Hi, my name is David Pankratz. I'm the Technical Production Assistant here at Linus Media Group.
Today, we're doing a Meet the Team and you get to meet me.
Yeah, and you're also building a PC. Yeah, Sammy decided to take advantage of this and get me to case swap all of the hardware over here from his PC into a new case.
I wanted the Christmas party and I hate working with a Y70, so I'm making you do it.
You're going from a Y60 to a Y70. It's basically the same case.
Yeah, and that's why I know it's a painty ass, so I want to move it.
Is it bigger than mine? Oh, yeah. Oh, it looks a lot bigger.
Y70 is bigger than 60. Damn. Well, let me just figure out how to get the panels off here first and then we can start.
There we go. That's it.
There's one more. Ry is also shooting his Creative Sponsor video on the background, so if you hear that, guys, that's him.
We do have the riser over here, so we can use this guy.
We've got some bags of mystery parts. We'll find out what those are for later.
Really quick from your side, we have no fans in this right now.
We've only got the three fans for the AIO. Do you want me to move anything more?
Isn't there more fans on my other case? There are three more.
It will take a bit of time to get them out and get them going.
I don't mind doing it. It's just going to take some time. That's all.
We can answer a question while I'm taking fans out.
So what do you do at the company? What do I do at the company? I do all sorts of stuff.
It is everything from building PCs for projects to some kind of project management,
keeping things going and making sure that projects don't stall out,
to coordinating with outside parties, doing research for projects,
making sure that the writers are up to speed on topics
when I have been the one doing the legwork for those projects.
So you're kind of like a pillar of support.
Yeah. Been involved in the tech industry for a long time
and have a lot of different unique experiences.
That kind of leads to my second generic question of what are your experiences prior to LMG?
I was at the same company actually for close to 16 years.
Oh, wow. We were doing business to business IT support.
So we would be essentially the IT department for small businesses
that didn't have their own IT guy or their own IT department.
That's where you worked with Eli, right? Yeah.
When I started there, the company was actually two, three people.
Oh, wow. Me and a buddy from high school and then another co-worker
from another previous job. And then the company grew to about 16, 17 people
during the time that I was there. I went from a technical role doing tech work,
going to client sites, designing networks, doing server installs,
kind of migrating servers, all that type of stuff, to service management.
So I was in charge of the technical team
and eventually moved up to a general management kind of operations position
where I was running the day-to-day operations for the company,
kind of involved in all facets. Before that, I had a bit of experience in a mechanic shop as an apprentice
and I also did a little bit of time at a small local computer store
called Mike's Computer Shop. That's about it.
Now, Sammy, a question for you. Yeah. Do you want the fans to look good or do you want it to function better?
What's the difference? Do I stick the fans this way and you have the ugly cage at the back?
Functional form. Okay. You took my PC apart before we started.
You saw how functional it was. We'll say it was definitely in the right functional state.
He cleaned my AIO and that was the most dusty thing I've seen in my life.
I don't think I've seen air physically. Well, that wasn't air that you were seeing.
It was dust. The advantage to having these nice big cases is being able to stick your hands through
all sorts of places that you can't normally get to in a smaller case.
So this is my last generic question before we get to the Q&A that we ask people.
How did you get into tech? I have always been interested in tech.
My dad worked in accounting.
I'm not sure exactly how, but somehow became kind of the de facto tech person for his company.
So from an early age, we had a computer in the household and I'd been kind of exposed
to computing stuff all the way back in like the MS-DOS days.
I remember going to the office with my dad and playing DOOM on the LAN and working through
the whole thing. That was very interesting.
I see you put stickers on the fans and then the uglyness goes away, right?
Sure. Can I take those stickers off?
Genuine question because I don't know. I am not 100% sure because sometimes they use the stickers to seal the bearing in the back.
Ah, okay. And you don't want to expose that because then your fans will die very quickly.
My Tanar, how did you learn about your first brief experience with Crappy Awards?
