Podcasts about well chris

Did you parents ever tell you things as kids that you later found out, it might not be accurate? Well Chris, Eric, and Chuck dive into some old tales your mother and father may have told you that weren't exactly true. Then they move on to a spoiler-filled Masters of the Universe: Revelation review and what they thought of the new series. So by the power of Greyskull, you have the power to get this episode going!

Well Chris and Bill watched different movies with the same name so........cool. They both watched Pledge Night.......cool. Joe gets the week off and boy does he deserve it. Scott tries to make Bill and Chris feel bad and it doesn't work.

For this week's Feature Discussion, please join authors Michael Ackerman, Christopher Haggerty, editorialist Michael Rosenberg, and Associate Editor Nicholas Mills as they discuss the original research articles “Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Assessment of the Heart Rate Corrected QT Interval Using a Mobile Electrocardiogram Device,” “ Deep Neural Networks Can Predict New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation From the 12-Lead Electrocardiogram and Help Identify Those at Risk of AF-Related Stroke,” and “Trusting Magic: Interpretability of Predictions from Machine Learning Algorithms.”   TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your cohosts. I'm doctor Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Greg Hundley: And I'm Greg Hundley, associate editor, director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Well Carolyn, this week's feature, it's kind of a new thing for us. It's more than our double feature; it's actually a forum, where we're going to have two papers discussed, we'll have both authors represented from each of those two papers, we'll have an editorialist, and we'll have one of our associate editors. And the topic, Carolyn, just to keep you in suspense, is really on machine learning and actually how that can be applied to 12 lead electrocardiograms. But before we get to that, how about we grab a cup of coffee and start off on some of the other articles in this issue? Would you like to go first? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yes, I would, but you're really keeping me in suspense. But first, let's focus on health related quality of life. We know that poor quality of life is common in heart failure, but there are few data on heart health related quality of life and its association with mortality outside of the Western countries. Well, until today's paper. And it's from the Global Congestive Heart Failure, or GCHF study, the largest study that has systematically examined health-related quality of life as measured by the Kansas City cardiomyopathy questionnaire 12, or KCCQ, and its association with outcomes in more than 23,000 patients with heart failure across 40 countries, in eight major geographic regions, spanning five continents. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn. That KCCQ 12, that has been such an interesting tool for us to use in patients with heart failure. So what did they find in this study? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Really important. So the health-related quality of life differs considerably between geographic regions with markedly lower quality of life related to heart failure in Africa than elsewhere. Quality of life was a strong predictor of death and heart failure hospitalization in all regions, irrespective of symptoms class, and in both preserved and reduced ejection fraction. So there are some important clinical implications, namely that health-related quality of life is an inexpensive and simple prognostic marker that may be useful in characterizing symptom severity and prognosis in patients with heart failure. And there is certainly a need to address disparities that impact quality of life in patients with heart failure in different regions of the world. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. Well, I'm going to turn to the world of basic science and bring us a paper from David Merryman from Vanderbilt University. So Carolyn, myocardial infarction induces an intense injury response, which ultimately generates a collagen dominated scar. Cardiac myofibroblasts are the cells tasked with depositing and remodeling collagen and are a prime target to limit the fibrotic process post myocardial infarction. Now Carolyn, serotonin 2B receptor signaling has been shown to be harmful in a variety of cardiopulmonary pathologies, and could play an important role in mediating scar formation after MI. So Carolyn, these investigators employed two pharmacologic antagonists to explore the effect of serotonin 2B receptor inhibition on outcomes post myocardial infarction and characterized the histological and micro structural changes involved in tissue remodeling. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Oh, that's very interesting, Greg. What did they find? Dr. Greg Hundley: So Carolyn, serotonin 2B receptor antagonism preserved cardiac structure and function by facilitating a less fibrotic scar, indicated in their results by decreased scar thickness and decreased border zone area. Serotonin 2B receptor antagonism resulted in collagen fiber redistribution to a thinner collagen fiber. And they were more anisotropic. They enhanced left ventricular contractility and the fibrotic tissue stiffness was decreased, thereby limiting the hypertrophic response of the uninjured cardiomyocytes. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. That is really fascinating, Greg. Summarize it for us. Dr. Greg Hundley: Yeah, sure. So this study, Carolyn, suggests that early inhibition of serotonin 2B receptor signaling after myocardial infarction is sufficient to optimize scar formation, resulting in a functional scar, which is less likely to expand beyond the initial infarct and cause long-term remodeling. The prolonged presence of the antagonist was not required to maintain the benefits observed in the early stages after injury, indicating that acute treatment can alter chronic remodeling. So Carolyn, it's really going to be interesting to see how this research question is pursued in studies of larger animals, including us, or human subjects. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, that is really interesting. And so is this next paper. Well, we know that genetic variation in coding regions of genes are known to cause inherited cardiomyopathies and heart failure. For example, mutations in MYH7 are a common cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, while mutations in LMNA are a common cause of dilated cardiomyopathy with arrhythmias. Now, to define the contribution of non-coding variations, though, today's authors, led by Dr. Elizabeth McNelly from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and colleagues evaluated the regulatory regions for these two commonly mutated cardiomyopathy genes, namely MYH7 and LMNA. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn. So this is really interesting. So how did they do this and what did they find? Dr. Carolyn Lam: You asked the top questions, because the method is just as interesting as the findings here. They used an integrative analysis that relied on more than 20 heart enhancer function and enhancer target datasets to identify MYH7 and LMNA left ventricular enhancer regions. They confirmed the activity of these regions using reporter assay and CRISPR mediated deletion of human cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent STEM cells. These regulatory regions contained sequence variants within transcription factor binding sites that altered enhancer function. Extending the strategy genome-wide, they identified an enhancer modifying variant upstream of MYH7. One specific genetic variant correlated with cardiomyopathy features derived from biobank and electronic health record information, including a more dilated left ventricle over time. So these findings really link non-coding enhancer variation to cardiomyopathy phenotypes, and provide direct evidence of the importance of genetic background. Beautiful paper. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. Dr. Carolyn Lam: But let me quickly tell you what else is in this issue. We have an ECG Challenge by Dr. Lutz on flash pulmonary edema in a 70-year-old; there's an On My Mind paper by Dr. Halushka, entitled (An) Urgent Need for Studies of the Late Effects of SARS-CoV-2 on the Cardiovascular System. Dr. Greg Hundley: Ah, Carolyn. Well, in the mailbox, there are two Research Letters, one from Dr. Soman entitled (The) Prevalence of Atrial Fibrillation and Thromboembolic Risk in Wild-Type Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy, and a second letter from Dr. Berger entitled Multiple Biomarker Approaches to Risk Stratification in COVID-19. Well Carolyn, now let's get on to that forum discussion and hear a little bit more about using machine learning in the interpretation of a 12 lead ECG. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, can't wait. Thanks, Greg. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well listeners, we are here today for a double feature, but this double feature is somewhat unique, in that we are going to discuss together two papers that focus on machine learning applications as they relate to the interpretation of the electrocardiogram. With us today, we have Mike Ackerman from Mayo Clinic, Chris Haggerty from Geisinger, Mike Rosenberg as an editorialist from University of Colorado, and then our own Nick Mills, an associate editor with Circulation. Welcome, gentlemen. Well, Mike Ackerman, we will start with you first. Could you describe for us the hypothesis that you wanted to test, and what was your study population and your study design? Dr. Michael Ackerman: Thanks, Greg. The hypothesis was pretty simple, and that is could an artificial intelligence based approach, machine learning, deep neural network, could that solve the QT problem? Which is one of the big secrets among cardiologists, which, as you know, one of your associate editors, Sammy Biskin, published a sobering paper over a decade ago, showing and revealing the secret that cardiologists are not so hot at measuring the QT interval, and heart rhythm specialists sometimes don't get it right either. And we all know that the 12 lead ECG itself is vexed by its computer algorithms at getting the QTC just right, compared to those of us who would view ourselves as QT aficionados. And so we were hoping that a machine learning approach would solve this and help us glean, one, a very accurate QTC, as accurate as I can make it when I measure it, or core labs that do QT measuring for living. Dr. Michael Ackerman: And two, could we get that QTC from just a couple of leads to be as accurate as what the whole 12 lead ECG would be seeing so that we can move it to a mobile smartphone enabled solution? And so that was our hypothesis going forward, and we studied a lot of patients. And that's something that machine learning and the power of computation does, that in my world, I'm used to studying a hundred or a thousand patients with congenital long QT syndrome and thinking that I've assembled a large cohort, but for this study, we started with over two and a half million ECGs from over 650,000 people. And then ultimately, through training, testing, and validation of about 1.6 million ECGs from over a half a million individuals to sort of teach the computer or have the AI algorithm get the QT interval not too hot, not too cold, but just right. And as we'll discuss, I think we hit the mark. Dr. Greg Hundley: Thanks so much, Mike, what did you find? Dr. Michael Ackerman: Ultimately, we were able to show that with this drill, we could get the deep neural network derived QTC to be give or take two plus minus 20 milliseconds from what would the standard of care, and that being a technician over-read QTC. But then we took, I would say, pretty unique to AI studies, as many AI studies, just do training, testing, and validation for study number one. And then a future paper of a prospective study. But we did that prospective study within this single paper with a subsequent about two year enrollment of nearly 700 patients that I evaluated in our genetic heart rhythm clinic at Mayo Clinic. And half of those patients have congenital long QT syndrome, half did not. And what we showed was that the deep neural network derived QTC from a mobile ECG approximated the subsequent or the just prior 12 lead ECG within one millisecond, +/- 20 millisecond territory. Dr. Michael Ackerman: And it's ability to say is the QTC above or below 500, which we all know is sort of a warning sign, that's a very actionable ECG finding, do something about it, that that 500 millisecond cutoff by the deep neural network gave us an area under the curve of 0.97, which from a screening perspective, that AUC is far higher than a lot of AUCs for a lot of screening tests done in the cancer world and so forth. And so we think we are very close to what I've called a pivot point, where we will soon pivot from the way we've been doing the QTC since Eindhoven over a century ago to a fundamentally new way of deriving a QTC that's precise and accurate and mobile enabled. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Mike. So using machine learning to accurately assess the QTC from just two leads of an electrocardiogram. Well Chris, you also have a paper in this issue of circulation that pertains to another application of machine learning and looking at the electrocardiogram. Can you describe for us your study population, study design, and then also the question you were trying to address? