Personally speaking, there is absolutely no worse place for me to drink my coffee than at my computer. Sadder still? That’s the place I will always need a cup most.

Though intended as a sipping beverage, one can only drink coffee so leisurely. Its ever-escaping warmth always leaves a sense of urgency to finish it before it goes stone cold. But when I’m seeing paradise by my monitor’s light, every other concern just escapes me. Before I know it, distraction has robbed my body of some hot Colombian lovin’ and left me chilled, bitter fail in a cup.

Fortunately, as I’m learning every single day, there are few things a standard USB port can’t fix. This 5.5″ x 3.5″ USB beverage cooler and warmer with 3.5-foot cable will fit at even a cluttered dump of a workspace. More importantly, flip a single switch on the back and swap between keeping a hot drink steaming at 120°F to 140°F to keep you going, or a cool beverage chilly at 55°F for when you feel you need to be slowin’. Even at its hottest temperatures, this USB drink warmer won’t burn disposable paper cups, making it Starbucks-ready at such a portable and convenient size.

It’s the coaster that science intended.

  USB Beverage Cup Warmer & Cooler ($19.95)

Down the hatch, morning after morning, goes my favorite breakfast cereal – half of which turns into a soggy fail-mush by the time I eat my way down the bowl. On top of that, at least a cup or so of milk ultimately flows down the drain. I suppose it beats the slovenly alternative, though. My five year old inner being is one thing, but the nearly 30 year old Sleepless One just feels his dignity slip a little at chug-a-lugging the leftover milk and crumbs. So could a hands-on experience with a Geek Gems favorite save my love affair with cereal, while whittling down my grocery budget?

I dug the Obol cereal bowl from the first time we featured it here. A bowl in which I could separate my milk and cereal, keeping my breakfast crunchy as I scoop-and-swoop what I needed into the milk a single bite at a time? Simple! Perfect! Useful! Where, oh where had this been all my life?

I was already impressed before the first milk drops coated the bowl’s bottom. The durable white plastic dish is molded with this C-shaped, textured white handhold in the base, making it so very simple to cradle comfortably to one’s body while reclining. It’s also a necessity, as the bowl is wide enough across that palming it would be a bit cumbersome. The shallower of the Obol’s two recesses holds what amounts to a perfect portion-controlling single measuring cup of any dry cereal. The divider between cereal and milk gives way via something shaped a little like a built-in curved playground slide to the deeper pool for the milk. And here’s where things go from “awesome” to “pretty damn awesome”.

I will nearly guarantee from personal experience that anybody could finish a dry cup of cereal using as little as a half pint of milk and pour practically nothing down the drain. Think of what cup after cup of wasted milk would’ve ultimately added up to over a week or a month. Another half-gallon? A full gallon? That couple bucks doesn’t seem like much this shopping trip, but over a year, that savings shall keep your treasure troves of Fruity Pebbles running over. Your only problem will be what you’re to do with all those extra prizes from the bottoms of all those extra boxes of cereal you can suddenly stockpile, you Seinfeldian saver, you!

I own few kitchen implements and gadgets that each day I truly relish using, and the Obol cereal bowl is useful enough to be favored among the few, right alongside my ESPN Sportszone “Chalice of Colombian Caffeination”. For casual users and cereal connoisseurs alike, the Obol gets two solid thumbs-up!

  Obol: The Original Crispy Bowl ($19.99)

Wine connoisseurs enjoy the very finest beverage-enjoyment innovations. Give true vino-philes and sommeliers their deserved due: their fervent fascinations with the meticulous details that make and define a fine wine have made fruitful their pursuits of ways to better enjoy one of the world’s oldest adult libations.

From the time Jesus re-stocked the bar at a dry wedding, necessity has been the mother of invention. We’ve seen aerators that will enhance a low-quality, cheap wine’s flavor noticeably; electric corkscrews, and manual ones that resemble deformed drill presses; I’ve even found an infrared wine thermometer and single bottle wine cellar with customizable temperature and humidity settings. Few aficionados take enjoying their passions to heart quite as wine lovers do.

And oh, the troubles this Instant Wine Bottle Chiller solves. I’m no sommelier, but I do love good wine. Unfortunately, it’s proven every time I want a chilled Chardonnay or white port that forethought might never be my strongest suit. I rarely have something chilled when I want it, and by the time a hastily refrigerated bottle would finally cool to the perfectly chilled temperature, oftentimes I just don’t desire a glass any longer.

Sure, I could start making a habit of always having a bottle gettin’ chilly in the fridge – or I could just toss this wine bottle chiller spout in a freezer for six hours before using, and instantly cool a room temperature wine up to 15°F with a single pour. The thermos-like shell will keep the internal stainless steel pouring tube cold enough to chill an entire bottle, and covering the spout’s air inlet with a thumb will slow the flow, keeping the wine chilling longer inside the spout before it exits into the glass.

