Holiday Specials

 

'Tis the season for holiday specials. We watched a couple this weekend. Spirited is a comedy musical with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. It's a modern version of A Christmas Carol. Both Ferrell and Reynolds are good in the film, and there's plenty of funny moments mixed in with the singing. Overall it was good.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are some of my favorite characters and movies in the MCU. Their holiday special has Drax and Mantis teaming up to abduct Kevin Bacon as a Christmas gift for Quill.  Apparently Peter talks about Kevin Bacon a lot. Drax and Mantis are funny together, as usual, and are the main stars of the show. It was good entertainment as well.

Star Wars: Andor

 

Andor gives us the best reason to date as to why the rebellion exists. Sure, having a crazy Emperor and a force sensitive Sith in charge of the galaxy is bad, but the stories have always been about Darth and Luke. We've never really seen how the Empire's influence affects the daily lives of regular people. Andor explores this concept, and in the process shows the origin of the rebellion.

Andor is unlike any other Star Wars show we've seen before. There are few pew-pew battles, few Stormtroopers, and no one is using the Force. What we get instead is a display of the increasingly powerful Empire and its Imperial Security Bureau (ISB). You see the Empire expand its reach, invading planets and affecting the daily lives of people. It feels less like Star Wars and more like something that could occur today in a communist society. 

Cassian Andor is looking for his sister when two private sector security guards start bothering him. He ends up killing them. The Empire becomes aware of the situation, and an overly-aggressive ISB agent suspects this could be more than a random crime. Andor becomes an Imperial target, and while trying to hide he becomes involved in a small rebellious gang who plots to rob an Imperial armory. They are successful, but in doing so set up a chain of events where the Empire becomes overly aggressive in their attempt to keep galactic order.

After the robbery, Andor is hiding at a beach-side vacation spot when he is arrested randomly (an example of the Empire's anger and stupidity, as they don't realize they have the man they are looking for under arrest). The prison scenes are some of the finest episodes of Star Wars content ever created. The psychological terror the Empire is able to provide feels real, and it is here where Andor learns he can lead a Rebellion against the Empire.

This show feels less like science fiction and more like a cold-war era spy thriller. It relies less on action and more on dialogue. Tatooine isn't even mentioned, which is a good thing. Instead, we're introduced to a new planet called Ferrix, which is refreshing. This is the best looking version of Coruscant I've seen. The music is super cool too, with an 80's horror vibe.

I really can't say enough good things about this show. In an era where Disney is churning out Star Wars shows left and right, a lot of them feel a bit recycled. Andor, however, is different. It is gritty and has a more "real" feel to it. It does away with a lot of the things that Star Wars relies on for stories - the Force, lightsabers, Jedi, etc., and instead tells a story about real people trying to survive the terrible regime that is the Empire.  I'm already looking forward to season 2.

Is Mesh the Answer?

 When I bought my previous router in 2019, Mesh and Wi-Fi 6 were all the rage. I got a router with neither technology. I wasn't sure if any of my peripheral devices supported Wi-Fi 6, and I had previously done fine with traditional routers, so didn't think Mesh was needed. Plus routers with these technologies cost more. I went with the traditional wi-fi router and it has worked fine until a few months ago, when it did what routers tend to do - drop signal. I typically get 4-5 years out my routers before signals start to drop. This time it happened before 3 years had gone by. Streaming issues in the basement is what we experienced this time. I'm using a range extender because of previous issues in the basement, which seemed to help temporarily. But it got to the point where we were rebooting the range extender, then rebooting the router, and trying to connect to one of the 6 networks that now existed in our house, that I thought it was time to upgrade our router.

In this age of wireless devices and streaming, the home router is one of the most important pieces of tech in your home. With this being said, you want to get a good one. However, they are very difficult to research. Despite being somewhat intelligent about home tech, even I have a hard time understanding the difference between them. Reviews can be deceiving because someone can give a router a bad review simply because they couldn't get it hooked up, which may or may not be the routers fault. 

With all of this confusion surrounding routers, I did what I typically do in these situations. I bought one that was middle of the road on price, and one that generally got favorable reviews. I decided to get a Mesh system this time. Our house isn't huge, but it is spread over 3 levels and the basement is a common struggle for consistent streaming. Our main router is on the main level, so I was thinking that routers aren't great at broadcasting below their location. I don't actually know that for sure, but it makes sense to have a device broadcasting the network as close as possible to where it is needed. The system I got has three nodes, one for each level of the house. It was simple to set up and I like that I only have one network to connect to now, instead of multiple that existed with my previous router which caused confusion, mostly for the internet of things.

It's impossible to judge how well a router is working after only a few days of use, because all new routers are going to work well. I can say that I have fiber optic and pay for 100 Mbps down. Previously when doing internet speed tests on my PS4 & 5, I would get around 30 Mbps. When I tested this with my new Mesh system, I got 85 Mbps. Quite an improvement! The real judge of success will be how the system performs over the long haul, however. I'm hoping to get more than 3 years out of this system.