That Time We Talked About Circle With Disney

This is episode number twelve of the Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all.

Come on, Kevin.

It's a small world.

I'm singing too. After all, it's a small, small world.

Why are we singing that?

I have no idea, and what I really don't know is how you got me to sing it too.

It's social pressure, man. There's only 2 of us, you had to do it.

It worked.

Yeah, so no, we're doing a show that has some Disney stuff in it, and I wanted like the most obnoxious Disney song ever to get stuck in your head for the rest of the show.

Thank you, it's there.

I want you to go lay your head on the pillow at night tonight and just have that, you know, little odd children dancing around in circles as you go to sleep.

Thank you for, uh—

May they torment you there.

For the visual on top of the earworm.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Well, I will tell you, um, and you know this about me, Craig, but Disney's close to my heart.

Close to the heart. Special.

I love Disney.

Yeah, we both have a love relationship going on with the Disney parks and the Disney stuff.

Absolutely.

We love Disney.

Yes.

And so tonight we're gonna be talking about a cool product for your home From Disney. Yeah, pretty neat, huh?

Yeah, it is cool that they're creating products like this. Yeah, it's interesting.

So we're gonna— before we talk about that, we want to tell you guys about some cool things going on with the show. One, we got these cool new stickers. Whoo! Check that out. So what is it, extreme close-up? Is that—

yeah, extreme close-up.

So brought to you by Sticker Mule. You got this, the Sticker Mule sticker.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, so we got these cool stickers from Sticker Mule. Uh, there's, there, there's the mule. Cute, cute little mule. And, uh, yeah, we're excited to be able to give these out to you guys. And the way that we're going to do that is we have a special event coming up. We're going to be at the Thistle Draft Shop down in Spring, Texas doing a live show on December the 17th.

Yeah, man, that's gonna be fun.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. We would love to have you guys come out and visit with us. Come say hi, and we will Give you a sticker, maybe even buy you a cold beverage or two, and talk to you about your home.

Yeah, so, um, you know, we encourage you to just come and hang out. I mean, Thistle's a fun place to begin with, and we're excited to be able to, to hang out there for a little bit.

I highly recommend the truffle fries.

The truffle fries.

Yeah, and I'm gonna have a big basket of them in front of me. I may even share with you guys, not with Kevin. Kevin can't have any. He's gonna get his hands slapped.

Yeah, that's gonna happen. But, uh, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna spend some time giving you the opportunity, the, the listeners and people that are there at the live show, to come up and, and be on the show if you want to talk to us about some of your home renovation projects or, uh, things you either want to do or maybe stuff you've done in the past and, uh, just spend some time with you.

Yeah, we'd love to hear some stories about the things that your crazy neighbor Ed did to his house.

Or to yours.

That Ed. Um, but anyway, if you, uh, if this is your first time listening to The Homeowner Show, we encourage you to hit the subscription button there on iTunes, on YouTube, or the notification bell. You can also join us there on Stitcher and Spotify or any podcast platform. Uh, you can watch the videos on YouTube. The show comes out every Tuesday and the videos come out on Thursday. We highly encourage the audio because on the video, We ugly.

We ugly.

We ugly. So yeah, so it's— man, I am really excited about this, this live show.

Yeah, I am too. It's gonna be fun.

Yeah, I mean, like, we sound better live.

Well, we don't look better, but we sound better live.

I feel like I'm on my game live.

Yeah.

I've got— I'm gonna bring all my good material.

Okay.

So, which I haven't used yet. So if you've enjoyed the show thus far—

You got better material?

I got better— man, I've got material. that I am hiring lots and lots of people to write for me.

This should be interesting, y'all. I would, I would come just for that.

I am breaking the bank for the Thistle Show.

All right.

So let's get into this thing, man. We're talking about the Disney's— or the Circle Disney. Is that how— what's the—

Yeah, it's Circle with Disney.

Circle with Disney.