  Ravi Wine Chiller ($38.36)

My sweet tooth doesn’t often gain a foothold – but when it does, I catch myself lamenting being caught without a handy emergency fix. My freezer tells my dietary sensibilities’ story: meat with sides of meat. Chicken, fish, beef and game leave precious little room for much else. Besides, on tight a budget, spending extra on tubs of ice cream and boxes of popsicles I won’t dig into but once every couple months or so and can’t even store makes precious little sense.

But still, what a fellow would give at times like that for a quick, no-muss fix … oh, and as long as I’m getting greedy, how about something reasonably healthy, too?

The Zoku Popsicle Maker will freeze three tasty, custom treats in about ten minutes, as long as it’s been primed in the freezer at least 24 hours before. From there, the three die-cast aluminum molds will freeze fresh fruit, juice, pudding or any other filling or ingredient smoother and with fewer ice crystals than anything you could pull from a grocer’s freezer.

And just because I’ve known nary an adult who every so often doesn’t have to compromise with an inner moppet, I have to wonder what a delicious White Russian-pop could taste like. Or if I could stop at just one …

  Zoku Frozen Juice Pop Maker ($49.95)

Doughnuts make such curious little snacks. They’re the alpha impulse-nosh food. So few ever really venture forth on an errand specifically seeking the lone pastry most people consume in one sitting; that’s probably why they’re so well-suited for convenience stores and quick, in-and-out eateries where people can get a snack and be on their way in a hurry. We’re almost never looking for them, but we want one when we see one.

But sometimes, we do. Coffee’s poured on a Sunday morning, the comfy sweats have been donned, the DVR awaits and suddenly, THIS MAN NEEDS COFFEE AND CRULLERS, STAT! Alas, nobody delivers doughnuts – and as we’ve well established, driving around the corner for a lone sweet treat uses gas that costs more itself these days than my snack. Doughnuts, like this conundrum itself, are a perfect, vicious circle. One vicious, tasty, irresistible circle.

This Sunbeam Doughnut Maker not only bakes the dunkable, frostable morsels, it actually prepares them healthier than most state fairs and even some swanky bakeries! Whereas they’re so often fried in more fat and grease than you probably care to ponder, the Sunbeam Doughnut Maker bakes up to five doughnuts in the style of a George Foreman Grill on its non-stick surface in about five minutes. From there, it’s your world. Frost them, sprinkle them, sugar them, glaze them, or just scarf your delicious home-baked doughnuts straight down.

Best of all, with so many people exploring gluten-free, vegan and dairy-free lifestyles, this is your chance to continue embracing one of the ultimate indulgent sweets with your own preferred tweaks and treats. Doughnuts needn’t mean the death of a diet ever again! [Source]

  Sunbeam Donut Maker ($34)

Ah, the Slurpee/Slushee. It’s so unique to the juvenile American experience. Someway, somehow, I grew into loving much simpler adult beverages with ingredients I could actually name and pronounce. Coffee contains coffee … and sometimes Bailey’s. Diet soda? Easy: aspertame, caffeine and if drinking Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, 42 flavors of WIN. But there was a time during my junior high and high school years in South Dakota when I didn’t know what was actually in my neighborhood 7-11′s slush beverage of choice, and I couldn’t have cared less. When I finished mowing that store’s lawn once every couple weeks for $20, it tasted like victory.

This slush maker mug packs nearly a pound of “super-freezing refrigerant” into a patented 12 ounce Glaciercore that will freeze a sugar-sweetened beverage of choice into a slurpy, slushy, mushy brain-icing treat inside an insulated mug. No hurry, either: this better-drinking-through-science mug will chill your cool beverage down to 34°F for up to two hours while crystalizing the ingredients. And better news still? It easily fits inside most freezer doors.

Try a few flavors and find your best fit. Coke? Root beer? Sunkist? Nestle Quik? Cream Soda? Perhaps go bold and ice some strong coffee or espresso. Or for those moments when your inner child has come of age, grown hair in awkward places, and started having funny feelings toward the girls (or guys … maybe both?), pour in a White Russian.

Some little slices of adolescence never really leave. They just get better – and slushier – with age.

  The Original Slushee Mug ($9.95)

Straight things are just too … I don’t know, straight. Flat. And dare I say, untrue to life.

There’s no arguing a level surface’s practicality. Fragile nick-knacks and bric-a-brac probably shouldn’t tilt like a three-legged pinball machine, especially suspended over an unsuspecting house guest’s noggin. But where one can, I don’t believe anyone should bypass displaying books and such at an askew, rakish angle.

Each set of these decorative angled wall shelves includes three medium-density particleboard shelves in a trio of sizes, as well as all the needed mounting hardware. Their beauty is in the infinite potential for making form and function one’s own. The shelves can be left their original stark white, or come ready for a splash of paint at your leisure. The trapezoidal shelves’ uniform angle measurements make nesting the units together a bottomless sea of geometric possibilities; a designer’s puzzle where there is no one right place for any piece.

