Tech Review

Sony Aibo 6 Month Review

So many readers have wanted to know my thoughts on owning a Sony Aibo. I purchased my aibo directly from the US Sony Aibo Store at https://us.aibo.com/ and it arrived I think it was July 2nd. Now it’s December 8th and I’ve turned her on for the first time since around Halloween – so it’s been asleep on its charger for at least a month – going on 2 now. My comments in this post are going to echo my comments to one of my readers of my 3 Month Check in – I feel I would enjoy Aibo more if I actually used it. But I don’t. And when I don’t I don’t miss it. read more

Sony Aibo – 3 Week Check-in

I’ve had Inca, my Sony Aibo, for 3 weeks now. Here are a lot of videos of our adventures so far. I’ll also briefly write some thoughts. You can see my unboxing videos here. And you can watch a lot of quick Tiktoks of my Aibo here. Continue reading this blog post to see some newer videos or follow our adventures on Tiktok together.

@geekysweetie.com Inca, my Sony Aibo, Day 18. #aibo #sonyaibo #aibosoftiktok #robot #robots #tech #technology #deeplearning #ai #artificialintelligence #gadget #gadgets #toy #toys ♬ Jupiter & Mars – ARDN

Enjoy all of the little clips and videos. I’ve put a few on YouTube, but I recently started Tiktok so most of the Aibo videos are there. Follow me to see new Aibo videos each day. read more

My Steam Deck Arrived Yesterday, and Games Are Unplayable

My Valve Steam Deck 521 GB model arrived yesterday. I preordered it on day one, which feels like it was probably a year ago now. At that time, I had a lot of hopes and dreams and spoke highly of the potential of the Steam Deck in this post here. Upon receiving it, my initial excitement turned to disappointment – however; that has since changed, at least a little, as I’ve spent time getting to play with it.

@geekysweetie.com So my Steamdeck arrived today… Not sure how to feel now… I ordered a 1tb card for expansion (and have the 521gb model so that part will be sorta kjnda fixed… but most my games are not compatible with it. I haven’t actually tried playing anything because im working and because it came dead and has to charge. I paid almost $700 for this and expected it to play wvery steam game… hmm 🫤🤔😐#steamdeck #fail #epicfail #happysad #wtf #computer #error #upset #doesntwork #wontwork #expensive #notwhatiexpected #unexpected #disappointment #unboxing #game #gaming #gamer #steam #steamdeckerrors #steamdeckfails #tech #technology #techunboxing #techreview #earlyadopter ♬ Steven Universe – L.Dre

What went wrong, you ask? First, it was not fully charged upon arrival. Not a huge deal but a minor detail. I plug it in and the process to begin setup begins. It goes smoothly and everything is setup. And then the very first screen is an error about a missing library file. I restart and the error persists… After several more restarts that error goes away… read more

I Bought an Electronic AI Artificial Intelligence Sony Aibo Robot Dog – July 2022

Before we begin – Get one thing straight – I BOUGHT this dog. It is mine forever. It is not a 7 or 14 day trial. Yes, it’s expensive. No, it’s not a toy. It’s the most advanced artificial intelligence available to a regular consumer. It is different from Furreal friends and Zoomers and Teknik and similar toy robot dogs. Why? The reason why Sony Aibo is so expensive and so unlike any other robot dog on the consumer market today is thanks to impressive Artificial Intelligence. – That’s the claim anyways. Now I’ve only had mine for four days so I’m not sure yet how impressive that AI really is. read more

The Real Reason I’m Returning My IPAD Pro

For those following my blog, you might already know that I’m a multimedia content creator – not just for this blog here – but as a fulltime living for a real client in the real world. I do everything marketing related for them, from print advertising, video production and editing, online advertising, tradeshow events, email marketing, social media management, and so much more.

