Some assembly required

Having a birthday close to Christmas can be challenging when you are young. Cool toys are released all year round, so it is important to put a lot of forethought into your letters to Santa if you are to weather the 11-month-drought until next year.

As an adult however, has it's perks. Despite the discovery of impulse purchases, knowing how hard you work for each dollar you can spare for indulgences usually sucks out all the fun. Hence, I restrict myself to cruising the interslice, imagining all the cool stuff I could buy and stopping just short of entering my credit card information.

Often, more than half of my open tabs fall into the "would love to have, but would never buy for myself" category. Sometimes, the right mix of unattended computer, exceptionally bright girlfriend and a wonderful family allows the Christmas-birthday combo to really pay off...

..like when your entire extended family pitches in to get you your very own robotic minion.

Now, as everyone has surely figured out, robots are cool. However, I find them particularly fascinating, and have spent 5 years of my life studying them. So I did what any self respecting member of the internet would do, and started a blog.