The more sets one uses, the deeper the options and the greater the potential mosaic becomes. Paint them or not, nest and fit them as you wish, but what ultimately creates the shelves’ accents will be whatever angle the items inside take.

Face it: life is no straight line. Things level off when they can, but nothing holds everything perfectly steady and level forever more. So take your storage space and make a statement that reminds the world how things ultimately really end up. The ground isn’t perfect, things slide about, but ultimately everything fits into place – even when some things remain just a little askew. [Source]

  Angle Nesting Shelves ($99 for a set of three)

It sometimes feels like Mother Nature’s stupid prank that summer must be so hot. Though I personally maintain there’s never a bad time for it, I concede coffee’s prime season effectively ended when the Kansas City Royals threw out the season’s first pitch. But with the days of cold drinks upon us come all the ever-present challenges.

The biggest fountain drinks practically never fit car cup holders, and over-icing to keep drinks cold means less to drink, and a watered-down beverage when the excess ice eventually melts. Canned thirst-quenchers heat seemingly too fast to savor them in the sun, but koozies can be so tacky, prone to wear-and-tear, and as ill-equipped to a cup holder as a Big Gulp.

That Thermos, the masters of keeping beverages the very temperatures God and Man intended them to be, should cure these specific summertime blues doesn’t shock me at all. These stainless steel can koozies – sold in sets of two – might be the last word you need in keeping on-the-go cold stuff cold.

Patented double-walled TherMax vacuum insulation will chill a cold beer or soda can up to three hours, but the exterior stays warm enough that you won’t have to worry about freezing a single finger off. More importantly, it will go wherever you go – ballpark, car, barbeque, wherever – with a durable scratch-resistant base and dimensions designed to fit most cup holders.

Here’s to you, Mother Nature. Bring it, bitch!

  Thermos Stainless Steel Can Insulator ($27.95 for two)

This Aperture Science Mug isn’t really a coffee mug. Oh, I know exactly what the headline says. I don’t care. It needs correcting. It’s not a coffee mug. The confusion is understandable. But let me point something out that will make it all clear.

Do you see that branding, “Aperture Laboratories”? That’s the rub. This is not your standard coffee cup, friends – but the patent-pending 14 ounce Aperture Science Kahphee Portal. Wonderful thing, this little handheld, non-projectile portal. Hot beverages – OK, more often than not, the bean-derivative stimulant you monkey people call “coffee” – enter one portal and rapidly vanish within another to destination unknown.

Curiously, substances that enter this portal often exit into its opposite portal with “enhanced” characteristics; souped-up levels of sucrose and frequently increased levels of lactose. Some substances acquire an unidentifiable, undefined substance that is not quite dairy but that has also displayed curiously combustible properties.

But really, just between us … just us good friends … a mug? Really? All the science to do, and you think we wasted time just making a simple mug?

A tip from your trusted friend in science: not unlike cake, the headline is a lie.

  Aperture Laboratories Coffee Mug ($12.99)

Man Vs. Food has most likely taught an unsuspecting but grateful world one enduring lesson. Other than that dignity is the market price for a T-shirt, bumper sticker and/or Polaroid on a restaurant wall, and that Mother Nature didn’t give man multiple stomachs for a reason, it’s this: enormous food just tastes better. And may I say, duh! Those phenomenal pancakes in Uncle Buck taught me that decades before.

Each of these oreos cake pans holds a ludicrous four cups of cake batter. In perspective, most whole boxes of cake mix yield about four to six cups. Would one even double this to make a Double-Stuff Oreo cake? Must we test the moral bounds of science by daring push the “stuff” into the exponential range? Stuff-Cubed Oreo, anyone? Stuff to the 10th power?

OK, kids, let’s all mop the drool before continuing. It’s not an actual crispy Oreo cookie, but this set of two non-stick aluminum cake pans allows for creating a mouth-watering, amazing facsimile. Why, only the Nabisco logo is missing, and that’s just licensing issues for you. Still, each pan makes a sandwich cookie cake that’s 1.5 inches thick and a staggering 9.75 inches in diameter. Stick to the included recipe, and you’ll craft a couple of incredible simulated Oreos cakes ready for a layer of the frosting of your choice in between. Your replica will be letter-perfect at first glance. For that last authentic touch, grab the closest knife and etch a Nabisco (or Hydrox, for all we care) logo into the top cookie. And for those who don’t care for chocolate, vanilla cake would make an equally delicious substitution.

This set also includes a 10-year warranty. Hand wash them with soapy water, avoiding abrasives and scouring pads, and begin the decade-long reign of the species that science will surely classify Orea freakingenormous.

  Sandwich Cookie Pans ($21.95)