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Subversive Gifts for New College Students?
openyourmind asks: "A friend's daughter is going to college, and I want to send her a package to help her in school. What kinds of things did you wish you had, but couldn't get, in college? I have already included a lockpick set, a UVmarking pen, and an LED flashlight in her care package. What else? Legal items only, please."
Lock box that can screw into a desk drawer. good for keeping the roomie out of your...stuff
Resolve carpet cleaner. Clean up that barf or bongwater before the RA finds out
Spray Bottle and rubbing alcohol. gets any nature of odor out of the air...quickly
"Do Not Disturb" sign. use your imagination
microcassette recorder. good for lectures, bugging and recording any nature of other thing
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I second the PDA vote. I honestly believe my GPA would have been a few points higher if I had had one in university. It doesn't have to be expensive, you can pick up a used Palm III or Handspring Visor (or Agenda VR3) off eBay for a song.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Keyghost (www.keyghost.com) keystroke logger. I'm buying one before I leave for college - never know when it'll come in handy.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
I'll second that. The single most useful tool I had in college (besides laptop). I still have mine and the knife on it is still extremely sharp. The can opener on it came in very useful in college, and the screwdriver is exactly the right size for the screws you'll find on PCs. It's also made out of steel, so the phillips screwdriver head didn't get stripped after lots of use.
Also, someone else already mentioned that lock picking tools might be illegal in her state. If you check the MIT Guide to Lock Picking, you'll see they mention that these are definitely illegal in MA, ME, NH and NY, so be careful. Also you might want to give her a piece of advice: fake IDs are illegal and have extremely stiff penalties. In addition, fake IDs aren't very useful in college, as even the most introverted, asocial geek can easily find some older colleague to buy the requisite vodka.
That's why you buy some of those lame plastic things to put over the top of the key - they're supposed to make it easier to tell one key from another, but what they are really good for is covering up the do-not-duplicate warning. If the clerk can't see it, he won't abide by it.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
I will take the other side... little of this is good.
Part of being in colledge is NOT having this stuff. What good is it if you come in with it already? Improvising lock picks (if your into that sort of thing, I probably would have been if I stayed in school longer)
Sure you could send her off with a lockpick, a glass bong, a computer with all the latest whizbangs, aq kick ass stereo, a soldering iron etc etc.... but what fun is that? I often lookj back a tthose years and the shit we used to improvise to hget a job done and really apreciate the shit I have accumulated over the years...
I would never go back to clipping wires off the piezo speaker element of a cheap $10 alarm clock and hooking it to my stereo, or smoke my pot out of a cheap ass metal bowl these days (I have a nice alarm clock - evenb tho I quit using it except when I have a morning meeting) and I exclusivly uses glass bowls now... I still am glad I started out where I did.
I say send her off with a toolbox full of simple shit like a hammer and screw drivers, a cheap soldering iron from radio shack, a roll of duct tape
and let her have her fun! Remember... McGyver's defining characteristic was that he ALWAYS had to improvise, he NEVER had the "right tool".
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Uhmm... Sorry. Despite the fact that sex toys and sodomy (and by the strictest definition -- anything other than hetero, vaginal sex) are on the books as illegal in TX, dildos are still sold quite openly in the right stores.
I've been to Forbidden Fruit in Austin. Lived next to it for almost a year since it's across the street from the UT student commons, as a matter of fact. Just said no when my buddies tried to convince me to get a body piercing there. Ahem...
AT ANY RATE... They did indeed openly sell a wide array of sex-related merchandise... Including leather ball-sacs, cock-rings, love-beads, and yes, vibrators and dildos. Mind you, this was in '93, and I don't live in Austin any more. Any Austinites care to confirm or dispell my dated data?
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