1. Pizza Port – Monterey pizza is really good and the Swami’s IPA is excellent. Best place to go with a lot of people. The one in Solana Beach is my favorite but the new one in Ocean Beach is usually less crowded.

2. Canned beer/Avery IPA – I’m a recycling nut and all those bottles take up so much space. People say it doesn’t taste as good, but they’re wrong. Other favs are Caldera IPA, Oskar Blues Old Chub and Gubna. California brewers are finally doing this with Sierra Nevada putting Torpedo in a 16 oz can. Also goes great with…

3. Thai Curry – Red, green, yellow, chicken, tofu, shrimp, so yummy I could eat it twice a day.

4. Mission Proto VSI skates – Since I play inline hockey 2-3 times a week, I need a skate that fits well and is light. I have two pairs, plus an older, beat-up pair of Proto VS skates for going around the lake/bay with Michelle.

5. CCM Thornton Blades – The inline hockey surface is a slightly rough concrete and it acts like sandpaper to my stick blades. It’s much cheaper to replace the blade than buy a $100 stick every two months. I hope they keep making them when he retires.

6. Sansa Clip+ – Best. MP3 player. Ever. Clips to my t-shirt collar for a run around the lake plus it’s expandable with microSDHC cards. Also works great for taking data back and forth to work.

7. Ikea Jerker Desk – Great desk with a funny name. I started standing at my desk and this desk adjusts to the right height. Plus it’s got great storage areas for my computers. I’ll be adding some additional hidden mounts under the desk to hide my cables and router gear.

8. Vmware/Cygwin – Allows me to run Linux and use Gnu tools (bash, g++, Emacs, ssh, XWindows) while I’m using Windows. Need both for work and it’s a pain to have two computers.

9. Subaru Outback – So versatile. Use it to carry big stuff from Home Depot, hockey gear, camping gear plus it’s not as big as a SUV and gets better gas mileage.

10. AT&T Uverse – So sad we gave this up for Time-Warner cable. TW only has two pros: slow-motion and it’s cheaper. As soon as our contract is up, we’re going back to UVerse.

11. Hot sauce – Because my list goes all the way to 11 and everything is better with it (PB&J and Sriracha). As you can tell, I keep a variety on hand for every spicing need.