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: Sure. Yeah, thanks Greg. Great to be here with you all today. Very similar to Mike's study, the motivation for us was we believe very strongly that there's opportunities with using deep learning applied to ECG data to uncover not only new knowledge latent in the ECG itself related to the current patient context, but also to try to predict future outcomes, future events. And that was really our motivation, was to take that paradigm of looking forward, in this case to predict new onset of atrial fibrillation within a year. We used our Geisinger patient cohort, which is a largely rural population in central Pennsylvania. We have very longitudinal data for a lot of our patients, which allows us to have this kind of design going back in our electronic health records, in this case, our ECG database to 30 plus years. Dr. Christopher Haggerty: Similar big numbers that Mike described, and in our case, 1.6 million ECGs over 430,000 patients used to train the model. And we had several different study designs that we employed. One just being a simple proof of concept, asking can we accurately predict new onset atrial fibrillation one year? And then a second study design that was intended to simulate a real world deployment scenario. Obviously the main rationale for trying to predict atrial fibrillation is to then be able to treat and try to prevent stroke. And so we tried to, as best we can in a retrospective fashion, simulate a scenario in which we might use this model to identify patients who went on to have a presumably AFib associated stroke. Dr. Greg Hundley: And what did you find, Chris? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: So I think there are three main findings that we highlighted here. So first, obviously we were building on the great work that Mike and some of his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic have done, showing that looking at AFib using deep neural networks needs to be feasible. We extended it in this case by looking out further than just an acute sense, looking at that one-year outcome. And we had an area under the curve for our proof of concept of 0.85. So area under the curve of 0.85 to identify patients with new onset of atrial fibrillation within one year in our millions of ECGs. Looking at it another way, the second main finding was that that one year prediction was shown to have prognostic significance beyond that one year, which is really interesting and warrants a lot of further study. Looking over 30 years of follow-up, patients predicted to be at high risk at baseline had a hazard ratio of 7.2 for developing atrial fibrillation, compared to those deemed to be low risk. Dr. Christopher Haggerty: And then really the third, and I think perhaps the most exciting finding that we had here, was this simulated stroke experiment that we had, where we identified patients from an internal stroke registry and identified patients who had new diagnosis of AFib at the time or up to a year after the stroke. So we can assume that they were an AFib associated stroke. And subsequently, or I should say previously, had an ECG that we could use to run through the algorithm to predict their atrial fibrillation risk. And we showed that the model performed well in this setting, that of the 375 strokes that we identified, for example, over a five-year period in our registry, we were able to identify 62% of them within three years based on that ECG. So a number needed to screen for an atrial fibrillation associated with stroke about 162, which compares favorably well to other screening techniques that are out there, obviously. So we took that as a great proof of concept that this type of AI technique might have benefits for screening for atrial fibrillation and preventing strokes. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well congratulations, Chris. Well, we're now going to turn to our associate editor, Dr. Nick Mills. And Nick, you have a lot of manuscripts come across your desk. What attracted you to these two papers, and what are the significance of the results as they apply to ECG applications as we move forward? Nick Mills: Thanks, Greg. Yeah, this is a rapidly growing field, where the availability of data scale with digital archiving and lots of really interesting new methodologies are available to our researchers. So we are receiving a lot of content in this area. What I loved about these two papers is not just the quality of the work, but also the really tangible benefits, potentially, for patients. So AI does not need to be complex, but it does need to solve a tangible problem. I guess what we look for in the journal, beyond the kind of innovation and methodology, is quality, and these studies used prospective validation, really reliable end points, ascertainments, transparency, reporting, all the things that we know are important for high quality clinical research. I think the idea that we can bring QT monitoring to the drug store on a portable device for our patients is potentially transformative. I also think that to take a technology, the electrocardiogram that we've been using for over a century, and provide new insights that go way beyond my ability to interpret the ECG, that might help us recommend a different course of action for our patients is also just really exciting. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice. Thank you, Nick. Well Mike ... we're going to turn to Mike Rosenberg now, listeners. And Mike wrote a wonderful editorial, and I would invite you to work through this. As you have an opportunity to read the journal and interact with it. Mike, there are two different types of machine learning, I think, that you described were used by the two respective investigative groups. Could you describe those for our cardiology listeners? What were the differences in those two approaches? Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, sure. And thank you for the opportunity to write the editorial. Two very fascinating papers. I should say that they both use the same approach of what's called supervised learning, where you basically have a set of data inputs, and you're trying to predict a labeled outcome. And what I talk about in the paper is that what we've learned is if you have enough data and enough computing power, you can predict almost anything highly accurately. What's interesting about the two papers, and what I sort of tried to contrast in the editorial, is that the one from the Mayo Group and Dr. Ackerman, was basically predicting what's already a known biomarker for sudden death, which is the QT interval. And essentially, almost trying to automate that process of predicting it accurately and in a way that, in essence, could allow a home monitoring of patients for QT prolongation, which obviously would be a huge benefit for clinicians, all those alerts and things, to be able to have patients taking drugs that are known to prolong the QT interval and feeling comfortable that if they have any prolongation, it could be detected accurately. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: The second one, which is sort of interesting, and in contrast is from the Geisinger Group and Dr. Haggerty, was the approach of ... where actually the prediction itself is actually the biomarker. And we don't actually know exactly what it's using, which I talk about a little bit of what that means and the implications clinically, but in essence, what they showed was that it actually is a very good biomarker and on par with what a lot of us would consider to be very strong predictors of agents. So I think it was two very interesting approaches to, again, applying the same type of machine learning, but really approaching it one from a more discovery side and another from sort of validated or almost automating something that we do on a daily basis. Dr. Greg Hundley: Thank you, Mike. So Mike, just coming back to you again, as we read the literature, and most of us are clinicians or researchers practicing, what should we look for when these new machine learning manuscripts and research studies come out as to gauge, "Ah, this is a really good study," or maybe not so much? Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. And it's a good question. I think one of the biggest challenges, as I talked about, is interpretability. I think in the clinical world, we're used to understanding the code for the variables that go into our risk prediction model. And so I think first and foremost is can I even understand what this is predicting or am I sort of expected to take the predictions as sort of a black box, it is what it is type of approach? I think that there's other things that I just look at when I'm reviewing these manuscripts. I mean, as I sort of mentioned, what these models are really doing, it's not anything magical. What they're doing is identifying patterns in the data and then using those to make predictions, again, toward whatever label that you've assigned them to. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: It's important that your data sets are split and that you're training at one data set and then testing it in one that's separate. And again, you can't ignore epidemiology. Is the data set that you're training it reflective of the population that you're going to be using those models in? And we know from outside of healthcare, there's issues with models that have been trained in one population where it's potentially biased or it's potentially offering predictions that are using information we may not necessarily want to use. Recidivism is a big example of that. So I think that that's, first and foremost, it's sort of taking a step back as a clinician and saying, "If this was a biomarker that someone was proposing to use to predict some new disease, what would I expect to use to evaluate that?" And that's probably what I would start with. Dr. Greg Hundley: Excellent. Well, I'm going to turn back and go back to our panelists here, listeners. And we're going to ask each of our panelists in about 20 seconds to describe for us what they think is the next most important aspect of research in their respective areas. So first I'll start with Mike Ackerman. Mike, can you tell us what's coming next in this area of assessment of QT prolongation or other aspects of the electrocardiogram? Dr. Michael Ackerman: I think next is implementing this in the real world. We are having our suite of the AI ECG as a  hypertrophic cardiomyopathy detector. We've shown that as an ejection fraction detector, and now as a QT detector in AFib, from our work and Chris's work. And for the QT itself, I think where we are is we're really, really close to now having a mobile enabled digital QT meter. And a digital QT meter, once FDA cleared, then allows the QTC to truly emerge as the next vital sign. And it really deserves to be a vital sign. We use it as a vital sign. We know I want to know my patient's QTC every bit as I want to know his or her weight, blood pressure, saturation. It's an actionable finding, and we're now getting really close. We're just on the cusp of having a true digital QT meter. Dr. Greg Hundley: Excellent. Chris? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: I think for us to, in part address some of the comments that Mike brought up about the reproducibility of these types of models, we're very keen to demonstrate the prospective capabilities of our models to enroll patients in a prospective fashion, run their ECG through our predictor, and then screen them for AFib to determine how well we actually do moving forward, instead of just relying solely on our retrospective data. So we're very excited to do that. We're ramping up for that trial now and hope to be able to demonstrate similarly positive findings from our technique. Dr. Greg Hundley: Great. How about you, Nick? Nick Mills: I'd like to see the same quality and rigor applied to the implementation of these technologies as we have to other important areas in cardiovascular medicine. I think that's a really important step, not just to develop the tools, but to demonstrate their value. But I also think what we've done so far is relatively simplistic. We've taken an ECG and we've ignored almost all the other information that we have in front of us. And as these algorithms are trained and evolved, these and other vital clinical biomarkers and information, and integrating them into these neural networks will really enhance their performance for predicting things that are less tangible, like sudden death in the future or stroke. Dr. Greg Hundley: And then finally, Mike Rosenberg. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, I actually see two challenging areas in this field. One is the access to data. And I think one of the things that a lot of companies are realizing is that even if they make hardware, that the data may be more valuable than the technology that they're getting the data from. So I think one is figuring out ways to get access to data so that people can reproduce findings from these studies. And the second is deliverable. A bottle like this is not like the CHADS-VASc score that I can calculate in my head in the clinic. I mean I need a way to actually run these models within an EHR, within a computer system like that. And I think it's going to be a big challenge to take a model like this and to deploy it at scale the way we would with the drug or any other innovation. Dr. Greg Hundley: Fantastic. Well listeners, we want to thank Mike Ackerman from Mayo Clinic, Chris Haggerty from Geisinger, Mike Rosenberg from University of Colorado, and Nick Mills from University of Edinburgh for really providing us with a wonderful discussion regarding the use of machine learning applications in one study to predict the QTC interval from two leads that may be applicable to wearable devices. And in the second study, predicting the future occurrence of atrial fibrillation and even stroke as an adverse event in people at risk. Dr. Greg Hundley: On behalf of both Carolyn and myself, I want to wish you a great week and we will catch you next week on the run. This program is copyright of the American Heart Association, 2021.  