Pre-Covid I used to work in the office, and so all the equipment I needed was right at my fingertips and provided by the company. I didn’t have much say or choice in what I used. When it came to drawing tablets we had a very small Wacom tablet. The old-school kind without the screen built-in. It wasn’t bad, I graduated undergrad college in 2006, and my MBA around 2012 or so, and so I was familiar with and used to using Wacom. Even back in my childhood, my stepdad who was the one who first bought me Corel Draw and started me down this career path back in the 90s, at some point bought me a REALLY old-school Wacom tablet, an off-white color, big heavy thing with a DONGLE. They don’t make those anymore. This was a dinosaur – but that proves that Wacom’s been around for ages… and well yes, certain things have changed, they now have better pens, and a nifty ergonomic standing base and even some very pricey Wacom that are self-sufficient stand-alone units – for a cool $3,000+ dollars. read more

Apple IPad Pro 12.9 Inch Review & Comparison To Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio

You might have seen my recent review about the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio over here. You may remember mine met with an ill fate. A fate likely caused by a defective Surface Pen… The pen would not do anything. I changed the batteries, I knew how to charge it correctly under the lip of the laptop… And in device settings it said it had 100% battery life.

I read an article about unpairing and repairing the device… so I unpaired it… and could not repair it… because it was effectively dead…. No lights, no nothing. I’d only had the device for 10 days… but since Best Buy’s cutoff for returns is 14 days… and at least my local Best Buy is running some weird COVID19 hours still… closing at 6 or 7 pm and I had to work past that time… We had gone up the night before only to discover they were closed, and knew we couldn’t make the next night either…. So on day 12 of 14, when they offered to ship me a new pen…. well… I was nervous… What if it WASN’T the pen?! What if it was a problem with the bluetooth inside the $3,000 computer??? read more

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio Review

I recently purchased Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio from Bestbuy. The highest end model here. It’s awesome when it works… but after just a few days my pen died. I tried changing the batteries. I know how to charge it. It sits under the laptop near the track pad. It will not light up. My device settings say the batteries are at 100%. I read about unpairing and repairing the pen, so I tried that. I was able to unpair it, but not able to repair it back to the device. For $3,000 for the laptop and $100 for the pen, I expected more… read more

Razer Opus X Wireless Headset Review

I just received my Razer Opus X Wireless Headset 3 days ago. I have done 6 videos included in this review. The first is an unboxing video. The other videos are “attempted soundtests” attempted because the audio YOU will hear while watching these videos is NOT exactly what you will hear while WEARING the Razer Opus X. I just have the Iphone placed right inside the ear cup of the Razer Opus X in those reviews.

I’m just going to sprinkle my videos throughout here in chronological order, starting with my unboxing, and then part 1 of the review / soundtest, part 2, and so on. Enjoy! read more

Retro Gaming House Retro Pie Emulation Station Raspberry Pi Review

This is not a sponsored post. I decided to purchase a Raspberry Pi with Retro Pi, Emulation Station, Kodi, and some other goodies pre-installed. I purchased mine from Retro Gaming House. https://www.retrogaminghouse.com/collections/retropie-emulators

The one I ordered came with 2 controllers that look a lot like PS4 controllers and a wireless keyboard. It had a small 32gb micro sd card with all the software pre-installed. They say they use their own skins and stuff too but I’m not sure if that claim is true or false. read more

Razer Blade 15 Quartz 2020 Pink Gaming Laptop Review

Quartz Pink Gaming Peripherals | Pink Gaming & Streaming Accessories ⌨️

Aesthetic appeal✅ Personalised style✅ Quality design✅ Get the Razer Quartz gaming gear set online for a personalised set up. Shop headsets, keyboards and mice.

This is not a sponsored post. I purchased this laptop direct from Razer and used my own hard earned money to pay for it. I have never owned anything by Razer but the company has long been the gold standard for gaming PCs, gaming laptops, and accessories.

Here is my unboxing video:

And a bit of my “gaming history” on previous laptops, sprinkled in with some pictures of the new 2020 Razer Quartz Blade 15 Inch Laptop. Followed by some Specs, Benchmarks, and recommended accessories.

The pictures and videos sometimes don’t reflect how pink this computer really is. My own pictures, Razer official pictures, and other people’s pictures really show this laptop as more of a rose gold with a hint of pink, but in person, it’s EXTREMELY pink. Not rose gold at all. So keep that in mind :). None of my pictures or videos have any filters or editing. I tried different lighting and different camera angles to try to get a good idea of how pink it was, but no matter what I did, the laptop is much pinker in person than in the pictures lol. Which is a good thing i think :). read more

Table of Contents For Best Girls Games On PC, Mobile, and Consoles

Due to the size of the post covering and ranking the past 30 years of gaming consoles (plus pc and mobile too), ranking them based on the quantity and quality of girl games available on the systems, I had to break what I’d hoped to be one big post into about FORTY (unbelievable lol) smaller posts.