Did you know it was Luke right away? I didn't know it was Luke right away, but the voice sounded familiar.
What threw it off for me was the, I believe it was the makeup artist that came in with
him. She did a bunch of the talking initially and he was just kind of like trying to not be
obvious about who he was. His voice is really recognizable.
It was around the time that we got into the CCAN that I was like, oh man, I really know
that voice. Where's that voice from? That's where it's from.
That's where Elijah and I used to work together. So I was Elijah's manager at one point.
Now we're coworkers. To some degree, I kind of answer to him because the writers have the creative direction on
which way a project goes. It's a collaborative effort.
It is a collaborative effort, but they get the final say. Yeah.
Well, I think everyone needs a final say or a guy, no matter what.
Yeah. Yeah. Or like nothing ever gets done.
Also, I have another question related to your previous job. Sure.
From T-TotsTV. How was your time working at the computer store and what value, skills, or traits did you
learn there to help you transition to LMG?
I'm going to assume that you mean my last position where you saw it on Scrapyard Wars.
That was a business-to-business IT support company. So we weren't so much a computer store where you'd have walk-in traffic.
We did remote work for businesses and we did a bunch of onsite work for businesses.
So I learned all sorts of things there. When you're working in that kind of environment, you see all sorts of different types of networks
and setups. So the variety forces you to be able to learn a lot.
That's where a large breadth of my IT expertise came from.
Through my time there, I had the opportunity to get into some management stuff and learn
some skills in that area, too. Realistically, the move I made over here was so that I could get back into working hands
on on the tech again. You want to do less management stuff and more focus on?
Yeah. The management stuff has got its own rewards.
It is really cool to be able to mentor people, see them grow.
But I got to a point in my career there where if there was something technical that needed
to be done, I shouldn't be the one working on it and it just kind of felt bad when your
passion is the tech. Sorry, I'm just releasing the Blue Screen Death Speed One contest.
I love the vibe in that video. That was great. Oh yeah.
Do you want to tell the story about how I messed up my AIO? Oh gosh. That's good.
So I was taking Sammy's old computer apart and found that this guy here is a little
bit shorter than this one and this one. So there is no way that you can have all of the mounts tightened down on the CPU anymore.
I was screwing in and I was like, oh, it's not screwing all the way. So I kept screwing it in.
And then I heard a snap. I was like, what the? There was only nuts on these two.
So there's only two that's actually holding it down.
We'll see if we can find a third one there, but no guarantees.
Ryzen 9,5900X. Yeah, it's good. It's still not bad.
I future-proofed my PC and I'm really glad to add it because... Future-proof is a very strong word.
I just want to say, I asked David if he's okay with working on my computer.
He said it's okay. Oh yeah. I don't want him to seem like I actually forced him to do this.
I gave him the option to bail out. Yeah, no, this is fine as I struggle with the AIO.
Kind of workout fan orientation. I think we're in the right spot now, at least.
This is before you had the fans that would just clip nicely together.
That's ready to go in. So before I stick that in, we're going to stick the motherboard in.
Oh, it's got the screws already in here.
We should have mentioned this. So the Y70 difference is that it comes with a built-in screen.
That's also a touchscreen. Now it's... It's also bigger.
It's also bigger. I don't know because I didn't do any research because I don't do any research in general
when I buy my very expensive PC products.
Is the screen a monitor or is it part of something?
Looks like you've just got a DisplayPort connector out the back. So you plug that into your video card and it acts just as another screen.
My graphics card has 3-H DisplayPorts and 1-HTMI.
The 3080 Ti from MSI, which I bought at peak scalp prices.
That would have been probably close to a $2,000 graphics card then.
$2,000 CAD. I think it's like $2,300 CAD because at the time I was financing, so I just wanted a
really beefy computer. But I didn't know what makes a beefy computer out of the big number.
If you need to use hardware for business, it makes sense.
There is a financial return on spending that money.
I didn't peel that. I bought this last year.