In the ongoing efforts to get the COVID relief bill passed through Congress, President Biden asked a 'rhetorical question', trying to keep everything in the bill and get it passed, including increasing the federal minimum wage and putting more money in his cronies' pockets. Biden asked, "What would you have me cut? What would you leave out?" Well Chris has a list of things you can start with, including cutting money that won't even be spent this year! All that and more on NewsTalk 820, WBAP! Support the show: http://www.wbap.com/chris-krok/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris has a few things that he just CAN’T stand: Airbnb (plus other businesses like that) & crowd funding websites like Gofundme.com. Well Chris has HIS reasons WHY he doesn’t care for them. Chris breaks it down. Support the show: http://www.wbap.com/chris-krok/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My guest today is Chris Marhefka. If you listened to my interview with Anat Peri, you will have learnt about the amazing work that goes on at 'Training Camp For The Soul'. Well Chris is the lead facilitator and CEO of the operation.Chris has founded and sold multiple 6-figure businesses. Worked and served thousands of people as a healer and coach. Chris is also a Certified Enlifted and Procabulary Language Coach, Certified Reiki Levels 1 & 2, and Life Coach.Chris was also featured trainer and lifestyle coach on two seasons of Z Living’s cable series, Altar’d. Marhefka is also the founder of B3 Gym in Gainesville, FL and Founder of Eat the 80, a healthy meal delivery service headquartered in Florida with a nationwide subscription base. We dove deep into many areas of the heart, healing, emotions and living our highest purpose.Me and Chris resonate deeply on many different topics, and I am excited for you to dive deep with us. Learn more about Chris: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/chrismarhefka/?hl=en Website - https://www.chrismarhefka.com/ Training Camp For The Soul - https://www.trainingcampforthesoul.com/ Enjoy family. Be well.

I'm keen for it! I'm hungry for it! "Might shock a few..."We dig a bit deep this week in to music habits, mindsets, prejudices, safety nets, open eyes, open minds and open doors!Ever wondered "Why doesn't anyone else know this song? It's sick!" Well Chris has too. And he'll share a song that inspired this claim within this incredible podcast episode.Discussing the current Melbourne lockdown lifestyle, Cassie got a bit reflective: "We're gonna look back at this podcast in 10 years and be like WHAT?! WOW! This is a really great time capsule for us. I have no doubt that it's gonna be something that we look back on..." and we hope we do. Feel free to binge a few past episodes whenever you like. We'll have 2020 wrapped up weekly like some sort of audio-journal with a kick arse soundtrack.Cassie also thinks anger banger is my favourite genre (that Chris just invented)Did you get on that good stuff train? Let us know what music you're digging!

