Each year, along with the main dress-up Christmas party, Unitech has a little in-house party where among other things, we do a fun gift exchange game. Rather than doing the typical boring (and potentially stressful) Secret Santa exchange, we do a game where, to begin with, everyone brings a wrapped gift (around $20 value), which they typically do not identify themselves on via a nametag.

Then everyone draws numbers to determine playing order. The first person to go chooses any gift from the table, opens it, then lets everyone know what it is. The second and subsequent players have a choice — you can either pick something off the table and open it, or decide to steal an already-opened gift. If you are person A and you steal from person B, person B can then steal from someone else (he can't steal right back from you) or go to the table. If person B steals from person C, C can then steal or go to the table. If person C steals from person D, however, D must pick something from the table. To state it more simply, there are a maximum of three steals per turn. Note that though person B can't steal right back from person A, person C can steal from person A. There is no per-gift maximum number of steals, so a popular gift can make the rounds throughout an entire game.

In this shot (from December 20th), I ponder my choice. I was in the enviable position of being the second-to-last person to go, so I could steal whatever I wanted, with only two unopened mystery gifts on the table. Unfortunately what I stole in this round (the "Shrek" DVD) got stolen back from me in the final round, but luckily it was the second steal in that round, so I got the final steal of the game. I ended up going for a dead hard drive that came with a $20 bill. I had been wanting to take a dead drive apart for the powerful magnets and for the spindle, which I was thinking of using for a homemade arcade spinner control (unfortunately this spindle was lacking the needed threaded hole).