Yeah, that's, that's the way they actually, they market it, uh, but most people just call it Circle. Um, uh, what's really interesting about this device is when you look at it It's not a circle at all. Um, it's a, it's a cube. It's kind of a, you know, like a, like a 3.5-inch by 3.5-inch cube.

So not an educational device.

Not at all.

Well, not, you know, if you want to teach your children poorly, it's not going to help you with— which can be hilarious.

Especially if you just want to turn the internet off, this thing will do that. Uh, but, but the reason it's called Circle is, um, Partly because of their user interface. Whenever you look at it, whenever you input it into the app and use the app, everybody kind of shows up in a circle and—

Oh, like on the app itself?

Yeah, on the app itself that you use to partner with this device, this physical device.

Yeah.

Everybody shows up in a circle and there's this idea of circling everything around the internet.

Well, how very hippie and new age of them.

Yeah, I just don't— I guess maybe they tried the—

We need to put more families in squares.

Maybe they tried like a circle ball and just kept rolling off the table. Who knows?

Who knows? My circle keeps breaking.

Yeah, so anyway, it looks like—

Totally different song.

Yeah, that's a different song.

May the circle be—

Okay, there's also the Circle of Life, right?

Oh, that's more Disney-specific. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that back.

You're welcome.

We need to stay on topic.

Okay.

to tell you, my, you know, my favorite thing about this particular thing that we're reviewing today—

Yeah?

The Muppets are on the box.

Oh.

Yeah, like all of them.

All of them? All of them.

Really? Like, it's like a cast of like 40 Muppets on the back of this box.

Wow.

It's fantastic.

That's impressive.

The price is worth the box just for the picture. So—

Probably not. Hey, so, uh, why don't you give us just an overview of What is this device and why would anybody want to go out and purchase this device?

Yeah, so I think this is really more like a family-oriented device. I mean, if you're just a couple that has a home, it may not be, you know, very useful to you unless you're like in a very untrusting relationship. But really, the whole point of this device is to manage the internet coming into your home and like what you can do with the internet and who you allow to do it with.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's pretty much the gist of it is it's just the internet management tool. And if, if you listen to, man, I cannot remember what episode it was. I think it was like episode 4, but anyway, it's, it's the one where we talked about digital security with Micah. I mean, this, this is a serious issue for families right now as to like what your kids can be exposed to via the internet. And it's pretty much limitless.

Yeah.

And so like, if you want to have a better idea as to what your family has access to, what it is they're actually seeing, amount of time that they're using the internet for. This— a device like this could be really, really crucial for your family's management of the internet.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's a lot of people that I think are recognizing the vulnerability that their kids are under whenever it comes to these devices. I mean, there's a lot of social pressure out there to get smartphones for kids.

Yeah.

Not just teenagers, but, you know, preteens and, and even younger. Um, and, and the question is, I mean, how do I know what my kid's doing on, on, on these devices? Is there a way I can manage their time on it, manage the things that they see, manage the things that they do? And, uh, this device gives you the power to manage those things.

Yeah. And I don't think like we were like trying to promote like being like helicopter parents or anything like that.

No, not at all.

Um, but like, it's just, I think it's a good idea to have an understanding as to like what it, what the reality of the situation is. And I think a lot of people have some misconceptions about this because as your, as your kids get older, one, they get smarter, two, they get more curious, and three, um, if you think this is a gendered issue, it's not. I mean, I was reading something the other day, like the quickest growing market for pornography is for females, like young females. And the way that they're getting access to it is through smart devices like phones and tablets and things like that. And people who produce that kind of content are making it readily available for those devices because they

know that that is a vulnerable point for most families. Not only for most families, but for most young people.

Yeah.

Like you said, a lot of parents have the pressure to get their children those devices, get them in their hands, and then when they have them and they have access to the internet, I mean, like, the world is their oyster. And man, do they like to go exploring.

Yeah, and so I do think that while you said it best, we're not promoting helicopter parenting, what we are promoting, and really maybe not we're promoting, what Circle is promoting here is just give you access to control the internet. Because without control, you said it, the world's your oyster. I mean, everything is at your fingertips. So let's just, um, Circle has said let's just create a device that gives people control of their internet.