I think you need a table of contents and i’ll be going back into each of those forty posts and adding this. As well as possibly changing headings and images to make things less confusing lol. read more

Fitbit Inspire HR Smartwatch Review

I purchased the lavender Fitbit Inspire HR Smartwatch a few days ago at Best Buy. This is not a sponsored post. I just thought my readers may be interested in learning more about Fitbit Inspire HR Smartwatch too.

I chose the Fitbit Inspire HR Smartwatch for the following reasons:

I mainly just wanted a watch that could count my steps. Yes a phone does that too, but my phone might not always be with me.

When looking at prices of such Smartwatches online, the black version of Fitbit Inspire HR seemed super reasonable, about $65. read more

Tamagotchi On Review 2019

I just recently purchased the Fairy Pink Tamagotchi On from Barnes and Noble. Here’s my thoughts after the first 24 hours. I did a lot of research prior to purchasing Tamagotchi On. Tamagotchi On is also known as Tamagotchi Meets in Japan and Tamagotchi Some in Korea. The Tamagotchi Meets has a lot of bugs which were all fixed for the English Tamagotchi On. The bugs included things such as draining the batteries in just a day or Tamagotchis getting glitched when they evolved.

I also read that a lot of people received used looking Tamagotchi On from amazon who had badly scratched screens despite being brand new. Luckily mine was in perfect condition. I don’t know if the scratched screens were just from Amazon, or maybe a bad batch, afterall it’s been out for about 2 months now so my tama is from a different manufacturing batch.

I chose to purchase from Barnes and Noble because you can get 30% off your first toy order when you join the free kid’s club. Tamagotchi On are pretty pricey around $50-60 so saving 30% is a big deal.

I also prepared for my Tamagotchi’s arrival by buying a “case” which as far as I can tell is just a decorative touch. It might offer some protection but not much. When it comes to Tamagotchi “cases” there’s 3 basic types. Silicone which is what I bought – I picked out a pink Pusheen case which still isn’t here. Crochet cases from places like Etsy – many of which have cat or rabbit ears. And Bath and Body Works Hand Sanitizer holders which people are using mostly as wrist straps. Unlike the original Tamagotchis of the 90s, the new ones are not keychains. They do have a place you could attach a chain, wrist strap, or lanyard though. Or just pop your tamagotchi into the Bath and Bodyworks hand sanitizer.

The other ways I prepared for my Tama’s arrival include buying a tiny screwdriver and some rechargeable batteries. The battery door is secured with a tiny screw. I bought an eyeglass repair kit. If you live in the united states you can buy these at the dollar tree store. It comes with 2 screw drivers that fit the tiny screw and a cleaning cloth that you can use on the screen. And it only costs a dollar.

I dunno about you, but I am a 90s kid. I grew up with the original Tamagotchi. The new Tamagotchi On is very similar to its 90s counterpart. The basic concept of the game remains the same, you navigate the menus with 3 buttons. The first button toggles through the menus, the 2nd button confirms your selection, and the third button cancels and goes to the previous screen.

The gameplay also has not changed much on the surface. You feed, play with, and clean up after your virtual pet. The big differences between Tamagotchi On and the 90s version are that the Tamagotchi On is in full color and has a backlit screen. The Tamagotchi On also features some new gameplay elements, the biggest of which is the ability to connect to the Tamagotchi On app and play minigames to earn coins, or meet other players from around the world. Once your Tamagotchi is an adult, you can even marry another player’s Tamagotchi and have babies, including twins. The genetics of the parents pass down and there are over 1 million different combinations and ways that your Tamagotchi can look. You  can use the coins from the minigames to dressup your tama, decorate your room, buy toys or food for your tama, or put your Tama in a daycare so you can take time away, perfect if you have to leave your tama when you go to work or school.

If you have 2 Tamagotchi they can have playdates or communicate when you connect via infrared. You may want 2 Tama anyways because there are 2 versions *and more in Japan* with exclusive places you can unlock and a few Tamagotchi exclusive to each version. And in some cases (in Japan) there are rare genes in the special versions. The two places you can visit right now are Magic Land in the Purple or Green Magic Tamagotchi On US versions, or Fairy Land in Pink or Blue Fairy versions. The fairy version has more cute type Tamagotchi while the Magic version has more cool type tamagotchi. So which version you get may be influenced by what type of Tamagotchi you like best. If you like cute things like unicorns, or cool things like bats, vampires, witches, etc. But in the end it really doesn’t matter since you can marry and have babies and get the genes from all of the versions, even the Japanese exclusive versions, so you should just go for the shell color you like best. The white Magic one was limited in Japan but it’s now going to be an amazon exclusive in the US and Canada.