You got a brand new motherboard again. The first time that I was on camera, I was the guy behind the Vault Boy Mask in the Arc
B580 video. The funny thing with that Arc B580 video is that was about two weeks after I started,
so I couldn't be on camera. But I was doing all of the prep for the workstations that we were using there.
One of the first tasks I got was, here is a 15 terabyte SSD.
Here is a list of games that we've had shouted out. Go and download as many as you can fit onto this SSD.
So I downloaded about 12 or 13 terabytes of games over that two weeks.
Mortem saw Mia. What's the strangest request that has been asked to do while at LMG?
Strange request. Yeah. Do you think that's a strange request?
No, it's not a super strange request. It felt really weird getting paid to download games, but that's kind of par for the course
here. Yeah. I feel like sometimes I'm like, am I really game paid to do this?
Am I really getting paid to sit here and watch, have someone fix my computer for me?
Yep. That's what's happening. But this is content, so I was like, okay, I guess it is.
Doing the underwear shoot? That's got to be up there for strange requests.
You've got four sticks of 16 gig, 3600 CL18.
I assume it's good. Because I actually had the, there's an RGB version of that.
I used to have that, and I said Darjeel looks ugly, so I just bought more RAM.
Just throw this guy into the top.
Go through. See, this case is a pain. No, the case isn't a pain.
RGB fans are a pain. That's what the pain is.
This is all of your RGB wires. That's all of them? Is that more?
Well, there's those. And then these are for the fans.
Oh, I mixed one of them up.
Oh, one of the one. So I had a final Scrappy Wars question.
Ethan and Mordo, would you do Scrappy Wars again? Oh heck yeah.
Maybe as a team captain to show the two L's how it's really done. I was really blown away when you revealed that it was you who let Luke into the container
in 2024 Scrappy Wars. It was so much fun.
It was a lot of work still too over the, I think we had four days, but it was essentially
three days because the last day it was cut off for judging. I don't know if I would necessarily say that I would be a team captain to show them how
it's done. I think I'd put up a good fight as a team captain, but they are the original Scrappy
people. Scrappy Wars is one of the series that I really enjoyed before I started working here.
I watched through all of them numerous times. I had helped put together some of the notes to do the compilations that got released as
well. There were reasons one through three as just full length videos and we added a little bit
of animations here and there to kind of help the story narrative be easier to follow through
the video. I had to go through so much raw footage to find out the pricing for some things because
there was no mention on camera how much things were and then all of a sudden it's just like
Linus I'm out of money.
I know that we were pushing to get those compilations out for a while.
They've been on the back burner for the last bit though. Coordinator Kerry asked, what was it like going from fan excited to meet your favorite
YouTubers and the regularity of working with Linus as your boss? That's a good question.
Let me find these screws that I'm looking for first. It is a job when it comes down to it.
I approached it very much that way so it is really cool being involved in the company
that I had been following for so long and I had actually put in a lot of effort to find
a position here. I had been applying for various positions over the span of about two and a half years
before actually getting the one that I've got right now. I show up, I get my stuff done, I try and do the best that I can and I think I'm appreciated
for it. You are. Very tech illiterate or not as techy compared to everyone's here.
It is very, very, very, very, very helpful to have someone where I can just go walk through
and say, hey, I need help for this and then you just know the answer instead of me stressing
it and figuring it out and praying I'm doing it correctly. But I'm sure everyone else also feel appreciated because you also do work with a lot of the
writers sometimes. Oh, that's most of my work working with the writers.
Yeah. I'm sure having the extra person just helping them get through, chuck through things a little
faster is very helpful. Yeah. I am a big part behind the scenes on projects.
So you don't necessarily see me on camera tons, but I do a lot of work to make the projects
that you see on the channel come to life. So some of the notable ones that I did.
Well, there's actually a question by Joseph Barcet. What videos do you enjoy most making slash helping with?