Yeah.

So how do they do that?

I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a programmer.

It's Disney magic.

More Disney magic.

Sprinkle pixie dust everywhere. So, so there are certain features that this device gives you access to. So maybe we just start off by kind of listing what some of those features are.

Yeah, so I mean, like, one that— I mean, like, we have a list here of all of the ones that they list as features, and the first one that jumps off to me is time limits. And I know, like, on iOS devices now, like, you have this feature where, like, they evaluate your screen time and they give you back that data. Well, that doesn't do anything. It doesn't like, you know, it doesn't regulate you. It just sort of makes you feel guilty if you spent too much time on Facebook. But this seems to indicate that they can actually limit time that you have access. And from what I gathered, it's not just like overall time, it's like specific time for certain things even.

Yeah.

You can say, okay, well, you can have an hour of social media time, or you can have 30 minutes of this for the week, or whatever it is, but you can portion out that time into different areas.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it does. And in doing so, so let's say you want to give access to a person an hour on social media, and maybe you target something like, you know, Instagram. So an hour on Instagram, after that hour it will disable that app on that device.

Right.

So you can't, you can't use it anymore. So that's exactly the way that works. It gives you access to limit the amount of time that, that an app can be used or that a device can be used or even, or even times of day.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so we're gonna get into another feature that does that a little bit more precisely.

And you may know the answer to this because I was— this was something I was curious about as I was watching like some setup videos and some reviews, some other reviews about this product. Does it do it by device or does it do it by the person?

You, you can do it by device.

By device.

Now, yeah, and so, so basically you set up a profile of a person and, um, the, the The place where it kinda gets a little tricky here is that let's say that you've got 2 kids and they share a device.

Mm-hmm.

You're gonna have a problem with that with this system.

System.

With this system. The way this is set up, it does not allow you to limit devices per profile.

Okay.

So it works, you have a profile and a device. And it's just the way you set it up is it's— we're making it sound more complicated than it is. Yeah.

But essentially what's going to happen here is if you have Johnny and Susie sharing an iPad, right, Johnny could potentially use up all of Susie's social media time and could care less. And then Susie fills Johnny's bed full of bees because she's mad.

Correct.

Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly the way that works.

That's not how your families resolved their issues?

No.

Oh, okay, just me.

Okay. Yeah, so time limits.

Yeah.

All right.

And so, okay, so the next one would be filters.

Filters.

Yeah, and so this one, this one's— and again, this may be something, I mean, you're more tech savvy than me, and so I'm curious, are these smart filters or do you have to like specifically go like, hey, you can't go to, you know, skateboards.com, does it— so like, say I say, okay, Johnny, you can't go to skateboards.com. Does it then learn that other websites are also about skateboards and filter those out?

Not exactly.

How does this work?

Not exactly. So they have certain groupings that you can set. So for example, if you've got a teenager, you can set the teen filter.

Okay.

Um, if, if you have a preteen, you can set the preteen filter. If you've got a toddler, you can set a toddler filter. And, and each time it is going— each time, you know, whatever filter you're using, uh, it gets stronger and stronger and it limits access to, to certain things. Um, that being said, you can also filter certain websites. So if there is a certain—

Specifically list those.

Correct. So they have presets in there.

Yeah.

And that's going to do certain things. Um, and so, so then what's, what's really cool about this then is let's say, um, Johnny goes in and accesses this skateboard website, um, that you have said, you know, I don't want them to access. It will show up on, on his device You're not allowed here.

Right.

And then it will send you a notification as the adult on that, uh, or the administrator on that account saying, Johnny tried to access this.

Ooh, it's a tattler.

Right.

You know what kind of filter I want?

Here we go. Tell me.

America, help me out here. I want a filter that prevents my children from listening to crappy music.

That is so subjective.

It's not. It's really, really not. Oh man, it's so easy to tell. Okay, I mean, just right off the bat, you just eliminate— really, I mean, like, you, you want your kids listening to Baby Shark?

