My kids don't understand commercials. They don't even understand VCRs which, when I was growing up, were just becoming a thing. I remember this extremely sketchy movie rental store downtown where you could rent a movie and a VCR that somehow fit into a briefcase, thereby ensuring that, as you exited the building, you looked simultaneously like James Bond and someone who was going to spend the evening sobbing into a microwavable meal for one.

But my kids have no such memories. For them, video content comes over the wire -- heck, over the air really thanks to wireless networking. TV? Cable? Not on my watch and, as a result, commercials don't really exist in their world and that means we are an streaming-media household.

So my Secret Santa got me a Chromecast. Now, I've been eyeing one of these bad boys for a while. Roku's major failing is its inability to stream from YouTube because... reasons... and while it's fine to pass a tablet around the room so everyone can see whatever bit of content it is that you're talking about, it's awkward and my kids aren't going to be as gentle with that several-hundred dollar bit of electronics as either of us would like. Nonetheless, they have discovered YouTube as a content source and therefore a Very Expensive Toddler Moment seemed like a near-term inevitability.

So a Chromecast seemed like a perfect solution to this particular looming problem.

"But we already have a Roku," my wife objected.

Now, I am what you'd call an "early adopter" but I'm the only one in the family thus-far. One of the twins might qualify in a few years yet but right now her idea of high tech is her Magnadoodle which she calls a "tablet." In any case, it's an uphill fight to get new gadgets into the house, doubly so if they fill a niche that's already partially filled by something else, triply so if that something else happens also to be a gadget that I talked my wife into.

So, unfortunately, and despite my Very Convincing Arguments in favor of one, a Chromecast was not going to happen, or rather, I wasn't allowed going to be allowed to buy one.

But if someone else were to purchase it........

So "thank you" Santa for the Christmas gift of prompting my "new technology dance" and the accompanying Glances of Unconvinced Disapproval (tm) from my wife.

Once she realizes that she can play back videos of the kids doing adorable stuff she'll be sold.