All a college student needs for a sumptuous feast is some boiling water. This is the essential ingredient for Easy Mac, tea and of course, Raamen noodles. But if you live in an older dorm — or anywhere in Los Angeles — you don’t want to die of lead poisoning. No matter what they try to tell you about the bottled water craze, you can tell them — at least it doesn’t run through lead pipes.

Though the water might come out of the faucet scalding hot — or even just warm enough to mix up some hot coaca — invest in a boiler instead. Immersion boilers, though failure-prone, are cheap, easy and small enough to hide from an RA. Or, just invest in a plastic boiler kettle. They run about $10 and it’ll be gross in less than a semester. But it won’t be as bad as:

Reduced cognitive abilities, or nausea, abdominal pain, irritability, insomnia, metal taste in oral cavity, excess lethargy or hyperactivity, headache and, in extreme cases, seizure and coma.

[via Wikipedia]

(Those things are also caused by alcohol, so try not to get confused.)

Remember this from chemistry?: Heat causes solvents to become aqueous more quickly. They dissolve easier. So, only use hot tap water to wash things or for making baby formula (please don’t take that seriously). And don’t cheat — hot water won’t boil that much faster than the cold. And boiling surely doesn’t remove lead content.

And if you think it’s an old wive’s tail, you can check out my source here.

One of the best ways to control your first-page Google hits is to register a domain name under your own name. If yours isn’t available, try adding your middle name as well. For example, mine is michaelkellysutton.com.

Once you’ve registered your personal web page, you need to decide where to redirect it. It might be a little expensive to get buy hosting for this site if you’re not going to do anything with it. Here are a few ideas on where to redirect your resume site:

• Your LinkedIn profile
• Your blog
• Your Facebook/MySpace profile (be carefule about this one)

or

• a random lolcatz website

So hop over to GoDaddy and register yourself.

So a few nights ago, here in New Haven, CT, my car was broken into. My front passenger window was smashed, my door dented, and (among other things) my new Garmin GPS was stolen. How mean.

I drive an old Jaguar XJ6, and my GPS was actually in the passenger-side glove box. My new Adidas Superstars were sitting on the back seat, so I’m assuming they were worth breaking my window. And once inside my car, why not look around. And then why not leave my door slightly open, so that once I get back to my car, my battery is dead. Geez, guys.

Anyway, I will get my window replaced this Saturday, and eventually I’ll be able to buy back everything that was stolen from me.

For now, I’ve taken the time to research a little bit. What could I have done differently? One thing I’ve found online is called GadgetTrak.

GadgetTrak provides proven theft recovery solutions for a wide range of portable devices including cell phones, PDAs, removable media devices (iPods®, Sony PSPs® digital cameras, flash drives, GPS devices) and Apple computers. GadgetTrak can tell where your stolen gadget is, who stole it and even what they’re wearing.

If you can connect your device via USB to a computer, you can use GadgetTrak. It’s a piece of software that, once your device is connected to a computer, will be triggered to send its whereabouts to your GadgetTrak account. You can then print out this information and present it to your local law enforcement. Then, if they care, you’ll be one step closer to getting your stuff back.

When I first noticed my car was broken into, I tried waving down three cop cars. All looked at me, but none stopped. So while those of us in New Haven are probably out of luck in this sort of predicament, it’s worth a try for others of you.

Any other tips or ideas? Let me and your fellow HackCollege readers know in the comments.

Finals are upon everyone not studying abroad. Chris and I over in Dusseldorf are busting our balls making our thesis films, though. Here’s a roundup of all things finals related to gear you up for the next week:

• Study Music: Groove Salad [HackCollege]
• Early Exam: Breakfast or No Breakfast? [HackCollege]
• Before an Exam: Get a Good Night’s Rest [HackCollege]
• Don’t Sleep Through an Early Morning Exam! [HackCollege]
• Finals Prep Roundup [Lifehacker]
• Tips to Make Your Finals/Papers a Little Bit Better [GearFire]

We wish everyone the best of luck for finals week!

If you’re the type to break up with your significant other over email, text message, Facebook message, or AIM, BreakUpEmail can help.

Check a few reasons why you are breaking up, decide whether or not you want to remain friends, choose a typical “break up line” if you must, and submit. You’ll receive a grammatically correct, multi-paragraph text ready for copy and paste.

To begin ending your relationship: See BreakUpEmail.com

It’s Thanksgiving Break, and many of you are at home with your parents. Are you studying for upcoming exams? Finishing papers? Finally buying the textbook and reading it? None of the above? If you’re looking to procrastinate, why not give your parents a good start on your holiday wishlist. Ask for a digital voice recorder.

Think back on this semester. How many classes did you miss or skip? Of those, how many did you miss or skip because you were coughing, sneezing, hungover, lazy, or just too tired? Probably all of them. Here’s an idea: Get a digital voice recorder. I had one during my undergraduate years, and it was a lifesaver.

If I was ever too tired or just with a head cold, I’d still trudge to class. Maybe I didn’t take notes, but I still didn’t miss anything. I would record the lecture, start to finish, and try to absorb as much as I could without pen and paper. This process was a lot less stressful, and I wouldn’t have a guilty conscience for skipping yet another lecture class.

I used a tape recorder, but I would recommend one that records to .mp3 or .wma. This way, you can store them on your computer and even send your recordings to your friends.

I did a quick search on Amazon and came upon the Olympus DS-40 Digital Voice Recorder. It records to both .mp3 and .wma, has 512MB of internal Flash memory, runs on AAA batteries, has 5 folders for organization, isn’t too ugly, and is priced under $150. But feel free to look around, yourself, for one that you like.

FileHippo is a cleaner, better Download.com, offering the newest updates to popular software without the popups and without the spyware. Their best feature, however, is their Update Checker. A small download with amazing speed that does exactly what it says and nothing more: It checks for updates to all the software you have on your Windows PC.

If you’re like me, you like to keep you software up to date, ready for all the newest features and bug fixes and glitter and glam. FileHippo’s Update Checker makes this tedious task very simple! A 100KB download, no installation required, 2-10 seconds of your time, and, BAM, it will list all the available software updates and even beta updates, too. Very easy.

Visit their site to download: FileHippo Update Checker