Well folks it has been a while since my last post.  My SkyBall review seems to be helping a lot of folks not waste their money on that useless toy and instead save the $15 dollars for something else.  Let’s fast forward to today, my then 6 year old is now almost 9 and his love of sports and outdoors has not wavered in the slightest.  We recently moved to a new house in the country with a swamp in the back yard.  My plan was to build a personal oasis filled with tiki hut and firepit, the focal point of it all being a gorgeous pond.

I worked with all the local authorities to basically rebuild an existing pond and dam that the seller had broken.  I decided early on to try and do this in the most affordable way possible.  I called the family friend with and excavating company, he gave me a fair price and away he went.  Built my pond in 9 days.  Made the shape an interesting and acceptable position in the yard, stuck a pipe in the drain and away we went.  A few rains later and we actually had something.  Snagged some fish from a local friends pond an my pond was complete…or so I thought.

In much the same way that a sports team is great when they are winning, and when they lose all the problems bubble to the top.  In the world of ponds, everything is great when the rain keeps coming, but when it stops..look out!

I quickly realized that my friend excavator had no idea how to build a pond, and instead was very good at just digging a hole. I decided to make a second mistake and enlist another family friend excavator (I know, I know) who charged me a mortgage payment just to dig some little holes, fill them in and leave me high and dry, LITERALLY!

Finally I decided to trust my instincts and my love for Google searches to find a replacement.  I stumbled on Western Pa pond builder Phil Hay and Sons Excavating.  I dropped them an email through the web form and was having a real conversation with Drew in a few days.  He literally told me that his days are filled with my exact story and he was there to help.  This is not a shameless plug, the guys really care about what they are doing.  If a man of his word wasn’t enough, and it is for me, I asked around.  Turns out two different local friends of mine were using or had used Phil Hay and Sons for pond work themselves.

I cannot recommend Drew and his pond building expert gang enough.  They have transformed my money pit in the back yard into the beginnings of my personal oasis.  Improved the property value for the entire area and did it all with a smile and handshake.  These guys use and I quote “old farmboy” methods to build and fix ponds, and it works.  They are so good they are listed with Pond Boss magazine as a resource as well.

Here is the contact info, if you are in Pa or Ohio and need or want work done, I’d give them a call I wish I had originally.

Check them out www.philhayandsonsexcavating.com

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Hyper Charged Sky Ball Golf by MauiToys.com Review

Let me set the scene before we dive into Sky Ball Golf — it’s the little man’s sixth birthday, and everyone is asking “what should I get him?”  We recently went into his room before our trip to the beach and looked around for some toys to bring with us, and both he and I realized that he doesn’t play with any of his toys anymore. All of the hundreds of dollars we spent on Disney toys, and action heroes, nothing. The only things he plays with now include the word “ball.”   Football, baseball, basketball, hockey ball (you get the point).

So when it came down to buying gifts for his birthday, legos and tinker toys wouldn’t cut it.  I told everyone to just get sports type stuff.  I was a local Dicks Sporting Goods and noticed for $15 SkyBall Golf. The package claimed that it will travel 300 feet, and frankly looked pretty cool. So I recommended to his Aunt that this would be a perfect gift. Well guess again. Let me give you some specifics on the toy first:

With the Skyball Golf set, kids get a Skyball golf club and a see-through hypercharged Skyball golf ball that is filled with a combination of helium and compressed air, pretty cool. They recommend you place it on a real golf tee (good luck balancing it) and kids get the effect of a ball going far.

Well, after the “kid test”, it failed. My son just turned 6 and took 4 swings saw the ball go a couple hundred feet and was bored. He can do the same thing with a regular golf ball he said, and “it’s feels cooler.” Well that wasn’t enough for dad, I had to try it out myself too. Sure enough, crap. Neither me or my son are very good golfers but the Sky Ball Golf was pretty weak and completely uninteresting.