Chris Browning had dreams of creating movies for Pixar - until he started art classes in college and realized that wasn’t his calling.He was also taking a personal finance class and thoroughly enjoyed it, so he changed his major to finance and never looked back.Chris should have perfect finances, right? Well…Chris found himself in debt after graduating in 2009 and working as a bank teller, trying to impress his girlfriend (now wife). He took control of his finances, telling his girlfriend that they needed to reign in their spending so he could pay off debt. But once his debt was gone, he started saving in earnest for an engagement ring, spent everything he had on that, and found himself in debt again when they started planning their wedding.Life happened, debt continued to stack up until they realized they were $27,000 in debt, with salaries just over that amount - all while living in Southern California.Living paycheck-to-paycheck makes it hard to throw extra money at your debt. Chris and his wife reviewed their spending and were shocked by what they were spending on. Once they knew where their money was going, they were able to drastically reduce their spending and throw more money at their debt.It turns out, tracking your spending and sticking to a budget are both excellent pieces of advice that can help anyone turn their financial situation around and start down the path toward financial independence.In This Episode We Cover:His journey with moneyHow much debt he has on his weddingWhat he did on paying off his debtChanges he make while paying off his debtHow he approached his wife on making changes about their budgetTalking about his emergency fundDave Ramsey's baby stepsHow he plan his retirementSteps towards saving for early retirementWhen did he discover Financial IndependenceHis vision for retirementHow to use credit card responsiblyHis tips on travel hackingAnd SO much more!Links from the ShowBiggerPockets Money Facebook GroupMint: Budget Tracker & PlannerBiggerPockets Money Podcast 75 with Justin from Saving SherpaBiggerPockets Money Podcast 39 with Jamila SouffrantBiggerPockets Money Podcast 15 with Brad and Jonathan from ChooseFIDave Ramsey's Envelope System

I've got another two-fer for you tonight…right. A real BOGO from NFN radio news!First up is commentary written by Chris Waldron for Not Fake News.biz that talks about how a lot of people supported Trump in the 2016 election because the figured he'd run the country like a businessman.Well…Chris suggests that maybe they got more than they bargained for.Then will come my commentary about a coronavirus coverup that's underway…at least in my view…by Trump and his administration.No, they're not trying to coverup the pandemic – that would be a little tough. But they are trying to coverup the reality of the situation…the seriousness of the situation. And their actions have simply been irresponsible.So first, I'll narrate Chris' comments, called The United States of Trump. Then will come the Coronavirus Coverup. Both from Not Fake News.biz. Take a listen.

Well Chris messed up!  He somehow lost a part of his audio for this week's episode...but.... we still have an episode for you. Today we are sharing with you a conversation we had on Chris' podcast Popcorn Finance called Facing Your Financial Fears.  In this episode we help a caller get through their fear that they will never be free of their debt. Check out the full show notes for the original episode at https://popcornfinance.com/facing-your-financial-fears/ ======= Have an awkward money situation? If so, we want to hear from you! Feel free to call in, leave us a voicemail, and we will play it on the show. You can either share your name or remain completely anonymous.⁠ ⁠The number to call is 707-200-8259.⁠ ======= Connect with us on Instagram! @thisisawkwardpodcast Chris - @popcornfinancepodcast Allison - @inspiredbudget 

In this week’s Mega Visions Show: With all this GDEMU and DreamPi talk you'd think the Dreamcast was alive and well and this was a Sega podcast or something! Well Chris, Graham, and Scotty have a whole lot to say about the Dreamcast, a few movies and games, and whatever the heck TikTok is. Quarantine is doing funny things to the MV Boyz for certain - even helping Graham finish a book! We also discuss that new Sonic game, the Panzer Dragoon Remake update, Bayonetta 3 and what games we would love to see updated with online multiplayer. For those interested in taking their Dreamcast back online, check out this site here. And for everyone who wants to check out Graham's movie podcast you can go right here. Oh, and if you really wanna hear more about Speed Devils then hit up Graham's review. Be cool and grab a Mega Visions T-Shirt! You can check out the Dreamcast Dreamless 24-Hour Marathon clip compilation/Thank-You video right here! Be sure to check out our sponsor Warp Zone! If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do so here: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Spotify RSS Also, if you got some time, check out our Patreon at www.patreon.com/megavisions! Find out more at https://mega-visions-show.pinecast.co

Looking to get your real estate license, but unsure if you'll be taken seriously or if people will trust you listing their home because of your age? Well Chris absolutely BUSTS that myth by selling over $40 Million worth of real estate by the time he was 24 years old! In this real estate interview, Joshua and Chris dive in to exactly how Chris got to where he is today.. running a real estate investment team which is currently #1 in the Carolinas doing over $140 Million in annual sales! Chris truly is a real estate market expert, and is a master at explaining how ANYBODY can recreate what he has done if they possess the drive and determination to get it done!   0:01 - Introduction 1:40 - How did you get into real estate and why? 6:00 - Did you go to college? 8:20 - What did you do at first to ensure you were successful? 12:30 - “My limit is always going to keep growing” 16:30 - Does a script matter or is it the delivery that matters most? 22:50 - Figure out your goals! 29:00 - “I needed to play the game of Monopoly in real life” 32:45 - How do you know when you have mastered a market? 34:45 - How to get into real estate investing for the 1st time? 40:00 - Struggles that have come during his real estate journey 44:00 - What keeps you driven and striving for more and more instead of settling for ‘good enough’? 49:00 - If you could give your younger self 2 pieces of advice, what would it be? 51:00 - Where to learn more about Chris   Websites:     https://www.facebook.com/chris.salerno   https://www.instagram.com/chris_salerno_/   https://qccapitalgroup.com/interested-investors/    

A wise woman of faith once said to me, "You can become bitter or better from the things that happen to you. It's your choice."  Well Chris and Emily Norton have not only made their life better, but they've made other young lives better in the process. When Chris was an 18 year old college freshman football player, he was severely injured in a game. One tackle, one split second, changed his life forever. He became paralyzed from the neck down. But though his body couldn't move, his spirit soared. His faith in God made him stronger, and he was determined to walk again. He questioned whether he would ever marry or have children; then he met Emily and they are now the parents of five adopted daughters. But his story went viral when, with Emily's help, he walked across the stage to receive his diploma. And then three years later, walked down the aisle at their wedding. The aisle, a mere seven yards. But it represents a miraculous journey that is inspiring millions. Their new book, "The Seven Longest Yards" chronicles their journey of faith and fortitude.

Fuse your daughter with your dog just once, and now your the only dad people talk about! Well Chris and I (Kieran)are here to talk about some dads that may have been over looked... and man there are not a lot of dads out there probably because they are all away for a business trip.

There is a certain channel that has celebs tell famous party stories and they animate them.  Well Chris has some of his own.  If anyone wants to animate this you can hit us up at facebook.com/10drink.  All the names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent.  Enjoy!

Tu ne sais pas how to feel about Weezer's latest record? Well Chris and Chris have you covered! In addition to discussing the surprisingly colorful Black album, C+C talk lemonade, kool-aid, sprite - yep ALL your favorite childhood liquids - and try to crack the code (FYI Mountain Dew: Code Red does NOT get a mention) of this diverse and divisive album. High As A Kite Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KGjliMdCLcWeezer NPR Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8UKQJZsv4oE-mail:WezTalkinWeez@gmail.comInstagram:@WezTalkinWeezTwitter:@WezTalkinWeezMyspace:TBDMusic ℗ Weezer under exclusive license to Crush Music / Atlantic Recording Corp. (U.S.) and Crush Music / WEA International Inc. (elsewhere)

The Rock N Roll Archaeologist digs into the Death Rocker/L.A. Punk supergroup, the Flesh Eaters, with lead vocalist and head visionary, Chris D! Coming out of the original late 1970’s L.A. punk scene, centered around the legendary club The Masque, Chris D, a cerebral poet, journalist and singer, turned in his own brand of Western America influenced punk. Less New York and London and more it’s own thing encompassing a wide variety of styles, with jazz elements, Chris focused on unique instrumentation and howling vocals to get the job done. In 1981, with the album “A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die”, the band reached supergroup status by including John Doe & D.J. Bonebrake from X, Dave Alvin and Bill Bateman from the Blasters and Steve Berlin before he joined Los Lobos. It was the only album to feature all of these now well known musicians. Well Chris and the boys are back and in a big way and including Chris’s ex-wife/bandmate, extraordinary vocalist Julie Christensen (see her credits). They have just released a new album of material that not only reaches the heights of “A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die”, but may even surpass it with it’s David Lynch film aesthetic and spooky themes that make it chic and romantic to worship the dead. The album is “I Used to Be Pretty” and is out now on Yep Roc Records. And lucky you, they are on tour at various times in 2019. Christian was in attendance on their San Francisco stop and if you love something ultra cool and deliciously decadent, it’s a must see show! http://www.yeproc.com/artists/the-flesh-eaters/ https://www.amazon.com/Used-Be-Pretty-Flesh-Eaters/dp/B07GTBJQQ1/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549311708&sr=8-1&keywords=the+flesh+eaters You can support the show by wearing cool rock n roll gear from TeePublic: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/rocknroll  Call us at 650-822-ROCK or email at: info@rocknrollarchaeology.com

Well Chris and Tokyo are joined by Jarred via cell phone. Jarred and Chris review WWE's Money In The Bank. Jarred talks about his Chicago experience at MITB. Tokyo fills us in on his Omaha trip to the College World Series. The gang was joined by fellow friends of the show, Matt Vogel, Brandon Bell, and The Kyle Wells as they attend Days of the Dead Indy. Lots of good moments from our adventures the last two weeks. Tune in and enjoy a ice cold Shiner beer as you listen. Please rate, review and subscribe to Tuned in with Tokyo on iTunes and Soundcloud.

