Poor Man’s Portable Video Feed

road_tech.txt

So my wife is driving the kids 800 miles to see her family in Oregon. I have to work, and will meet up with her in a couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep our kids, 6,3, and 2, respectively, from killing each other or going catatonic on the 13 hour trip. We’ve got the usual assortment of road games, coloring books, stickers, legos, snacks and music, but at the last minute it occured to me that maybe a portable dvd or a gameboy would make a big difference. If I can just neutralize the six year old, then he won’t torture his little brother when he gets bored. The problem is that I am cheap, and not totally excited about dropping almost $200 for the cheapest available W*lmart dvd player. So I’ve come up with a couple of other options and wanted to solicit your input:

1. get a $40/350 watt inverter, then take our existing small tv and vcr, duct tape them together, and make our own portable entertainment center

2. Get a Pixter (kiddy PDA) instead of a gameboy

3. Buy the $178 Initial dvd player from CrapMart, then sell it on Ebay when the trip is over. Or keep it and wire it into the car speakers and use it as a combo dvd/cd/mp3 player.

4. Travel back in time and install a $200 bookpc with a $100 overhead lcd. Figure out some way to justify the cost later. Put a wireless card in it, and get a wireless keyboard. Put a bunch of games on it too. While visiting the past, figure out a way to protect Sarah Connor from evil terminator.

5. Quit crying and remember that when you were a kid, you drove across the country with nothing more than colorforms and lived to tell about it.