retire, but you know he's been doing it for 22 years, him, him and his wife. His wife's got a another job and he just, you know, he got to the point where he kind of was ready to hand it off, um, and he wanted, you know, to his credit, he, I own the newspaper, I bought it, um, you know, I see myself as more of a curator of it.
Speaker 3:I was just going to use that word.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean it's, it's a community access asset they get absolutely is like it's a better place to live If we have a newspaper and a media group that covers where we live and informs people. You know, so I'm not going to work until I'm 80 years old. Um, you know, but so at some point I kind of, you know, I I'll hand this off to somebody else that I hope is as passionate about where we live and is passionate about the news and storytelling. I mean it's, I kind of consider myself a placeholder for this thing.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, in the timeline of history, so we talked about, or you mentioned that uh somebody, either whether they move to Cornelius or they live there and they want to know where a restaurant is, or they want to know where, uh, you know a specific thing, uh, the local community schools or whatnot. What about do you address technology, kind of bringing it back to what sound vision does? Do you address technology in the paper at all? I, I actually do not know so is that something that that is, I don't know, uh of interest to your?
Speaker 2:it totally is like I get super, like I love people that are really passionate about things. I loved kids that are super passionate like I love. You know, I'm a sports guy.
Speaker 2:My kids are sports kids but, like the kids that get super geeked out on band or theater or whatever you know. I just I love people to get geeked out on things. Um, I think I told you guys earlier, when it comes to tech, I have champagne dreams on a beer budget, but so anything that I think is interesting is stuff that we're going to get into. I mean, we're limited by space. Right, you've got 32 pages. You've got to have a mix of content and advertising. I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 2:I was in a we're going to have a story on this in a couple months. I was in this very high-tech innovation lab in cornelius. I mean, these guys are uber engineers. They're explaining stuff that I will never understand. Like, even if I had chat gpt explaining it to me, I still wouldn't understand what it was. And then I walk around a corner and there's this piece of plastic that's got some little drops coming, droppers coming down from, and I said what's that? And he said it's a. It's a. It's a device to feed chickens and to give water to chickens. It was just some plan. I said what, amid all of this, how is he? He's like, listen, these people came to us. They live in Davidson, they needed some help. They had a prototype, they had an idea, so we sat down and we created this. It's like an eight station water dripper for chickens and you think about? It's not technology, but these guys with you know uber-techno brains just sat down and they're like you know, we could design a rocket, but today we're working on a plastic chicken feeder.
Speaker 3:All right, all right. Well, there's an innovative that is innovative. Um, do you ever feature? Do you do anything like uh? Or have you thought about doing anything like uh? A man caves, kind of comes to my mind, but you could be any derivative, something like that, is that? Well, actually, let me phrase it this way Does your readership is? Is readership board? Yep, readership is okay, good, Uh. Does your readership like actually reach out and say, hey, we wish you had more of this.
Speaker 2:They do, which is part of what I love about it, right, because I'm brand new. I mean, I've been reading the newspaper for the 11 years that I've lived in Cornelius, but everybody else reads it and everybody's got an opinion. Is passionate? Yeah, definitely. So, you know I I had, you know, a bunch of people reach out, you know, with all kinds of different ideas and it's funny because every idea I hear not all of them, there's some bad ones out there but like a lot of the ideas I hear I'm like man, that's great, we should do that. But then and I put it on a piece of paper, you know, sports is one that we added immediately. You know my kids are going to, are either in high school or will attend high school. I love high school sports, that's one that we added immediately.
Speaker 2:Restaurant coverage is something that we're going to start doing, because we haven't done it typically in the past, other than brand new restaurant openings. So you know, I've got all these ideas and all these things that I want to do, but I also have to run the business Right.
Speaker 2:So like you know, the first two weeks of this, you know I, I was scheduling one hour per day to bang my head against the wall because of QuickBooks. Like you know, it's just all of the stuff. You know my background, you know my background, really feeds into this. I was in sales, I was in, I worked in printing, I was a journalist, you know, like I was a publicist, like I did all this stuff.
Speaker 3:But in none of those. In none of those examples were you running the business.
Speaker 2:I wasn't running the business. Even the business that I ran before was a consultancy, so it wasn't heavy invoicing, you know, it wasn't a ton of accounting. And you know I gotta I gotta get used to sitting down, you know, and in invoicing and cleaning up you know the books and coding things correctly, and that is not it's. I wouldn't say it's not a strong suit, because I can usually figure stuff out, but it is not a passion of mine.