Why is spread glass popular? What can you use instead of FR4? Listen and learn from industry veteran Chris Hunrath, who joins us from the San Jose Insulectro facility for a deep dive into what material sets are used in printed circuit board assembly and manufacturing. Get expert insights and learn about new materials on the market to help with your PCB design before going to fabrication and assembly.   Show Highlights: What is Insulectro? Operating for over 50 years, Insulectro provides materials for electronics, everything from laminates, prepregs, flex materials, copper foils, conductive inks, substrates, process chemistries, imaging materials and lamination materials. With 11 stocking locations, the newest in Toronto and 9 branches, Insulectro is a leader in providing electronic materials to industry. Prepregs - 175 different types to cut from in San Jose facility alone! Spread glass is becoming more popular - electrical and fabrication benefits because it is more electrically uniform. No open areas, the filaments are spread across (aka fanned out or mechanically spread) and this has signal benefits especially for differential pairs. Better from a drilling standpoint too. New materials are gaining traction - with low loss that laminate at normal temperatures Insulectro distributes for both Isola and DuPont Isola’s line-up of high-speed, low-loss material sets - Isola has a suite of laminates that are low loss, some of them with DKs close to the teflon range and they laminate at the normal temperatures which makes a composite build much simpler. Low-loss, low-Dk materials that can help with their signal integrity requirements I-Speed® - Low loss system, not as cheap as FR4 but its close and could be a good next step for people looking to upgrade material Having the right material set for a design is critical Challenges are more often in the fabrication than the design Copper is a really good moisture barrier, you have to bake the parts prior to assembly. I’ve seen people underestimate the baking and end up with scrap. Moisture is avoidable. Bonus Material: In Designer's After Hours, Chris Hunrath shares what kind of electric creatures lurk in La Jolla!!    Links and Resources: Chris Hunrath on Linkedin Insulectro DuPont Isola HDPug Research on High Frequency Flex Signal Integrity Journal Understanding Glass Fabric by Isola Group   Hi this is Judy Warner with the OnTrack podcast. Thanks again for joining us. Once again I have another amazing guest for us who is the go-to guy in PCB laminates. I am with Chris Hunrath today but before Chris and I get started I would like to please invite you to subscribe, or to favorite us on your RSS feed, or you can connect with me personally on LinkedIn. I share lots of stuff relative to engineers and PCB designers and on Altium I'm at @AltiumJudy and Altium is on Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn. So please give us a subscribe and a connection and we’d love to interact with you and hear more about what you'd like to hear on this podcast but I'm sure you're going to enjoy today's guest. Chris is the VP of technology at Insulectro and I'm gonna let Chris go ahead and tell you a little bit about Insulectro for those three people on the planet who might not know who Insulectro is. So, welcome Chris and tell us about Insulectro. Okay thanks. So yeah Insulectro has been around over 50 years. We supply materials to the circuit board industry - actually multiple industries - but mostly we've been focusing on electronic materials. Everything from laminates, prepregs, flex materials. copper foils, conductive inks. Different kinds of plastic substrates used with conductive inks, process chemistries, imaging materials, drilling materials, lamination materials. Also we have 11 stocking locations. We just opened one up in Toronto and we have nine branches. So I'm based in the San Jose branch in the Silicon Valley area so that's a little bit about Insulectro. Yeah nothing going on there in San Jose? Lots yeah, so since the San Jose facility is one of the four branches where we do fabrication on master sheets and master roles of prepreg and laminate we do cutting, tooling, vacuum packing, and will also do that on the lamination materials, the release films, and the press pads and things like that. So we do that in four branches… I'm going to ask you more about that later  because you just told me about that yesterday and I had no idea you guys did that. Actually I saw you more as a distribution channel. But before I ask you about that, why don't you give us a little bit of background on your history in the industry and how you came to this? I always say no and no one does this on purpose, unless you're an EE right? So yeah those printed circuit boards - those of us that got pulled into the industry ,, have been here a long time. So I started actually back in 1983, I was going to school for chemistry and one of the shops back east, actually in New Jersey, was looking for someone to work in plating on the night shift, and ,, the rest is history as they say. I got pulled into the business and the next thing I knew I was coming to California to to work with our sales team. So that's how I got started in this, and then I joined Insulectro in 2001 and it's been great being with this company. So many different materials we get to work with and so many different customers. I think you're a familiar name and face - being the VP of Technology but you also do trade shows and stuff. You present a lot and are really articulate explaining the technology of laminates because it's gotten a lot more complicated than it used to be back in 1983. I started in ‘84 by the way, and it used to just be, we'll get some FR4 some, prepreg and you're off to the races. Right yep, back then it was FR4 and polyimide. A little side note, actually the company I worked for made multi wire circuit boards so we also had an adhesive to embed the wires and that's a whole nother story for another time. Primarily it was FR4 and and polyimide and now there are so many different materials and then if you add the Flex materials on top. There's a lot to to work with, it's a lot of complexity but also a lot of opportunity. I mean electronics are going into everything and we're seeing that with our printed electronics products as well ,. A lot of interesting applications from wearables to medical to consumer electronics so that's been pretty cool to be a part of that as well. Yeah so tell us about what you're seeing on the front lines of current technology and marketing trends that are having an impact on laminate suppliers - ultimately since our audience here is mostly engineers and PCB designers - how that's sort of flowing down and what the impact is? Okay. Yeah so big question  sorry. Yeah that's okay, that's all right. It's become a bigger opportunity - a big part of our business - but if you look at  materials in general, everybody knows people are looking for higher speeds and high-speed digital and they're looking for lower loss in RF applications the Internet of Things also even data communications and those types of things; car electronics, radar, self-driving cars. All these things need low loss materials. One of our challenges - and again - it's an opportunity as a supplier to the industry; is having the right stuff available for customers and certainly the Bay Area. It's always been a quick turn market, but it's that the time window has shrunk and one of our challenges is supplying all these different materials to our customers, and of course with every laminate system, every resin system you have the different core thicknesses, the different copper weights and then you have the prepregs with different thicknesses, and resin contents. Add to that also spread glass. It’s becoming very popular I'm sure most of the people who watch this will be familiar with the spread glass systems. They have electrical and fabrication benefits but but again, it adds to the part numbers, the variety of materials we have to stock. So we we currently have here, just in San Jose, we have a hundred and seventy-five rolls of prepreg we cut from for customers. And ,, it always seems like our customers need something we don't have in stock. Yeah. It's the one thing they need for that application. But you know we try and up our game here and have the right things. And that comes from going to our customers and talking to the people in their design group, in their sales department and asking them; what do you see? You know, years ago we used to work on forecasts. Customers would have a very predictable usage on materials and they'd have forecasts out for some time. We would base our stock on that and we do forecasting today but it's not the same thing anymore. I mean customers may get an order and they have four days to turn it and they don't know what the build’s gonna be until the stackup’s done and and that creates those challenges. But you know, we try again, we try and improve what we stock and what we have here and get better and better at that. It's just never boring that's for sure. Yeah right, you gotta have a big crystal ball… Yeah just talk a little about spread glass. Yeah spread glass now that kind of puzzles me in context of high speed so I'm curious. Teach us about spread glass? So there's different kinds of glass, what they call standard E glass and then of course the low dielectric constant glass. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But the spread glass is basically that the the fibers, instead of having a crossover and a weave - like you would in a fabric for like clothing - the actual filaments and the weave are spread out, so you don't have open areas and crossover areas, or areas of higher density glass and that makes the system more electrically uniform. So when you have traces that go through the PCB they’re not either going through high resin content areas, or high glass content areas because they'll have different signal properties so you want to make it more uniform. Are they more in glass spindles - are you saying it's not woven? Well it is woven but instead of having a high concentration of glass with open areas of just pure resin, the filaments are spread across so you're filling in the open areas. Okay so they're kind of fanned out you're saying? Yes exactly there's different terminologies there’s mechanically spread, there's flat glass, but but basically what ends up happening is, the crossover areas where you would have what we call glass knuckles, they're thinner and of course, the open areas now have some glass. So again the system is more uniform it's a composite. So the composite’s more uniform and and like I said that has signal benefits, especially for differential pairs. If you had one trace and a diff pair running over mostly resin, and one running over mostly glass, they'll have different propagation velocities. So you'd have different electrical results, so the spring glass is better for that. It is better from a drilling standpoint, either laser or mechanical drilling. Because you're not going through high concentrations of glass where the crossovers are so there is a benefit there. There are some caveats though, to how it works with filling ground planes. Because the resin doesn't easily move through the glass fabric - you could have some problems filling, so we have to offer not just the spread version, we have to offer the standard versions as well because very often, designs - if they're strip line - you'll have a reference plane on either side of a signal and those reference planes could be heavy copper and they require a certain amount of fill. So you need the standard fabrics to use as well in a stack up. So you might have a mixture of those types of systems - so yeah it does add some complexity. So now we're not only doing hybrid materials now we're doing hybrid prepreg you're saying? Well there are different varieties I guess you have to do it that way anyways because if you're doing hybrid you're matching the materials to the bond ply that you're using anyways I suppose, but now you're adding in this kind of third layer almost. Right. And then we also have standard copper foil and then we have HVLP or VLP copper and low-profile coppers, so so yeah so it adds. And then of course, all the different copper weights - really everything from 5 micron through four or five/six ounces, so it's all over the place. But yeah actually going on the hybrid thing too we are seeing a lot of mixing the resin systems. In other words you would never mix B-stages in the same layer in other words you wouldn't have one kind of resin melt but you can mix cores so you could have one type of resin system as long as it's fully cured adjacent to another kind of resin system and we see that with RF, because very often what you do is, you have your low loss layer on the outside and then you would have your - whether it's high-speed digital or just DC - you would have that in the other layers and that system would be mixed and there are challenges there too even if you're not mixing the B-stages. Some materials require higher lamination temperatures and if you're not using a standard material that can withstand that, you would have issues or you would have to use a low loss material that has normal laminating  temperatures. And typically when we say normal laminating temperatures, we're talking in the 375 degrees Fahrenheit range. Whereas some of the more exotic PCB materials - the filled PTFE systems LCP FEP - they require much higher laminating temperatures more like 550 to 600 Fahrenheit. For a while I was at an RF - it really never took took flight - but I'm sure you remember not too many years ago, we got on the fusion bonding bandwagon. We thought that was going to solve all our problems but I remember being at a shop where I think we were running our lamp press at like 700 - 800 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 hours with some crazy profile. That's not very sustainable but it was homogenous DK and it had some great performance benefits but it really never took flight. So my gosh let's talk about hybrid a little bit more because I left the industry for a while to raise kids, and when I came back it was like Rumpelstiltskin waking up to all this high speed stuff and I was like wow! And what I did see was an awful lot of hybrids. So can you talk a little bit about what you think - certainly RF and microwave is an obvious one - but talk about what is driving the demand of high-speed digital RF and hybrid technology overall? Well it's - in very broad terms - it's about electronics, doing all kinds of different things from a design standpoint though it's about mixing, mixing proper material properties in composites that's what you do. You choose one material over another because of its properties and you separate those layers out to get what you need out of a design. So it's driven by cost, some of its also driven by how you would fabricate. In other words, if you had a material that was hard to laminate you could use that as a double-sided low loss layer and then bond the other layers. Conventionally that would run the DC or other signals you would have in the design. We do have some new materials, so one thing I didn't mention earlier is that we distribute for both Isola and DuPont. Okay. Isola does have a suite of laminates that are low loss, some of them even with DKs close to the Teflon range, and they laminate at normal temperatures. So making a composite build is a lot simpler. You don't have to do two separate laminations, unless you had buried micro vias. But you wouldn't do it because of the materials. You would do it because it's for the design but you can do it in one lamination cycle so that's one thing we're trying to bring to market and that's something that's been a growth item for us. Some of these new materials like Tera MT40 for example, the Astra MT77. Astra has the lower dielectric constant - a dielectric constant of just under three - that's for certain, for RF designs, whereas the I-Tera is for the mid-DK, what we call the 3.4 - 3.5 DK range but they're both low loss and they’re both laminated. Again at normal temperatures, so that seems to be getting some good traction. How do they stand up cost-wise against some of the traditional high speed laminate providers? Well as a resin system PTFE is expensive and then if you're reinforcing it with ceramic or fiberglass, that adds cost as well, so we actually stack up - no pun intended - pretty well with the PTFE-based product. It's not as well-known, many of the designers are familiar with the PTFE based laminates for RF applications so, they go with what they know very often, until they have a need and then they start looking at alternatives. And there's so many different, projects coming on with our