There are also many special events that happen. Like right now it is fall time and sometimes a tamagotchi will visit mine and they will go harvest fall food from the trees. Sometimes my tamagotchi will play hide n seek, or play with bubbles, or try to talk to me to get my attention.

It is a simple cute game with the object being to reach adulthood and breed and aim either for genes you like, or for rare genes that you want to collect.

Is it worth the high price? It faces a tough market, saturated with apps on the phone, some including other virtual pets, or even more complex games, all for free. each day new apps release, and kids have cell phones these days. But maybe Bandai never intended to target kids in the first place; perhaps they’re banking on people like me who collected the first tamagotchi to be willing to pay for the new Tamagotchi On.

What I like about Tamagotchi On is the feeling of nostalgia, the cuteness, both of the graphics, and the outer shell, and the ability to breed and see genes pass down to the babies. I also like that I only need to spend a few minutes a couple times a day checking in on the Tamagotchi. It doesn’t require much time, effort, or thought. It’s just a simple cute game. I like the feel of the egg in my hand, and the buttons are comfortably placed. This Tamagotchi is larger than the 90s version and seems a perfect fit for my hands. The color backlit screen is also a big improvement over the 90s version.

What I don’t like about Tamagotchi On is no built in keychain/wrist strap/lanyard mechanism, and sadly, I think I’ll enjoy the game for a few weeks and then bore/tire of it quickly because it’s just too simplistic. But on the plus side I do think I will revisit the Tamagotchi from time to time, whenever I feel like playing a cute and carefree game.

Godaddy Sucks

Honest Godaddy Review – Why I Left Godaddy After 20 Years

I joined Godaddy back in 1999. Aside from some other free very early websites back in the early 90s, like Geocities, Godaddy was the only web host provider I ever had. And I was perfectly happy with them. Any time I had an issue, which honestly, in and of itself was pretty rare, the support team was quick to fix it. I didn’t like the overly sexualized sensationalized advertising, but as a marketing professional myself, I understand that sometimes sex sells. I didn’t care – and honestly didn’t know – about the questionable ethics of both the company and of its founder. All I knew is my websites worked and it was cheap and that was good enough.

So why after being a happy customer for over 20 years would I choose to leave? Because of a few recent interactions over what should have been a very simple issue. It opened my eyes to how poor the support team really is, and how money hungry the company is, and most importantly, how they treated their most loyal of customers who have been with them since almost the founding of the company. How little they did to try to save my business and how little I mattered to them. I will not be treated like that. And money talks, so I put my money where my mouth was and I chose a new web host who is almost triple in price what I paid to Godaddy, but I don’t mind. Honestly, since moving my site about a month ago now, I notice it’s so much faster and performs so much better. And the few interactions I’ve had with the support team, were all handled professionally and quickly.

So what was my issue? A recent update of wordpress required an update to PHP versions. This should be simple enough. I am a technical person. I went to the settings in Godaddy… and… I was already on the most “current” version… php 5.6 – a version that was over 5 years old and for which support had stopped almost a year ago…. With no way to access a higher version, I contacted Godaddy.

They informed me that my “Deluxe Linux Hosting Package” could not be updated to a higher version of PHP…. Not so “Deluxe” is it? But they told me I could switch packages to one that was cheaper, had the same unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage, and actually costs less. Great! Let’s do it, I told them.

But the catch, I would have to back up and move all of my websites myself – I had about 12 of them, or they could do professional migration for $99 per site. And to put a cherry on top of it all, despite having just one CPanel, and one hosting package. Godaddy insisted that I had to pay $99 per domain name. I am just a hobby blogger – where on earth am I going to get over $1000 to migrate all of my sites?!! I make maybe one check from google ads a year, an affiliate commission here or there, and a few sponsored posts a year.

