Mike’s College Graduation, Christmas, and Birthday Gift List

a.k.a. One List to Rule Them All

This list was originally created as a graduation gift list, but I figured I would just retool it and use it as a gift list for all major holidays in the coming year (sure, my birthday isn’t officially a holiday YET, but it should be… if nothing else, you can always still “observe” the holiday of my birthday by taking a “sick” day—or a personal day). While I could go on about why my birthday should be celebrated as holiday and the giving of gifts and such, I think I will be modest (for once) and not go into those details. I should also note, that I have no problem with presents being combined (either people pooling together or one present for all 2-3 holidays). I have most of the smaller things I want/need, so that’s why I mostly have larger items on here.

Since Mike is graduating college soon and as his gift lists are always ever so amusing, he has chosen to once again indulge the readers of this list with his amusing descriptions and such regarding the items on the list. As is customary with such lists, there will be the normal preamble explaining why items on the list should be purchased for Mike. Besides the obvious fact that Mike is a great and awesome person and deserves gifts in general, it should also be noted that Mike is the first in his family to graduate from a four year college. In addition, Mike is graduating a semester early from college and with a degree in two separate fields: computer science and English writing—two areas with no overlapping classes, thus making the double major more challenging. Mike has also made the Dean’s List in 4 out of 6. His overall GPA is currently 3.51, so he will be graduating cum laude. During his time in college, Mike also held executive positions in three of the largest student organizations on campus. He was director of travel for Union Board one semester, President of the Resident Student Association (RSA) for a year—during which time he strengthened both the executive body and led recruitment efforts that resulted in more active councils, and he was vice president of academic affairs for student government while also holding a directorship within RSA. He also did two years of community service on campus, working with underprivileged elementary school students. Mike also did various technical jobs on campus, mostly to earn car payment money, but also to earn additional work experience. One summer Mike participated in a research project on campus and had the opportunity to present the results of his research at a national conference where he made it to the final five for undergraduate researchers. During his final semester, Mike has designed a research project for his senior project in computer science where he and his research partner, Kyle Shipley—who requested to join the project after Mike explained his plans for it, will be working with the IndianaSchool for the Blind to design a sound-based computer game for the visually impaired. This summer, Mike spent his time in Los Angeles working for the Aerospace Corporation, which is in charge of verifying the results of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the other private aerospace vendors. So clearly Mike has had a successful college career, and since high school graduation is a joke, but is rewarded in gifts, it only makes sense that a graduation from college should also be rewarded in gifts. So without further adieu, here is Mike’s wish list of gifts for college graduation.

Since Mike has been accepted with full funding to grad school (IowaState), he feels that his list must be revised to better reflect what he realizes his graduate studies needs entail. Following this paragraph will be a list of the top 5 things Mike needs/wants for grad school and following that will be the big list of other things. The list of top 5 will be in the order of most needed, while the bottom list is in no particular order.

  1. Laptop—I have a very capable desktop that works great for almost everything (recording TV, word processing, surfing the net, burning DVDs, etc.), but it lacks mobility (being a desktop). I don’t need a powerful laptop because it’s sole purpose for me will be to provide mobile access to e-mail and allow me to write papers or write code while on the go (i.e. not at my desktop). Something with tablet functionality would be nice as I can use it for taking research notes or notes in class, but is not necessary. My ideal laptop would be either one of the Acer TravelMate C200 series tablet computers (starting at $1,200 on Newegg.com for a 12.1” screen, which should meet my needs fairly well—the more expensive model would be nice as well, but isn’t necessary, this is more than sufficient for my laptop needs). The Oqo ( is also a good choice as it definitely has mobility in mind (but the price point is rather high at almost $2,000). The MacBook Pro is another good choice, but it’s not as light as I’d like, nor as small, nor does it have the tablet/pen capabilities of the other two (plus it retails at a good $2,000 or so…)—but it would allow me to run OS X, Linux, and Windows all on one machine, which would be sort of nice.
  2. Kitchen supplies (I have some plates and pots and pans and such, but they aren’t a complete set and really could stand to be replaced…)
  3. Some Target/Walmart gift cards to pick up some miscellaneous items (any additional light fixtures, chairs, etc.) I may decide I want/need.
  4. Bed and bath stuff (sheets for double beds—SOLID COLORS ONLY, preferably like a dark blue, white, or some other color that doesn’t stand out too much). Not sure what I need in terms of bathroom stuff, but I’ll have a bathroom… I know I need a vacuum (although I just realized that 2 days ago…)
  5. A nice HD-Ready LCD TV 19-27” (the ViewSonic 27” one is right around $700 on newegg.com)—I could use it as a TV AND as a monitor for my computer—that way I can lie in bed and be on my computer at the same time (although I can do that with a laptop too… but then I wouldn’t get to use my nice wireless keyboard and mouse…)