The interesting twist to this review, my son took the ball itself and actually had a lot of fun with it. The cheap golf club that came with the Sky Ball Golf set was kind of useless, but the ball itself bounces really high, and can be a lot of fun when coupled with real sports items, like a baseball bat, or a hockey stick. So my opinion of the Sky Ball Golf set is poor, but Sky Ball in general, big fan.

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Here is my review on the Hamilton Beach 12 Cup Proctor-Silex Coffeemaker…

So I rolled into Wal-Mart the other morning looking for a new coffeemaker after the one I had for several years took a turn for the worse, so to say. I was in need a new one, but I wanted to go the cheap route though. I came across a Hamilton Beach 12 Cup Proctor-Silex coffeemaker that was tagged for around $15. Well, let’s just say that it was $15 for a reason.

I took it home and my wife pretty much looked at me and said “what the %$#$ are you doing with this thing?” Yeah, the box it came in even looked cheap and it looked like someone was in dire need of coffee and ripped the box open hoping there was magically a way to produce some right there in the damn store.

The next morning I put it to the test and low and behold, it didn’t work as expected. I took it back and exchanged it (yeah why the hell would I exchange it after the experience I was already having up to this point). The next morning I plug the bad boy to see what it can do. Well the good news is that it turned on when I plugged it in. The bad news is, well, pretty much everything else. It took forever and it continued to leak after I took the pot away from it. I think the autopause didn’t work and who knows what else is wrong with it. I got what I paid for, bottom line.

And I was back at Wal-Mart picking out another one shortly after…

RD (ReviewDaddy!)

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Here is my review of the Waze app for the iPhone, one that I think is very worth downloading.

Waze is a free app and truthfully, it is a perfect way to “beat the system”, so to say. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is a pretty much a way of cheating on the cops, but doing it legally (at least I think so).

It is an interactive way to track traffic, speed limits, accidents, and oh, where the police are on the roads. When you see something happening on the road, you pick up the iPhone, hit the little button that gives you about 10 options on what you see, and you click it. Pretty simple process.

And it helps a ton. I was using it on the Pa. Turnpike the other day and someone “Wazed” that a cop was hidden on the side of the road. Wouldn’t you know it? I slowed my ass down and there he was. Saved me about $200 in fines! So you tell me whether this app is worth it!

Download it. Use it. The more people on it, the better. Open it every time when you leave the house and it is well worth it. Help me help you. You know the drill now. Thumbs up for this guy!

RD (ReviewDaddy!)

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So the wife isn’t ok with just hearing a baby cry, she needs to see it as well. Go figure.

After shopping around, as I am sure you are starting to pick up on me, I do a lot. Lots of research, lots of review reading – so I decided on the Lorex LW241 LIVE sense Wireless Video Baby Monitor
.

It’s pretty damn cool, I’m not going to lie. It’s a little screen about the size of a big IPhone, and it comes with its own charging cradle (though the battery is still not the greatest). You set up the camera and can view you little one on the screen day or night (night vision capable). You can even buy extra cameras and have multiple angles or rooms monitored at the same time. But we only have one infant, and no money, so one cam is good for us.

Some cool and differentiating things about this monitor is the fact that it has a built in thermometer so we can see how cool or hot it is in the nursery from anywhere we have the little monitor. It shows the time, big deal I know we all own a watch.

It has an on demand two way radio. So let’s just say you are in the basement watching baseball and the little one starts screaming like a banshee, you can hit the button and tell her to hold on while you run up two sets of stairs, or even better, it has a lullaby function where you can kick start some lullaby to play in the room. This can be both scary and cool, I will let you little one decide which. It has recording functionality and can be hooked up to a computer and streamed over the internet somehow as well, but frankly that’s sort of creepy so I didn’t enable that functionality.

Only drawbacks I’ve seen thus far is the battery life, and sometimes late at night it turns the bedroom into Studio 54. It starts like a strobe light flashing, which again can be either scary or cool, I will let you and your wife decide which ;).

RV (ReviewDaddy!)

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