TechyDad

ABC Neckties Review and Giveaway

July 27, 2010 TechyDad Giveaway, Review

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..

Time is Relative

July 26, 2010 TechyDad NHL, Parenting

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.

Aloha Friday: Beach Memories

July 23, 2010 TechyDad Aloha Friday, Photos

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

Easy Linkup with LinkE

July 22, 2010 TechyDad Computers, Review, Roku

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.

The Wind in Their Hair… and Mouths

July 21, 2010 TechyDad JSL, NHL, Photos, Wordless Wednesday

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