But the main issue is the location. Regardless of whether you’re a student or not, the location of these apartments is just horrible. First of all, there’s only one bus stop that goes down University Avenue, making it a hassle to go anywhere else if you don’t have a car. Even if you did have a car, parking is not fun anywhere interesting. Being public transportation, you get the oddest people riding the bus with you. Half the time I have to cover my nose with my hands or shirt because I’m sitting next to someone who reeks, and the other half of the time the bus is slow or late because the driver has to accommodate handicapped people, which I don’t mind, but handicapped because you’re overweight!? That is just unacceptable.

The second is the train. It’s 4am while I’m writing this on a Friday night and this is the second time I’ve heard a train pass by while writing this post. Trains passing by isn’t that bad, but there’s a railroad crossing right in the corner of the apartment complex where I live, and because of this, the train honks every time it passes to notify anyone who may be on the tracks. These honks are VERY LOUD, even when I close all my windows. Here’s a picture of the train passing by at 4am.

The sound proofing inside the building is perfect; I’ve never heard a squeak from any of my neighbors. But the sound isolation is just ridiculous. I can hear the train with all my windows closed. I don’t understand how the architects did not consider outside noises before building this complex. Every window should be sound proofed, or this brown wall you see in the picture above should changed into an effective sound barrier.

How much does this noise affect the tenets? I’m fortunately a deep sleeper and have trouble waking up, so the train actually helps me get to class. But for most people, this is a nuisance. My roommates are still having trouble sleeping two months into living here. Apparently the leasing office didn’t tell them about the train noise when they moved in. The train noise is apparent EVERYWHERE, no matter where you are in the complex. Of course I have it the worst, but other people still have it.

This noise is very loud. If I blast my music, the train noise still overcomes it, and I have a Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 system which is actually quite loud. If I am watching a TV show or movie, even on my headphones, I have to pause it because I can’t hear anything. My roommates both sleep with earplugs in otherwise they’ll be awakened by the noise.

Do I recommend living here? Not if you are sensitive to noise and require sleep. Apparently all the two bedroom apartments here are taken, but I’m pretty sure this complex will have a low retention rate unless they begin sound proofing all their apartments. If I lived here for more than 6 months, I would actually read Berkeley’s city code to see if this apartment violates any of these codes and try to sue them because this noise is unbearable.

Limited Warranty – CPU’s generally have about 3 years of warranty. However, if you toast your CPU from overclocking, there’s no way you’ll have it replaced unless you somehow convince them that it wasn’t due to overclocking. GPU’s on the other hand many times have lifetime warranties, and NVIDIA’s GPU’s are meant to run at high temperatures. Thus, you can usually overclock a GPU and get away with it for a lifetime.

Power Consumption – Power consumption increases rapidly as you overclock. Take a look at this graph from Anandtech’s review on Intel’s i5 655k. Notice that after 4GHz there’s a large spike in power consumption, but before that it’s actually more power efficient to overclock. This however only takes into account the power consumption of the CPU. In fact, power consumption is one of the most expensive parts of having a fast computer. For every 100W of power you use an hour, expect an increase of $130 in your annual electricity bill in California.

Increased Temperatures – Not only will the CPU run hotter, but so will everything inside the case. You’re going to need more fans, which costs more power. Your ambient air temperature will also increase, making your room or house even hotter. This will drive up costs in air conditioning if you need it.

Noise – Due to the increased amounts of fan, your computer will become quite noisy. You would probably want water cooling or low noise fans to mitigate this effect.

Limited Benefit – For the most part, you can’t tell if there’s a 10% increase in speed. This is especially true if you don’t use your computer for anything computationally demanding. You may want to overclock for say Folding@home, but what’s the point? You don’t derive any benefit for folding, and folding right now is a waste of time.

Thus, the small benefits of overclocking are greatly outweighed by the large cost of overclocking. I overclocked my CPU, but only by about 10%, and I no longer run folding@home all day, so it runs cool. Casual overclocking like this is the most anyone should do.

