TechyDad

If you’re anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with cleaning. I love a clean house, but hate how much time needs to be put in to clean the house. I’d rather be spending that time playing with my kids or having a date night with my wife. Still, if you don’t put in the time, the house begins to take on a rather unsavory appearance.

One of the worst jobs has got to be scrubbing the toilet bowl. First, you need to squirt that foul-smelling cleaner around the rim. Then, you need to wait for it to soak in. Then, you need to remember to go back and clean it off. And you just know that, during the soak-in time, a little one will run up needing to use the potty!

That’s why I was excited over the prospect of the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. You attach it to the toilet bowl and a sensor detects when the bowl isn’t in use. When the sensor identifies the appropriate time, it sprays a cleaning solution around the entire bowl’s surface. The next time the toilet is used, it is clean. That’s the theory, anyway. So how did it work?

I took the automatic cleaner out of the packaging and set it up. I was half-afraid that this would be complicated, but it was actually quite simple. I just clipped one end to the bowl and suspended the other end from the toilet’s tank. After putting in the bottle of cleaning solution and giving it a “test fire,” I let it do it’s job.

We have hard water and, as such, will often get hard water stains on our bowl. I knew this was coming so I purposefully left them in place to see how it would do. Unfortunately, it didn’t get these off by itself. After scrubbing the bowl, though, I haven’t seen any sign of new hard water stains appearing (going on 2 weeks now).

The cleaner does a very good job of firing off only when the toilet isn’t in use. In fact, for awhile, I was wondering if it was working at all. The bowl was clean, but I never heard it fire. Then, I realized that the cleaning solution was steadily going down. So there was actual proof of it working even if it was a very stealthy cleaner.

You can purchase Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner from Amazon.com (affiliate link) or from Drugstore.com. But wait, there’s more!

Giveaway:

Thanks to Edelman and SC Johnson, one lucky winner will receive a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What is one household cleanup chore (besides the toilet) that you wish you could automate?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.

• Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Follow @ScrubbingBubble on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad, Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: Automate toilet bowl cleanup. Chance to #win Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner from @TechyDad. http://bit.ly/bLiFYC #Giveaway
• Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
• Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from July/August. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
• Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, September 2nd and ends at Noon EST on September 16th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only.

Disclosure: I received a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner complimentary of Edelman and SC Johnson in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. Edelman and SC Johnson is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.

During NHL’s birthday, B and I were talking with my family a bit about our blogging activities. Specifically, we spoke with my sister. She was interested in how we were getting so much "free stuff." Skip forward a few weeks to earlier today when Jenn (aka KissMyKitty) tweeted:

Who the hell blindly contacts a company to ask for free shit w/o offering *anything* in return? Bloggers like these do us ALL a disservice.

This got me to thinking. When I first started TechyDad.com, I’d see companies sending products to bloggers and, I’ll be honest, I thought "Man, I’d love to get free stuff like that." I had fallen into a trap that a lot of people can fall into. They only look at one side of the equation: Blogger Gets Something For Free. There’s a whole other side of that equation: Blogger Reviews Product Thus Increasing Product’s/Company’s Exposure. When done properly, both sides come out ahead. The blogger gets free merchandise and content for their blog (the review) and the company gets exposure, usually in the form of a product review.

Now, obviously, companies aren’t just going to start shipping free products to random bloggers with no expectation of anything in return. In general, bloggers with a bigger following will get more review offers and more expensive offers than smaller bloggers will get. Of course, you don’t need to be King Of The Bloggers to get some great product review opportunities.

First of all, bloggers who are just starting out should expect to recieve nothing for free (unless you happen to have company contacts). For these bloggers, I would recommend cutting your product review teeth on items you buy for yourself or your family. Did your kid get a new game for his birthday? Review it! Did you buy a new kind of frozen meal? Review it! This way, when a company is evaluating whether or not to give you a review opportunity, they will see your past reviews. In fact, this is a good practice to keep doing even when you start getting review opportunities. After all, if you like a product enough, why not give it a little shout out on your blog?

So now your blog has been going for almost a year and you’ve gained a decent following. What do you do? Well, you could join a review group like Family Review Network. (NOTE: I don’t know if FRN is accepting new members or not.) You will recieve possible opportunities e-mailed to you and can apply for ones that interest you. You might not get all of the ones you like. You might not even get that many at first. But it will begin to open doors.

In addition, don’t be afraid to approach companies yourself. I’ve gotten review opportunities out of simple Twitter messages or e-mails. Just be sure that you research the company first, that your messages are professional and that you express how your review could benefit their company. Remember, they’re going to be looking for ways to improve their product’s/company’s exposure. They don’t really care about how you’d love to have a free item.

