Plus I'm sure that the Gates' keep the bathroom much cleaner.

I read the Boba Fett triology a couple years ago.  Basically Boba doesn't die in the Rancor, gets saved by Dengar and then takes down the bounty hunter guild.  I found it kind of hard to follow and a bit out there.  I'd skip that one.

The X-Wing books drew me in and were good reading.  I'd recommend those.

Timothy Zahn books tend to be very safe bets, though some are better than others.

Muftak is right, don't read the Jedi Academy series expecting it to be like the Thrawn trilogy, its not.  Though I read I, Jedi before I read the Jedi Academy series and it seemed to kind of speed through some of the slower parts.

Also the fragility of the Tie Fighters serves as a reminder to the Imperial Pilots that they must obey.  Its kind of hard to defect in a Tie fighter when you can't really run away and you can't land on your own.  By eliminating hyperdrives and landing gear in the fighters, they had to dock with the Star Destroyer.  And since they were pretty cheap to build, it was no great loss to leave one behind if they Star Destroyer had to leave in a hurry.  By reinforcing that the individuals are all cogs within the machine, the Empire was able to keep its own troops in line.

I agree with some of the earlier comments though.  I don't really see that the empire had a great need to put out fires, so to speak.  Their rule was pretty well established and they would have been only fighting disbursed rebel groups, not major Separatist groups across thousands of star systems.  So its unlikely that they would have sent in a group of just Tie fighters (why send in a Tie fighter, when you can send in an Impstar-Deuce and a whole wing of fighters).  Its not like they were short of Star Destroyers.

Lastly, I think its in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, but Obi Wan marvels at how handy it is that Grievous' ship had an internal hyperdrive, clearly a luxury in a ship that small, at that time.  Saved him from looking for a hyperspace ring, and let him make a clean get away from Utupau.

So I think Tie Hyperspace boxes would have been unnecessary for the Empire and would have actually run counter to some of their policies.

I haven't bothered to look, but do big box stores like Wally have those automated sprinklers, like in an office building?  I'm thinking they do and it's probably the kind of thing where they all go off together.  Which means the whole store would get doused.  And that's going to have a negative impact on a lot of what Wally carries (clothes, electronics, paper goods, the liner notes on CDs and DVDs, etc.).

Good episode last night.  Michael did his usual bit of hampering the actual productive influences of his staff, Dwight went off on a power trip that either no one cared about, or was the opposite of what anyone else would have done, Andy showed how pathetic and shallow he is (all show, no go), Pam got to regret more of her decisions when she was with Roy, and Jim actually tried.  It was pretty cool to see him like that.  I'm wondering if Jim will be Michael's new object of affection (he's got a girl, he does better at work, he's well liked at work, basically what Michael is not).

Watched TPM last night and I have to say that I like the music in it second only to ESB.  I'm not just talking about Duel of the Fates, the whole sound track just seemed richer.  I'm not a music producer or a music-phile (I don't remember what the real term for that is..), but the music just seemed to reinforce the feeling I had when I first watched it in the theater, how struck I was by the wealth and refinement of parts of the Star Wars Universe.  I mean, who here hasn't marveled at the size and scope of the Trade Federation and their ships.  The music seemed to really capture that lush and rich side of things.  Its not that the music was terrible in the others, they just didn't capture the tone the same way, for me that is.

How about an Evolutions of the Gonk droid set?