Divisions

Put your whole resume in a single division and center it using margin-left: auto and the same with margin-right. For my webpage, the left side stays the same while the right side scrolls. This is done by creating two divisions inside the main division: menu and main. Just set position: fixed for the menu. I also set each set of text in its own division. For example, I made a division for Work Experience, a division for each job listing such as Student Trainee (Mathematics), and division for its description. This is necessary for hiding and unhiding portions of the resume.

Hiding and Unhiding Text

First, you need to put each set of text you want to hide and unhide in divisions. Then add two CSS classes: .hidden { display: none; } and .unhidden { display: block; }. Then add three javascript functions. The first switches toggles the text from hide to unhide or vice versa:

function toggle_visibility(divID) {
var item = document.getElementById(divID);
if (item) {
item.className=(item.className==’hidden’)?’unhidden’:'hidden’;
}
}

The next shows the text regardless of whether its already showing or not:

function show(divID) {
var item = document.getElementById(divID);
item.className=’unhidden’;
}

The last one does the same except for hiding:

function hide(divID) {

var item = document.getElementById(divID);

item.className=’hidden’;

}

<a href=”javascript:hide(‘resexp’);hide(‘workexp’);hide(‘career’);hide(‘edu’);hide(‘skills’);hide(‘pubs’);show(‘etc’);”>Et Cetera</a>

Google Chart Tools / Image Charts (aka Chart API)

Google’s lesser known contributions to society are their API’s. This API allows you type a link to Google that spits out a graph of your choosing. This is one of the graphs in my resume:

<img src=”http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chxl=0:|MATLAB+|Maple+|R+|C+|FORTRAN+&chxp=0,90,70,50,30,10&chxt=y&chbh=a& chs=600×100&cht=bhs&chco=4D89F9&chd=s:96xPJ&chma=0,5&chtt=Relative+Programming+Expertise” width=”600″ height=”100″ alt=”Relative Programming Expertise” /><br>

Goals:

• 1080p and good sound quality
• Cost effective including power consumption
• Large storage capabilities
• Enough computational power for encoding
• Flexibility in viewing your media files
• Low noise

Hardware

Chassis: ARK 4U-500-CA Black 4U Rackmount Case 3 External 5.25″ Drive Bays $80

My current HTPC uses a Silverstone GD05B case primarily for the aesthetics. I’m picky with my furniture and anything I have in my house, so I had to get a sleek case. However, this may not be very effective for your purposes since it only has space for two (or one) 3.5″ hard drives and one (or two) 2.5″ hard drive.

Thus, before this HTPC, when I didn’t care about aesthetics as much, I thought outside the box and used a rackmount server chassis, this ARK case. The main benefit is that I’m able to hold more than 7 3.5″ hard drives, making the amount of potential storage very large. Granted most motherboards come with at most 8 SATA ports, this just enough slots.

CPU: Intel Core i7-870 Lynnfield 2.93GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80605I7870 $230

I would most certainly recommend an Intel CPU over an AMD CPU especially when you can find really good deals on them such as from Micro Center. Otherwise, I would go the AMD route. $230 for a brand new Intel i7 870 is a very good deal considering the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz costs $200, $190 at best, and has a TDP of 125W compared to Intel i7 870′s 95W. Consult Anandtech’s CPU Benchmarks for information on other possible CPUs you may want.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $120

There are only two motherboard brands I trust: Gigabyte and Asus, but lately I’ve been leaning towards Gigabyte for primarily subjective reasons. I’ve just had very good experiences with them. I would suggest you use the P55 chipset over the H55 since the latter is made primarily made for the integrated graphics Intel CPUs. Also keep in mind the size of the motherboard. You might want a smaller motherboard just because you won’t need those extra expansion slots and it’ll save room and clutter in your HTPC.

Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 $95

The problem with memory is that regardless of what speeds and latencies you look for, they’re all relatively the same price give or take $20. I personally would spend an extra $20 and buy better RAM since better RAM probably has better reliability. Just keep in mind that up to 1600MHz, speed is more important, then latency. I wouldn’t suggest buying RAM over 1600MHz unless you plan to overclock, which I don’t suggest. Keep in mind that most RAM manufacturers provide lifetime warranty.

Power Supply Unit: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-430D Green 430W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply $65

Since you’re probably going to be leaving your computer on 24/7, you want a very good power supply. A good power supply will reduce your power consumption some what, have a less chance of dying on you, and a less chance of ruining your components. You can also keep your power supply for a very long time, so I would suggest a good one. You won’t need anything over 400 watts, so choose accordingly.

Power supplies are ranked by their 80 Plus certification. Gold is the best and also the most expensive. It it worth the extra cost? Probably not. I would just stick to 80 Plus Bronze.

Just a note, check that the power supply comes with a power cord. Two Antec’s my friends recently bought didn’t come with any. Quite annoying since they didn’t know and then had to drive to Radio Shack to buy a new one.

SSD: OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $131

There are many options for an SSD, but I recommend that you get one as your primary hard drive. The brands I would recommend are OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, and Intel. It will make everything run faster and you’ll experience much less lag. If you need more space for your primary drive, by all means do so, but for an HTPC you probably won’t need more than 30GBs.

For a good comparison of today’s SSD, read Anandtech’s Benchmarks.

Hard Drive: HITACHI Deskstar H3IK20003272SP (0S02861) 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive $120

Regardless of what brand of hard drive you buy, make sure it has 7200 RPM. Anything lower than that will slow down your computer regardless of whether it’s your primary drive or not. Remember to RAID 5 all your storage hard drives.

Video Card: XFX HD-545X-ZNF2 Radeon HD 5450 1GB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card $50

Today, AMD has better video cards. You don’t need much power for an HTPC, but you want a low power video card since it will be on 24/7. I would also always go with the latest generation, but you don’t necessarily have to. Also, be sure to buy a video card with lifetime warranty. My favorite brands are XFX and eVGA.

Remote Control: Rosewill WMC Remote control/Rcvr RRC-127 for Win 7 $25

There are a lot of different types of remote controls, but honestly they’re all the same. Don’t spend over $50 on one since this $25 does everything you would ever need and more. I suggest using a wireless mouse and keyboard for when your remote doesn’t work since it would be much more flexible.

Optical Drive: LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Reader SATA Model iHOS104-06 – OEM $50

You don’t even need one. This Blu-ray player doesn’t come with software so you will have to get your own. I honestly don’t recommend one because I download all my movies, but if you do get one, get the cheapest one and do not get a Blu-ray burner because you will never need one.

CPU Fan: Scythe SCSK-1100 100mm Shuriken Rev. B 3 Heat Pipes CPU Cooler $35

Depending on how your system works out, you may want a new CPU heatsink and fan. From my experience the stock fan doesn’t work well with high loads in these rackmount style cases. However, you probably won’t need one if you’re not utilizing your CPU. Make sure you get one with a low noise rating and the fan pointing the CPU otherwise it won’t fit.

Chassis Fans: Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm “Slipstream” Case Fan $9 or Scythe S-FLEX SFF80B 80mm Case Fan $13

Pay attention to noise level as you probably don’t want anything over 15 dBA. By all means, do not buy any SilenX fans as they have a very bad reputation.

Sound Card: HT | OMEGA CLARO Plus+ 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card $175

You probably don’t need one, but if you wanted an actual sound card with higher sound fidelity and options, I recommend these sound cards. I have one from them and it actually makes a difference.

Software

Operating System: Windows 7

I recommend Windows 7 because thanks to the large user base, a lot of software is made for it. For me, the driving factor is iTunes. If I had a Linux setup, I wouldn’t be able to listen to music on all the networked computers. This of course assumes that you can get it for free because there’s no way I’m paying for Windows.