If a review possibility doesn’t pan out, be cordial. Thank them and ask them to keep you in mind for future review opportunities. You definitely don’t want to burn any bridges. Even if you aren’t going to review Company X’s products, that PR representative might get switched over to Company Y. If they then remember your blog and think it might be a good fit for Company Y, you don’t want their last memory to be a "frell you" letter.

When you do get a review opportunity, make sure you keep your time committment. If, for some reason, you are going to be late, let your PR contact know why and when you expect it to go live. If you find you can’t post a review of the item at all, be honest with the PR contact. Give them specific reasons why. (I have actually done this when something turned out to be not quite what I expected. It wasn’t bad, but just not quite applicable for my situation and therefore I felt I couldn’t give an honest review.) Keep those lines of communication open.

Remember, review opportunities aren’t about free products. It’s about establishing and maintaining relationships with companies. There’s a balance here and any free products that you recieve are just one side of that balance. Focusing on the "free" too much will upset the balance and make it harder to get review opportunities in the future.

There are many things that dads will do for their kids that they previously would never have thought of doing. At the risk of stereotyping, I doubt any guy without kids would spend a day on the couch watching a Dora the Explorer marathon. Neither would he play on the floor with plastic dinosaurs (at least, not with other grown-ups watching on). And he definitely, positively, would never paint his toenails purple. Of course, once we guys become dads, these “never ever” activities become “always” so long as they bring a smile to our kids’ faces.

In My Purple Toes by Blair Hahn, the father of the story is introduced as having purple toenails. (This is explained in the forward as having happened when a dad brought his teenage daughter to a nail salon for a pedicure.) Instead of being embarassed by his colorful toes, he revels in them. He walks barefooted, showing off his purple toes, in all seasons (though his toes get cold in the winter) and enjoys spending time with his family and their non-purple toes.

I read this book to both NHL and JSL. They both enjoyed the story as well as the little extras within it. (For example, there’s a purple-toed frog “hidden” on every page.) I also enjoyed that the book was interactive in that is asked the child questions (such as “Where are my purple toes?”). When I got to the end, JSL asked me to read it to him a second time. How could I refuse?

In addition to their website, where you can purchase My Purple Toes for $10.99, the author also has a Twitter and Facebook presence. (No word on whether he tweets with purple fingernails.) Also, a second book, titled My Purple Kisses, should be released in time for Valentine’s Day 2011. Finally, a portion of the proceeds from My Purple Toes goes to the nonprofit organization Soles4Souls which collects and distributes shoes free of charge to people in need.

Disclaimer: I did this review as part of a campaign on Family Review Network for My Purple Toes. I received a complimentary copy of My Purple Toes to facilitate my review. The opinions expressed here are my own and no other compensation was received.

We’ve been fans of The Wiggles since NHL was young and they were on Playhouse Disney. We’ve been to three Wiggles concerts and seen countless TV shows/movies. We’ve pointed our fingers and done the twist, mashed some potatoes, woken up Jeff and even rode the Big Red Car. When we go in the car, JSL will invariably ask for "toot toot chugga chugga" (his code word for the Big Red Car song). When NHL goes to sleep, he insists on listening to Go To Sleep Jeff (a series of slow songs designed to help kids fall asleep). Needless to say, they (and we) were excited to hear about a "best of" Wiggles compilation.

The first thing I liked about this DVD was the inclusion of Greg. As any Wiggles fan knows, Greg had to step down as the Yellow Wiggle due to health reasons. Even though Sam stepped up and made a fine Yellow Wiggle, many of the Wiggles classic songs were done with Greg. Instead of having the Wiggles re-record these past hits (with Sam), they simply did an introduction to the piece and then let the original video speak (sing?) for itself. This also gave you a chance to marvel at how young the Wiggles looked during some of their early videos!

Of course, the next thing we liked were the songs themselves. From Wake Up Jeff to Monkey Man to Hot Potato to Hot Poppin’ Popcorn, there was a good mix of classic and newer Wiggles songs. When we put this on, it didn’t take long for the boys to get up and start dancing.

Finally, I loved the bonus material. Seeing the Wiggles’ mothers talk, while not too exciting for my 3 and 7 year old, was very interesting to me. My kids and I both enjoyed seeing some of the early Wiggles videos too. They marvelled at a very young Anthony, wearing green instead of his usual blue, singing with a very young Greg, Jeff and Murray in an obviously low-budget setting (especially compared with current Wiggles productions).

All, in all, this DVD is going to see a lot of use and my kids are going to get a lot of exercise dance a lot thanks to the wonderful songs on it. Hot Potatoes! The BEST of The Wiggles is definitely a must have DVD for any Wiggles fan.

