By Cherissa Roebuck

I pause in front of the looming blue and yellow building, take a deep breath, and step through the automatic doors. “Welcome to Best Buy,” says the guy at the counter as he dutifully greets me. I wonder if he can tell I’m lost. Sure, I’ve been into Best Buy hundreds of times (unwillingly), but today I have ventured here alone - to find a Christmas gift for my tech nerd husband.

I look around at all the departments: software, hardware, MP3 players, plasma TVs. Not sure where to start, I turn around and begin to make a beeline for the mall. But then I remember something a friend once told me. He said he had had been advised to never, ever, under any circumstances, buy his wife a present that plugged into an outlet.

Perhaps we women should follow the antithesis of his advice: if it doesn’t require power, it’s a risky gift for the man in your life. So cross off your list those sweaters and shoes you were planning to buy him, and get your guy something that he really wants: tech stuff. Here are my top recommendations.

iPod Shuffle: $79

Remember the first rule of buying for a tech nerd: just because he already has something that serves a certain function, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like a new one. Perfect example: the new iPod Shuffle from Apple. Sure, he might already have an MP3 player or even another iPod. But does he have one that clips to his pocket protector and holds 240 songs in its 1 gig of storage? At $79, this is a tech gift that is relatively easy on your wallet. Another added bonus: maybe he’ll give you the old iPod.

PlayStation 3: $599

If you’re even reading this section after seeing the price of the PlayStation 3, I commend you for being open minded. Don’t worry, I can’t afford it either. However, if you happened to have come into large sums of cash, and you are lucky enough to find a store that still has one of these in stock, you may have found the gift that will make all of your man’s friends green with envy. One notably cool thing about the PlayStation 3 is that it includes a Blue Ray disc player, which is apparently the format that will be replacing all our DVDs someday soon (Gee, I’m glad my husband has purchased a DVD collection larger than the local Blockbuster. But that’s an issue for another article). If you buy this game console for your techie, he will never be able to question your devotion. Period.

Civilization IV: $50

If your guy likes to play games on his computer, this gift might just be your ticket. I don’t really need to get into what this game is all about, because I know you don’t really care. All you need to know are these three things: 1) He will like it; 2) He can name cities after you during his quest for world domination, and that’s about as romantic as computer games get; and 3) the music that plays during this game is really nice, an almost soothing soundtrack that is somewhat like an African children’s choir. For those of you like me who have listened to the annoying machine gun sounds of games like Halo for hours on end, I needn’t say any more.