HTDE: Forks and Ice Masters

Hey guys it's Peter, once again in your weight weight feed I am so pleased to present you another episode of how to do everything by weight weight producers Ian and Mike. Now remember you can only get these episodes of how to do everything in our feed for a short while so if you love the kind of mysteries that Mike and Ian are revealing make sure you subscribe to how to do everything at their own feed. Thanks. At this very moment the hockey pre-limbs at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Cortina, are happening and I think it's fair to say the man that made it all possible is Don Moffett. Don is the chief ice maker for ice hockey at the games that means he's in charge of building the rink and making sure the ice is perfect. He's done this at five Olympic Games, he's joining us online now from Milan. Don, what gives you the magic touch with ice? You know I don't know that there's a magic touch, it's just a kind of a passion for the sport of hockey that you know I just want to create the best surface I can for the best athletes in the world to be able to do what they do without them having to worry about ice conditions or problems with the rinks. Now I have you know a vast amount of experience dealing with the Olympics which are very difficult you know there's just so much bureaucracy that I'm always incredibly excited when I actually get to get a you know an ice tool or a zamboni onto the ice or you know start making ice type things. Now this this venue it's not a hockey venue, it's not purpose built right? It's a concert hall do we understand? Yeah it's a concert entertainment venue yep. So there must have been unique challenges this time. Yeah there there was a lot of different challenges you know right from the start we had an Italian company created a temporary rink situation where we have insulation on the on the concrete floor because we don't want to freeze their new floor and break it and then on top of that insulation is our refrigeration piping. Does it being in a concert hall does it sound great? This ice does really it does well well with with this temporary system it's funny it's one of the things that I'm talking to teams and and players about is it's going to sound way different than a normal you know for example on NHL building the ice is much much louder it sounds hollow. Yeah you know the players start to say that it feels hollow but then they're like no no it feels good but it just sounds weird. Oh so they it since it sounds hollow or then they're used to it it I guess it would make you nervous if you were skating on it. Yes well just for the first you know it's funny when they when the players first jump on they start skating around and you see them looking down at the ice going what the heck is going on you know and then they get into practice and they forget about it. Oh but what a fun element for us as viewers to know when we're watching them skate. Yeah yeah with all that action on the ice are you Don really protective of your ice when you're watching a game do you feel like oh come on guys during the games not so much because I want I don't want to have any effect on on the teams of the players but you know leading up to the games oh yes I'm yeah it's it's my child I'm very protective of it you know anybody that's going on whether it's photographers practice ceremony practices anything I have to approve and make sure that I know that they're going on and and give them directions and make sure that they're timing fits with with our timing to get things ready for the games. Is that is that your spectator experience like you know when we watch we're watching who's going to score who's going to win yeah are you thinking about the ice the whole time when they're playing 100% really oh yeah yeah I'm I'm listening to the sound of the skates I'm watching the skate marks I'm I'm feeling the snow I'm picking the snow up during the TV time outs when there's commercials that on the TV channels I'm out on the ice surface with an infrared gun measuring temperatures and and you know the ice in the air to make sure that everything's still good so yeah yeah I'm pretty busy during a pretty busy during the game. So if we're watching the game we should be able to find you somewhere uh maybe I'm the ice. Hopefully not easy like to say commercials okay they typically don't show live they go away you know commercials uh kind of run run sports nowadays yeah well I guess that's true so when you're when you're out to eat and you get ice water or I don't know if you're a cocktail person you get a cocktail are you do you check out the ice in your drink absolutely yeah really oh yeah oh yeah I want to see if it's I want to see if it's nice and crystal clear if it's cloudy if it's cloudy then I know the water is not quite the best uh or it was made at the wrong temperature wait a second Don so what's your ice game at home what are you doing in your your own freezer do you have the special you know ice things no and nothing I've got crazy no I've got some nice filters you know so I've got some nice ice cubes but uh just just some really good filters on the on the waterline going to the freezer did you have to do that yourself or did that come with no no so are you the chief ice maker in your own home then too yeah pretty much pretty much yeah well Don thank you so much for talking to us about what you do absolutely no problem at all this is how to do everything I mean and I'm Mike on today's show what to do when you meet someone with the same name as you but first over the last couple years people who are taking surveys online have encountered an odd error and a brown is a survey methodologist at the Pew Research Center and can you tell us about this of course so yeah we had one of our surveys in the field and we found out that some people as they went through the survey many of the questions looked perfectly normal and then they would come to a yes no question such as you know do you ever use the internet uh and it would say forks no instead of yes or no and people were understandably a little confused about what was going on I the one I saw first was the question was are you pregnant and your choices were forks or no yeah so that was actually this has been popping up on other people's surveys as well so yeah on kind of medical questionnaires that you fill out before doctor's appointment that seems to be a commonplace that we've been seeing this online yeah so we realize that we were not alone okay so the these are online or at least on computer surveys that people are filling out and whenever it says you choose between yes or no it says you're choosing between forks and no what's happening so that's that's what we wondered um yeah it has never happened to us before we tried to replicate it we we tried we just started going through the survey a bunch of times using different browsers using phones using computers and then my co-worker messaged me and was like it's real I saw forks and so from there we were able to figure it out and something in the survey was telling the Google Chrome browser this survey is in Spanish so what it was doing was it was trying to translate this survey that was completely in English into English yeah so indeed um it looks like they have now fixed this issue in Google translate but up until recently if you went to Google translate and you said I'm typing in Spanish but you wrote yes in English and