Speaker 3:We talk about this this is another kind of tangent we talk about this a lot where, uh, there's a book called the E-Myth, uh, by a guy named Michael Gerber Uh, great, great read and it's basically talking about the difference of working on the business and in the business, and that in the business, in the weeds every day, uh, where you have to do things that you're not passionate about. You got into the business because you are passionate about this thing and in your case it's journalism and the paper but, but you have to do other things, like QuickBooks and invoicing, that you're not passionate about.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, unfortunately for me, the one thing that I'm least interested is the only thing that could get me arrested and put in jail at some point if I do it incorrectly right. You know, congratulations.
Speaker 3:Some of the sometimes misquotes and things can get a little crazy too, right.
Speaker 2:I got insurance for that. I got insurance. They don't make insurance for not paying your taxes correctly. No, they do not.
Speaker 3:No, they do not. So you actually quickly mentioned chat, uh, gpt, uh, a little bit, and I would be remiss if I didn't bring up just ai or llms, large language models. I can't say that real quick mouthful, that's a tough one, uh. But how much in your business is that a thing? Because that's probably in our business. It's huge, by the way. It is really really. We use it a ton now for all kinds of different things. I'm curious about your business.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you, and then I'm going to answer how much time a day? Do you think, let's say, how much time a week? Do you think I would use ChatGPT as a print newspaper owner?
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're asking me, I would say 98% of your time.
Speaker 2:Less than that. You went the other direction. I thought you were going to say that much. I use it every day, but if you look at the process of what we do is we put out a daily newsletter and that has to be, in my opinion, has to be written by a human being, it has to be concepted by a human being, that have to be written by human beings. There's, you know, there's some places that write ai generated articles. We don't do not do that, never will. Um, however, you know, as a small staff, it's my editor every story I was thinking it's dropped into chat gpt and I'm not.
Speaker 2:You know your listeners probably aren't that aware, but there's something called ap style, which is the style that newspapers are written in. It's a certain grammar, a style of writing. I am not an AP style guy, I was a writer. I was never an editor, so I don't know how to edit an AP style, but ChatGPT does in about 30 seconds.
Speaker 2:And not even that, probably 10 seconds every story that you write. So I use it for that. We do real estate listings that were previously manually typed in off of the county records of deeds. I go into Redfin, I download 30 days of sales, I drop that file in ChatGPT and say format it to look like that and what would have taken me probably 10 to 15 hours a month takes me about eight minutes, yep.
Speaker 3:So again, not here. Tangent three are you using? So very, very, very familiar with ChatGPT 5.0? Are you familiar with perplexity? And are you familiar with whisper flow?
Speaker 2:I'm not I, so I am a newbie. I mean, I am brand chat. Gpt up until two months was nothing more than a better version of a google search for me. Um, until I've been able to kind of discover the workflow, uh, the workflow time that it's. It's safe, sure it is. It's incredible. Uh, you know, if you're trying to fact check on something now again, it's safe, it is. It's incredible. You know, if you're trying to fact check on something now again, it's not a hundred percent accurate. It makes a lot of mistakes. I used to use it to make I used to run an adult soccer league and I used to try to use it to make schedules and it would screw up the schedule. I mean it would schedule one team, two teams, to play each other four times. Then I'd say, you know, the master can be. I don't know if everybody's seen tron, but the master computer is not there yet yeah so for both you and and our listeners.
Speaker 3:So perplexity, uh is, imagine if chat and google had a baby. So perplexity gives you all the sources. Uh, it's much better for uh, actually like for fact checking. Uh, really, really good, check, check that out. There's a, there's a free version and there's, you know, paid version, but the free version works great. Um, and then I just found this one out, but this is kind of cool whisper flow.
Speaker 3:Whisper flow is a ai that allows you to basically you hold a button on on any. It works on any device. It's better on a computer than a phone. But hold, hold a button on any. It works on any device. It's better on a computer than a phone. But hold down a button and you just talk. So, instead of typing, you just talk, but instead of like Siri or you know whatever, it doesn't just translate what you say. While you're holding the button down, nothing happens. What it's doing is it's actually sending your words out to an LLM and then it's like processing it and when you pick up your finger, within like two seconds it comes back and it actually looks not only for what you said but your meaning behind it. So it's really cool. It'll format stuff. It'll start to learn how to how you like things formatted and very, very cool, so that's a good one to check out.