General List

  1. Cash—always a great gift, helps pay off college loans, any credit card debt (currently I have none of the credit card debt kind), savings, and money toward a new car.
  2. Newegg.com Gift Certificate (so I can get either electronics or new/more computer parts).
  3. Fry’s Electronics/Outpost.com gift certificate (same as above, but this is a brick and mortar establishment—prices are SOMETIMES better, but are normally a little bit more than the above).
  4. Flat Panel TV—doesn’t need to be large, but it would be nice as transportation of it would be easier and finding a place to put it would be extremely easy. Something in the range of 19-23” would be good. HDTV would be nice, but not really necessary. The Samsung 23” HD-Ready LCD TV for $700 is pretty nice at a decent price; and the ViewSonic 27” HD-Ready LCD TV for between $700-800 is also very nice.
  5. Vacation—some type of tropical cruise, trip to Japan, UK, Italy, Hawaii, Caribbean, or something along those lines would be nice. Trips are always nice and it would be good to relax before going off to several more years of school. The trip would be best for the summer, or something that I could use when I feel like it.
  6. Nintendo Revolution—three new video game systems are coming out in the next year. Xbox 360 comes out in November but I only have a slight interest in that. The Nintendo Revolution is scheduled to come out during late Q1 or early Q2 of 2006, with more precise estimates of March. Out of the three systems coming out, this is the least expensive and most interesting of the three. I haven’t followed much of the information on the PS3 since I’m not really interested in it.
  7. Wine Club Membership—I’ve decided it would be fun to begin a wine collection, so membership to a wine club would be kind of fun. Wine.com has yearly memberships starting at about $20 a month, or $100 a year. Magazines or books about wine would be nice as well. Some type of portable wine cellar would also be nice. I like dessert wines the best, and my least favorite wine so far is merlot. Shiraz, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Grigio are some of my favorites.
  8. Laptop—I just built myself a new desktop, which is an extremely nice machine, but I realize that there are times when I might need some portability so a low powered laptop would be nice. Something smaller and lighter weight are preferred over something with lots of power in a laptop—as I have my desktop to handle all the heavy computations and such. Toshiba makes the Lifebook which is a pretty nice compact laptop, but it’s price is a bit high. Something used off of e-bay with at least 750 MHz would be fine. It’d also be REALLY nice to get one of the Mac Book Pros so I can run OS X, Windows, AND Linux off of it (starts at about $2,000 though…)
  9. AMD Athlon64 X2—This should be for a socket 939 motherboard. I have a pretty good processor in my computer right now, but this one is two processors in one, which is nice when running multiple applications or multi-threaded applications. It has a high price point--$400-1000, but that price should drop fairly rapidly in coming months. This isn’t really necessary at all, just a nice new toy to add to my system.
  10. Video Recording PCI card—I have one card in my computer that can record TV shows already, but it doesn’t work in Linux and, besides, two cards allows me to record two shows on two different channels at once, rather than just one show. A second card should have built-in MPEG encoding and decoding capabilities and be usable in Linux (so it shouldn’t be made by ATI—although there are other companies that don’t have Linux drivers as well).Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 is an excellent choice, as it would allow me to record 2 TV shows at once.
  11. A 17” black LCD monitor, so I can have a dual screen set up. Don’t really need one, but it would be nice.
  12. 7.1 surround sound receiver (I have 5 speakers, and obtaining 2 more won’t be too difficult).Boise and Sony should be avoided as they just have good brand names, their sound quality is actually inferior. Onkyo is supposed to be fairly good and reasonably priced (although a receiver will still run $300-500).
  13. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (for GameCube). This game was supposed to come out in November and I was going to pre-order it. It has been delayed until March, so is perfect for a birthday presents.
  14. Digital camera. I would want it to be SLR (that means the lens can be replaced), have at least 4 megapixels (more megapixels really only determine how large you can blow the picture up/how much you can zoom in to edit it—4 megapixels is fairly sufficient). It should also have a fairly good shutter response time (so something with a “burst mode”). I’d prefer that it use either xD or SD memory cards (with a preference toward xD as they are supposed to be slightly faster than SD, but since I know only a few companies use xD and since SD memory cards are less expensive, SD is perfectly acceptable since there isn’t THAT much of a speed difference). The Konica Minolta Z6 is an EXCELLENT choice in terms of balance between quality and price (about $350-- It has 12x optical zoom (no SLR, but with 12x optical zoom, it shouldn’t need it unless I want to do trick photography, and let’s face it I’m not into photography enough for that type of stuff…); 6.1 Megapixels (again plenty); is from THE best digital (and film) camera manufacturer out there; and all sorts of other fun stuff.
  15. Blank dual layer DVDs. These are $20-30, which is why I normally don’t buy them myself, but it would be nice to have a few.
  16. Advance Wars DS (Nintendo DS)
  17. Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS)
  18. Prince of Persia The Two Thrones (Xbox)
  19. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube)
  20. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube)
  21. Half-Life 2 (Computer/PC)
  22. Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox)
  23. A nice 200+ GB hard drive—preferably SATA based as they are faster. These run anywhere from $80-200.
  24. More Special Edition DVD ($24.99). This is a 6 minute film, and one of the most interesting pieces I’ve seen in a while. It can be purchased from
  25. 3D Visor—this product allows me to play around with virtual reality, both when playing computer games and when building projects of my own. It comes with a rather hefty price tag though ($899). It can be purchased here:
  26. Firefly Complete Collection DVD—this is the TV show that the movie Serenity was based off of. The movie was awesome, and from what I’ve heard the TV show was pretty much just as awesome. Amazon had the lowest price ($30).
  27. Fraggle Rock The Complete First Season DVD Set—to relive those childhood memories.

That’s really about all… So pretty much cash is the best bet. I don’t have many things I want, but I do have some higher price items I should probably get myself before going to grad school and being broke again. Plus, cash will help cover initial grad school expenses as I find a place to live there and things like that. Although a vacation would be pretty nice as well…

Sincerely,

Mike