customers, we're quite busy trying to keep that education process going. So I'm putting myself in a designer's shoes today and I was talking to Lee Ritchie yesterday and he was talking about how the speed curve has gone up near vertical in the last five years and I think you and I would both agree that we've seen that trend. I'm putting myself in a designer's shoes, so how do I get educated fast enough to keep up with all these moving pieces? Because like I said, when I left the industry and came back it was completely like a waterfall as far as onboarding all the different laminate manufacturers and then learning about matching bond, prepregs and bonding systems and cover weights. And then, let's just throw in, that we might have this on an aluminum carrier or whatever. How can we do a good job other than hosting a podcast so I get people educated? I think the IPC design councils are helpful for that. Some of our folks have presented, I presented, our other people presented. Certainly, if you're an OEM or a designer and you get boards from a board shop, reach out to the board shop and say, what are my options? The board shops have to live and breathe this stuff and certainly, folks like myself and folks at DuPont and Isola will also support the board shop in that effort. In fact that's becoming a bigger part of what I do. I travel with my customer to their customers and talk about their options and the pros and cons because you would think, in theory you would want the highest performance at the lowest cost but, it's not just single performance. It could be mechanical performance, it could be thermal performance, there are a lot of different attributes that you would need in the design and you don't know unless you talk, unless the designers were talking to the folks that have the materials background. You can't put all that together and I've seen projects where people have used the same old stuff and then they get unexpected results and so that's what we're trying to do. It's better for everybody if we hit it right the first time. So, that's what we do, we go in and we say, these are the options, this is when you use fired glass, this is when you use standard, this is when you go for the lowest loss possible, this is where you go for a better economy. We have a material called high speed that's very economical and it's pretty low loss, it's a 006 loss tangent and it's compact. It's not as cheap as FR4, but it's close to a lot of the other materials out there. So it's a nice scale of economy. Now it's not for every design but those who have been using FR4 for a long time and want to upgrade to a total low loss system, it might be a good next step. And that product has actually doing pretty well for us. The 4UIS has been growing pretty well and then the high-end products are growing pretty well. The products in between not so much, but, I think it's just a matter of what people need and the design. All right, that makes sense. Does Insulectro and/or DuPont and Isola put out resources online that designers can get a hold of? Yeah both companies, obviously all three of us actually, have websites with links to connect slash sheets, tech data sheets, and other things but I don't know if a website will ever be a good substitute for actually having a conversation with someone who's knowledgeable. Certainly that's a good place to start. The other thing too is sometimes a design will have some IPC slash sheet numbers on them, the specification sheets for different materials, and sometimes you're locked into that. So we've seen that with our customers, sometimes they're locked into a particular material set and it may not be the best. And again that goes back to having a conversation with the people involved. And sometimes they’re willing to change and sometimes not. Sometimes they have no choice. Certainly all old legacy military designs are examples where people are really stuck on very old old systems. And there's definitely a better mousetrap in those cases. But like I said, there's no substitute for having the conversation. So Insulectro for instance, we were just at IPC Apex and I'm sure Chris, you were doing presentations there. I assume that going to trade shows also, there would be opportunities to have face-to-face conversations? Yeah certainly, seek out - if you're buying boards - seek out your PCB shop. The folks at those trade shows, or sit in on some of the technical sessions, and then certainly, if Insulectro, Solar DuPont are there, great place to go get some information on materials. Great. Well I know I sound like I repeat myself often about this, but I've often said, and I used to blog on Microwave Journal to tell people, please go talk to your workshop, please go to your workshop because I think it kind of all ends and starts there and and because, like you said they have to deal with so many laminate and resin systems and all these things every day. A lot of times they could be helpful, it's just sometimes I think designers are so strapped for time. Sometimes they're doing the jobs of two people and so I'm always trying to help the designer get resources as best they can. Yeah and it's something we appreciate, and what we see happening too, is they'll pick up a data sheet and they look at differences there - sometimes there are very minor differences between resin contents and electrical performance. You don't know the dielectric constant of a loss and they'll pick the lowest on the datasheet, but that might not be the best for the fabrication and having the right material to make the board come out right, yield well, do well after assembly, do well in the field. You're not really giving up anything even if the loss is very minor, higher in loss, but yet the board performs well it's definitely a good trade. So that's part of the problem, sometimes some of the designers who are pressed for time will pick a particular material set. Yeah it might have the lowest numbers, but it may not be the best fabrication. If you can't build it, or if the board shop doesn't yield well, it doesn't do anybody any good. So I was just talking also to Kelly Dack, Chris. You would probably recognize his face. Anyways we were just talking about this and it's like what looks good on paper is... First thing, it isn’t always this linear process when it comes to design and fabricating. So, back to the hybrid designs. What would you say for someone that's designing hybrids, some of the the challenges are of those boards and some of the benefits? Obviously performance is one of the benefits. Yes performance and cost, because very often the very low loss materials, come at a premium, because of the resin systems - the cost of the resin systems - and the cost to make the materials and so on and so forth. So that is another benefit - it can be a challenge for the board shop and it really depends on the materials. The challenges are more often in fabrication than they are in the actual design part of it. Yeah, like I said before, it just varies so much, I mean one of the requirements usually for an RF design is to have a certain level of precision when it comes to forming the circuitry. When we say forming, it could be a plating and etching, it could be just print and etch, depending on the the technology used. And then you would laminate that into a standard FR4 system, and sometimes those materials aren't really compatible. So yeah, that goes back to being able to have materials that have the right CT properties, the right adhesion the right lamination properties. But you look at some of these high speed materials and sometimes they can be more fragile. I mean they might for instance - and correct me if I'm wrong here - this is second-hand knowledge here, but they might survive the fab process, and lamination cycles, or even multiple lamination cycles, because then you introduce buried and blind vias. And then there's multiple thermal excursions and then you take it to assembly and you've got through-hole and surface mount part and they have to go through another two thermal excursions. And so that it all adds up and it it's not obvious at the outset right? Yeah those are all good points, all things that have to be considered in the fabrication and use of the part and there's a lot there too. One of the things I'm seeing, is copper is a really good moisture barrier. So one of the things that we try and preach to our customers and their customers or the assemblers if it's a CM, is you have to bake the parts prior to assembly and you can't underestimate that. There was a really good paper put out around 2011 - 2012 at IPC that showed just how long it takes for the moisture to get around because if you have a strip line construction, or if you have a reference plane and RF design, that moisture has got to go around that copper plane. It can't go through it and I've seen people underestimate the baking and end up with with scrap. It's kind of a shame because if moisture is the only reason why you're doing the laminating and assembly it really is avoidable yeah sometimes it's a pain did it bake a board for two, four, six, sometimes 24 hours but, that's what it takes to yield well but it's it's still worth it and that’s something that comes up a lot. Well I know that I worked for a smaller art shop and we had the case where we were doing kind of pre-production quantities and the board was cooking along, no problem, and then one day it wasn't working. Guess what, it had rained for a week and we didn't have them in an airtight storage or whatever, so we had to completely look the way we were storing and make sure we were baking this, because in California, it doesn't rain that much and it wasn't  first and foremost on our brains and when it came down to that, it was like what? Yeah didn't see that one coming at all. I've seen that happen yeah, I've seen that it where customers or assemblers, they don't bake for years and think everything is great and they want to know what's changed and it's well material’s the same... Had a heavy winter... Yeah and it turns out it was something like that, it's always best practice to bake and it varies so much by design - ground planes are a problem. In fact there was a great study done recently with HD Paragon, I don't know if you if your listeners are familiar? Maybe not, but we’ll put that link below in the show notes. Because they're an amazing asset to our industry. So they did a great study on crosshatch ground planes on flex so there's some performance trade-offs to the crosshatch ground planes, but they do create a window. Moisture will get in more easily but it can get out more easily and when - as opposed to a solid plane - there is a frequency cut off where that is usable and one of the things the study looked at was diamond-shaped versus round openings in the ground plane. But I always like to put, or recommend putting, openings in the ground plane when you can afford it - just as a moisture egress. Hmm, that’s new to me, so neat but it completely makes sense right? if you're locking in moisture inside of the laminate because you're capping it off, you're trapping it right? Right, and a lot of the PCB processes are water based or aqueous based chemistries, even up to the surface finish. You know, Enog one of the most popular surface finishes, it sits in a hot bath for 30 minutes, actually two hot baths. The gold bath in the NIP and the nickel plating bath or high temperature what, 180 Fahrenheit - 190 Fahrenheit for 20 or 30 minutes in each bath. That's a big opportunity for the moisture uptake on the part, and if you can imagine, that's near when the part is finished. It usually gets routed and cleaned and electrical tests and a few other things. But then it goes out to the company that does the assembly some assemblers require the board shop to bake, which is okay if you put it in a moisture proof bag, but even that's not a guarantee because the workshop loses control over when it was opened and how long it stays in the atmosphere before it gets assembled and so on and so forth... -or just before it gets bagged. Yeah right. And it may already be present and you're just vacuum sealing a moisture-laden board. It’s so many moving pieces, I always say, I wish my dear friends that were printed circuit board designers or engineers that are designing boards now understood the complexity of board manufacturing because you and I've been talking this whole time about just the laminates this is not drilling, laminating buried and blind vias, filling vias. There's so many moving pieces and I think sometimes copper bond treatments? Yeah all of that and I think in this day and age, a bare board is a line item on your bomb. It's not like pulling a component off the shelf and so I think the closer board fabricators and engineers can get together the better for both actually. Because sometimes I think the board fabricators also get exasperated with designers, but the technology is being driven in a certain way. And they're gonna be the first ones to see it and can actually help enable the board manufacturers in many cases so it kind of goes both ways An experienced designer will know what the board shop needs and that's again - that comes from communication - things like minimum clearances, designed for manufacturability, those types of things, and in fact all the board fabricators I know are very good about working with their customers to try. And again it's in everyone's best interest to yield well and have a part that survives. Absolutely, and back to Kelly Dack, we had a long conversation - actually two people here at Altium, all of our AEs and FEs here - are required to take the CID course and so two guys here recently took it and for the first time I got to look through the workbook. Holy cow this thing is like this thick and a huge percentage of that is the DFM things. It's understanding, so to hopefully save time and money and headache on the end of the designer. Well Chris, I know we've only got started but we need to do this again clearly, because the other thing I want to talk with you about is flex, because flex is on the rise and I know you'll have a lot of insight there and I would love to ask you more about that. But before we go I always do this thing at the end of the podcast called ‘designers after hours’ because most people in our industry usually have some kind of interesting hobby. or a lot of us, even though we kind of act left brained, we have a pretty active right brain too actually, so sometimes we're creative or do something interesting. So do you have anything that you enjoy doing after hours, sort of unique? Yeah so actually I've been I've been diving, gosh since the late 70s… Diving? Oh scuba diving I thought you said dieting, okay! Yeah so actually I started back east when I was living in New Jersey I actually did some shore diving and some wreck diving and that was a lot of fun. Now in California, when I was living in Southern California, it was Catalina Island and the Channel Islands and so on and so forth. But here in northern Cali the best place to go is Monterey. I've done some abalone diving up in Mendocino, but that's free diving that's not scuba. But, in fact, I've taken my sister my niece there. There's divers also and we've gone down to Monterey and I've done that so that's one of things I like to do. It's something I don't get to do as often as I like of course. I know we're all so busy. Well speaking of free diving for abalone my mom and dad grew up here in San Diego - I grew up in in Orange County just about two hours north of here - but my mom, when she was a teenager used to free dive for abalone in La Jolla Cove. So about a year ago I moved down here and I'm itching to go get certified and do diving here because there's some really neat dive spots here. But we went to the area where my mom used to free dive and my daughter came up from snorkeling one day and pulled up two abalone shells, which is so rare. Yeah Well down here it's so picked over it's like there's divers out every weekend so it's really rare to find live abalone anymore. But anyway, she brought up a couple of shells. Interesting fact about La Jolla, you can find electric rays down there so Rays are capable of delivering an electric shock. Really? Yeah well check it out they're pretty cool - but don't touch them - yeah, they're pretty cool. Yes my interest in electronics and nature stops. Well thank you Chris, so much, this has been fascinating and I want to ask you 50 more questions but if you will say yes we'll do this again in a month or so and we'll talk about flex. Sounds great. Okay thanks so much Chris. Again this has been Judy Warner and Chris Hunrath with the OnTrack podcast. Thanks for joining today, we look forward to you tuning in again and until then, remember to always stay OnTrack.

