to be great today. Happy birthday, President Trump.

I think there was a little extra simultaneity in that one. Makes the sipping so good.

Well, let's see what we've got going. I almost didn't have a show here because I had, again, major computer failure. Do you remember when Apple was accused of slowing down their phones to make you think you needed a new one? And then people were thinking, ah, that can't be a real thing. And then we found out it was a real thing and they admitted it. Well, I've got a desktop Macintosh that suddenly tells me I don't have the right operating system when it's the new one. It tells me I don't have application memory, which I do. It tells me I don't have room on my hard disk, which I do, lots of it. Now anyway, it's basically crashing all of my applications all the time.

So I said to myself, well, I'm going to go to the Apple Store because I don't get out much since the pandemic. I don't have a ton of human activity outside the house. So I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go see what it's like to be with people, like actually go to a store where there are human beings in the same room and stuff. Because I don't really do that. It's been so long since I've been in a store. I guess I've done grocery shopping, but that's about it.

So I go to the Apple Store and what I was expecting, of course, is Apple's usual blue star amazing service because their service is so good that in the Apple Store they literally call the job description of the people who work there "genius." It actually says genius right on the business card. Literally, that's just the name of the job. They're called geniuses. And I remember the first time I went to an Apple Store several years ago and I remember they were called geniuses and I thought to myself, well, they're not going to be geniuses. Watch this. It's just going to be like every other employee. They won't be able to know how to do anything. And then it turns out they were really, really smart and they could solve anything. Every time I went in they had immediate solutions. So they were in fact geniuses. I mean, way smarter than the average person anyway. So that's the experience I expected when I went there yesterday.

So I go in there and sure enough I'm greeted at the door by sort of a host-type person with a phone who's going to put me in and make sure that somebody comes and helps me right away. And I'm like, this is what I remember. Yeah, this is good stuff. So she tells me to go wait by the computer I wanted to buy because I literally walked in and she said, can I help you? And I said, yes, I'd like to buy your finest computer. Now I meant that literally because I don't like to mess around. I just want to know what's your one that has the best memory and the fastest processor. Okay, wrap it up. That's what I planned to do because when you do it professionally you don't really buy the second best computer. Computer is nothing really to decide because you know you're going to appreciate every little bit of extra power it has.

So she goes, stand by the computer. So she goes, well, you can, while you're here, you can compare this one to this other one. Now already she's not understanding my request. I said show me your finest computer. That's very different from show me some computers of which I can spend some time comparing. No, not really interested in the second best computer. So already they're kind of not understanding the mission. No, only the best computer. It's the only reason I'm here.

So I wait by the computer, which seemed like a little longer than they usually make you wait, especially since there were a whole bunch of geniuses wandering around not helping any people but often just talking to themselves in little groups. Now that was the first thing that caught my attention. I thought, huh, there's a group of three of them over there doing nothing for customers when I'm standing here with my finger on my ass. But eventually a genius did show up and the genius showed up wearing an N95 COVID mask in 2024 in the summer. And I said to myself, I've got a bad feeling about this genius. There's something this genius is signaling that says it's different from the other geniuses. It could be the COVID mask in 2024.

And so the COVID mask g