then told that you wanted it wanted it to translate it from Spanish to English it would translate yes to forks whatever was happening the the software was saying I don't know what this word is I guess it's probably forks yeah I can't really speak to you what was going through Google translate's head when it did that but yeah something there was there were some cross wires wow so I don't know at what point like how many responses had you received do you know that people completed the survey by selecting well I guess if my choices are forks or no my answer is forks right so obviously our next thought was oh no we need to make sure this is in completely you know destroying our our survey I mean we had sent out tens of thousands of letters inviting people to take the survey and also every single person who pointed out clearly understood that it was a yes no question they all said the word yes is being replaced by forks so it's not like they were like I don't know what forks could possibly mean we think this was a pretty isolated incident only happened to you a handful of people and it didn't seem to really impact the results. But yeah, we were a little bit worried there for a minute, but we're pretty confident in the results now. I just want to say this is the funniest Pew Research survey I've ever read. Yeah, it's definitely the funniest thing that's ever happened to me. I would not say, you know, Surrey methodology is known for its humor necessarily, so I was very popular at the annual conference that year. I think for the rest of the show, what we should do is we should replace any yes with forks, just to give us sort of audio experience of what the people take these surveys face. Just to see what it's like to live in a world where forks is what you say instead of yes. Do you. Mike, do you think this is a good idea to do this? Forks. If you have a question, you'd like to ask, go ahead and send it to us at [email protected]. That's our email address. It can be how to question. It can be a simple forks or no question. Whatever it is you are wondering about whatever it is you need help with. Go ahead, send it to us and we will do our best. Forks. Hey Valerie, what can we help you with? So my name is a little unique, not unusual, but I don't need a lot of Valerie. However, when I do, like me, an old friend, you haven't seen in a decade and there's this instant connection and it's just this feeling of, oh my gosh, I can't believe it's you. Oh, uh-huh, forks. What is that magic that's happening? Can you tell us Valerie about your most recent meeting with another Valerie? Flex. That was just a few months ago. It had been a long time since I met another Valerie. Maybe four years or something. So it was actually at the doctor's office and I had to go to the front desk and talk to them. So this woman heard me say my name and she was a Valerie. Of course. So once I left the front desk, she came over and she was like, my name's Valerie. She was like, hello, you know, because the whole thing is, oh, I can't believe it's you. And then she was like, I went on your birthday. It was a whole thing. So you're at the doctor's office, which is a place where we actually have laws to protect people's privacy. This other person overheard you and she just couldn't help but introduce herself to you. Right. So Valerie, I'm thinking maybe the person to call here, the people to call here, my parents are named Sean and Sean. They're spelled the same. My mom and dad are both named Sean Chilag. So it's something they've been dealing with for 50 years. And I feel like if they'll take our call, we should see if they can give us some insight into the connection of people with the same name. That sounds great. Hi, it's Sean Chilag. And I am the female Sean Chilag. And I'm Sean Chilag. The male Sean Chilag. Welcome, Sean's. Thank you. You two have been together since what your junior year of high school? No. You mean in a not platonic way? Romantically. You've been a couple since when? Yeah. Yeah. We were 50. Well, the first time I heard of Sean, he was just a little bitty. And he was, I mean, I didn't see him. My brother just told me about him because he had been a lifeguard and told me about this tiniest boy making the one mile bad you get for swimming a mile. And he said that not only was it amazing to see this little guy swimming, his name was Sean. Wow. So how old do you think you were then, Dad? Maybe 11 or so. Wow. I think you were more like five. No, come on. I don't think I was. I could have been 10, I guess. Yeah, but when I met Sean, he was shorter than me. Okay. That was a Boy Scout camp. You met it a Boy Scout camp? No. Yeah. She was, she was a hard one. I got to see this short swimmer. Where is he? Yeah. Dad, do you remember the first time you heard about Sean? Yes. Well, I'd heard about her just in passing, but the first time I saw her was it some probably a junior high basketball gang? What was your first date? Oh, I'm sure we went to the movie doing thing. There was nothing to do and Logan. I'm sure. Other than sex. Okay. All right. Yeah. Ian's here. You guys. Come on. I hope you're going to edit that. Yeah, we're going to try and edit it out of my brain. I'm going to turn an echo on so that it lives forever. Well, I remember mom, I found your, I think maybe your sophomore year, yearbook from high school and dad had written in the back to Sean. You have a cool name. I hope to get to know you better. Sean. Oh, no, that sounds like Sean. Do you think, do you think you all would be together if you weren't both named Sean? Was that a big part of your early connection? Oh, I don't think so. No, I don't either. I mean, that's why we met, but we just liked each other. Can you all remember a time or two that both being named Sean, people have had a funny or surprising reaction to it? One time a person thought I didn't know any personal pronouns because I was talking about Sean, but she thought I was talking about myself. How long did that go on for? Well, actually, it must have been a semester because it was back in the days in college and I don't know. I guess I spoke about him a lot. In derogatory ways. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? Well, I learned that if you're a kid out there thinking about what you want to be when you grow up, one possible job is master of ice. Ice master. Don didn't ever talk about being called the ice master, but that's how he is known in the Olympic coverage, which really sounds like a superhero. And then I think everything Don does is amazing, but I think if you heard you were about to meet the ice master, you would think Don had more going on. Is it possible, and I don't know, we didn't get into this into the technical parts, but we don't know that Don doesn't shoot ice out of his hands to make the hockey rink. Totally. Yeah. The idea that you could make a hockey rink in a old Italian concert hall is implausible without superpowers. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Nice try, Don. What about you, Mike? What do you learn today? I learned that your parents had sex. Yeah, you know, if you asked me, Ian, would you like me to stop talking about that? My answer will be forks. How to do everything is produced by Skyler Swinson with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern is Sean Gillock, and we're not going to tell you which one. Send us your questions to [email protected]. I'm Ian, and I'm Mike. Thanks. Thanks.