The Glade 4.0

Do we have a dedicated one yet?

My family went the secret santa route this year since most of 'em are broke, so I don't have much to brag about

My lewtz:
- 74" x 40" 'stone jungle' wall decal
- 24 pack of Karl Strauss Amber Lager, haha

Things I gifted:
- Tokyoflash Oberon watch
- 60 min hot stone massage gift cert
- Home beer brewing kit
- Bundt pan
- Engraved fountain pen for my boss

Planning on trading gifts with my roommates today, and I'm pretty sure I saw my boss walking in with something :p

Cordless Screwdriver
Ender's Game paperback
Shrek BD movie pack
Marvel comics pajama bottoms
Izod brand polo shirt
Bag of Ghirardelli chocolate
Bag of Lindt truffles
$100 cash

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Amazon Kindle 3rd Gen

Kickass hardcover 1-8 collection

Hardcover Rocketeer - The complete Adventures

Earth, The Book


Still haven't done Christmas with either my parents or in-laws.

I wanted an iPhone 4.... Santa didn't bring me this

I got perfume, awsome bubble bath, hat and gloves, manfrotto tripod, amazon gift card and iTunes gift card..

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

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Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Okay, that's pretty awesome.

From the direction of the parental units, it was mostly some stuff to flesh out things I hadn't gotten around to getting for my house yet. Additional dishes, blankets for the guest room, etc.

A box of Warhammer Fantasy Battles High Elf Phoenix Guard (and I'm already nearing halfway assembled on them, hehe, though I don't think I'll have time for painting them for a while, yet)
Risk -- not the newest, bastardized version that I found myself saddled with when I went and replaced my long lost copy
Small World, another board game that I'd not heard of, but looks interesting and comes with a stamp of approval from GAMES Magazine, of whom I am a lifetime fan...
Edit: Oh, almost forgot this one because it came early: Season 1 of Sherlock

The cat also walked away with a several toys. My family's spoiling him silly.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I got a PS2!!

(Yeah, I know, where've I been for the last ten years, right?)

A Newton's Cradle ... the ever-popular shirts for work ... A bottle of Laphroaig .... Oh, and a Lego Torch. That was pretty cool.

There's more, because my wife goes pretty hard on Christmas, but those were the highlights, I think.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Acer LCD Monitor (Fair the well old NEC it's been a nice decade)
One of those alarm clocks with Iphone Cradle.
and of course the new Salvatore. And of course I have something to finish reading before I start.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I got a nice new headset for my pc and some pants. I needed pants pretty bad. I also got Cataclysm and a game card, but I'm debating whether or not to jump back in. I'm doing the 10 day trial in the mean time.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Santa brought me a bunch of oil painting supplies as I made it known I was interested in learning how. Also gave me a couple of these. The Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales and Jules Verne ones in specific.

My brother gave me a set of bongos.

I bought some new running shoes and jersey shorts for myself.

Asked for a nice wood cutting board and got a black plastic one instead, which I'll use anyway.

Oonagh collects hand blown glass balls and has them hanging in the front window all year long.

This Christmas we went and "blew our own balls"

Great experience!

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

30 gift card to local sporting store
jalapeno wine
yeungling mug

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Sony eReader Touch edition. And a little bit of money to help with my snow mobile expenses. Oh and one of those roadside emergency kit bag things.

I thought about getting me a Kindle or Kindle-esque device.

One question: Do they cause eyestrain like reading does?

A good quality e-ink display does not cause eyestrain at all. In my opinion they are easier on the eyes than any LCD, and for me anyway, than traditional paper/ink.

If you are looking for 'easy on the eyes' then an e-reader (i.e. Nook, Kindle, Sony (like Elessar linked above) is perfect. The fact that you can change font and font size to suit you is huge.

Stay away from 'hybrids' or overgrown PDA's like the galaxy tab or the iPad (especially if eyestrain is a concern). Note that the Barnes And Noble Nook is awesome. The Nook 2 is a color LCD touch screen and for me is not worth considering for a reader.

There are lots of things to considering when deciding which unit to get. Mainly, where will you be getting your books from? I dont' know much about the Sony, so can't speak to them, but the Nook is a tad more 'open' than an (unhacked) kindle. With the help of some free adobe software, using my nook, can download ebooks directly from my local county library, barnes and noble ebook store, borrow/loan books with other nook owners, buy books from third parties (O'Rielly tech pubs for example) or get tons of free stuff from the Google online library.

That Nook sounds perfect for what I am looking for. They apparently have a $149.99 version which is all I really want (i.e. basic reader).

As far as where I get my books from, Barnes & Noble is fine, as they normally have a giganto-huge selection anyway.

Now do you have to buy a plan a la mobile phone or do you just plug in your cc info and pay as you go?

My bf gave me his 2nd gen Kindle (he had upgraded to an iPad when they were first released). I had asked for it when he upgraded.

He also got me a charger that can handle several devices at once.
I got a DVD of a tribute to Stephen Sondheim, the Animal ornament from Hallmark, 2 CDs, a wine aerator (so I don't have to bother with a decanter), a frame and some onion jelly, and a Boromir action fig*.



* I asked my fencing teacher for Sean Bean for Christmas.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

I got a 1Tb external HDD and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I got a Guinness polo and T-shirt, a Guinness flat cap (parents went to Ireland,lol), a pullover, a watch, an iTunes gift card, a Christmas ornament, a gift certificate to a scrub store, a stethoscope, and a chunk of cash that went straight into my college fund.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

There's no plan. You enter CC info and pay for books individually as you buy them.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

jalapeño wine? Does it burn going down?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

And probably coming out.

I'm not sure about the different versions available now. The one I have has 3G connectivity built in. It's free. I don't have to pay anyone for it. It works basically anywhere a phone would work. There is no need to sign up for any kind of data plan. Mine also has WiFi, which does just what you would expect. Allows you to connect to any wireless network. You also have the added benefit of being able to take it to any B&N store and read (preview - unless you're Khross) any book for up to 1 hour. Not sure if they still have them, but B&N used to have promotions where if you took your nook into the store, they would give you a coupon to download a free book (not any book, but a specific one).

Just to clarify, not every book that B&N sells in their store is available as an Ebook (same with Kindle). Not all publishers are ebook friendly (they fear IP theft, etc...).

Another cool thing about the nook. You can drag any PDF over to it and read it. I think it's friendly to some other electronic document formats as well..

One of my favorite book publishers (O'Rielly) has strongly embraced ebooks and have DRM free versions of many of their popular tech books.

http://oreilly.com/ebooks/

Yeah, the two versions are WiFi only and WiFi/3G. The 3G operates off of AT&T's network, and you pay nothing for it beyond the additional up-front cost to get the 3G version. WiFi will connect to any G wireless access point and can handle secure connections using WPA2.

Otherwise, Midgen nailed all the pertinent info.

B&N and Amazon (Nook and Kindle, respectively) both have very good e-book selections; they're very competitive libraries thus far. Early in the Nook's life, there were lots of discongruencies between them, where one or the other would have a book in e-book format, but the other wouldn't. Most of those have smoothed out as both B&N caught up, and publishers seem to have dropped the exclusivity shennanigans as they seem to have come to the realization that there's a very competitive market between different sources now, and they're only limiting their market by doing so. So for the most part, if a book is available as an e-book, it's on both Amazon and B&N.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Googles online book store
http://books.google.com/ebooks