TechyDad

Next week, I’ll be attending BlogHer 2010. Among the events, is a party billed as “glitterlicious” where people are told to “dress in glitter and leotards.” Obviously, as a guy attendee, this doesn’t quite match up with my wardrobe. There aren’t many glittery men’s outfits around. Call us guys crazy, but “glitter and leotards” just hasn’t hit it off as the macho fashion trend for 2010.

So what should I wear? After all, I don’t want to show up in a sea of sparkle wearing a plain shirt and pants. After some thought, I remembered back to when my friend G got married. Part of my groomsman outfit was an orange silk vest/tie combination. Here’s a photo of me wearing it (my friend got the gold version since he was the groom).

I got to keep this set post-wedding, but they weren’t exactly my day-to-day style so they got put into the closet and ignored. With BlogHer, and SparkleCorn, approaching, however, I’ve began thinking of taking them out. I could easily wear this with a pair of brown pants and a nice shirt underneath. Of course, if I really wanted to embarass B, I’d take LastMinuteMandy up on her double-dog dare and wear this mask from G’s costumed wedding reception.

Hey, it is sparkly! And you’ll definitely be able to tell me apart from the crowd. I’d be The Masked TechyDad!

Since we’ll be driving to BlogHer, I don’t need to worry about airlines charging extra for luggage. Still, I don’t want to overpack. Plus, we might be hopping from party to party so do I really want to leave the previous party, stop back at my room for my vest/tie (and mask) and then head back for SparkleCorn?

My Aloha Friday question for today is: If you were in my shoes, would you pack this vest/tie? If not, what would you suggest for a guy to wear to a party like SparkleCorn?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #49

As B posted about on Sunday, we recieved a big, BIG box of Kung Zhus to try out/throw a party with/give away. I struggled to put the tracks together, not because it was hard to do so, but because I was trying to make a self-contained system for the Kung Zhus to run around in. Eventually, I gave up on this idea. The resulting track was too unweildy and sections would be inaccessible.

Instead, I made four sub-systems. The first was the battle track using the Giant Battle Arena, Special Forces HQ and Ninja Dojo HQ. The second was a training ground using the special forces training sets. The third was a ninja training ground using, what else, the ninja training sets. The last was a general area using the remaining tracks.

After awhile, I got the idea to place the entrance to the special forces training area at the exit of the ninja training area. Then, I placed the general area’s entrance at the special forces exit. The result was one long track, albeit one that could easily be reconfigured into 3 separate tracks without disconnecting anything.

I got the idea of filming a Kung Zu’s eye view of the track as one of the little guys powered through. That proved to be impractical, so I just did an overhead video instead. Here’s Stonewall being put through the paces.

During Disney Social Media Moms, we got a lot of stuff to bring home. Some of these items were given to us (aka swag) and some items were purchased. Here’s a photo tour of what we got.

I have a confession to make: Growing up, I hated neckties. I suppose this was understandable. At the time, I only wore neckties at formal (read: “boring” in kid-speak) affairs. The neckties themselves were borrowed from my father and thus didn’t represent anything approaching my taste. I was expected to slap on the tie and then keep it on until the event was over.

When I got a job that required a dress shirt and tie, I found that I actually liked ties. I especially liked theme or offbeat ties such as the Jerry Garcia line, wildlife ties or ones depicting famous cartoon characters. I now have a very nice collection of ties from the very dressy to the very wacky. Still, when I was given the opportunity to review ABC Neckties, I jumped at the chance.

I was impressed with their selection. They have a little bit of everything so you’re pretty much guaranteed to find something you like whether it is a tie featuring Wile E Coyote or just a plain silk tie.

I quickly homed in on which tie I wanted to try. It really wasn’t hard, I’m a fan of comic strips and work as a webmaster. So this tie quickly caught my eye:

It arrived pretty quickly and I didn’t have to wait long before I wore it to work. I was impressed with both the speed of the delivery and the quality of the tie. I’d definitely order from them again (and, in fact, am deciding which tie to get next).

But wait, there’s more! Thanks to Family Review Network, Affordable Style, and ABC Neckties one lucky winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to ABC Neckties!

Rules for Giveaway:

• MAIN RULE – Go to ABC Neckties and name one tie that you’d like to wear or, for the ladies, that you’d like the man in your life to wear. (NOTE: You won’t be held to this tie if you win.)
• 1 Bonus Entry – Follow ABC Neckties on Twitter @ABCNeckTies. Post a comment here with your Twitter username.
• 1 Bonus Entry Per Day – Tweet about the giveaway. Be sure to include @TechyDad and @ABCNeckties in the Tweet. Please leave a direct link to your Tweet in a separate comment for each daily entry. Example Tweet (feel free to use): Chance to win a $25 gift certificate to @ABCNeckTies from @TechyDad. http://www.techydad.com/2010/07/abc-neckties-review-and-giveaway/
• 1 Bonus Entry Per Comment (limit of 3) – Post a comment one of my other posts from June or July. Be sure to leave a comment here telling me which post you commented on.
• 3 Bonus Entries – Write a post on your blog about and linking to this post. Be sure to leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries.

