We wish they’d had these things for sale the last time we had roommates. They were nice guys and all, but when it came time to “decorate” (with stolen road signs and advertisements for beer), they just pounded nails into the walls wherever their fancy passed. Wham-bam with the hammer; no thank-you, ma’am, with the measuring tape. Those guys didn’t need to measure, they eyeballed it. Not a foolproof method.

What we needed back then was a device that could have measured the width of the wall surface and handily divided it into the appropriate number of segments, indicating the best spots for hanging all that crap at equal intervals. The Strait-Line rolling tape measure does that and more—it also has an “auto mark” feature so you can use it one-handed. Convenient if you’re drinking a tall boy while you decorate, like one of our old roomies often was—or if you only have one hand, like the other one. (Tragic story, that.)

Anyway, back in those days there was no such thing as the Strait-Line. And now we suffer from all kinds of qi blockages as the result of messed-up feng shui. Don’t let this happen to you, OK?

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