Media Player: VLC, Windows Media Center, and Hulu

Windows Media Center is actually pretty good, especially compared to Mac’s Front Row. There’s a Netflix plug-in, but unfortunately no Hulu plug-in. You can use VLC to play everything since Windows Media Player doesn’t have all the right codecs. I recommend downloading VLC and Hulu through Ninite.

Codecs: CoreCodec CoreAVC, Combined Community Codec Pack, Media Player Codec Pack

CoreAVC is the best codec for viewing your H.264 files if you’re on an NVIDIA GPU, otherwise it doesn’t really matter. These two codec packs will make sure you’ll be able to view all the files you want on Windows Media Player and Center, though I still have some trouble with it. Always use VLC as back up.

Encoding: Handbrake

Simply the easiest and quite robust method of encoding your DVDs or Blu-Rays. Keep in mind that encoding is a long process. Expect to spend at least twice the length of the movie on the encoding process. Download Handbrake through Ninite and read my encoding guide for details.

DVD Ripping: DVD Decrypter

Simply the simplest and free way of ripping a DVD onto your hard drive. I recommend doing this before encoding with Handbrake.

Alternatives

Apple Mac Mini $690 – If you’re lazy, don’t care for storage or CPU power, and want something beautiful, by all means get a Mac Mini. My favorite aspect of buying a Mac is the retail value. In 3  years you’ll still be able to sell your Mac Mini for at least half the price.

Other sockets (LGA 775, AM3) – You can save some money by changing the sockets, but you’ll still be paying at least $50 for a motherboard and $100 for a decent CPU. I recommend an AM3 socket since the LGA1156 socket is going to be replaced soon.

Dual Core’s – If you don’t play on encoding, consider getting these dual core i5′s and i3′s. You can even try using the integrating GPU’s for displaying your media, but you might experience moments of lag. You’ll save at most $100 moving to dual cores, especially when you’re buying a quad-core for only $200.

Ebates

Make sure you sign up for Ebates so that you can get 2% of all your purchases from Newegg. It’s not much, but every penny counts! And just for signing up you’ll get $10 if you purchase using Ebates within 30 days. You have no risk!

What does this mean? This means that instead of trying to gain new or keep existing customers, they are more or less trying to increase profits through various fees or by reducing customer service. On the other hands, we have smaller or newer banks, such as Chase in California, who are trying to build a customer base through exceptional customer service.

Most banks except for Bank of America and Wells Fargo have incentives for new customers. A lot California residents have been getting cash bonuses for signing up for new Chase checking and savings accounts. Bank of the West is currently offering free iPod Touch’s to new checking customers. Bank of the America on the other hand never has any incentives. Neither does Wells Fargo, but that’s because they’re actually a good bank; they weren’t very affected by the recession until they took over Wachovia.

Another way Chase entices customers is through their mobile services. Have you used Bank of America’s iPhone or BlackBerry applications? They both suck. The iPhone version lags so much and the BlackBerry version is just a web browser inside an application. You would think that the biggest bank in the U.S. could spend a little more money developing a decent application. Chase on the other hand has a superb iPhone application. You can easily transfer money to friends from your phone, and my favorite is the ability to deposit up to $1000 from your phone just by taking pictures of checks. In fact, half the time I try to log onto bankofamerica.com, either I get some error which makes it impossible for me to log in, or I can’t access the website at all.

Bank of America doesn’t even cooperate well with other companies on their platform. Have you tried using your Bank of America on Mint? It always says something along the lines, “There are known issues with Bank of America”, which means Bank of America isn’t cooperating with them. Bank of America won’t even cooperate with Chase; I tried to add my Bank of America account as an external account on my Chase account to transfer money, but it got rejected.

