It's All Geek to Me!

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June 29, 2005

Object Lust #1: Double feature

Some people, particularly women, have a strange shopping gene in their genome. To them, spending hours walking through shops, looking through things they probably won't buy, is a perfectly acceptable timepass. I certainly can't stand being dragged through real-life store after real-life store (as I am sometimes by the various women in my life) all day. Sometimes though, I catch myself doing the online equivalent of the same activity. I float aimlessly from online store to online store viewing all manner of weird and wonderful things that teh InTaRw3b has to offer. Sometimes I even run into something I think is cool. I definitely don't need these items but I keep thinking about how fun it would be to own them.

I am starting this new section of my blog called Object Lust (nod to the Salon column of the same name). From time to time, it will feature some stuff which caught my attention either because it is cool, or weird or otherwise distinctive. Don't use this section as a wishlist necessarily *wink*. You can rest assured though that all the items in this section either interest me or interested me at some point, even if very briefly.

Because this is the first post in this section, I will feature two cool items:

Caffeine strips. For the caffeine junkies among us, this is quite an awesome invention.These strips deliver caffeine straight to your bloodstream, bypassing your gastrointestinal tract. You put them under your tongue, where they dissolve and give you an instant energy boost. $2.99 for a 24-pack.

On an unrelated note, like they have the nicotine patch, wouldn't it be awesome if they had the caffeine patch and the adrenaline patch too?

Paramotors. Imagine being able to make a powered flight with an aircraft that fits in the back of your car. All you need to do to get in the air is to turn on a motor, run for a short distance in an open space and watch the ground recede under your feet as you are lifted by an aerodynamic parachute-like wing. You can stay in the air for upto two hours and climb to great heights considering you're doing it on our own. Paramotor pilots generally reach 2,000 feet, but are licensed to go upto 18,000 feet, by which time it gets freakin' cold. And best of all, it's a self-regulated sport for which you don't need a pilot certificate from the FAA. So, you too can fly without appearing on Department of Homeland Security no-fly lists for having taken flight training. $5,000 or so for a paramotor, $2,000 for a wing and an additional $2,000 for training.

Posted by Vishy at June 29, 2005 09:37 PM

Comments

Posted by: Karolina at July 1, 2005 04:58 PM

Posted by: Stephen at July 7, 2005 08:38 PM