DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
439 clips, strongest first.
Dr. Dave laughs that his children are amazed when he repairs an Xbox or music player because fixing technology is his livelihood; Evil Steve adds that they mostly experience him arriving home late and being handed another problem before dinner.
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A discussion of modern diesel technology sends Dr. Dave back to an independent-minded friend and his 1976 Mercedes 300D with an enormous auxiliary fuel tank. Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember that its range seemed endless, its zero-to-sixty time was roughly sixty seconds and a hard press on the accelerator produced a James Bond-style smoke screen.
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Regular caller Mark challenges the phrase “private browsing,” then tells the brothers about his move, wife, injured foot and new home phone while the studio keeps the conversation light and personal.
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Dr. Dave admits spending days changing and testing a small solid-state computer with no practical destination, treating it as an intellectual exercise driven by the desire to understand why things behave as they do.
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Dr. Dave explains that he is intrigued by the combination of high-tech and high-touch because, for all his technology, he still loves fountain pens and yellow legal pads. Evil Steve answers with jokes about parchment, ribbons and a copper carrying tube.
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Returning caller Mike greets Dr. Dave and Evil Steve as his brothers from another mother, asks for a recap because he is hooked on the show and then stays through warm teasing about Earth, Wind and Fire and Evil Steve missing the concert. The exchange preserves the familiar relationship the program built with regular listeners.
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After a caller wishes him well, Dr. Dave says Saturday radio lets him have more fun than he deserves by showing up, speaking freely and reaching listeners everywhere.
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After saying he has listened for roughly twenty years, caller John asks what Dr. Dave means in an advertisement when he says “kids like I do.” Dr. Dave replies that nobody has children like his and affectionately adds that they are good boys.
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A caller’s beloved old game controller leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve through old IBM keyboards, subjective feel and Dr. Dave’s taste for heavy, uncomfortable vintage motorcycle helmets.
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Dr. Dave remembers being only six or seven when his family moved to Hawaii and feeling overwhelmed at the USS Arizona memorial, imagining the quiet Sunday morning that changed abruptly and honoring the people who lost their lives.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember watching a B-52 make a low pass at an earlier Tucson air show and then climb at an angle they can hardly believe. Their shared excitement and precise memory of the 1992 event make it a vivid personal story.
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Dr. Dave explains that after spending as many as fourteen to eighteen hours around computers, he would rather watch football or play a real-world game than play solitaire on a screen.
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Dr. Dave explains the prior week’s absence with his and Gina’s first balloon flight, describing the fun of meeting people, learning an unfamiliar craft and asking questions with the curiosity of a child.
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While reviewing his schedule, Dr. Dave realizes the van registration expires in February and that neither a thirtieth nor thirty-first will arrive to save him. He races to emissions, finds almost no line, completes the online renewal and laughs that everyone else must also be waiting for dates that do not exist.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve wish Dr. Dave's son Nicholas James Mason a happy birthday on the air, then later connect the greeting to a funny recollection about the Mason boys swinging wildly at birthday piñatas. It is unusually personal family material preserved inside the radio archive.
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A discussion of why football is exciting leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve back to playing when they were young. They remember bruised forearms becoming numb by the end of a season and laugh about feeling able to knock down a concrete pillar.
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Remembering James Brown, Dr. Dave traces the singer’s reach from music that irritated his grandmother and mother to music everyone around the show enjoyed. Lou Rawls’ recent death reminds him and Gina that when an aging great performer comes to town, the opportunity to see that person should not be postponed.
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Convention cancellation leads to personal memories of the press experience, post-September-11 security and Evil Steve’s Mercedes test drive. Retain the full shared story.
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After a week spent working behind computers, Dr. Dave says that taking his wife and children to the fair left him physically tired but mentally rejuvenated. The short reflection captures the importance he placed on family time away from technology.
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Dr. Dave arrives at Mervyn's hours before its final closing with a year-old gift card, finds door after door locked, laughs when an employee threatens to call security and finally gets inside to spend it.
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Online-auction fraud leads Dr. Dave to describe collecting roughly eighty fountain pens while refusing inflated prices and urgent bidding. He explains that a cheap uncertain purchase can still provide parts, but he never treats one auction as the only chance because another pen will always appear.
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Explaining why portability matters, Dr. Dave opens an inventory of his unusually large consultant’s briefcase: a small printer, Zip drive, floppy drive, external hard drives and the laptop itself. The list preserves the physical tools required to bring computer service to a client in 2006.
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Evil Steve tells listeners that he traded his restored 1976 Honda 400F for a Harley with a friend. Dr. Dave observes that what Evil Steve received had nothing to do with the motorcycle, and Evil Steve agrees that the value was “beyond the motorcycle,” which was how it was supposed to be.
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On Dr. Dave's son Nick’s birthday weekend, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve explain that doctors proposed an April Fools’ Day delivery and the family deliberately chose April 2 instead.
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Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