Another plus I had with Chase that I didn’t have with Bank of America is pre-approved credit cards. One day when I went to the bank to change some details about my account, the lady said, “Oh, you’re pre-approved for a Chase Freedom Visa Signature credit card. Would you like it?” Pre-approved cards are awesome since it doesn’t affect your credit score since you don’t apply for them, and in fact increase your credit score because you have a lower debt to available credit ratio. I was never offered a credit card from Bank of America, and Chase has one of the best rewards for Visa credit cards.

Perhaps the tipping point which made me close my Bank of America account was when I overdrafted my checking account. I accidentally paid for my credit card twice because I was confused with when my automatic payments would begin. The best part was that I overdrafted by less than $50, yet they charged me $35 for the overdraft fee, and I had over $1,000 in my connected savings account. Why don’t they just transfer money from my savings account to my checking account? Apparently I have to sign up for overdraft protection which my Chase account already had. Why don’t they just make it default?! On the other hand, I withdrew from the wrong Chase account and my checking account went to -$1,200, but instead of charging me anything, Chase sent me a text saying something along the lines of, “Reply with A if you’d like to transfer $1,200 from your savings to your checking.” With a simple text reply, my checking account was no longer in the negative and there were no fees involved. This is just another example of Bank of America finding small ways to get money from their customers.

And I knew that a lot of people were moving away from Bank of America when I went to a branch to close my account and the employee lacked any sort of customer retention. When I said, “I’d like to close my account”, the employee replied with a simple, “Okay”. You would expect at least a futile “Oh no! Please don’t!” or a simply “Why?”, but no, the employee simply went through the process and closed my account in a minute. I’m guessing these employees are used to customers closing their accounts and gave up asking why. It’s funny how the best customer service I’ve experienced at Bank of America was when I closed my account.

1. Archive EVERYTHING and NEVER delete. You have gigabytes of storage on your account. E-mails are ridiculously tiny. You should never delete anything unless you are close to this maximum limit which is impossible unless you’re extremely popular or you’re sharing files. Your inbox should always be empty by archiving all the e-mails you’re done reading or don’t care to read. Your inbox should only have e-mails you have not processed yourself.
2. Star your important e-mails, but still archive them. This is useful since your inbox won’t be cluttered and you can easily find these e-mails by typing “is:starred” in the search field.
3. Setup labels. This is Gmail’s version of folders except e-mails can have more than one label. There are only two folders in Gmail: inbox and archive. This is how my left menu looks like with all my labels. Notice that you can rearrange your menu on your left.
4. Setup filters. You can create specific criteria so that Gmail will label them correctly. The criteria can be: From (sender), To (recipient), Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have words, and Has attachment. Most of my filters are either from sender (for example @berkeley.edu or specific people. I only wish you can filter groups of people…) and subject (for example e-mails with a [MATH228A] tag). This is why I wish grouped e-mails have tags in the subject line (for example [HOC] in the header). After you create the filter, you can choose what you want Gmail to do with e-mails that match the filter. For e-mails you don’t care for, Skip the Inbox and archive it. Otherwise, I would apply a label. The best part is that you can retroactively apply the filter to the e-mails you already have . For example, I automatically archive all e-mails from “CALmessages@berkeley.edu” since, as an employee of UC Berkeley, I’m unable to unsubscribe from the mailing list and, to me, it’s equivalent to spam.
5. Organize your contacts. Gmail makes it ridiculously easy. Gmail remembers everyone you’ve ever contacted and clicking contacts allows you to choose who to put on your contact list. The best part is that if you take some time to make everyone’s name accurate, there’s a simple “Find & merge duplicate” function that saves so much time and effort.
6. Setup Microsoft Exchange with your smartphones, e-mail clients, address books, and calendars. I have another blog post that covers this for smart phones. This will automatically sync all your e-mails, calendar, and address books with your Gmail account and, for iPhone users, push notifications. You will never worry about losing any data ever again unless Gmail somehow fails.
7. Create unique Gmail addresses simply by adding a + after your account name. For example, I would register for Reddit under the account name jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. It will still go to my jongleberry@gmail.com e-mail address, but I would be able to filter it by to: jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. This is helpful if you’re getting a lot of spam as you would know where they are coming from.
8. Similarly, you can create unique e-mail addresses by adding periods in your e-mail address. For example, jongle.berry@gmail.com is equivalent to jongleberry@gmail.com.
9. Unsubscribe from all your mailing lists. Alternatively you can filter them, but I prefer just to be unsubscribed. You can easily do this by searching “unsubscribe” and unsubscribing from every single spam mail you get.
10. Find useful gadgets from Google Labs. These can be found and installed on the settings page in Gmail. My favorites are Hide Counts and Multiple Inboxes. Hide Counts simply streamlines your left menu so that there’s less numbers everywhere. I’ll know that there’s unread e-mail by that label being bolded. Multiple Inboxes is especially useful since I star my important e-mails. Every time I log into Gmail, I’ll see both my inbox and my starred e-mails. There are countless possible gadgets that you can install to make Gmail more efficient for you, but these two suffice for me.
11. When writing e-mails, press the “pop out” button so that you’ll compose the e-mail in a new window. This is helpful when you’re replying to a long e-mail and you want to read what the e-mail says while you write.
12. You can easily manage multiple e-mail accounts. I have all my e-mails forwarded from my Berkeley e-mail to my Gmail. The best part is that I can by default send either from my Gmail address or Berkeley address. I have the option to choose every time I send an e-mail. Google also just added functionality that allows better management of multiple Gmail accounts, but I don’t see the point since I got two different Gmail accounts so that they’ll be separate. These options can be found in Settings -> Accounts and Import.
13. Make sure you go to Settings -> Web Clips and uncheck “Show my web clips above the inbox”. These are basically advertisements from Google and to me is spam.

