I made myself some tea the other day in authentic Japanese-style tea mugs. They are ceramic and don’t have any handles. It seemed awfully lame to drink white tea in a big ol’ American coffee mug, right? Except my simple mind couldn’t decide between drinking and setting down the totally hot mug that kept burning my fingers. That hairy barbarian handle is on mugs for a reason! Yeeouch! My tea would be borderline tepid by the time the sides of the mug cooled enough to touch them. I had to race myself to finish up before the tea at the bottom turned cold.

I was given a very nice gift this holiday that solves this problem, but may create one of its own.
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There’s a class of games I like to call “starters,” games that are light-hearted, take an hour or less to finish, and are warm-ups for longer, more “serious” games. They are also easy to explain, so if there’s a newbie or two in the crowd they can jump right in without too much explanation.

Such a game is the infamous Ticket to Ride, which is one of Board Game Geek’s Top 50 games. Like any good starter game, the premise and rules are simple: win by earning points for completing railroad routes across the United States. Earn bonus points for completing “ticket” routes to and from certain cities. You claim routes by playing collections of same-colored railcar cards. Most routes only allow for one train, but some routes allow for two in the event of a game with more than three players.
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I have owned some apparently very nice clad stainless steel cookware made by Cuisinart. I bought them on the advice of my (at the time) boss, who swore up and down that stainless steel was the best way to go. I shouldn’t have listened him, about the pots and pans or about buying a home, as the cookware proved a pain in the ass for day to day cooking, and he laid every last one of us off four months later.

I spent a pretty penny back then. The Cuisinart set was great at conducting uniform heat, but sucked as far as stuff sticking to the pan. I had to use a fair amount of oil or butter to keep even simple things from adhering to the surface like a mother of nine to her welfare check. Sure, the pots looked pro but the burnt remains of food did not.

I wanted something different, something non-stick, and most importantly, something cheap. I asked Starbuck for help in picking something out. She’s my go-to-gal for anything cooking related. She thumbed through some of her cooking magazine back issues and scoured a few culinary Web sites. She sent me links to a few sets, and I finally decided on the Wearever hard anodized non-stick cookware set.
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I have participated in the Ars Technica Sekrit Santa event ever since it was started four years ago. Every year I got something awesome: niche coffee from Honduras, very nice tea, and a Gnomad, Gunpowder tea and tulip glass teaware, and an Italian stovetop coffee maker complete with homemade instructional DVD.

Those were all great, but I got something so totally unexpectedly awesome that I thought I’d post about it here on Gibberish, and recommend it to all of you.
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I buy a lot of stuff. Sometime I buy it because I need it, sometimes because I want it, and sometimes because I think an item is just plain whacky that it deserves a review on Gibberish.

With “Black Friday” kicking off the retail season I thought it might be interesting to go back through some of my old reviews (and future reviews, too) and tag a few products that might make great goodies for the little nerdy geek on your gift list.

I am tempted to turn this category into a year-round kind of thing, in case you need a birthday present, graduation gift, or whatever. I have also considered breaking the items down into subcategories based on price: $25 and less, up to $50, up to $100, and over $100. But for now, let’s keep things simple.

Look for this little icon at the bottom of reviews:

One of the best things about the Xbox 360 is the Live! service. The free “Silver” level allows you to do a lot, like send and receive voice/text messages, buy and play games via the Xbox Live Arcade, and try out demo versions of games before you buy. One thing the Silver level does not allow you to do is play games online with other people. For that, you need the “Gold” level of service, and that runs you $50USD a year. I spent almost $500 when I got my Elite and one game, and the last thing I wanted to do was shell out another $50 for online play.

There had to be a cheaper way to get access to Live!, wasn’t there? I started snooping around on the Internet, and here are two easy ways to get a year’s worth of Live! Gold for less than retail. You can upgrade online immediately via your 360 for $50.00 a year with a credit card. You can also buy subscription cards (think pre-paid mobile phones) from various vendors, including Best Buy, Target, and so on.

However, not all vendors are charging the same amount, and there are a few deals to be had.
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I liked the ThinkGeek caffeine molecule shirt so much I’ve bought it twice — my first one literally wore thin. As such, I was excited to get the same design on a travel mug. The mug was $12.99 before shipping, so I gave it a shot.

Unfortunately I don’t love the mug as much as I do the shirts.
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I have all sorts of flash memory cards and drives that I use on a regular basis. I have a compact flash for my Canon Digital Rebel, a SD card for my Minolta Ximage camera, a microSD card for my Samsung u740 mobile phone, a Memory Stick for my PSP, and a thumbdrive running Keepass. I had an internal multi-format card reader in my previous workstation. It didn’t always recognize my cards when I inserted them, and I was too lazy to disassemble the older computer to put the reader into my newer workstation. I started looking for an external reader that I could take with me when I traveled, or migrate easily from machine to machine if need be.

I looked to NewEgg, my favorite e-tailer, for a solution. I decided on the i-rocks IR-8100-BK card reader.
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Sometimes I’ll buy something and will have to wait for the right time to review it. The Bissel Little Green Portable Deep Cleaner is a good example. I started thinking about buying a portable steam cleaner after I got Pearl. She had the shits off and on for her first month here, and after watching Lady Jaye spend nearly an hour get poo-spew out of the carpet I was like, “fuck this, I’m buying a steamer.” And then Pearl got better. Heh. I’ve used it a few times before I started this review, but I was waiting for some gnarly incident to happen. Luckily, Porter was willing to oblige by barfing up a nice present on my cream-colored carpet.
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I haven’t been to the real-gym for about four months. I haven’t felt the drive or desire to really go. I’m still in decent looking shape, have gone from a 34 to a 32, and am only nine pounds heavier than my high school weight. To keep up some level of upper body strength I was doing fifty pushups a day, but I was getting bored. Enter the Creative Fitness door chin-up bar.
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