Father's Day is fast approaching.  Actually, much faster than I had originally thought.  I thought I still had another week left yet, but whadda ya know, it's THIS Sunday.  And if your dad is like MY dad, dad's are extremely difficult to shop for.  My dad started life as an auto mechanic, then became an aircraft mechanic for the major air carriers for decades, and is currently working his "retirement job" working on those really cool drone craft we hear about so much in the news.  So tools and tool related gadgets have always been a safe bet for him.  Over the years, however, he's accumulated every known tool and gadget known to mankind.  So, what the hell do you buy some tool/gadget geek that has everything?

Well, as a public service announcement, I have a couple of really cool gift ideas for you.  Just because that's the kind of guy I am and I'm tired of shirts and ties.  As an added bonus for y'all, at the end of this post, I have a FREE giveaway for one special dad, or mommy wanting a cool late daddy's day present.

So, anyway, Growing up with my dad, I spent a lot of time in and around engines with him.  Being the less experienced of the pair, I was usually the one that was voted to hold the flashlight.  It was a pain in the neck to figure out where he needed the light and to actually get the light where he needed it past and around his head and hands.

And now, that I am a geek myself, I spend a lot of time inside computer cases, behind my TV fixing some issue or another (I watch a lot of TV if you haven't figured that out yet), or inside my Xbox trying to fix red rings of death.  And, of course, I have passed the flashlight carrying baton on to MY son (and/or daughter) and have them "attempt" to hold the flashlight steady for me.  In the case of Princess K, the flashlight's beam usually ends up somewhere on the wall or ceiling, shining in Super Michael's eyes, or upstairs in her bed.  Which, of course, leaves me in the dark trying to to solder my fingers to the inside of my TV.

Well, I found a nice little solution for this dilemma and it comes in the form of the Petzl Tikka 2 Plus headlamp.  This little baby fits comfortably on any size head (even malformed large ones like mine) and will faithfully shine in the exact spot you are looking.  It has two brightness settings: SUPER DUPER BLINDING mode, and normal mode.  The super duper blinding mode will light up your work area like nobody's business.  I read the instructions on the box about NOT looking directly at the light and promptly looked directly at the light and couldn't see right for half an hour.  But man, is it nice and bright.  It uses the cool sci-fi LED light technology, so the bulb lasts for what could virtually be called forever, and the battery life is measured in the very long variety.  It uses 3 AAA batteries, which makes it much easier to replace batteries.

I've used this guy when futzing around in the car, and compared to my normal "feeling around until I found something in the dark" mode, having this nice bright light handy makes working on the car much easier.  I can now safely see every dirty surface in my car and actually managed to not come in the house covered in oil.

I do have other LED lights that you can place on a platform, or hang off something, but your big dumb head always gets in the way and this is just so much more convenient then having to move a light every few seconds.

Now, another mode which I thought just really made this thing super cool was it's two color modes:  white and red.  I know, I know, what is red for?  But, just work with me here.  I have a telescope that gets dragged outside on occasion to teach the kids about the stars and planets and generally when I'm setting it up, I'm pawing away in the darkness trying to figure out which lens is which to put in the telescope.  In the process, I get fingerprints all over the glass lens and it's just a mess. With the red light mode of the Petzl Tikka 2 Plus, I can see what I'm doing without ruining my night vision, read star charts outside, and find the lens I was looking for without getting finger prints all over them.  Well, MY fingerprints anyway.  There are still usually little tiny fingerprints all over EVERYTHING in the house, the lenses included.

Switching back and forth between the two modes is a breeze by just holding the button down for a couple of seconds.  Once in a particular mode, say red mode, the light stays in that mode until you switch it back to the other mode, which is handy if you are turning the light on and off outside and don't want to blind yourself or the people around you with the VERY bright white light on this.

Finally, there's an extra mode for the two different colors.  Flashing!  So, you can either have the headlamp flash in white or red.  Now, supposedly, this can be used in emergency type situations. Maybe you are an emergency worker and need to bring attention to yourself, or you're lost on a trail somewhere and need to being attention to yourself.  Or maybe you just need to annoy the other people in the house.  Whatever works for you.

This also comes in handy if you are a tent camper, or just tent camp in the backyard.  Putting up tents with this thing at night time is a breeze.  No longer do I have to either hold the big flashlight on my shoulder, or the little pen light in my teeth while trying to set the tent up.

Next up on the Super Mega Dad's Father Day wish list is Netflix.  Any normal dad watches movies, and Netflix makes it SO much easier to watch thousands and thousands of movies.  You simply login to your Netflix account, add movies to your queue, and movies start coming to you in the mail.  You keep the movie as long as you want, then mail it back when you are done with it and then are sent even more movies from your queue.  At any normal time, my queue has upwards of fifty to sixty movies, but I've heard of people with hundreds!

Netflix also offers up a streaming service that allows you to watch movies over your computer, or over a streaming Netflix device.  Microsoft just added this ability to the Xbox 360 at the beginning of the year and this was the main reason I subscribed to this service.  The only drawback here was that they don't have any first run movies on the streaming service, mostly just older movies, but it's still pretty cool.  I even watched an old Battlestar Galactica:1980 episode to remind myself how horrible it was.

Netlix offers a pretty easy way to give a gift membership, so try it out for your dad.

Now you shouldn't have ANY excuse to buy lame ties or yet ANOTHER dress shirt.  You're welcome.

And now, for the giveaway.  The people at Petzl were kind enough to give me an e+lite to give away.  This is the smaller cousin of the Petzl Tikka 2 Plus model that I'm using, but is still a really cool light in it's own way.  It's really light (as in not heavy, weighing in at almost a third of it's bigger brother) and has the same light settings I mentioned above.  The batteries last as long as 45 hours in their "economy" mode (vs. 140 hours for the Tikka 2 Plus) and the bright light shines at a blinding 16 lumens (vs. 50 lumens for the big boy).

The kids will hold a random drawing of the people that leave comments to this post.  Please put something like "sign me up for the light" or something similar in your comment to let me know you want to be added to the hat and I'll have the kids pull a name from the hat and we'll announce the winner next week.  Please make sure you leave your email address in the email field so that I can contact you for your address to send this.

One final thing, the folks at Petzl let me know that these headlamps won't be available to purchase until September 2009, so maybe it's good this post is a late Father's Day gift idea edition.  There's always Christmas right?  But, hey, whoever gets the light gets it before anybody else in the states so you can show it off to your friends and family and annoy them with the flashing red light. :)

One last thing, I got an award from my buddy Otter over at Life of a New Dad. I will post all about this sometime next week when I have more free time and when I know that my server isn't going to crash for extended periods of time.

So, there you have it.  Happy Father's Day, and don't forgot to check out all of my buds over at Dad-Blogs.com!