Tag Archives: Toys

I Can Nap At The Cape

I Can Nap At The Cape
Photo-A-Day #1520

Today Allison, Eva and I went to the Cape. That was after another piece of technology decided that it hated me. See, my tech has been revolting on my lately. First it was my laptop. Last weekend it gave me trouble with multiple virus warnings even though there was no virus whatsoever. It really slowed things down while using it. It was telling me that my memory card for my camera had viruses. Then last night I received the Nokia E75 to review. I slipped my SIM card into the phone, yeah it didn’t work. I took a bunch of photos, did they show up? Nope they didn’t, I didn’t use the camera correctly so there were no photos, that is why last night’s photo was just a junky image of the caps lock.

Actually last night was nice (non tech stuff). Allison and I went out for a double date night with our friends Michelle and Bob. We had dinner at the Tavern and then went to see Star Trek. If our server had gotten our check sooner maybe we wouldn’t have missed the previews, my favorite part and there was supposed to be a Transformers preview too. We got there about a minute into the movie and I was a bit confused, I like to see things from the beginning. But I got caught up to speed very quickly and really enjoyed the movie. It was awesome however it was hard to tell the Romulans apart so I was wondering if there was a movie flub and it took me out of the movie for a few minutes. I like the direction that this movie took and many of the choices the creative types made.

We did the late movie so when I got home I was going to upload my images from the E75 to the computer quickly write a little something and go to bed. Nope, not gonna happen. I couldn’t get the images off the camera because there weren’t any, so I took some of myself with the alternate camera setting (there are actually two lenses in this phone, sort of cool for taking photos of yourself, a feature on the E75 that I like, go figure). I tried uploading them and it didn’t work, just more frustration. So I took a photo with my EnV and uploaded that in seconds.

Which brings me to this morning before we left for the Cape. My parents wanted me to print out the eulogies for Grandma Theresa as well as my initial post. I printed the initial post with no problem, then the printer started acting up. It printed one line and then two minutes later it would print another line. I had never seen this before and it was frustrating. So I canceled the printing and shut the printer off. When the printer came back online it had an error message stating that there where no ink cartridges. Now, I have been using recycled cartridges from Cartridge World. I’ve been happy with them so far too. So I looked up troubleshooting ideas on HP’s site. It didn’t work. So I cleaned the contacts on the cartridges and we left.

Leatherhead

When we got to the Cape Eva played with my sister Shelby. Then I found a plastic bag full of plastic animals, dinosaurs, a monster truck and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure. I know the plastic animals and dinos were mine, the rest of the stuff we acquired over the years. Eva and I played with them for a while. She liked them and could identify many of the animals too. I taught her the dino names. As I told Eva the dino names Allison said “must be that Y chromosome” because I pulled the names out of thin air. I loved dinosaurs as a kid, Triceratops was and is still my favorite.

I Found Dada's Toys

We took a walk along the water and up over the hill to a restaurant that changes hands with every season practically. This was the place that I worked at as a kid. I was a short order cook there. The food was never better than when it was called Shrubs and I worked there. That was not because I worked there but because Shrubs, the owner, was a savvy business man and he demanded quality. Our meal at the new place was so-so. The best part of the meal was the calamari. It was delicious and Eva liked it till I gave her a piece of tentacle and she found it too chewy. She wanted nothing more to do with calamari after that.

A nice walk home and then a refreshing 2 1/2 hour nap for all of us. It was great. I love being able to take a nap during the day, wish I could do it at work, I’d be so much more productive after a quick 20 minute nap. I hit my need for a nap around 1:30 – 2:00 each day, which usually is the exact same time that someone schedules a meeting.

We took a quick trip over to the supermarket to buy dinner, had a nice dinner together and then walked over to the beach for a little photo shoot. I got some really nice ones of Allison and Eva including today’s Photo-A-Day. Here is one of my favorites. The rest are on Flickr.

Having so much fun

MagNext Virtual

I love playing games online. I play a bunch of them on Facebook as well as other places. I got the opportunity to test out a great game site for kids, but to tell you the truth I enjoyed all the games too. The game site is called MagNext from MEGA Brandsâ„¢. These are the same people that make incredible toys like iCoaster, Spheron and of course the MagNext system. What they have done was take these great toys and made a fun online MMORPG. Each of those toys is now an online game that your kids can play for free.

Here is the user area and you can move around, interact with other players and play many different games as well as buy upgrades for your magnetic marble.

I played the game for a while and really enjoyed playing the online version of Spheron. I liked that game the most because it was really fun to move my car up and down and keep it flying along. The longer the car was driving along the more Magz I would earn. Magz are cool because with them you can buy paint jobs for your magnetic marble. You can also buy gear as well as actions. It is pretty fun because the paint jobs and gear make your marble look unique. The actions make your marble stand out when you are wandering around the world. This is where you can interact with other players through IM and emoticons. What is nice also is that the messages that can be sent are pre-written and they are friendly.

Speaking of friends, as a player you can invite your friends to play as well. The more friends that you invite and who accept your invitation the more experience points you get as well as more Magz. I played for a while but didn’t get enough experience points to go to the next level. I earned a ton of experience points playing the Spheron game, my favorite of all the games. I did play the iCoaster game and challenge game in the arena and they were fun but I am a car guy so Spheron was the most fun for me.

As a father who wants to keep my children safe online I think that this site has done it right. For one thing messages are already pre-written so kids can’t share sensitive information. That is important to me because you never know who is online. Also the MagNext games are non-violent and challenge kids imagination and cognitive skills rather than make them veg out and turn off their brains. This site gets a thumbs up from me as a parent.

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