Aaron's Last Minute Gift Guide

It's just about Christmas and I'm sure everyone reading this has finished their shopping, so consider this an extremely early 2025 gift guide. I've tried to cover a wide price range here, but each of these is a serious suggestion with items I've personally tested. 

This is Grok's idea of a "cartoon shop vac"

Battery Powered Shop Vac

One of the quirky things about my wife is that while she doesn't seem to like vacuuming, she loves vacuums. She may not tell you that she loves vacuums, but her actions speak louder. On no less than four occasions during our marriage, she has asked for a vacuum as a present. And she has received the requested item every time.

The best of these is the battery powered shop vac. We had different shop vacs before, but invariably the cords become an issue. My dad keeps a 50ft extension cord wrapped around his shop vac, which is handier than hunting one down when you need it, but not nearly as good as being cord free.

We use the Ryobi cordless vacuum and it is great, but you will want to find out if the gift receiver has a battery tool system they already use. It's frustrating having one outlier that you have to charge on its own system.

A Subscription of some kind.

Most of the people you are looking for a gift for are likely more a part of the digital age than you realize. My 76 year old father was sitting in his recliner with two devices in his lap and a streaming service on the TV on the night I wrote this. Since we spend our time in the digital realm, we should at least try to do it with quality content, and that often means paying for a subscription.

This is Grok's graphic representation of a subscription.

You can use this in different ways as well. A subscription can show that you understand and support that person. For example getting an outdoor enthusiast an All Trails subscription or a homeschool parent a Daily Wire subscription. Or it can be used to try and improve the recipient. For example getting a couch potato an All Trails subscription, or your crazy hippie aunt a Daily Wire subscription.

This gift requires the most thought as there are wide variabilities between types of subscription, but it also gives you the widest selection of price points. Some possibilities are: Duolingo, The New York Times (includes daily games like Wordle), or geocaching.com. If you are shopping for a reader, Substack likely has a favorite author offering regular articles for a price. You can even think local, like the Cedar County Republican. Sadly, the St. Clair County Courier is unavailable at this time.

A Remote with a Find Feature

I'm not sure if this is readily available or convenient in any other model, but I hated to lock it into one streaming device. That said, the Amazon Fire TV Remote Pro has been a favorite gift I've received. The buttons light up, it works as expected without a million other options, and when the Chiefs game is about to start and the remote is missing, it is a fantastic feeling to say, “Alexa, find my remote." Then, the remote starts calling out for you.

A Long Shoehorn 

One undeniable truth in life is that everyone ages. This may seem like a gift for the elderly, but don't we all hope our loved ones make it there. With the proliferation of laceless sneakers, the range of people this has become useful for has increased greatly. They will have fond feelings for you each morning when they don't have to bend down or awkwardly dance on one leg to get themselves out the door. For bonus points give this with a 3M hook to hang it inside the closet.

Those are my gift ideas for 2024 or 2025. I think you will agree they are timeless. If you enjoy reading about some gifts you would never actually buy here is Dave Barry’s 2024 gift guide. It's funnier than mine, but I promise not as useful.

Christmas Gifts 2016 - Part 1

Disclaimer: The author is fully aware that the true meaning of Christmas is not in gifts received. Further the author stipulates that he may be contributing to the commercialization of the sacred and degradation of American culture.

I got some great stuff for Christmas this year. A few things that give an exciting glimpse of our future.

The Amazon Echo Dot

It is probably telling that one of my co-workers is worried about my marriage solely based on the way I talk about Alexa. It would only be worse if she heard me talk to Alexa. You know all of the times you've had your hands full and needed something spelled for you, or looked up, or just wanted some music turned to put some noise in the room? Well, if you thought getting married would cure that, I must disabuse you (I just asked Alexa to define "disabuse" to make sure I had used it correctly). Alexa will not only perform these tasks but will do it without attitude. And in case you are now getting concerned about my marriage, my wife bought us the Dot, so I just love her the more.  

I received the Echo Dot a little before Christmas, so my parents had time to get an accessory as another fantastic present.

TP Link Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch

This is where the future begins. The light switch paired with the Echo Dot means that I no longer have to get out of bed to turn off lights. Also, if anyone gets up in the middle of the night to get a drink, they can ask Alexa to turn on the light before they run into a piece of furniture or step on a Lego® left strategically placed in the path to the sink.

If you have modern wiring and a single-way switch, the installation is easy and the Kasa app visually steps you through the process. The app also lets you set timers or turn things on and off while away from the house which will make my next business trip away from my family a lot more fun.

I got two of these for Christmas and also a wifi plug-in receptacle which we used for our Christmas tree, but now is connected to a bedroom lamp. This means that I am always only a shout away from illumination. A light switch does one thing, but these do it so much better that I can't imagine going backwards from here.