I know backing the sites up and moving them is not a hard job, anyone can get on FTP backup the files and reupload… But I live in a very rural area where there are amish people and more cows than cars, and internet connections are slow, and unstable. And I did try to FTP my sites myself but it kept timing out – 20 years worth of files, even just for 1 site takes hours if not days, on my connection, and the time outs had me worried about corrupt files or losing my data. I asked Godaddy if they could please waive the migration fees and was told that “We can’t work for free” by a manager. – I asked several reps and eventually spoke to a manager and the answer was the same. Nothing they could do unless I paid.

Well guess what? There are hundreds of webhosts who WILL migrate me for free!! So you have just lost a customer. A happy customer who has been with you for 20 years and probably would have been with you another 70 years – or the rest of my life… But you didn’t care… you didn’t care I paid money monthly for the hosting, or annually for the domains, you couldn’t see that you would have EASILY recouped that 99 dollar fee in less than a year.

If you’re curious what host I chose. I chose Siteground. I considered a lot of other options, but I feel good about my decision. I almost chose Fastcomet. Their prices are hard to beat, but I read they have some issues with site uptime. Most reviews don’t tell you about this, but I found 2 or 3 more honest reviews out there.

When shopping for a new webhost, you have to be careful, because a lot of reviews are sponsored or affiliate reviews and will be more glowing and you get pulled in and then “stuck”. Luckily, a lot of web hosts want your business and will migrate you away from whoever your “bad” host is. So you’re never really stuck.

Don’t settle for a web host provider who doesn’t value you as a customer. Let your money speak, just like I let mine speak to tell Godaddy I had enough. I know I’m just one small customer in part of a multimillion dollar company, but I work hard for my money, and if they don’t want my business, there’s plenty of other hosts who do.

It is unacceptable that 1.) I was on an old plan and never had any notice about PHP being depreciated. They stopped support completely last year meaning I didn’t even receive security updates or etc. And my version was so old probably a lot of plugins/themes/and in fact the newest version of wordpress itself isn’t compatible – It shouldn’t be my problem or expectation on the customer to fix this issue. I know how to update PHP but if there’s no option to update it – that should fall on Godaddy to move me to a plan that has at least a current supported version. 2.) And equally unacceptable that no one did anything to help lower the costs, etc. I can go migrate to hundreds of other hosts for free, but Godaddy can’t move me to a different plan or server with the correct PHP for “free”? It’s not “free” because I’m a paying customer. No one is asking you to do anything for “free” I’m just asking for my websites to work, which were broken by their lack of proper PHP.

I will never recommend Godaddy to anyone again. Previously I always recommended them, we even use them at my work because of me and have probably about 80 domains and multiple sites. I won’t tell my work to leave Godaddy either — but I will warn you blog readers – Godaddy doesn’t deserve my business, and they don’t deserve yours either.

Siteground is running a promotion right now, if you pay for a year of Go Geek hosting up front, you get it for slightly more than what it’d normally cost for 3 months. It works out to under $12 a month. Siteground has a free wordpress migration plugin that lets you flee your bad hosting company for free. They’ll also move one site for free for you with their professional migration… Or if you need them to move your site, it’s only $30, not $99 like Godaddy…. I actually had to have them move one of my sites for me because it was having an error when I tried… but fine, I spent an extra $30, instead of $99 (or 1,000+ for all the sites that Godaddy ridiculously wanted).

Siteground has an affiliate program too; remember what I told you about affiliate programs, you have to be wary of what you read, do your research and make your own decisions. I applied but as of time of this post am not yet in their affiliate program.

I can however refer them and earn a free month of hosting, so if you’re interested in a new host, and want to check them out, especially with their awesome special pricing right now, here’s a link to do so. https://www.siteground.com/recommended?referrer_id=8158484.

Update: 10/12/19: I’m now an affiliate of Siteground – full transparency and disclosure here, if you use this next link I will make a commission: https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=1a41a164ae9c30dc54ffe5a58032f16c

Or if you don’t want to use my affiliate link, you can always just visit siteground.com

Hopefully this review will spare someone the heartache, anger, frustration, and time that I spent with Godaddy. All I can say, is stay as far away as possible from these crooks.

There may come a day some day where I am dissatisfied with Siteground too, but honestly, I’ve been happy so far, although it’s only been a month or two since I migrated. Do your own research, talk to a lot of people, and take into consideration the factors that are important to you. I would strongly discourage you from joining GoDaddy, but I can’t tell you what’s best for your web hosting needs, I can only tell you about my own experiences with them.