These are the only tips I can think of right now. Let me know if you can think of any others.

Should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve are contractions for should have, would have, and could have. Look the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Should’ve Said No”:

You should’ve said no, you should’ve gone home
You should’ve thought twice before you let it all go

Now lets expand it to see if it makes sense:

You should of said no, you of gone home
You should of thought twice before you let it all go

Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me. None of the sentences have a verb. Of is a preposition, and these propositional phrases do not make any sense. “Of said no”, “of gone home”, “of though twice”. Syntax error, does not compute.

But then you can make things even more complex. How about “should not have?” If you look online, people write it “shouldn’t've”, but that’s a lot of apostrophes. Similarily, “she would have” can be contracted to “she’d've”.

How do you solve this problem? Simply never use contractions when writing to formal audiences.

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. – Wikipedia

1. Ask obvious questions:
2. Answer rhetorical questions:
3. Take figurative language seriously:
4. Grammar Nazi:
5. Make an all-out awesome comment:
6. Ask the obvious question of, “are they hot?”:
7. Pick a victim and like everything on their page. Unfortunately this girl disabled my ability to comment or post on her wall:
8. Pick a victim and consistently insinuate sexual relations with her:
9. Reiterate the last statement except replacing the noun with the word “you” or “you’re”:

But it’s like how the saying goes: it’s only fun until someone gets hurt. It’s fine to joke around, but if you joke around too much, you’ll be stuck in the apathetic mentality and don’t realize the issues that arise. You’ll be branded a person who is never serious and will then never be taken seriously. Apparently when I was actually trying to be a creeper, I also developed a poker face. I would try to tell people truths, but they weren’t sure if I was joking or not. Sometimes when I’m telling a joke, they’ll take it seriously because they don’t know that I’m still in my joking mode.

Then there’s a law of probability. If you apply for 1000 jobs, there’s a good chance you’ll get at least one offer. Similarly, if you hit on 1000 girls, there’s a good chance you’ll get one, regardless of how awesome of a person you are. This in itself is not a problem, but combined with a poker face, this could be a grave problem. The girl that likes you might just because she thought you were serious when you weren’t, and the girl that you actually like might not think about you that way because she thought you were joking when you weren’t.

