Rated Best

Jeans are a wardrobe staple for me. Working as an engineer in Silicon Valley, one needs to dress the part. While I have tried other jeans over the years (Lee, Gap, Lands End, and even a few designer jeans), I keep coming back to Levi's.

Levi's have a lot of advantages over the competition:

• They fit me well.
  
• They are widely available
• They are inexpensive (~$30 a pair)
• They look good
  
• They are well made. Other jeans I've tried (especally the Gap jeans) stain, rip, or fall apart far too easily.

I used to buy 550s or 560s. Recently I bought 3 pairs of 569s. They were much more stylish and made the 550s and 560s look frumpy in comparison.

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I changed my mind. I used to think that the Total Shaving Solution was the best shaving oil out there. But I admit it was the first one I tried. Any shaving oil is a massive improvement over shaving cream or gel, so you really can't go wrong. But I find Kinexium to be a better product than TSS for several reasons:

1. It's easier to dispense. A single squirt from the pump nozzle is all you need.
2. It doesn't have the overpowering menthol smell and feel like TSS.
3. It's slicker, making it easier to spread and easier to shave.

The price per fl oz is about the same as TSS. I found it at my local CVS drugstore. It's available online too from Amazon or eBay.

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I love my Evo pen. I picked mine up several years ago at the MOMA store. I love it. It's the most comfortable pen I've ever used.

Then when I was packing for a long international trip, I stumbled upon the idea of taking one of the Evo cartridges with me in my money belt. It worked brilliantly. At 2.5" long, it's short enough to fit comfortably with my credit cards. But it's long enough to be usable for filling out travel forms and taking brief notes.

They are also very reasonably priced, at only $1 a piece (though you have to get them in sets of 3). I recommend you pick up an Evo pen while you're at it. At only $3, it's a great deal.

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I love my Apple aluminum keyboard. The flat keys, short travel, and ample margins between the keys make it the easiest keyboard I've found to type on. Plus it is quiet. No loud clicking to distract me from the thoughts I'm typing.

Of course the annoying thing is that it's designed to work with Macs. Still, that doesn't stop me from plugging it in and using it. The only real difference is the Command key sends a Windows key event. Personally, I use the SharpKeys utility to remap my keys so that the Command key on the keyboard sends Ctrl and vice-versa.

You can also get a narrower version without the number pad on the right. This gives you a bit more space to operate your mouse on the right without straining your arm way out to the side. (I mouse on the left, so I don't have this issue.)

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I recently upgrade my car to support my iPhone-centered mobile life. I upgraded my speakers and got a new head unit with an iPod jack. I needed to get a dashboard mount for my phone as well, to make it easier to use it for music and navigation. After doing all the research, ProClip came out on top.

ProClip is not cheap. Mine cost about $70. But the extra money is worth it for a hold that was designed to exactly fit both your car and your mobile device.

They do this with a modular system. You buy two pieces: one for your car (make, model, and year), and another for your phone. This also enables you to upgrade your mount if you get a new car or new phone.

I looked at generic dashboard mounts that used sandbags, suction cups, and the like. The reviews were always mixed, the devices were all big and clunky, and more often than not, they obscured some part of the windshield.

I love my ProClip. It is practically invisible, and is mounted over a vent placing it in a perfect location just to the right of the steering wheel at the top of the dash.

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I recently outgrew my old external hard drive and needed to get a bigger one. While there are plenty of deals out there on external hard drives—including ones that cost $100 or less—I opted for a higher quality option.

ConsumerSearch.com gave La Cie's d2 Quadra the nod. It's highly rated by both reviewers and owners. But more importantly, it has fewer negative reviews than most. The company has a good history of reliability, the drives quiet (no fan!), and they have USB, eSATA, and FireWire connectors.

I went for the 1TB capacity (which I think is the best value right now), but they come in ½TB, 1½TB and 2TB capacities as well.

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It was a toss-up between Microsoft's Zune HD and Apple's iPod Touch. And for a pure, stand-alone music/media player, I would probably go with the Zune. But why settle for that when you can get a really nice media player in the iPod Touch, that also doubles as a portable computer? You can check your email, browse the web, play games, and even stream music from services like Pandora and Last.FM. Granted, you have to be connected to wifi to do many of these things, but wifi is widely available.

Or, get a Novatel MiFi modem, and for a monthly service fee, you can have internet access anywhere cell phone service is available.

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The Aeron is the chair that seems to get all the great press. And it is a nice chair. But I'm not a big fan of the mesh. (If you like mesh, you should probably get the Mirra, which is basically the Aeron v2.0.) For long periods of sitting, I prefer firmer support.

For me it was a toss-up between the Leap and the Criterion. Both are excellent chairs. ConsumerSearch.com gives the nod to the Leap. I went with the Criterion because it felt just as good to me, and I was able to get an excellent deal on a refurbished one at a local office supply store.

Whatever you do, don't just buy the first cheap chair you come across at Office Depot or OfficeMax. I got my first chair at Costco for about $150, and I got what I paid for. The joints weren't solid so they shifted and squeaked as I moved, the padding quickly compressed, and the fabric easily stained.

 

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