Battle Born Tech

Get Me Out of This Menu Maze! | Battle Born Tech · November 3, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, Suzy’s brand-new camera recorder wants a password she never set. Brian has waited five years for Windows to let go of his taskbar. And Linux Lee’s new laptop took a dive off the desk and woke up asking questions he wasn’t sure he should answer. Three callers, one maze of menus. Which way is out?

Plus: hackers turn supermarket freezers into ovens, a few corrections we owe you, and why the update you keep putting off matters more than it looks. Call us Saturdays 9 to 11 AM or Sundays 7 to 9 PM Pacific at 775-241-3571, and hear the show Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on KNVC 95.1 FM in Carson City and at KNVC.org.

AI-assisted: Christy Ramsey drafted this description with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence; all content was reviewed and verified by him, and responsibility for its preparation is his alone.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Unsupervised Gadgets Will Be Refurbished | Battle Born Tech · October 27, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, A laptop that comes with someone else’s life still on it. A whole new operating system you can take for a test drive without touching anything on your computer. A speaker at the office that will happily buy things for anyone who asks, and a parrot who proved it. And an ad that can break into a phone without a single tap. Unsupervised gadgets go awry. Get them rehabilitated. Press play.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM and Sundays 7–9 PM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Tales from the Encrypt | Battle Born Tech · October 20, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, Your new Windows 11 PC is encrypting its own hard drive right now, and if you don’t know where the recovery key is, a bad day could become a lost-everything day. Tim asks whether to turn BitLocker off before he even unboxes his new mini PC. Christy says probably, explains the real performance cost, and points to the exact setting.

Then: Hallie’s WordPress site died with a “critical error” the same weekend a stolen set of UpdraftCentral keys let attackers install backdoor plugins on sites around the world; Christy walks through recovery mode and what to check after. Helen wants a written procedure for a departed employee’s email, and gets four steps in order: lock the login, forward it, set an auto-reply, archive it. And Ken (Digital Dorsey on YouTube) calls from Ohio to vouch for Christy’s 50 years of battling tech, starting with an Ohio Scientific Challenger 2P and a cassette port that ate every program they typed in.

Also on the show: ArtCraft, a free open-source alpha that is cloning Adobe and Microsoft Office apps one at a time.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Ready, Set, Stop | Battle Born Tech · October 13, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech: Steve has a 15-year-old laptop still works. Steve wasn’t going to throw it away. The question was which Linux would still talk to it, and why one installer built him a house while the other only moved the furniture.

Teresa's sound bar lit up. It just wouldn’t make a sound. The problem wasn’t the sound bar.

Every program on Josh’s computer remembers “don’t print on both sides.” Except the one that prints his checks. The fix was not where he’d been looking.

News: Windows 10 gets another year, data centers become war targets, and French supermarkets learn what happens when the freezer takes orders from the internet.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM and Sundays 7-9 PM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Another License? You've Got to Be Kidding Me!| Battle Born Tech · October 6, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, Rebecca just wanted the hymn words on the screen to match the hymnal. Then she learned there's a license for the words, another for Zoom, and another for movie clips. Jay, a retired engineer, tells how his company left Microsoft for Linux and watched its trouble calls fall. And Christy and Joe sort out drivers: when to leave them alone, where to get them when you can't, and why there are two programs named Snappy.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · Show notes at battleborn.tech · links at bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM or Sundays 7-9 PM Pacific: 775-241-3571

It's All Plugged In Why Won't It Work?| Battle Born Tech · September 29, 2026

Stephen's office got a new modem, and suddenly his laptop couldn't reach the printer down the hall. Rachel had a class coming back from recess and a projector showing nothing but blue. Jay's church laptop kept listing his thumb drive twice. Christy and Joe follow the wire one box at a time, and find the equipment was fine all along. The settings just needed a nudge.

