Neff Zone Column -- December 8, 2007

Print Edition: December 8, 2007

ANSWERS PROVIDE GIFT IDEAS

Last week’s column about gifts for geeks generated a fair number of comments. Many people asked for more gift suggestions and that got me thinking. I’m often asked "how to" or "where do I get those" questions and answering those requests might actually lead to an idea for a unique gift. So, here are some of the questions I’ve been asked and my answers. If that results in a gift idea, all the better.

Question: Where do I get my own dot.com and if I got one what would I do with it?

Answer: Getting your own Web address (called a URL) is easy and cheap. There are scores of registration services and most charge less than $10 to register your URL.

For discussion purposes, let’s talk about the one I use called Active-Domain www.active-domain.com. Let’s also say your name is Irving Sturdley and you want to have irvingsturdley.com as your domain name/Web address.

You would go to Active-Domain and there you would do a domain search to see if irvingsturdley.com (or.net, .org, .us) is available. If it is, you would then buy that domain name. Within minutes you would become the proud owner of irvingsturdley.com.

Now you can go to the Active-Domain site and click Manage Domain. You have several options, but here are two cool ones.

First, if you already have your own Web page (with a long, hard-to-remember address) you can do a URL Redirect. Then whenever someone types irvingsturdley.com into their browser it will immediately take them to your Web page.

Second, you can do an E-Mail Forward. First you give yourself a new e-mail address, like irving@irvingsturdley.com. Then you set up Active Domain so all mail sent to that address gets immediately forwarded to your regular mail address (like one you might have at Yahoo Mail or through your internet service provider).

The beauty of owning your own domain name is that as far as the rest of the world knows you are a dot.com, a big time player. What they don’t know is that it only cost you $10. Plus,you can keep your unique dot.com e-mail address forever even if you change service providers by just changing the forwarding information. If you’re getting someone got a new computer for Christmas it would be very nifty to get them their own domain name as a stocking stuffer.

Question: You ski a lot. How do you keep your feet and hands from freezing?

Answer: First of all, for my feet I have ski boot heaters in my ski boots. Basically, this consists of a heating element built into the footbed of each boot with a flat wire that runs up the back of the boot between the inner liner and outer shell. The wire plugs into a small rechargeable battery pack that clips onto the back of the boot. Four heat settings keep my feat cozy regardless of the outside temperature. Based on how much I ski, I’ve calculated that my heaters cost me about 20-cents per ski hour, so even on a long ski day it only costs me a buck to have warm feet.

I’ve used two different brands over the years, Therm-ic and Hotronic, and both worked well. You can get these at ski shops and I recommend letting a professional bootfitter make sure your boots fit properly and that the heater installation is done correctly.

As for my hands, I have heated gloves/mittens. The heat is provided by those heat packs used by hunters and fishermen available at many local stores. My gloves and mittens are Swany Toasters, which have a zippered compartment for the heat packs. You can get these at www.rei.com, but pretty much any glove/mitten with a space between the inner and outer layer works similarly.

Question: I see you walking with poles almost every day. Where do you get those poles and how do you keep from slipping on the ice during your winter walks?

Answer: I’ve talked about fitness poles in this column on several occasions, but not a week goes by when someone on the street doesn’t ask me a question about the poles.

My fitness walking poles are from SkiWalking.com www.skiwalking.com and its American Nordic Walking System. I love the things. Walking with my poles I burn 40% more calories, have a more upright posture and have three points of balance. The poles have rubber tips for summer and for winter I remove the rubber tips and let the metal tips dig into the ice and snow. The specially designed hand straps allow me to swing my arms with no possibility of dropping the pole.

Now, you can get knock-off cheapo poles, but compared to SkiWalking’s poles they’ll feel unbalanced and clunky. Besides, if I ever want replacement rubber tips or hand straps, I can get those at SkiWalking.com, something I’m not sure would be the case with off brands.

To be sure, winter walking presents an additional challenge because of the possibility of slippery conditions. I combat those conditions by the use of cleats on my walking shoes. The ones I like are called Due North Ice Creepers at www.campmore.com or Get-A-Grip Cleats at www.cozywinters.com. These are both the same thing, rubber straps with tungsten spikes that fit over your shoes. The tiny spikes really bite into the ice. I put these on an older pair of sneakers and just leave them on all winter. On dry days I use regular walking shoes and on slippery days I put on the sneakers-creepers.

There is another system that uses criss-crossed springs underneath your foot, but sometimes the springs are ineffective on hard ice. I recommend the tungsten spike variety of creepers.

Final note: Remember, I have a special family holiday fun page online at www.neffzone.com/holidays.htm.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to nefzone@gmail.com Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.