Geeking Out

I’m still a kid at heart. DW can testify to that. I enjoy games. Sport games. Video games. Board games. Word games. Picture games. Though my taste in toys has changed over the years. No longer do I ride Big Wheels (though I more than likely would if they made them my size). No longer do I play with Speak-n-Spell (though I probably should because my spelling can be atroshus). Now my toys involve a bit more technology.  It will come as no surprise for two items on my “after we get rich” list. Naturally, these are items strictly on my “want” list. There’s no way I need these things other than to make life a bit more fun. But still… I can’t wait to get rich.

The first item is kind of like something I already have except about a million times better. You may have seen a video I made with this techy toy. It’s a small drone. When I say small, I mean that it doesn’t have any bells and whistles. We’re lucky if the battery lasts ten minutes. It has the power to carry a GoPro, but if I lose sight of it, it’s gone. If a gust of wind blows, it’ll be gone. So we’ve limited ourselves to flying it just in the backyard. It’s still fun. But this new one, this high tech one called a Mavic that’s made by DJi, has all the bells and whistles. The battery lasts for nearly a half hour. It folds up small enough to (barely) fit in your pocket. It has a wicked camera. It has GPS so that it can hover in one spot no matter the wind speed. It can fly 4 miles away and return with the touch of a button. It can follow you! Okay, so it costs as much as a new computer, but how much fun would that be? Granted, I’d still be filming our family 99% of the time with it. However, imagine filming yourself, or the kids, or all of us, from the air as we go zooming down the best sledding hill our town has to offer. Imagine a birds eye view you could of yourself, of the kids, of all of us, kayaking a forested, lazy river. It’s taking home video to levels never seen before. If anyone knows where I could get my hands on one, I would LOVE to fly one of these. 

The second toy I have my eye on is a new gaming system. We have a Wii and have had it for many years. It’s easy to use. Both of our boys were using it by the age of 2 or 3 (with supervision, of course). Lately, we have spent two or three nights a week having a “family night” after supper and before bed playing four player Mario Kart. The boys laugh and laugh when DW lets slip a bad word because she fell off the track, again. In March, Nintendo has a new system coming out that’s getting a fair amount of hype called The Switch. It seems to be part tablet and part console in the sense that you can dock it to your TV to play, but once undocked you can continue playing your game as a tablet. It even has controllers that fit the tablet portion. I’m curious to see if it can still play four player games locally without having to be online like the Wii can. Also like the Wii, it relies on controller motion, not just joystick movement and button pushing of it’s competitors. Crash has asked me to print a chore chart again so he can start earning an allowance to save up for this. I’m curious to see how it does once it hits the market.

What’s on your wish list?