I mean, I mean, I don't want it, but they're gonna hear it somewhere else.

Ah, that's just lazy parenting right there.

Find a way to just eliminate it from their lives completely.

I mean, if I was a hacker, that'd be like my top 5.

That would be it.

Just eliminate Baby Shark from the internet. Okay, all right. That was intended for Sunday school only.

Yes.

And when you had nothing else left.

That's right. Yeah, and they— in the actual Baby Shark song that came out, they like took out all the good stuff.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Is there no Grandma Shark?

Well, no, there's Grandma Shark, but you don't— I mean, there's no 911, there's no lost an arm, you know what I'm talking about?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Oh my goodness. Some— there's people listening that know what I'm talking about.

Your Baby Shark is way too deep, man. You're part of the problem.

Oh goodness, I know too much.

All right, so next feature, bedtime. What we got going on here?

Yeah, so bedtime is basically what will happen—

The internet makes your children go to bed.

That is so not what this does.

If you get on the internet, it'll play nothing but scary videos until they do it.

Yeah, so that's, that's one of the kind of misnomers of this. I mean, it obviously cannot make your kid go to bed.

Well, this would be cool though, right? If we could do Disney villains like to pop up on this, go to bed.

Go to bed. Yeah, some, I mean, some of these villains are really bad, but I digress.

They're not as bad as Baby Shark.

No.

Or Bieber.

Well, okay, now we're getting down the rabbit hole. So So here's the deal with the bedtime function here. Basically, you, you have the ability to shut the device down completely, and it's going to say on, on the screen something like, it's now time to go to bed. Now, it's, it's not going to make your kid go to bed, but they no longer have access to this device.

Right.

That could potentially be keeping them from falling asleep. So, um, again, this, this kind of is similar to time limits, right? But it's separate in that the time limits, you're limiting a certain, maybe a certain app or a certain, um, genre of apps.

Um, oh, so it can also control apps on those devices?

Yes.

Oh, that's cool.

Yes. So the bedtime's just gonna shut the whole thing down.

Haha.

Yeah.

Unless you wanna use the word processor, kid, you're going to bed. Yeah. Write me a poem about how sad this made you.

Go get Grandma's typewriter.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. That's good stuff.

So bedtime.

I like that. But I still want like a Disney villain, like either doing like a finger wag.

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there's a, you know, a suggestion.

Disney Imagineers, help me out here. We need a finger wagging Ursula.

Yeah, there's a, there's a suggestion box somewhere.

Yeah, I'm gonna fold that paper up.

Good luck.

All right, so we got Usage.

Usage.

So I think this one's actually pretty cool because like from what I, what I read is like it actually will like give you kind of a report, right, as to where, where the people who have freedom on the Circle, what they've been doing with that freedom, right? Where they've been going, what they've been doing. And it doesn't get necessarily like specific, it doesn't tell you like www or anything like that, but like it It was like, hey, we went to like a, you know, like an Amazon. They went, they were shopping, or they went social media, or they did this, that, or the other.

Yeah, yeah, it gives some generalities, but what it does do, um, and, and this, this starts teetering on the, on the helicopter parent type thing. However, I, I, I, I see this very different than that. I see this as just, um, you know, you're gonna start getting me on a soapbox and I don't want to get there, but I will tell you that I do think it's our responsibility as parents to have a good firm grip on what our kids are doing.

Yeah.

And if we're not doing that, then we're not parenting really well. And so this usage basically says I can go in and look and figure out what is my kid going and doing, right? What are they spending their time on? So, so it's giving me an insight into their life.

Yeah.

That they might not tell me otherwise.

Sure. Yeah, because teenagers love communicating.

Fine. Good. Nothing. Aren't those the general responses?

Later.

Later.

No. Man, that word has so many different meanings.

I'm tired.

Goodbye when I'm going to do something.

Yeah.

I use that with mine.

Yeah, uh, it's not gonna work.