Obviously, I did a whole bunch of the work on the modding video that came out right around
the New Year's. That was a lot of fun. I had dipped my toes into modding at that point before, but hadn't really done tons.
So it was really neat to explore what is possible through that project.
And then of course, after the project is finished, there's all sorts of comments about how I could
have done other things that would have been even more cool.
So I went home on the weekend and took a look at some of the suggestions.
And I went and had an install of Skyrim running with like 2,500 mods or something by Sunday.
Did he ever run? Oh, yeah. No, it ran.
There was a suggestion from someone who said, check out Wabajak, which put together kind
of a large vetted mod list with the load order already taken care of and the mod manager already
taken care of. So it was pretty much as easy as load this up, wait for it to download.
I think it was like 150 gigs and then decompress.
So it's like 300 gigs and then it just worked. It was great.
That was way easier than what I did. I can tell you that much, even though a lot more, a lot more stuff was loaded once it
was done. I actually have two questions regarding the modding video. Casual Gamer Floater asks, when you research games modding for those videos, did it make
you want to mod games in your off time for you to game with it or did it make you want
to shy away from it or neither? I enjoy the process with modding and that's, I think, the struggle when it comes to actually
enjoying the game is the game becomes modding the game and you can spend so much time fiddling
with mods that you don't actually end up playing the game anymore.
So that is something that I knew I struggled with before, with the little that I had done.
Seeing something like Wabajak where it was able to load an extensive mod list and get
that going pretty easily, like I said, by Sunday after the video released I had that
2500 mod install of Skyrim running.
To be honest, I haven't touched it much since then, but it is sitting there and I've got
it kind of set not to update so that I can explore it a little bit more.
I've got a couple of other games that I'm going through right now that I want to finish up before starting something new, but it's there ready to go.
What games, if you don't mind me asking? I'm working through Expedition 33 right now.
I'm getting close to the end, I think. I have been going back and forth with Silk Song, making a bit of progress and then leaving
it alone for a little bit so that I don't get too frustrated with it.
It's a great game, but there are points where I just have to put it aside for a little bit,
cool down, continue later. Not a question based on the modding video from Floaters.
Seeing as you made the modding video games video, are there new or old classic games
that you mod on regular? Not really. I think Skyrim, like even before the video, Skyrim is the thing that I had poked around
with the most. Trying to think if there's anything else that I had tried to mod much, I mean I tried
to mod Oblivion way back. It was not in a great place to be modded even at that time.
I need another one of these. Oh, I actually have an update for you.
You have an update for me. You use D-L-O-S data, you should use R-D-O-S data.
Yeah, I know. Apparently that's what someone said on the line. I saw it after the fact.
Oh, did you?
Yep, Dell is for files, R-D is for remove directory.
I was watching the video later and in the replay even, I listed the directory again.
It was still there. I'm just like, I think I got it. It's sitting right there.
I think we're at the point now where all of the fans are taken care of. It's not pretty, but all of the fans are taken care of.
These don't have a theme, so I'm just kind of asking you random questions. Sure.
I think it's a pretty interesting one. Leetwin, how did you decide it was time to appear in videos?
That is a pretty big decision and must have been scary.
It's been super scary, actually. I knew that working here, I'd probably be on camera at some point.
Almost everybody appears on camera at some point.
You might just be in the background, but you'll be there somewhere.
Presenting on the other hand, I didn't come into the role thinking that I would do that,
but it's been a new skill that I've had a lot of fun exploring.
I'm always interested to learn, as long as you guys find me interesting.
You know, Pankrats, I don't care what they think. I think you're interesting.
Your ShortCircuit is also coming up today. Your first ShortCircuit.
We ran it as a training session just to see how it would go, and after Bell did a review
and Andrew Muir did a review, they had some positive feedback on it, so I think they sent
it to Linus just to make sure that we've got the go-ahead, and it's pretty cool.
I don't know where you had this USB cable plugged in, the one for your pump.