Speaker 2:Just make things faster I do the ai stuff. I love using it. Does you know I was? I love tron. The first tron as a kid, and I mean the first. They started talking about ai, this in its current form, when it came out a couple years ago and it was all I could think of was master computer taking over the world. I was like how in the world. You know how are we? How are we recreating tron and lawnmower man and thinking this is going to turn out any better than it did before?
Speaker 3:so okay. So we, we've touched on a lot of technology stuff um, with you too. So, uh, you were, you were saying you geek out on some of the things we do. Just this is off script here. But what, uh, what is your? What do you see in the world of technology that you geek out on? Like, what have you seen out there that that you think is really cool?
Speaker 2:I mean it's funny because I this is not planned and I'm not doing this on purpose. I love tech when it comes to audio video, like I love that. The first time I went into somebody's theater room I was like 24 years old and I was like this is my dream, like I just want to make enough money to have a theater room. Like they're so cool to me, you know, and you sit down with the iPad and you're turning it, you know you're putting the curtains up and you're dimming the lights, like I just I love, but again, champagne dreams, bush light budget.
Speaker 2:Uh you know I love all of that. It's just it's super cool to me. The man cave stuff, I mean it's just I love going in and just these people who have spent you know some money to put together a very high end you know audio visual listening watching experience, I just think is always super cool.
Speaker 3:Do you do any, uh any automation at home DIY stuff, whether it's? You know? It could be a doorbell, it could be a voice activated thing, it could be anything. You said you tinker, uh, offline you were. You were talking about tinkering and putting together couches and stuff, but is there anything? Do you like to play with that kind of stuff too?
Speaker 2:So I would love to. That's one of those things that, like I, just I I'm never going to get there, but I do a little bit like we've got. You know, I got tired of turning on the lights every night at six o'clock and then leaving them on all night long, so I got smart outlets that all the lamps are plugged in so now our entire house turns on and off. It confused my wife, I think, for the first couple of weeks, but now she's down with it. But I'm not man.
Speaker 2:I feel like everybody's got something that they're kind of super into, they love reading about but they don't actually implement in their own lives. And for me, a lot of that is some of the technology stuff. We that is some of the technology stuff. Like we've got smart outlets, but you know we don't have a smart doorbell. I don't have security cameras. Um, you know, I don't. We we switched to. You know I was actually one of the first people I knew that got rid of cable. Uh, we got rid of cable probably 11 years ago. We dropped ours and got Roku boxes. Um, you know, I have a Roku box. I travel a ton with my kids for sports, I fish a ton, so we get a lot of Airbnbs and I have a Roku travel bag that comes with me everywhere because I do not want to deal with somebody else's TV and have to log into all their stuff, like I.
Speaker 2:Just you know. So it's implemented in my life, but it's not large scale. I wish it was much larger scale than it is.
Speaker 3:That was funny. I was in. I was just in a hotel last couple of nights and, uh, I was looking to stream my phone to the hotel.
Speaker 2:TV.
Speaker 3:And it'll look. It'll look on the uh, on the wifi, and one of the things I saw on the wifi obviously in a neighboring room, was a Roku travel bag.
Speaker 2:Oh, no way no no, no, literally.
Speaker 3:I saw that and I'm thinking, oh, that's, that is funny.
Speaker 2:It's funny. So my son I forgot I, we, he plays lacrosse and so he travels a bunch um this past or travel a bunch this past summer and I walked in, we were stuck in a hotel, so I think it was in Delaware for like six days and we forgot the Roku. And the TV situation was not like there wasn't streaming, it was like you know, standard def cable. And somehow he actually hacked into and he's not a tech kid either, I mean, he is because he's 16, but like somehow he hacked into the TV and actually like restarted something so that he could remove the filter that doesn't let you stream.
Speaker 3:Love it I don't know. It was. What is your son's name?
Speaker 2:Cooper Cooper. Cooper don't do that, Cooper. No, no, no, Don't tell him. It was amazing. We got to watch TV all week long. Otherwise we'd have been stuck watching Golf Channel and Standard Def for four hours.
Speaker 3:Good we'd have been stuck watching Golf Channel and Standard Def for four hours. Good for you, Cooper. When you get of age, come and apply.
Speaker 2:Bend the law, don't break it.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right. Well, andrew, you want to ask some fun questions of.
Speaker 1:John, absolutely so, john. With all of our listeners, we'd like to end on a music take. So we always like to ask all of our guests who is your favorite band artist, it's favorite concert, what's your jam?
