It’s kinda amazing how far toys have come since I was a kid. 

I hate when technology is on the verge of death and I play the will-it/won’t-it game trying to see if I can make it last just long enough to get through another month or two until an expected sale or whatnot. 

One of the things I missed most about not having a Fitbit was receiving notifications from my iPhone right on my wrist.

A couple years ago, Nathan happened across a couple of my old G.I. Joe 3.75" action figures. He doesn't have any other G.I. Joe stuff, but he loves these two figures. One of them is the vintage Baroness from 1984...

I feel like I’m writing announcements like this every year, but, yet again, another Fitbit has bitten the dust. 

It’s kinda cool the stuff you find when you clean out something like, say, the trunk of your car.

Katie and I desperately want to extend the wifi signal in our house. It just doesn't reach as well, say, upstairs in our bedroom as we'd like. It was fine before. But now that we're relying 100% on streaming for our TV habits, we need a better one to avoid buffering and display artifacting and the like. 

I guess since the company working on installing new roofs on our home have done this...

Is it cruel if I tap into the microphone on my Nest doorbell and start doing satanic chants right now?

As it turns out, the roof replacement work on our unit will begin at the end of this month necessitating us jumping from DirecTV very soon. But there is good news. We’ve been doing our research and have a good idea what steps we’ll be taking... just a whole heckuva lot sooner than we anticipated. 

We re-arranged our entertainment cabinet at home and, afterward, while sitting in the couch, the ever familiar dock connector end was shining out at me like a beacon. 

It’s kinda funny. For the last two decades, I’ve grown accustomed to always fast forwarding through commercials on shows that we watch. First because we recorded them on VHS; then because of the beauty of DVRs. 

A while back, I mentioned an issue with a missing piece from our San Francisco puzzle. When I was at a point where I figured there was no hope of finding it, I started researching options for getting the piece replaced.

We now have two Roku SEs hooked up in our house and tied into Hulu, Netflix, MoviesAnywhere, Disney Now, And a couple other services that we’re trying out and you wanna know what we have not used (much) in weeks? 

I’m starting to get severely creeped out by our Amazon Echo devices. 

A few weeks ago, my parents gave Nathan a LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar. Bear in mind that, aside from LEGO Star Wars shorts and the new anime-styled Star Wars scene recreations that air sporadically on Disney XD, my son has no knowledge of the Star Wars films whatsoever. Despite this, I knew he'd enjoy building the little micro sets because, well, LEGO!

I was shopping for a candy bag today at 2nd & Charles for Nathan to use for trick or treating this year when I saw this...

Due to the fact we will no longer be able to have DirecTV starting next year (HOA installing new roofs and decreeing that no dishes can be mounted on the roof anymore), Katie and I have been researching new means by which to consume visual entertainment.

This past weekend, I broke out the remote control truck so Nathan and I could have a little fun. My neighbor, Greg, who is also an r/c enthusiast had some of his cars out as well as a couple friends over and they were tooling around with them all in his garage.

After a long day of swim lessons and re-organizing our media collection and nearly destroying our oven door (don’t ask), we decided to relax at home with the ol’ Nintendo GameCube. 

We’ve had our ins and outs and ups and downs with home technology. We still love our Nest Thermostat E and have had zero problems with it. Despite being gung-ho when we first setup our WiFi outlets, we quickly fell out of love. And now we barely use the three Amazon Echos (“Echii”?) that we have. 

I’m looking for a new wallpaper for the home screen of my iPhone and I’m hoping you all can help me decide. Oh, and before you all ask, I already have Nathan and Katie on my lock screen, so, no, they’re not getting the shaft. 

I get that technology dates itself and new stuff can’t keep working with all instances of old stuff. But it still sucks sometimes. 

By now I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Amazon Echos freaking out. Like the one Alexa that recorded a conversation and sent it to coworkers. Or one that started laughing spontaneously.

It blows my mind that you can spend a thousand or more dollars on a way cool laptop like the one I have for work and, despite this already excessive cost, buying a brand new power adapter for it still costs anywhere from $50-80 depending on how fast you want your laptop to charge.

Funko recently announced a line of their POP! vinyl figures for the original Jurassic Park movie. admittedly they’re cool and, despite the fact it’s been half a year since I bought a toy, I’d really like to get a dilophosaurus.

Occasionally I get a question along the lines of "Why are you -- a 42-year-old man -- constantly taking pictures of toys?" Well, first, I'm only 42 for six more days. Second, allow me to enlighten you.

For the better part of decade, I was a big fan (but only a minimal collector) of Funko POP vinyl toys. They represented a very unique take on pop culture icons and characters with their oversized heads and custom-sculpted bodies. 

This is the last cassette Walkman I ever owned. It is the Sony Sport WM-SXF10.

A week or so ago, Katie bought me a little poly bag Star Wars LEGO set for my desk at work. It's a tiny little thing, which is ideal given my small workspace, but it's really cool. It's the First Order Heavy Assault Walker (30497-1), or The Last Jedi re-envisioning of a classic saga vehicle, in this case, the AT-AT. 

Anybody want to do a podcast with me? The topic is very much up for discussion. Or we could just do one on random stuff (although that does make it much harder to market and gain sponsors and whatnot).

Before I get into the guts of this post, I have to wish a happy birthday to my mom who turns... I'll stop myself there. Happy birthday, mom!

The other day, Kevin Spencer treated us to a rare, non-photo blog post asking us to rank five technology giants based on our likelihood of ever giving them up. I promised in his comments that this was going to be a blog post of my own, so here it is...

It feels so, so long ago.

Nathan has become a junkie for LEGO Batman blind bag minifigures. He currently has all but one of them after working to earn them via good behavior and improvement in swimming lessons.