Yeah, so So, so I guess you could also use this as a tool to like, oh, Susie's been shopping a lot. I'm gonna throttle that a little.

Hmm.

Yeah?

Yeah, I guess you could.

I would.

Yeah.

Yeah. She's not gonna spend my money.

Yeah, well—

Susie's not even my daughter.

Not yet.

Gosh, she's spending my money. All right, off time.

Off time.

I have no idea what this is.

I don't either.

Really?

No. Unless you turn it off?

It's a feature on there. I'm gonna give you a chance to look it up.

Okay.

And then I'm gonna jump into history. This is the last, one of the last features. And I think history is kind of like usage, except for that you can kind of go back, you know, and you can look at a report, you know, instead of going, okay, what did they do today? What has their overall, you know, arching usage been? Because I think you could look at like a single day and like, you know, Johnny spent you know, like 3 hours on Wikipedia. And it's like, what's he doing on Wikipedia? And it's like, oh well, he had a school report, you know, it's not like he's spending every day for 3 hours on Wikipedia. Well, he's, he's actually doing something with that. And so in the,

in the overarching report and the history of the usage, you can kind of get a better idea, like what you're talking about, like what, what are his interests, where is he going, what's he been looking at, and, and where— and then, you know, you can go like over a month. over a quarter and really get a good idea as to, you know, how they're spending their time on the internet. Because like a day-to-day view is probably not going to give you like the best idea because, you know, people have different interests from day to day and different things that they're doing. And, you know, let's face it, I mean, like my kids, I mean, like, gosh, they're in elementary school and they're already having to do homework. Pretty much all their

homework is on the internet.

Right.

Their teachers are giving them like logins and passwords for websites for them to jump on and do these assignments, and then they have to send them in. It's insane, man.

Yeah.

And so like, you know, if I'm looking at the history of my kid and what they're— how they're using the internet, which, which by the way, like for, like for my kids, which it'll be hard because they pretty much use one computer to do all their schoolwork, right? And so it'd get up— it would be hard for me through this device to get an idea as to my individual kids' usage, even though I have a pretty good idea as to how they spend their time on there.

Sure, but there's even some of this homework that can be done on a device and not a computer.

Sure.

So, so in that regard, maybe—

We're just not in that financial bracket, Kevin.

Yeah, your kids just aren't old enough yet. That's what it is. You start making money for the things that you want.

Yeah.

So, um, what else about, about that?

I think that's pretty much it. I mean—

So I've looked up off time.

Okay, okay.

So, so off time is, um, exactly kind of what it sounds like. It's a time that, that your device will basically tell you, oh, by the way, it's off time, which means screen time is unavailable.

Oh.

So, so it's, it's similar to time limits, only it's the opposite of that.

Okay.

Time limits is going to say you can be on your device for this amount of time, right? Off time is saying you cannot be on your device. Go play. Go do chores. In fact, there's a way you can schedule some of those things and say, you know, it's time to do chores or something like that. So it's basically saying it's unavailable right now.

Okay. Yeah. And so I would— I mean, like, from what I'm gleaning, I mean, like, this sounds like it could get like sort of micro and macro. So like, if you're not like my family and you have a very regimented schedule, You could say like, look, you know, dinner time at the Jones household is at 7 o'clock.

Yeah.

And at 7 o'clock there's no internet. So that way no one's sitting at the table looking at their phone. They're having to like actually engage in conversation and look at their food as it travels from their fork to their mouth.

Right.

And, and interact with the people at the table. And there's like, there's no opportunity to like Facebook or That's right.

Yeah, so, so there's, there's another feature that we'll couple this with that is, uh, called Pause. But, um, the off time is basically you scheduling a time that says during this time you will not be on your screen. And it's almost as if you're, you're, um, you're planning that.

Yeah.

Okay, it's something you have pre— determined this is going to be our off time. Okay, there's another feature called pause, and pause does exactly what you think it might do. It pauses the internet.

Yeah.