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, July 27th and ends at Noon EST on August 10th. You don’t need to be a blogger to enter, but I do need you to leave a valid e-mail address in your comment so I can contact you for your mailing address once the giveaway is over. I’ll select the winner using random.org and will contact you via e-mail. Once the e-mail is sent, you will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to residents of the US or Canada.

Disclaimer: I did this review as part of a campaign on Family Review Network for Affordable Style. I received a complimentary necktie from ABC Neckties to facilitate my review. The opinions expressed here are my own and no other compensation was received..

One time, while watching insects fluttering about, I came up with a theory that time passed slower for tiny insects than for us gigantic humans. It explained why that fly that I was trying to swat could evade my every blow even though its brain is smaller than a sesame seed. To it, I was travelling in super-slow motion and thus was a cinch to avoid.

I never thought this applied to humans, the size differences between people would be too small to make a difference, but now I’m beginning to think differently. On Sunday, we went to Staples to find a backpack for B. Her new laptop didn’t fit in her old laptop bag and she needs *some* way to carry it during BlogHer. Staples had a good sale so off we went.

We entered the store and made a beeline for the backpack rack. Thirty seconds later, NHL was complaining left and right about how long it was taking us and how we were going so slow. I dragged him away to the side for a little discussion and then we continued shopping…. until he began complaining again 30 seconds later. This went on until we selected a backpack. The whole selection process took 10 minutes, tops, but NHL acted like we took 3 hours.

I can’t help but think back to the time I spent shopping with my father when I was younger. He would be looking for a new shirt or suit and would take hours upon hours to pick the ones he wanted. At least, it seemed like hours upon hours. Maybe it just seemed like that to my young mind and he really was done shopping in 30 minutes or less.

Perhaps my old theory has some validity after all. Maybe time goes slower when you are younger and speeds up as you age. The years do seem to fly by more quickly now. Next week, I’ll be turning 35 and, in many ways, it seems like I just left my twenties. Is time really speeding along for me while it drags along at a snail’s pace for NHL? Or perhaps all forms of shopping (except for toy shopping, of course) are so inheriting boring to young boys that time grinds nearly to a halt.

On Sunday, we went to the beach after some time boating on the lake. Now, B has made it clear that she’s not a beach girl, but I love the beach. I grew up on Long Island, so beaches were very available. In fact, there were two beaches that we would regularly go to. I don’t know if they were their real names, but we always called them Long Beach and Short Beach.

Now, these beaches weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Long Beach had sharp rocks under the water. Each year, the rocks seemed to get further and further out so you had to carefully walk out until you could barely stand before you could enjoy the sand under your feet while in the water.

Short Beach didn’t have rocks. Instead, it had a low tide. And I mean low tide. One time, I remember we walked into the water during low tide and decided to just keep walking. I don’t remember how far we got, but the shore was distant and we started nearing where boats should have been… and the water still wasn’t up to our knees!

Still, I have happy memories of the beach as well. Playing in the sand, splashing in the water, finding sea life (horseshoe crabs, minnows, etc) in the water, shell collecting, getting ice cream on the hot days and trying to eat it before it melted, etc. I loved the beach and am glad to say that my kids made some great beach memories on Sunday.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Did you go to beaches when you were younger? Do you have any fond beach memories?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #48

When we moved into our house, our computer systems went upstairs. Over time, though, we found that we were using the downstairs more. This was aided by the addition of a wireless router and our laptops. When we added our Roku and CinemaTube, we hooked them up to our wireless network. This was a fine solution, but wireless is slower than direct Ethernet hookups. Unfortunately, running network cable throughout our house wasn’t an option due to the age of our house and type of walls it has. That, plus we had enough home repair bills without drilling through walls just to run cable.

Enter the LinkE. The LinkE, from Brite-View, uses Powerline Networking technology to connect your devices to your router. Put simply, the traffic flows through your router, into the LinkE bridge, through your house’s power lines, through the LinkE switch and to your device. If that sounds complicated, all you need to know is that you plug the bridge into an electrical outlet near your router, connect it to the router and then plug the switch into any other electrical outlet in the house. After connecting a device to the switch, you have Internet access.

