2009 has been pretty good to me in because I have either received or picked up some cool gear. What better way to keep track of it all than to write a post? Here’s what I got:

First is a signed Wonder Girls CD that Caroline bought for me when we went to the JYP tour concert in early March. If you look closely So Hee’s signature is smudged ):. I wasn’t too happy when I first noticed it, but now I realize it just helps prove its authenticity.

Second is Programming Perl. I actually learned Perl a while back and never found a use for it, but I still bought a brand new copy during spring break because I got Larry Wall (the inventor of Perl for those of you who don’t know) to sign it when he gave a talk here at talk. He even had fancy stamps! Now I have a book to start my collection of programming books.

Third is a 8GB 4th generation iPod Nano. I won this at the raffle at the IEEE 125th anniversary celebration. It’s the first thing I’ve won since way back in 7th grade when I won a baseball signed by a bunch of professional sportsman. It is so much nicer than my old 4th Generation iPod (from 2004). You can shake it to shuffle, watch videos on the 320×240 screen and turn it to landscape mode to view coverflow.

Forth is a Kindle 2. This was a surprise birthday present from my parents. I after I got back to campus from spring break, I received an email saying that I have a package at Lerner. I walked over expecting it to be spam or some free offer I signed up for a long time ago only to find an Amazon.com box. I thought, “I don’t remember buying anything from Amazon…” Then it struck me. This box looks exactly like the one in the Kindle 2 unboxing! I opened it to find a brand new Kindle 2 staring at me. What a surprise! I love my parents. It’s pictured below with 20th Century Boys on the screen, which is a really good manga by the way. If you haven’t read it yet, make sure to download it from Lurk sometime. Also, if you get a Kindle and plan on reading manga on it, make sure you download Mangle. It downsizes and converts manga images to a Kindle friendly format. Sadly, there isn’t a Mac version. So, you’ll have to use something like Crossover or VMware to run it on a Mac.

The last thing is another Wonder Girls singed CD! This time it is from asian media blog Ningin. My post about the Wonder Girls concert won their blog contest and I got a signed CD as a prize. So sexy.