It shuts it down similar to how off time does, except you can do that per device. So you can pause this device, you can pause that device. And so it's not so much of a scheduled thing, right, as much of it is you go Okay, I need you to pause, go take care of this, right? You know, that sort of thing.

I can, I can see the value in this because I mean, like, they clearly anticipated people like me who aren't going to schedule anything because everything is just constant hectic chaos, which I love, by the way. Okay, I love it, man. I actually feel like I do better. I guess not that I don't plan and I don't schedule, it's just It's kind of how we operate.

Sure.

Sometimes we have to fly by the seat of our pants, and sometimes that's just how we live.

And it works for you.

It works. Yeah, but like, you know, not only that, I mean, like, I'm just— it would be really difficult for me to schedule that. However, even if you are a scheduling type of person, let's face it, at some point in time your children are getting in trouble, and like, one of the biggest hammers that you can hit that nail with is to just turn the internet off.

Sure.

And so like, oh, you know what?

You're on pause. You're on pause.

Booyah. You're done. So you're gonna get the finger wagging Ursula.

Uh, not yet. You're not. Um, so, so there's another thing here that, um, that is coupled with that even.

Yeah.

And it's the opposite, which is rewards.

Rewards.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what are rewards? Do you, do you know?

I have no idea. I mean, I would imagine what they are. I was like, where are you? Like, you know what? It's usually turned off at this time. Um, but we're gonna, we're gonna turn it back on.

Yes.

Congratulations, straight A's, you get full access all weekend long.

Uh, almost. Yeah, but so, so rewards are basically saying, okay, you did something well. Maybe you came home with a good report card, or, or maybe you, uh, did something else good.

You didn't kick your sister today.

That's right.

Way to go. Woohoo!

So it's different than you know, I'm going to punish you by pausing the internet. It's, I'm gonna reward you by giving you more time.

Okay, extra time.

Extra time.

Gotcha.

So this could be something as simple as, hey, you get a later bedtime tonight, and I'm going to reward you with a later bedtime tonight. And that is specifically related to more device time, right?

Okay.

Yeah. Or maybe you say, Okay, our off time is gonna be, uh, less today.

Oh yeah.

So you're gonna get more time on, on your screen opportunities. So rewards are just a way to say, listen, we understand that life is fluid, and so we don't want this circle device to just be the most negative thing in the house.

Right.

Because that really could be what your kids view it as. Yeah, this is just a thing that limits me.

Instead, there are rewards. And let's not do that to Disney. I mean, like, right, we don't want to have our kids have a negative view of the most magical place in the world.

No, absolutely not.

Yeah, yeah.

So, uh, rewards, it's an option.

Cool.

Yeah.

So, and did we talk about that this isn't the only device that has this? Did we talk about that yet?

No, we did not.

Yeah, so is it Netgear?

Yes.

I think it is Netgear.

Yes.

That has the new Orbi.

Yes.

And it has the Circle integrated into it.

Yes.

But I think when you and I were talking before the show, it has a limited set of features built into it.

Yeah, so basically, like we said earlier, the Circle is a device. And it looks like a little cube. And one thing we didn't hit on, and I'll just briefly hit on this, uh, the thing is either, uh, you can plug it in to an Ethernet, okay, and, and have it, uh, draw its internet signal directly from Ethernet, right? Or it's Wi-Fi. So that, that's how they connect.

Um, it doesn't— but it doesn't have to be directly connected to the—

Does not have to be, right? Um, and the other thing We'll come back to some of that later. But so Netgear has a new device that Circle is built into the router itself.

Right.

So you don't have to have a separate device. Now, there are limitations to that. So the limitations are that they have a free option.

Right.

Once you buy Netgear, this specific Netgear router, and there may be more. The Orbi?

Yeah.

specifically the Orbi. More than likely they'll come up with more devices that have this. Um, you get basically 3 functions. You get the filter function, which basically says, you know, the content filtering, uh, the pause function, and the history function. Those are the 3 you get. Now if you want—

So Netgear is all about the negative reinforcement.

Exactly.

No rewards.