On this episode of the Holy Nerdy Podcast, joining us in the digital studio is our guest and friend, Chris Holm from the “Conspire A Theory Podcast”. Chris has joined us on our show to chat about two things that he is really nerdy about; Being a comic book artist and Furries. What’s a Furry you might ask? Well Chris is here to drop some real furry knowledge and some funny stories about this misunderstood culture and community. After the break we take a trip to the hidden nation of Wakanda to give our review and thoughts on Marvel Studio’s most recent smash hit, Black Panther.   Subscribe to The Conspire a Theory Podcast - https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/conspireatheory   TOPICS Chris Holm Joins Us Caleb's History With Chris Holm The "Furries" Caleb's History With "Furries" Chris Holm's "Furry Horror Story" "Furry" History Howard The Duck and The Duck Boobs Jeffrey Jones Is A Pervert The Life Of A Comic Book Artist Steam Punks Are Real Punks Black Panther Review Caleb's Interesting Theater Encounter   Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon Bonus Episodes Caleb and I are currently preppring for our next "Bonus" episode detailing the history as well as audio commentary of the short lived and hugely divisive series featuring our favorite psychotic chihuahua and dimwitted cat, The Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. This next episode containing more history as well as commentary on the next episode in the series will be released as soon as we hit 10 Reviews on ITunes. Additional episodes after that will be released at 10 review intervals until we complete the animated series. We are really looking forward to these bonus episodes. We have done our homework and have compiled a treasure trove of backstory and history on creator John Kricfalusi including introductions for each episode from John K. himself.   Follow us on Social Media Facebook Twitter Instagram   You can call us and leave a funny voicemail at 806-680-6373. We might even play it on air if your lucky.  