I couldn't tell you. I'm sorry. As long as my computer runs, I'm okay with that.
I'm going to unplug your RGB one for now.
It won't be difficult to figure that out later, but I think you need some different hardware
to be able to have the RGB all controllable as well.
So it will still light up. Oh, that's all I need. But you can't program it.
That's fine. You're not going to have USB-C at the front. No!
Okay, that's fine. I don't think I even did from the start. Your motherboard doesn't have a USB-C port?
Yeah, that makes more sense. Where are the front ports on it?
Yeah, I don't think it worked for you anymore. Those two will work? That one will not.
Does the headphone thing work? Yeah, that works. That's the most important part.
VayMax asked, are you a Linux person?
If not, are there Linux workflows, for example, audio processing, video processing, that would
make for an interesting, I tried this job on Linux video that you would enjoy creating.
Am I a Linux person? I haven't really run Linux on my own.
The time that I've had here has let me explore Linux more than the entire career before that.
So I am learning a lot there, too.
I know that there are some things that I could run at home on Linux.
I'd love to build a NAS at some point, and I'd probably use TrueNAS for that.
TrueNAS, FreeNAS, what's it called now? It's TrueNAS.
We did use TrueNAS at my previous work, and I did get involved in administrating that
a bit, but it wasn't a ton.
If I'm going to go down that road, too, I'd probably load up a few containers on TrueNAS.
Maybe play around with some home automation, because I've got some IoT devices, but right
now it's pretty light. Honestly, Linux seems so scary.
It is definitely less scary if you have grown up with command line.
I learned how to use a computer with DOS.
My first OS was Windows 7. Windows 7?
Yeah. I think. I've used that one.
I would also. I went through doing the retirement of Windows 7 when it went end of life, and the retirement
of Windows XP when it went end of life. There was a lot of system upgrades and replacements and whatnot when those happened.
Paul asked, stupid question, is that a live disconnect at your desk, and what is it for?
I don't 100% know, but I would assume so.
There are two large breaker panels right beside those very large switches.
We should pull it figured out. Yeah, as long as there's content, it's fine, right?
It's fine. It's fine. Where did I stick those four screws I just took out?
I can just steal some new ones. Yeah, you can steal it.
It's mine. I want it. They came with the case in the Ziploc baggies.
This is easy stuff now. I have one more question. One more question.
And then I can look for more questions, though, if you need to.
D-Man123 asks, what is your favorite piece of tech?
Favorite piece of tech? That's not a computer. That's not a computer.
That's a cop-out answer. I mean, the phone is the cop-out answer. That's what everybody says.
Phone? Phone. Okay, no phone, no computer.
I want something interesting, David. We want to know you. I mean, I like mechanical tech.
I like cars. Those are fun.
There's a lot of car people in this company. Oh, yeah.
No, there's lots of cars. I hope mistakes were not made.
I hope so, too, for a month. No, just whether or not this will all fit behind the side panel.
Oh, that screw hole doesn't hold anything anymore. You didn't need it anyways, right?
What? No, it's fine. There we go.
EPS connector. Or CPU power. Yeah, that one sucks.
Yeah, that one, freaking, I hate that one.
In this case, I feel like it's one of those cases, and once you get it, you just don't
touch it ever again, but I think I've touched that Y-60 case like six times.
So here's the situation.
We've got a hard drive that this is how it was before, not hooked up to anything.
Then you got this guy that's just kind of floating around, and then this guy, he is
hooked up there, but there's another one that's not hooked up underneath.
I want them all hooked up, but some of them won't work, so I was like, I don't know.
And then when I plug in some things, other things don't work, so this is the combination
that worked. I think I'm at the point where I'm going to test fire this guy and make sure that we
turn it on at least. It worked, guys. We did it.
I didn't do anything.
Thank you guys for watching. Let's him know how you liked the new format here.
He's trying to shake things up a bit, kind of bring a little bit more spice to the meat
of the team instead of just sitting at a table and answering some questions.