Giveaway:

Thanks to The Wiggles, one lucky winner will receive their very own copy of Hot Potatoes! The BEST of The Wiggles DVD. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: Who is your favorite Wiggle or Wiggles character?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.

• Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad, The BEST of The Wiggles DVD Giveaway, and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: Get ready to Wiggle. Chance to #win The BEST of the Wiggles DVD from @TechyDad. http://bit.ly/cY0Yd6 #Giveaway
• Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
• Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from July/August. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
• Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today August 19 and ends at 11:00 AM EST on September 2, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only. Also note that TheAngelForever is also running a Hot Potatoes! The BEST of The Wiggles giveaway on her website. You can increase your chances to win by entering there as well.

Disclosure: I received this DVD complimentary of The Wiggles PR agency in order to facilitate this review. They also sent a few other Wiggly surprises for our sons that included a T-shirt, CD and Henry the Octopus doll. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. The Wiggles are also providing the giveaway item to my readers.

Growing up, I loved Rubik’s Cubes, but I had a horrible secret: I couldn’t solve one. I could get one side all solved, but that was it. After that, I was just helplessly twisting and turning until another color was solved… and the first one was scrambled. Still, I loved spending time twisting and turning them trying to figure it out.

A while back, I won a Rubik’s TouchCube and I loved it. It was just like the Rubik’s Cube, only with touch-sensitive pads. You could have the cube self-solve too. This was cool, but it wound up not getting used often. The problem was two-fold. First, I still couldn’t solve it on my own. Secondly, I didn’t have much time to spend trying to solve it.

These problems turn into advantages with the Rubik’s Slide. Mine happened to come without a manual. While this mistake was quickly fixed, I was able to figure it out in a few minutes. You basically have six possible moves: Slide Up, Slide Down, Slide Left, Slide Right, Twist Left or Twist Right.

Meanwhile, the “playing surface” has been simplified. No longer do you need to get 54 colors into the appropriate locations along a cube. Instead, you need to get up to 9 lit up squares (either red or blue) to match the appropriate pattern. Not only is this easier, but there are three modes of play: Easy, Medium and Hard. You can find the level that suits you best and play that one without feeling like the puzzles are way too difficult.

Rubik’s Slide has two modes of play. In Free Play, you solve puzzle after puzzle for as long as you like. In Lightning Round, you solve 10 puzzles as quickly as you can.

Here’s a video I shot of me solving a few Easy Free Play puzzles. (It looks more difficult than it is because I was videoing with one hand and twisting/sliding with the other.)

This is definitely a fun addition to the Rubik’s family and I would recommend it to anyone. It’s great for involved puzzle solving sessions or a quick game here or there. I’ll even be bringing mine to BlogHer just in case I get the urge to solve a puzzle or two.

Disclaimer: I recieved a complimentary Rubik’s Slide to review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own.

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..

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.

Thanks to winning a contest over at Dad of Divas, I was able to check out the new book Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share by Ken Denmead. I was instantly overwhelmed, but in a very good way.

The book recognizes that not every dad is your stereotypical sports-loving, beer-drinking man. Some of us like Star Wars, role playing games, and other things of a geeky inclination. Since dads love sharing their favorite activities with their kids, the question becomes: How do we share our love of science, technology and other geeky subjects with our kids? Sharing some items might be easy. You can sit down with your kid and have a Star Wars marathon, but others might not be as easy to share. Chances are, a 7 year old won’t quite understand or have the patience for an adult-level role playing game.

Read more…

I’d like to preface this blog post with a warning. There will be links to some sites that might not be considered safe for work. They aren’t porn or anything, but they do point to a shop that sells toys of a kind often used in the privacy of one’s bedroom. Just a warning to save those link clicks for when you get home. Now on to the review.

I’ve got to admit, I love giving B massages. However, sometimes it can be tough to massage for long. Dry flesh (hands) plus dry flesh (back) equals friction. We’ve considered massage lotions in the past, but B’s skin is highly sensitive. We buy everything we can fragrance free, especially if it will be touching her skin (like laundry detergent). So rubbing a scented massage oil on her skin never seemed like a very good idea. Read more…

As you might have guessed from my frequent Cooking With TechyDad posts, I love to cook. I’m also a fan of Alton Brown (the God of Cooking Geeks) and have often drooled at some of the gadgets he employs. One of these is a laser thermometer. If he wants to see how hot something is, he doesn’t use no stinkin’ stick thermometer. He whips out his laser and shines it on the object. In a split second, a digital display tells him just how hot it is.

When I heard that RedEnvelope was offering Dad Bloggers (via Dad-Blogs.com) a chance to review some items from their Father’s Day Gifts collection, I was intrigued. When I saw the infrared laser BBQ thermometer on the list, I knew I had to review it.

Read more…