I just had to revisit the Christmas gifts for construction people post when I got a catalog from ThinkGeek. A lot of construction, architecture, and engineering folks like cool gadgets. Here are my picks from this company.

A Metal Safe for the Laptop: This one is designed so you can bolt it down to a desk, wall, or other solid surface. The bolts are on the inside of the case so they are not accessible. It holds up to a 17″ laptop and accessories and has a combination lock. This would be great for securing computers in job trailers. Except that perhaps the ready availability of crowbars might make it a little less secure than its intended use in dorms.

A Mini Refrigerator/Range: You can heat up your lunch, or cool down your afternoon drink in this 20 Liter capacity unit. It also works in vehicles and comes with the adapter. Set the temperature you want and wait a bit. It chills to 44 degrees, and heats up to 140 degrees. It’s 12.5″X13.5″X17.5″ and comes with three shelves.

Especially For Plumbers: Hey, this might even be helpful on the job to find out which side of the faucet the hot was hooked up to. Water takes on a new glow when it turns color coming out of the faucet. In this case, it even matches the temperature by turning blue for cold and red for hot. You can also get it ONLY in blue although that seems a bit boring. It comes with the batteries (thank goodness, if it was a plug-in model you’d only enjoy the colored water one time), and includes some spares too.

Especially for Everyone EXCEPT Electricians (they probably already have their own): Find out what any electrical item is costing to operate. Plug the unit into the outlet, plug the appliance into the unit. You can input what you pay per Kilowatt and find out costs by week, month and year. It also counts how many Kilowatt-hours the appliance is using.

Mini Laser Tool Set: Based on the tried and true concept of trying to put a number of functional things into one compact unit this one includes a laser, level, ruler and screwdriver bit holder. They say it will work for leveling shelves and pictures and for taking measurements and marking lines for cutting materials. Oh, and it comes with the screwdriver bits, one slotted and two Phillips.

Digital Measuring Tape: Perhaps a little light-weight for many construction pros, but nontheless handy. It’s a tape measure that displays the measurement digitally on its top. For those carpenters who can’t remember the dimension from the time they take it until they get back to the saw horse to mark the cut, this solves the problem by allowing them to click a button and save the dimension. It works in feet/inches or metric units and displays fractions down to a sixteenth of an inch. It measures up to 16 feet. Now, if they’d just add a calculator that helps with figuring rafter cuts and concrete volumes then we’d really be cooking.

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