I took the LinkE out of the box and plugged one unit in downstairs near our TV. I plugged the other unit in upstairs near our router. I was actually expecting more setup than that. I figured that I’d need to log into some administrative panel and fiddle with some settings or something. Instead, it was literally plug and play. When I hooked it up to our Roku, our Roku was able to tell that it was connected to a wired network and could use that instead of the wireless network. Before you could say “powerline networking”, Netflix movies were streaming through our power lines and onto our TV.

This was highly convenient, but it wouldn’t be much use if the speeds didn’t meet or exceed wireless network speeds. Brite-View advertises speeds up to 200Mbps, but, since my ISP doesn’t give me that much bandwidth, I didn’t expect to reach that figure. Still, I wasn’t dissappointed. The Netflix loading seemed to go faster and, when I connected it to my computer, my web page load times seemed to shrink.

Of course, I’m too much of a geek to accept “seemed to.” I want hard numbers. To quantify just how much of a boost I got, I ran six speed tests at DSLReports.com. First, I ran three using my wireless connection. This resulted in an average speed of about 1984.7 Kbps down and 988 Kbps up. Next, I ran three tests while connected via LinkE for an average of 2414.7 Kbps down and 1000 up. (I cleared my browser’s cache after each test to avoid any influence there.) The upload speeds were comparable, but the download speed improved by 22%.

Wireless Speed Test Results:

LinkE Speed Test Results:

I would definitely recommend the LinkE for connecting home theater equipment to the Internet. Nowadays, many electronics (Blu-Ray, Roku, CinemaTube, etc) come with ethernet ports. Not all come with wireless built-in. Instead of buying wireless adapters for each of these, you could hook up one LinkE and network all of our devices. The LinkE can be purchased from Brite-View. The 1 port bridge + 4 port switch model that I tested retails for $84.99.

Disclaimer: I recieved the LinkE 1 port bridge + 4 port switch model complimentary from Brite-View to test. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own.

I’m a big fan of mousse, but I don’t often get the chance to make it. When I saw this recipe, I knew I’d have to make it. First, we gather our ingredients, all three of them.

That’s heavy cream, milk and Mighty Maple Peanut Butter. If you don’t have maple peanut butter, you could always add some maple syrup to the mix. First, put the milk and maple syrup peanut butter into a blender and blend them together.

Next, pour the egg whites into a bowl and beat them with an electric mixer until they form stiff peaks.

Now, fold in peanut butter-milk mixture.

Refrigerate the mixture for a few hours (or overnight), scoop into a bowl and enjoy.

The Verdict:

NHL and B didn’t like this one. I think they might be used to chocolate mousses and so were thrown by the maple flavor. I definitely think that the taste was improved by adding some mini-chocolate chips. Perhaps next time I’ll try making this with the Dark Chocolate Dreams Peanut Butter.

Disclaimer: Peanut Butter & Co sent me the jars of peanut butter to try. The opinions about the peanut butter and the dishes I make with them are my own, though, and have in no way been influenced by Peanut Butter & Co.

One of the shows I’ve introduced to NHL and JSL via Netflix/Roku is Rugrats.  NHL has developed a passion for this show, burning through season after season.  He’s up to Season 4 already, the last season available on Roku.  The show went on to Season 10 meaning that the babies were "10 years old" and yet still in diapers.  I guess it could be worse.  Bart Simpson’s been 10 years old for over 20 years!

One of the premises of Rugrats is that the babies can talk.  The adults can’t understand them, but they do talk amongst themselves in nearly perfect English.  (Some words get replaced with similar sounding ones to humorous effect.)  The only one who can communicate with the babies and the adults is Angelica (and Susie later on).  Instead of becoming "The Baby Whisperer", Angelica uses this communication advantage to impose her will on the babies every chance she gets.

Getting back to our kids, JSL has developed a problem speaking.  He’ll drop syllables and seem to expect that we’ll understand him just fine.  If, for example, he wants fruit chews for a snack, he might ask for "uitews."  If he wants his feet covered, he might ask for "ahk."  Needless to say, this can get frustrating.  He thinks he’s being perfectly clear in what he wants and we can’t figure out what he’s saying.

We had one of those moments yesterday.  JSL didn’t want to eat dinner.  Instead, he wanted to play.  But he didn’t want any of the toys we had out so we asked him which toy he wanted.  "Idoam."  We looked at each other, had no clue and, on a whim, asked NHL if he knew what his brother wanted.  Calmly, NHL said "He wants his video game."

Apparently, NHL speaks fluent JSL the same way Angelica spoke fluent baby.  Let’s just hope that NHL uses his gift for good and not evil.  And by using it for good, I mean he is now the Official JSL Translator.