And so I decided to change my ways: I only creep on girls who I know will deny me because that way no one will get hurt and girls who I may be interested in because then there’s no risk. And now I have to work on how to convey the messages I wish to send with minimal transmission loss, a grave problem for me since my messages are best understood through keyboards. I still will write articles on how to be a creeper if people are interested. Let me know if you are.

A lot of times when you go to Best Buy or something you buy an item that ultimately sucks when you actually want to use it. Instead, let me show you products that you would actually want to keep for a long time and are actually worth their cost. If you want me to recommend anymore items, please let me know.

Gun Safe - Stack – On® 8 – gun Security Cabinet $110. You don’t want to spend too much on a gun safe unless you have kids or think that people are actually going to rob you. I have this at home and it is worth the price. It does what it needs to do although a safe can be much better. If you’re on a budget or don’t need to much safety for your guns, buy this gun safe.

Hammock - Strathwood Portable Folding Hammock with Carry Bag, Chocolate with Champagne Frame $80. I bought this hammock for my beach house and my God is it awesome. For $80 you have a hammock you can fold and take anywhere with you. I used to have a fixed hammock made out of wood, but that eroded thanks to the ocean water. Consider this if you like to go to the beach often.

Wireless Router - Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band) (MC340LL/A) $168. The problem with most wireless routers is that they seriously suck. You get disconnected a lot or you can’t even connect. What I love about Apple is that their products seriously just work. I have purchased 4 of these and I haven’t had a single problem. I wouldn’t suggest these in a commercial setting since you can’t set very specific options, but it does perfectly well in a residential setting. Another thing I love about Apple products is the resale value. These won’t depreciate as much as other routers.

Cable Modem - Motorola SB6120 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 eXtreme Broadband Cable Modem $120. The problem I had with my cable modem and router leased from Charter is that it would consistently disconnect and I could only plug in 5 devices. With this modem, not only am I able to use any speed Charter or Comcast can offer me, I can plug as many devices as I’d like, and I never get disconnected with a good router like the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Never lease a router or a modem, and buy this modem if you have cable.

Computer Speakers - Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Computer Speaker System $180. It’s difficult to find good computer speakers, but these are the best 2.1′s. I spent almost $500 on a Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System only to replace them with these for less than half the price. Don’t buy Bose speakers, they don’t even compare.

Large Computer Monitor - Dell UltraSharp U2711 27-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor – Max Resolution 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) $980. This is by far the best computer monitor out there. I only wish that it used LED lighting like Apple does. It has a very good pixel pitch which makes anything look beautiful on the display. It has a 16×9 aspect ratio making it perfect for playing movies. The color gamut is over 100%, making the color reproduction basically perfect out of the box. I have a Dell U2410 24″ Monitor too and this U2711 blows it out of the water.

Headphones - Sennheiser HD-555 Audiophile Headphones $130. These probably aren’t the best headphones ever, but they are the best for the price. You get almost the audio fidelity of expensive headphones at a fraction of the price. The only problem is that there’s no sound insulation; you hear people talking and people can hear your loud music. But for $130, you can’t complain.

SLR Camera - Canon EOS Rebel T2i 18 MP CMOS APS-C Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens $900. I am biased in that I am a Canon user, but right now this is the best valued camera out there. You can record in 1080p and take photos at 18 megapixels. Canons are the most popular SLR format, so you can easily buy, sell, and rent lenses. I recommend these for any non-professional photographer.

Tablet – Apple iPad MB292LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi) $600. You want an iPad, but you don’t want to pay the full price or the tax. Simple! Buy it off Amazon! You can buy it brand new for less than $600 shipped. Granted, this iPad should NOT replace your laptop, but it’s nice to have if you have some change laying around. You shouldn’t bother buying the larger capacity iPads or the ones with 3G. They just aren’t worth it. It isn’t an iPod, you shouldn’t be dragging your iTunes library everywhere you go. You only want all the good applications and you want to stream everything. Higher capacity doesn’t add much to the resale value either.