No rewards. So if you want the rest of them The rest of the things that we just talked about, uh, time limits, bedtime, off time, rewards usage, uh, connections, different things like this, um, you have to pay for that. And it is a monthly subscription.

Okay.

It's $4.99 currently.

Right. Uh, and so that enables all the missing features, right, that you would've got just by purchasing the cube in the first place.

Right.

The circle cube.

Yes.

Okay.

The circle cube. Yeah.

Well, and then we should, we should also mention one of the reasons that we, that we wanted to do this episode is, and this is on the heels of Black Friday, and so they've been, they've been running a special, and these things are like right now I think are like $49.

That's half price.

Yeah, and they've extended that, that special. I mean, like, this is how long away? I forget how far away from Black Friday now.

Well, we're, we're recording this. Yeah, we're recording this before it's gonna go out, but And we're, we're 5, 6 days away from Black Friday right now, and they're still— this deal is still going on for $49.99.

Yeah, so I mean, it's, it's a fantastic deal. Yeah, I mean, if this is something that you're interested in, so hopefully they're still running that by the time this episode airs. If not, what was the regular price on this thing? Do you remember?

$99.99.

$99.99. So like $49.99, that's, that's a tremendous Deal. I may jump on the internet after we get done here and get one of those.

Yeah, so there— then there's another option. So, so here's the— here's the biggest drawback in my mind to the Circle device. It is network-specific. Okay, so let's say that you've got a Wi-Fi network set up in your home and and for whatever reason you've got another network in proximity to your house, maybe your next-door neighbor, they don't have a, a, a lockdown on their— a secured network, uh, on their network. So if your kid is smart enough, and this doesn't take a lot of smarts to know how to do this, and just—

So if they're not, Kevin's saying they're dumb.

I didn't say it. But—

Carry on.

Anyway, okay, so, um, if, if they're smart enough to go in and change networks over to another network, then all of a sudden the Circle becomes obsolete.

Or just turn the Wi-Fi off, and if it's cellular enabled—

That's right. Then, then all of a sudden you've got a whole different network that you're accessing.

Yeah.

And Circle doesn't know to, to limit that network. Okay, so, uh, they recognize this problem, and so they've come out with a new feature, um, and it's called Circle Go. And with Circle Go, it is a paid subscription. It's $4.99 a month, right? The same thing as the, uh, same, same price.

The Orbi.

As the Orbi, uh, subscription. And it gives you the ability to do everything outside of your network. Outside of your network. So if they're at school, if they're, you know, at a friend's house, wherever they are, uh, as long as, um, you— they are on a network anywhere, whether it's cellular or Wi-Fi, you have the ability to limit them at that point.

Okay.

So that is, uh, you know, to me, that fact that you have to be on a specific network.

Yeah.

In order for the Circle device to work. That is the biggest drawback in my opinion.

Yeah.

But with the Circle Go option, that changes the game.

Yeah.

And, and so some people maybe ask the question, why would I want to pay? I mean, it's $5 a month. I mean, goodness, that's $60 over the, you know, over a year.

Yeah.

Why would I want to spend that money to have this device or this, this service limit what we're doing?

Yeah.

And again, I think it goes back to what we talked about at the very beginning of the, of the episode, and that is just having the ability to manage and control the internet that's coming in, that without it, it's all you know, all bets are off.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you one of the, one of the other features that, as I was doing some research that I, that I read about that I was like, that's actually really cool, is any device that enters the network, you immediately have access to all those features that we talked about on those devices that enter your sphere, basically.

Right.

So like, if Johnny's clever, what he might think is, I know, I'll call Pete because Pete's got an iPad and Pete can just bring it over. It's not in my circle. Then we can go look at skateboards.com and not get the finger wagging Ursula, and you know do what we want to do. That's not the case, and that's not the case. And I watched this mom on a video; like she was talking about how her friend came over and her daughter's friend came over, and when soon as she came over, she locked it down and said like, "No, you can't do that. Can't do this." Da da da da da. And like it alerted her that there was a new device in the home as well.

