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It's that time of year again when everyone stresses out about buying the perfect gift for dozens of relatives and friends, some of whom we don't even like but feel obligated to buy for them anyway.
I hate the obligation of gift giving. I think it loses the whole point of the gift when you are obligated to get it or give it. And on the flip side, most of the people who buy into this whole gift-giving obligation thing don't even know me well enough to buy stuff for me that I want. I'm also terrible at picking out gifts for other people, obligated or not. I just don't do well with gifts in general.
My parents have recognized the futility of trying to buy stuff for me since I was about 10 or so when I pitched such a huge fit about a pair of couhlotts that my mom found for me, that she threw them at me and said she was never going to buy clothing for me again. And the huge sense of relief that came with it was just too much for my mom to understand.
So, since she just *can't* give up the idea of buying holiday and birthday gifts for her children, she insists on me writing a holiday wishlist every year. I don't know why people think I'm "too old" for this. I think the wishlist is a wonderful idea! I list exactly what I want so I never get hideous relative-gifts again and it's long enough that I am still surprised when I open my gifts. I love for other people to give me lists so I absolutely can't fuck up in buying their gifts.
I also use my list for my own purposes. When I get a bonus of money that I am not accounting for in my budget, I will go back and check out my list for things I wanted and buy myself something. It's a convenient bookmarking site of stuff I want for future reference when I can't buy it right when I see it.
A side benefit of other people's lists is that, when I have a friend with similar tastes, I might discover an item that I would like that they found first and I might not have known about it if they hadn't put it on a wishlist that I got to read.
Someone a while back mentioned an online wishlist site but I mostly ignored that because I use my own website to make a text-and-hyperlink-based list (http://www.theinnbetween.net/wishlist.html and http://www.theinnbetween.net/xwishlist.html). But the discussion of wishlists came up again recently with someone else who uses lists after childhood. His list was a simple text email, which gets the job done, but the convenience of the hyperlinks when someone doesn't know exactly what that item is or where to find it is quite helpful. So I did a search on online wishlists and came up with http://www.thethingsiwant.com.
This site is great! It has a few flaws, IMO, but overall it's a wonderful service. You install a button on your web browser, then anytime you see something online, you click the Add To TheThingsIWant button and another window pops up where you can review the display image, name, price, add notes, priortize how important it is, and add tags for easy sorting.
The drawbacks are:
As a guest visiting someone's list, you cannot sort by priority. You can sort by tag, but otherwise you just have to read the descriptions (which are simple and easy read) to see how much your friend or family member wants that item.
As the moderator, the ordering of the list is cumbersome. You can put your items in whatever order you want, which is great, but you can only choose to "move to top", "move up", "move down", or "move to bottom". I have 260 items on my list. Moving them one by one up or down the list is a royal pain in the ass. I like YouTube's feature for ordering favorite videos. It has a number box on the right side and you just change the number in the box and hit "reorder" and it moves a bunch of videos into their proper position at once. I'd like to see that function here.
There is no convenient selection for searching by tag. On the main page, they do list all the tags used at the bottom of the page, but once you're viewing a specific list, you have to either know the url format and the tag line to type it in yourself, or you have to see an item's tag that you want to group by and click on that tag, which will then filter out everything that does not have that tag.
**Searching by tag will bring up items in all lists, not just the current list you are viewing. I'd like to see something like a drop-down menu on the side with all the available tags in that list ... one that only lists the tags in *that* list and not all the others (if you keep multiple lists like I do) and one that only brings up items with that tag in that list and not the other lists who have the same tag.
The benefits are:
You are allowed to create several different lists and ascribe "permissions" for who gets to view it. When you assign one to a "Guest Access Only" permission, the tag search flaw of listing every item with each tag in all lists is fixed. Random visitors do not see items in the Guest Access Only list when they search by a tag, but Guest Access Only friends will.
The detail pages of each list include a small bar for each item that shows a thumbnail image, item name, price, priority, and tags. The tags are clickable so you can do a search of items only with that tag. There are 10 items per page for quick page loading.
They give you a blog and website code that you can put in your journal or website that is a mini version of your list and that will remain updated as the original list is updated.
There is a link in each item's description to view/buy the item that will take you directly to the purchase page (whatever page you were on when you clicked the Add to TheThingsIWant button) for convenience of your visitors.
When a visitor purchases something, they can then come back to your wishlist and indicate that an item is purchased so that no one else will buy it. You, as the moderator of your list, can indicate if you want to be able to be "surprised", thereby allowing anonymous purchases, or not. You can also indicate how many of each item you want, so that one purchase does not remove its availability if you want more than one.
http://thethingsiwant.com/joreth
I have two lists, both of which are public but I separated them out because of the content - I'm sure my family has no wish to see some of the items I want. I have a generic Wishlist and I have an Adult Wishlist. I have attempted to order the lists according to priority because my generic Wishlist has so many items, I figure people will get bored before they finish reading it, so I put my most important items at the top. Many items on my various lists are really expensive. I am not expecting to get these as gifts, remember, I use this list for myself too.
Click on whichever list you want to view. You can then scroll down on the following pages to view the items. Click on the "view" or "buy" button to go to the online store that sells that item. If you want to search by tag, you can either wait until you see an item with a tag you want to isolate, or you can just type in http://www.thethingsiwant.com/joreth/tag/ in the url bar and add at the end of that url the name of the tag you wish to isolate followed by another /. I use the following tags:
accessories
back
books
car stuff
clothing
cock rings
dance
clothes
dvds
electronics
for fun
furniture
gift cards
harness
health
housewares
jewelry
miscellaneous
music
pets
photography
restraints
security
shoes
tools
vibrators
The tags in red are tags for adult items only. The tags in blue are tags that overlap and can be found in both lists. The black tags are in my generic wishlist.
So, for example, you could type in http://www.thethingsiwant.com/joreth/tag/shoes/ to see all the different shoes and boots that I want. Unfortunately, searching by tag does bring up items in all lists. This means that clicking on the "furniture" tag will bring up a set of bookshelves, and also a Rider Rocker Fucking Ball. Sorry family.
Oh, and if someone wanted to get me a gift card, those are located at the end of the general Wishlist, even though the "priority" is 3 and I have some items with priority 4. Or you can do a tag grouping of "gift cards" to isolate them.
***EDIT***
The one feature I particularly dislike is that when you use the same tag in multiple lists (as I have a general wishlist and an adult wishlist and I have "furniture" in both), and you search by tag, items in all your lists with that tag come up, even when you're already inside one particular list.
I prefer to leave all my various profiles "open" so that people don't have to subscribe or "friend" me or whatever in order to view it. But, with the holidays coming up, my family will be wanting to know my wishlist. I have no problem with them *knowing* that I have an adult-themed wishlist, but I'm pretty sure they really don't want to see what's on it. So if one of my family members goes to my general wishlist and figures out how to use the tag feature, they'll end up seeing my adult wishes too.
That sucks.
So, temporarily, I have enabled Guest Access Only for my adult wishlist. That means, in order to see it, you have to have your own TheThingsIWant account, you have to log in, you have to go to my accout at http://www.thethingsiwant.com/joreth and click the "Add To Guests" button that only shows up on my list if you're logged in. This will give me access to your Guest-locked list (if you have one) and will send me a request asking me to friend you back. When I add you to my Guest list, you will then be able to see my adult list on my profile page under the general Wishlist link.
Annoying, sorry. I'll probably remove the Guest access after the holidays, if I remember or if this site separates out the tags for separate lists.