The Dot has drastically changed the way I think about future purchases. With every new appliance I will seriously consider if Alexa integration is a part of it. I have already added the Logitech remote hub to my wish list. I am wondering at what point it would make sense to put a wifi lock on my front door. And I'm very hopeful for a price drop in wifi thermostats (there is not much reason for these to cost much more than than the light switch as the server software could handle the "smart" features).

Another great thing about the Dot is that it should move forward in abilities without needing new hardware. It is really only a wifi microphone, and it is remarkably good at that already. It can hear me from the bedroom or at the bottom of my basement stairs. Since it's job is to hear what I say send that to the Amazon servers then relay message back, it is up to the servers to get better. Which they can and will. Maybe it's only a matter of time before I can say, "Alexa, what was that thing I was thinking about the other day?" Until then I'll still have to rely on my wife for that one. 

Tony Soprano Paved the Way for Donald Trump

Where I live a lot of people were asking how anyone could vote for Hillary Clinton given what we know about her. I would usually say that I think many of her voters are asking how anyone could vote for Donald Trump. Though I had some of my own answers, I think for many, subconsciously the answer is Tony Soprano. Twenty years ago there is no way someone with the crude and immoral history of Donald Trump could run as a Republican and win. Rural residents of the Bible Belt might overlook one divorce, but not multiple divorces, bankruptcies, Playboy covers, and publicly crude language. Then in the late nineties The Sopranos appeared and became a bit of a phenomenon. It was mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh show; many said it changed television. It popularized the antihero and led to a stream, then a river of followers in popular culture. Here was a man who was violent, vulgar, selfish, cheated on his wife, didn't put his kids first; yet viewers still rooted for him to overcome his enemies. It almost felt like you were hoping he would become a good man, but really you just wanted him to win. He never changed, but he changed the culture. Seventeen years later we've had a steady diet of this kind of protagonist. And we've grown fat on it. I am surprised at the things I'm willing to overlook in a candidate, and just as surprised at the things I'm willing to overlook in myself. If you do not want more leaders like Donald Trump, we need to shift the focus of our culture away from heroes like Tony Soprano.

Travel Bugs: A Personal Introduction

Geocaching is an international treasure hunt game. People hide a container with a log and mark the GPS coordinates. They upload those coordinates so others can find the container and sign the log. Often, the containers are big enough to contain trade items. I enjoy geocaching and one of my favorite things to find in a cache is a travel bug.

Travel bugs are not like other trade items; you don't have to leave something of equal value for them. But you do not keep them either. They can be in almost any form, but all have some kind of tracking number. Their owners assign them a goal or a mission which may just be to travel from cache to cache, or it may be something more specific, like visit all the states that start with the letter "A."

I enjoyed finding travel bugs and moving them along on their various quests so much that I soon decided to get my own. My first travel bug I made out of an old trophy and called it "Crown'em."

I gave it the goal to get to a cache in Palmdale, CA. And the following "About" section:

Along the way this bug would like to have its (and your) picture taken with appropriately kingly backgrounds, castles, suits of armor, the Queen of England, that sort of thing.

Experience geocachers had recommended giving it an interesting but not too difficult goal. They also advised making sure the travel bug didn't look like it was worth much and wasn't too cute. And they warned me to expect failure. So I was not sure it was ever going to get anywhere. The first person to find it posted a picture of it with her dog then did not visit another cache for months.

Thankfully, though she finally remembered the little hitchhiker, dropped it in another cache and started an interesting journey. The goal was to go west to Palmdale, California, so of course the first people to pick it up headed immediately east.

Once it was on it's way some neat things happened and people posted some cool pictures.

Then a cacher picked up Crown'em and asked if he could take it out of the country where it might have the opportunity to visit some real old world institutions.

I include this next picture with the qualifier that I don't actually believe the travel bug took two seperate trips to the southernmost point of South America. But that it how it was checked in, so it shows up in its map.

Now in Europe it continues to travel across borders, and cachers have been kind enough to send back pictures. Thankfully, it doesn't need a passport and as far as I know customs has had no problems clearing its passage.

As of March 13, 2015, with the different caches it has been checked into, the crown has traveled 18,841 miles.

Sadly, for every path of glory there is at least one tale of woe. Enter travel cat. Another bug we sent out into the wide world with what we thought was a satisfying and doable mission. "My goal for this one is to get to cache GC51T9E in Howard Florida. It would be great if you wanted to post pictures of your pet with this cat along the way." I also mentioned that it was made out of an old pair of pants.

It did make it to Florida in just 4 stops, but not quite to its destination. Then, it disappeared. We are pretty sure we traced the cacher who picked it up, but he did not log it and there is no sign he ever placed it again. If only our real cat could be disposed of so easily.