Kurt Johnson

In the spirit of day-after-thanksgiving materialism I thought I’d detail some outstanding products that might make a good gift for someone. Maybe this will be helpful to others who have as much trouble as I do thinking of gifts. Feel free to email me if you want more specifics.

< $50: Oregon Scientific alarm clocks. There's a recurring theme in the list for products that do exactly what they're supposed to do and do it well - no frills or bugs in their function. There are a bunch of flavors of these clocks. I/Susanne have both a medium size model and a small travel model (alarm clock only, no temperature or projector). They sync properly from the atomic clock signal and have an alarm that gets progressively louder over the first 30 seconds or so, mitigating the agony of early wakeup alarms. See one at Amazon.com

$35: Timex sports watch. It’s got two time zones that switch back and forth with a single button press, handles 3 different alarms (customized for daily, weekdays, or specific days of the week), plus the standard stopwatch and interval timers. Best of all it’s simple, lightweight, and I can wear it through the metal detector at the airport. See one at Amazon.com

$50-$1200: Wusthof kitchen knives (”Trident”, “Classic”, or “Gran Prix”). I believe that “Trident” is Wusthof’s higher end brand (as opposed to “Wusthof Gourmet” or “Emeril” which are lower end). The “Classic” flavor of this line has traditional black or white handles while the Gran Prix line has the same blades with contemporary rounded plastic. I like the classic style better but it’s really a matter of taste. These are expensive but also the best knives I’ve ever used (comparable/better to Henckel’s “5 star” line). In my opinion the best values are the block sets in the $299-399 range - you can buy individual knives but they are more expensive for what you get vs. the package deals. Realize that not all “10 piece block sets” are created equal - they may have different knife selections that make up the 10 pieces (or 8 pieces or whatever) so take a look at different sets to get the mix of knives you prefer - e.g., I prefer straight blades instead of serrated blades. Prices seem to be pretty well fixed across distributors, so unless you’ve got a coupon somewhere just buy someplace with stuff in stock, good service, and free shipping. They have block sets up to $1200+ if you’ve got money to burn. See one at Amazon.com

$21: Book - On Food and Cooking : The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

$50: 6 months subscription The Economist. High quality, high density news on business and political issues. Reading the WSJ or other daily media can get pretty tactical - The Economist takes a little larger perspective on things.

$200: Paradigm “Titan” bookshelf speakers. Great sound, not a huge package. You can do better if you spend (a lot) more or are willing to deal with bigger speaker boxes, but these have an awesome mix of value, size, and quality.

$100-300: External Firewire or USB 2.0 hard drive. I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff on my computer that I’d hate to lose - photographs, writing and work, and music. I can and do burn stacks of DVDs to back these things up but it’s much easier to use an external hard drive to do backups and to move things between my computers. Check dealnews.com or techbargains.com for specials - I’d assume you could find $200GB of space for < $200.

$20+: Print some photo enlargements and frame them. At Adorama.com you can get 8×10 prints of digital files for $1.99 plus each plus a few buck shipping per order. 12×18s are $10 each. Standard 4×6 prints are OK but it’s so much more fun to get enlargements, especially with the low cost and convenience that digital brings.

$80: Shure E2 noise blocking in-ear headphones. See my earlier post on these. Great for folks who might want to listen to music in noisy places - trains, airplanes, whatever. See it at Amazon.com. I just saw a blurb on Dealnews.com that you can use a sale+10% coupon at buy.com to get these for $58 (through 12/15/04).

$15-20: TelArc DVD-Audio of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. This is probably the most incredible audio recording I’ve ever heard. You need a DVD player to play it, and it will sound best on a system capable of 5.1 surround sound. If you don’t have surround sound hooked up it may still be worth getting since you can throw it in a regular DVD player and watch some video clips that are on there. I really can’t say enough good things about it. If you’re into DVD-Audio there’s a recording of Handel’s Messiah with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that
I’ve also been enjoying recently. Review: http://www.audiorevolution.com/music/revs/tchaikovsky.shtml

$250+: iPod. Worth the extra money over other MP3 players for anyone who has an interest in carting around a lot of music with them. I recommend the 20gb model unless you have a specific need for the smaller size of the mini, the larger 40gb size, or the 40/60gb iPod photo. See it at Amazon.com

$800-1300: Digital SLR. Probably too expensive to take a risk on unless somebody knows they’re definitely going to use it. I’ve got a Canon Digital Rebel that I’ve enjoyed enormously (9,000 photos since last Thanksgiving); Nikon’s model is the D70. The Nikon is a better camera and a little pricier; Canon has (I think) better low light performance and the lenses may be a little cheaper if you buy those later on. D70 at Amazon.com. Digital rebel at Amazon.com.

Walking around Chinatown in Philadelphia last weekend Susanne and I found this sign. I think it’s a good metaphor for the way I feel as someone who does their own moderately complicated American taxes; I can see the literal letter of the law - it’s right there in black and white. I understand that there’s a stiff penalty for noncompliance. However I have no idea what the law actually means until I go hire a translator to interpret it for me.

The following day we were having lunch with a friend who is literate in Chinese. He said the law translates to “don’t leave trash here” and also noted that this is an example of terrible design since you have to be bilingual to understand both the law and the penalty.

I was disappointed in the quality of the public infrastructure in Philly. There seems to be a lack of pride in doing the job right. For example, none of the traffic lights on either Broad or Market streets seemed to be synchronized. In a small Connecticut town this might make sense if you wanted to keep people from speeding through town on their way to somewhere else, but on the two busiest streets in downtown Philly it’s a disgrace. For the record, Houston was the same way when I lived there in Lee Brown’s administration and it only took about a week for the new mayor to fix the problem after taking office.

I also noticed that many drivers roll through stop signs or red lights in Philly. Some stoplights have a delay between the red light on cross traffic and the green light in your lane, so experienced drivers jump the light by a few seconds and get well out into the intersection by the time they have a green. Stop signs are acknowledged as you’d acknowledge an acquaintance driving the other direction - make eye contact, tap the brake, and keep going.

Another funny/sad moment: my friend, who lives in West Philadelphia and is pretty analytical by nature explained that he keeps a “robbery fund” of cash on his person when walking around. The logic is that if someone is robbing you they’re probably pretty keyed up and if you’re broke there’s a chance they’ll get frustrated and hurt you out of spite. Giving them a reasonable amount of cash increases your chances of getting away unhurt. It’s funny that he analyzes this and sad that it’s a frequent enough event that he has to analyze it.

On the positive side, I had some outstanding Vietnamese food in Philly - some of the best I’ve had in restaurants anywhere, and at prices that were a refreshing relief from NYC prices. I tried Vietnam Palace (Chinatown, variety of food) and Pho 75 (1122 Washington, in a shopping strip in the Center City Vietnamese area).