Power strip envy!

Do you use electricity? Then check out this 4-foot long, 24-outlet power strip! We bought one for a photo shoot prop and I fell in love with it immediately. So much so that I had to desperately rack my mind to come up with an excuse to use it. My entertainment center at home currently has about 14 items (!) plugged into two power strips, but even that would only occupy half the sockets on this magnificent beast. Then again, if I took full advantage of all 24, I would probably burn down my apartment building.

Part of the reason is that this beauty features a circuit breaker, but no surge protection. I had always been fuzzy on the distinction, so I read up a bit on How Stuff Works. Turns out surge protection is like flossing... if you don't use it all the time, your expensive electronic equipment is eroding away from slight fluctuations in the current. So I'd have to plug this into a surge protector anyway, and the only one-socket surge protector I found didn't look up to that awesome task. And if I'm going to plug this power strip into another, surge-protected power strip... Well, even I can see that's silly.

In the end, I wound up installing this in my office when it turned out I needed an extension cord. It only has 5 things plugged into it, and it's hidden away in a trough under my desk. What a sad, sorry waste. But at least I know it's there if I suddenly need to, I don't know, charge 19 cell phones.

Speaking of cool power strips, this lovely strip in the shape of a container ship was floating around the web a while back. The creator has a rationale about how it reminds us that our electronics come from China, but I find that entirely unnecessary for the enjoyment of it. This is a power strip that can go on your desk, not under it. Makes me wonder why there aren't any fun novelty power strips being sold, when there are millions of USB hubs shaped like pigs or Hello Kitty or whatever.