Along the way we cover:

when a router is worth replacing, and why a 12-year-old modem earns a plaque

why a cable beats Wi-Fi for video calls

the Windows key + P shortcut every teacher should know

where Windows sends your sound

why File Explorer lists a removable drive twice on purpose

corrections from last week

a new phone app that alerts you when camera glasses are nearby

AI-assisted: J. Christy Ramsey prepared this description with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence. All content was reviewed and verified by him, and responsibility for its preparation is his alone.

Battle Born Tech is a service mark of Christy Ramsey and airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Email Ain't Working, Money for Nothing, and PDFs Are Free | Battle Born Tech · September 22, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, who's paying for all those data centers, and could the answer show up on your power bill? Lee asks the question Wall Street can't stop asking, and Nevadans have a way to speak up. Brian brings a laptop that went swimming, and a famous kitchen remedy gets put to the test. Kathryn's email keeps asking whether she's a robot, and the reason is hiding in plain sight. Plus, Publisher users: the clock is running.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM and Sunday 7 -9 PM Pacific: 775-241-3571

We Are All Bouncers Now | Battle Born Tech · September 15, 2026

Email that should be rejected, Encryption that shouldn't be, and a photo show that needs to survive the meeting. This week on Battle Born Tech, A pastor opens an email from his own music director asking for another copy of the church mailing list. The name is right. The address underneath it is not. What stopped it was a staff member who happened to be standing there and asked four words.

Craig calls in from southern Nevada with a spear phishing attempt aimed at his entire staff, and we get into how the attacker built it, why the polite reflex to be helpful is the whole attack, and what to do when someone insists they cannot talk right now. Stevan bought a brand new computer for work and it will not turn BitLocker on, which is the opposite of the call we usually get. And Pat has to make her bosses' photos run in a loop at tomorrow's meeting, using photos that do not exist yet. We look at obvious tools in Windows but pick the unlikely but simple one that will last curious browsers and stray users.

Definitions, corrections, and every link we mentioned are at battleborn.tech.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM and Sundays 6-8 PM Pacific: 775-241-3571

Everything Is Fighting Me Today | Battle Born Tech · September 8, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech,Steve's Windows 10 machine boots fine and logs in fine, right up to the moment he plays a recorded show through Dish Anywhere. Then the blue screen takes over and the whole thing starts again. He has already run the repair commands he found online. Christy walks him through what a blue screen is actually pointing at, why the timing is the best clue he has, and why the fix is probably a graphics driver rather than a dying computer.

George has handled a couple thousand of the new stick of gum sized drives and has never managed to kill one. He settles the decades old magnet question, explains what does destroy a drive, and Christy follows with the cheapest protection there is, which is probably in your recycling right now.

And Betty is finished with Google Maps. Christy covers what happened to the ad free MapQuest option, who owns MapQuest these days, and how Organic Maps and OpenStreetMap will get you past Fallon with no signal at all, as long as you remember the one step everybody forgets.

Plus the smart TV settings worth turning off tonight, an overdue reminder to freeze your credit, and paper maps get their moment.

Battle Born Tech airs Tuesdays at 8 PM Pacific on FM 95.1 · Stream live at KNVC.org · battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats · Call the studio Saturdays 9–11 AM & Sundays 7 - 9 PM Pacific, or anytime: 775-241-3571

It's My Party But No One's Talking! | Battle Born Tech · September 1, 2026

This week on Battle Born Tech, Joan did everything right and still got yelled at. A scammer forged a malware party invitation and sent it to her whole church group, and her friends blamed her. Christy explains why changing her password will not stop impersonation, how blind carbon copy keeps her list out of a scammer's hands, and when a free mass-mailing account is worth the trouble.

Then Dave calls in about the burner phone he carried to his son's wedding in Vietnam. It kept his data safe at every border, and it worked so well that his own family would not answer texts from the unfamiliar number. Lessons learned on eSIMs, airport SIM desks, and going a little bit too incognito.

Call Battle Born Tech at 775-241-3571, Saturdays nine to eleven AM or Sundays seven to nine PM Pacific. New shows Tuesdays at eight PM Pacific on KNVC 95.1, streaming at KNVC.org.

· battleborn.tech · bbtl.ink/stats