Speaker 2:oh man, I like weird music. Um, I always have like I listen to alternative stuff in the early to mid 90s, you know, when it before it got super huge. Now I'm big into like you're gonna put me on the spot and I don't want my phone on me. I'm not gonna remember a single name of anybody. I have a playlist that I created like eight years ago that my buddy and I were going to Atlanta for a wedding. It's called ATL. Uh, he flew in from Massachusetts. We're going to a wedding playlist on Spotify and that's all I've listened to for eight years. I mean, it's now for eight years.
Speaker 3:30 songs. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:Now it's, it's probably at like three or 400 songs.
Speaker 1:Oh, you've added yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's you know, I tell it to me when I put it on. I'm like it's you know. People say like hotel room mix, it's give us a couple people on there.
Speaker 3:You see, you can't remember any or every, but can you remember any?
Speaker 2:it's a lot of like alternative country. Uh, tyler childers is one yeah sure uh zach bryan a little bit, not a ton. Uh chris stapleton or some of that love, chris stapleton um, just, it's just good music to listen to and drive down the road.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very, very cool. I was actually uh in an uber um in denver going from the airport to the hotel, and if anybody's traveled to denver, you know that the airport's out way out in the middle of nowhere and the guy was uh listening to what's it called. It's techno, but what's it called now? What's the thing that's super popular, where the like the djs or yeah, yeah, yeah, like what nate was talking about yeah, what is that? What is it actually? What's the acronym mean?
Speaker 3:um, so we are saying electronic dance music, but it may be like okay, different term close enough, but basically it's just this beat and they're every once in a while somebody go or something like that. But it's basically just a beat and the entire way and he's got it on and it and I'm like it's one song for like 45 minutes or something like. Maybe it changed. I just didn't know. I'm going, man, this is how they're going to brainwash us, because I don't like I don't know what you can do other than just like completely zone out during that it was weird.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what happens with a lot of those, uh yeah you can't do that with chris stapleton no, the other one that's come back. So my son uh, he has his first car is my wife's wife's old, old 2009 Honda CRV. We gave it to my dad and then he gave it back. So that's my son's car that he decided to immediately start working on. He blacked out the rims and a bunch of other stuff. They bought a woofer to put in the back. He put a muffler on it that now sounds like it needs a muffler.
Speaker 3:He may have taken the muffler off and straight piped it.
Speaker 2:I'm with you, cooper, but he did so. He pulled up the other day and the music blaring in his car and he gets out and I go, what are you listening to? And he's like it's house music. You ever heard of it. And I go, oh man, like yes, I've heard of house music.
Speaker 3:We listened to it in the late 90s in college.
Speaker 2:Like that's back, so have you. Do you go to any concerts? Are you a concert person or no? Uh, the last concert I went to was at the uh outdoor I don't know what it's called now.
Speaker 3:Verizon used to be yes, is it still?
Speaker 2:I think it's still verizon pnc yeah, I think it's pnc now it's the last concert I went to live outdoors was dave matthews band in august of 1999. Yeah, but it was 1 billion degrees outside. It took us like three hours to get out of the parking lot and in that moment I turned to my two friends and I go. I will never go to another outdoor concert, ever again. And I 26 years I have.
Speaker 3:I've stuck to that mantra Well, that's a good last one to go to. Dave Matthews rocks yeah, that's cool. Well, this has been very, very fun. We appreciate uh, we appreciate your time, john. We appreciate what you do for the community Absolutely, and we would be remiss if we don't ask, like, how do people get in touch with you, the publication, how do they subscribe and that kind of thing? How does that all work?
Speaker 2:So a couple different ways. If you live in 28031 zip code, you receive the newspaper in the mail. It comes every single month around. Receive the newspaper in the mail. It comes every single month around the first or second of the month. It drops in your mailbox. The website is Cornelius todaycom. We've got contact information on there. If you're interested in advertising, we always like advertising Absolutely. Thank you very much and I totally lost my train of thought. No, it's fine, you asked about. You asked about contacting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like. So how? People saying like, if they want to submit something, or say they want to say something.
Speaker 2:The other thing that we just did. I've had a few people that I met in the community the last couple months that have said you know, I'd love to read the newspaper, but I don't live in Cornelius, how do I read it? Well, we do have the website.
Speaker 3:no-transcript show notes, as always, correct, andrew. Absolutely awesome, john. Thank you very, very much been super fun, really cool interview absolutely thanks guys.
Speaker 2:I appreciate I love doing these things. I mean, it's always super fun to sit down and talk to people that are passionate about things. I know you guys are about your company and what you do here, so it's a. You know I said it before I love people that are super passionate about the things that they're into. So thank you, all right.
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