Right.

So you can't just like sneak one in. As soon as it accesses the internet, it jumps on it and goes, "Hey." there's something new in the house and you need to be aware of what they're looking at and what they're doing. And do you want to, you know, limit this, that?

And yeah, yeah. So one of the things I will say is some, some homes I know will have multiple networks, right? Uh, and your routers are able to do that. And part of the reason they do that is because you can maybe lock down a certain something that maybe, you know, the adults have access to something, the kids have the access to a little bit less, but still your, your range of what you can do with that is pretty small. And so for just a little bit more money, you can get this device and have a lot more control, and you can all be on the same network, and, and this gives you control over it.

Yeah, it's very, very cool.

It is, absolutely is.

So it's not as cool as a finger wagging Ursula, but what are you gonna do, man? Disney's gonna make this happen for me, I feel it.

Man, you're awfully confident.

Well, I live on confidence.

Well, you have to.

I'm not good at anything. That's all I have.

Yeah, you make people think you are.

It works.

Yeah, okay.

That's how I got this show. That's how I got hired for this gig.

Yeah, yeah, you got forced into it.

Was there anything else about this?

Man, I don't think so. I think we've hit the highlights and also the, you know, couple things about it that are maybe not great.

Yeah.

But for what you're paying and, and what you're getting, I, I do, I do think it's a great device.

Hmm. Yeah, awesome. Well, a couple things that we should mention. One, uh, this, this episode is a result of a, uh, survey that we put out on Facebook. We, uh, did a survey and said, would you rather hear about the Circle or the Tile and the Circle One? But however, if you would still like to hear an episode about the Tile, let us know. We'd be happy to do that. Very cool devices. Uh, been super helpful to, uh, my wife. Um, also we've, we've, uh, we got these cool new stickers. Kevin, Kevin, show them the sticker. Ooh. Yeah. So we're, we're super excited about these stickers. Kevin's gonna go ahead and put one on a truck. So if you were an officer of

the law, uh, we would be super stoked if you pulled Kevin over and complimented him on the sticker.

Yeah, I'll give you one.

He probably deserves that, uh, that warning. Probably just a warning. Yeah, no more. Because we don't have the budget for a ticket right now. Yeah, so no tickets please, but do pull them over because it would give us a fun story. Yeah, and I like to laugh at Kevin.

It's easy to laugh at me. Hey, if you do have any other products that you are interested in having reviewed, something maybe that you've, you've decided you're interested in, let us know. We'd love to review it.

Yeah, I've been begging Kevin to do that hammer episode.

Well, you say that—

Claw, ball-peen, I'll do it.

I was gonna say, you think, you think that's funny and clever. You've been to a hardware store. You know how many hammers there are on the shelves.

That could be fun. We could talk about all the different hammers.

Yes, we could.

Hit Kevin's thumb with each one of them. See which one hurts the worst. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll bring the hammer.

We'll use the right hand, right? Because you're left-handed?

I am. Well, you are too.

Well, yeah, but we're gonna hit your thumb. My hands—

Valuable? More valuable than mine?

Look at them, they're gorgeous. No, you could be a hand model. That's right, whole other career. Yeah, like I need another job.

All right, we're, we're really— nobody's listening at this point.

We're teetering on the brink here. Yeah, yeah. So no, look for the, uh, look for the invite to the live event at the Thistle. Come see us, get a free sticker, right? Have a beverage. and particularly the truffle fries, which are very, very yummy.

Yummy.

Um, yeah, and please, you know, go follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Send us a message and we will respond. And by we respond, I mean Kevin will respond.

Just me.

Just Kevin.

Yep.

If you want to get to me, good luck.

That's a challenge.

That's right, find me if you can. Uh, no, but you can always reach us at info@homebrewingwithkevin.com. homeownershow.com. You can also find us on the web at homeownershow.com, on the www. We are happy to find you and respond to you there, and we love hearing from you guys. Yeah. So anything else, Kevin?

That's all. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with another episode.

Bye!