This week on PodQuest we dig into the good and the bad from the Game Awards 2017, debate what for us makes a GOTY worthy game, talk about some of the things that happened during PSX and round all of that out with a rousing discussion about how Monster Hunter is a bad game (Well Chris says it's bad, Walnut likes it). In between there's Cuphead, trailers, and more!

This week on PodQuest we dig into the good and the bad from the Game Awards 2017, debate what for us makes a GOTY worthy game, talk about some of the things that happened during PSX and round all of that out with a rousing discussion about how Monster Hunter is a bad game (Well Chris says it's bad, Walnut likes it). In between there's Cuphead, trailers, and more! Intro and Outro music Mega Man 2 'Project X2 - Title Screen' OC ReMix courtesy of Project X over at OCRemix

Today’s guest is a gem. He’s just a gem. And I’ve really never used that phrase before but I couldn’t think of any better way to introduce Chris Cieri, the founder of Franklin and Whitman, the instagram-famous plant-based, paraben and cruelty free skin care company you might already be familiar with. You know that song: “started from the bottom now we here?” Well Chris’ version might as well be “started with a beard now we here” because that’s really the story of how his passion-project-turned-second-job exploded onto the natural skin care scene. Just like Chris is blown away by the response to his handmade products, I was blown away by this conversation because we go WAY more than skin deep. Haha I love puns. We talk about morals and ethics and life and death and dogs and instagram and serums and dry shampoo and everything in between.   You’ll hear: Why is Franklin and Whitman is even called Franklin and Whitman (or “Frank and Whit” for short). The guiding principles/brand promises that Frank and Whit lives by. What the heck parabens are! The shocking way Chris learned to make all his skin care products. The product he’s most proud of creating. And so much more! Links related to this episode: The full show notes with all the deets from this episode! Where I’d much appreciate you leaving a review for the show in iTunes!! How to work 1-on-1 with me! Get my FREE #EATMOREPLANTS course! Where you can go to submit a question for the show! Where you can go to suggest a guest (yourself or someone else) for the show! Party in My Plants on Instagram Party in My Plants on Facebook Party in My Plants’ Cooking Videos on YouTube

Well Chris has left us once again. In fact, today is his first day at Apple in Vancouver, WA, but we managed to get a season 3 finale recorded before the big move. We talked about why he’s such a good candidate for Apple and generally tried to figure out why he’s leaving me. Check … Read More →

Chris Kelsey is a hit film producer who has worked with Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Tyler Perry Studios, BET, MTV, and FX Networks' two-time Golden Globe winning TV Comedy series "ATLANTA." Are you curious about what it takes to be a hit film maker? Well Chris gives us a glimpse into what it took to make him successful and it all starts with him being a man of God. In this interview, he tells us what inspires him, why faith is so important to him, and drops some major keys on what it takes to be successful in the Hollywood game. Grab your smart phone and take notes! Please leave a review on iTunes and then share this gem *podcast* with a friend!

Have you been watching Supergirl? If you have, you may have noticed that there is a character that was a surprising twist to the whole Supergirl mythos. One J'onn J'onzz "The Martian Manhunter" has made himself known, but do you know who the last green martian is? Well Chris and Mitch are here to give you a lesson in the very powerful alien. We hope you hear some things you didn't already know and more so enjoy.

You remember way back in 2008 when Norman Osborn was the "Top Cop" of the Marvel Universe? Marvel appropriately named this the Dark Reign, and the named could not be more fitting. Osborn, formerly known as The Green Goblin, had his own Cabal, a secret society of villains brought to together by Osborn, now in an Iron Man powersuit and going by the name The Iron Patriot, to oversee and concoct world devastating plans, as well as his very own Avenger team at his beckon call, made up of some of the worst and most ruthless criminals. Well if you remember that Imagine If Lex Luthor was given the same opportunity in the DC universe, who would he pick, who would side with him? Well Chris and Mitch give the scenario a go in the second episode of Imagine If... enjoy. So if you ever wonder"What If?", or utter the words "Just Imagine", or love to argue "Who Would Win?" then this is the podcast for you. Let Chris and Mitch take you to another world, another time, and instruct you to "Imagine If".

Allison hijacked the title, so yeah. Well Chris opted to watch Lost instead of record so he's sorta in the background, well anyways it's another crappy news week, we try out our new Trailer Spot with My Soul to Take. I do the Box Office Report. And for reviews Allison takes over Machete and I review The Last Exorcism. Enjoy the show! Opening and Closing Song- You're Going Down by Sick Puppies

No news, no reviews (kinda), and no Trailer Spot. So what is there to do for this episode? Well Chris and I decided to go over the summers' biggest hits starting with Public Enemies and ending with...well you'll have to listen to find out! After we go over the biggest movies of the summer we have the Fall Preview telling you guys what you should keep an eye out for leading through the month of November. And yes we do cover New Moon. Enjoy!