I got my daughter Snap Circuits two years ago and we try to do a page in the book each night. https://www.amazon.com/Snap-Ci... last year we got her the Osmo Genius Kit https://www.amazon.com/Osmo-TP... this year I went with the Wonder Workshop Dash Robot and the lego attachment arms. https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-...

A cheap easy way for me was to remove the old drywall on walls that faced the road. It comes in standard sizes and goes in between your studs and then a thin layer of drywall. My local Menards carries the product and its not insanely priced. http://www.homasote.com/produc...

If you already have steam and some games, why on earth would you want to downgrade into a console ? You can build your own "steam machine" for under 500$ and it will have twice the horsepower of any console. For 25$ on Amazon you can but some xbox 360 controllers. Steam living room mode makes it look like a console except you are not locked into that platform. Steam now has native support ofr Kodi and can all be controlled from a remote or joystick. Unless there is some console exclusive game you have to have, I cant think of a single reason to buy either. just google "build a steam machine" for ideas and then involve the kids in the buying choices and building process. They will appreciate their home build console and dad time more then anything you can buy.

I have a lot luck going through the companies facebook page. For example, I had an problem where I was losing over 25% of my packets to their gateway. I posted this on their facebook page along with a screen shot. A few hours later a real technician contacted me. I also had a strange issues with my cable companies clear QAM channels. the channel had the same # but was now broadcasting QVC instead of NBC. I knew explaining this to some 1st level tech would be pointless. So I posted it on their FB page, where another user confirmed it. The issue was quickly resolved publicly. I assume the person who manages the Facebook page has the ability to skip level one and get an answer. Also, by using their public page, It helps shame them into working quickly for large high level issues. It's probably not going to work if you have a billing question or a company that does not care about public perception.

Setup a synology server and use the community app OS ticket. that would be the easiest thing to do. If you want to go cheaper then setup your own Xpenology server with the same OS ticket.

my family thought AOL was all there was until i bought a copy of mozilla and got to show them the whole web that they had been missing. i bought a book about the internet (it may have been internet for dummies). a local ISP finally got a connection and we dropped AOL around version 2. thank you mozilla. it still makes me chuckle thinking about buying netscape... good times.

exactly ! my cable company has a local monopoly on broadband... because of the local government. service always goes down as government involvement goes up.

start with something easy like http://www.mikesmath.com/tribune.htm