Episode: 1510
Title: HPR1510: What's in My Bag?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1510/hpr1510.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:29:52

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Hello, and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Charles in New Jersey, and I'm back
with another show. This time it's also not about math. It's called What's in My Bag.
Actually, this will be what's in my bags, because I had action. I did an inventory of
both of the bags that I carried to work today. Today would be Monday, 12 May, 2014. So I
had two bags today. Both of them are black. One was a lunch bag, and the other was the
bag in which I carry my computers and other stuff that I need for work. It's a busy day
because I had two computers in the bag and various amounts of stuff. So it'll be a fairly
long list. I'll start with the computer bag. I suppose I should mention what is my bag,
and that is today I was carrying a black to-me t-tick messenger bag. The one that would go for
more like 80 euros as opposed to the 300-euro type that they usually sell. It has a padded
shoulder strap, a big pocketed flap because it's a messenger bag. Inside pockets and
compartments riddled all the way through it. Let's start with the flap pocket. You'll hear
rustling papers instead of clicking clack of stuff because I wrote this inventory when
I was on the train. You can imagine what the other passengers thought is I was taking
stuff out of my bag and writing down every little thing that I took out. Let's look inside
the flap pocket. It has a zippered pocket. Let me see what's in there. First it was my monthly
train pass, which I then put around my neck because it's in a wearable pouch. The pouch was made
out of a leather luggage tag holder. It's got an adjustable string fraying around my neck,
so I don't have to keep taking it out for the conductor in the train or put it into the slot
where someone could take it or I could leave it behind. It also has a little pocket in the back
for some extra one-way tickets, which comes in handy. Then I pulled out my building pass, my
access badge that I used to get into the office building where I work. It's got one of those cute
little belt clips with a retracting reel and a cord on it to have the badge hanging from my belt,
so I can just grab it and wave it over the turns down to get in the building. I also had five
blank CDR discs for doing file transfers for people who still use those. With a small wire bound
memo pad, three by five inches or about 7.6 by 12.7 centimeters. It's made by Ampad, it's model
20-867. Then I had another small note pad that goes with thank you gift from St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital, and that's about nine by 15 centimeters. Then I had a Zoom H1 handy recorder,
quick start guide, a shoe polishing cloth, still in its original plastic from New Jersey Transit,
where they look like a train system map and a dire warning about terrorism and calling it in.
Then I had a small four-in-one mini screwdriver, all black, with a couple of different standard head
and Phillips head screwdriver blades. That's general model 744. Then I've got a silver colored
stainless steel ballpoint pen by Shafer with gold trim, gold colored trim. Then I had
three microfiber lens cleaning cloths for my glasses or screens, I guess. Two of them are 20 centimeters
on a side, square, one is purple, one is black, and then there's a smaller one that's 15 centimeters
aside, also square from the optical shop in Princeton, New Jersey, and that's more of a magenta color.
Then I found my Sansa Clip Zip. It's a black 8GB of internal memory and a 32GB micro SD card
for storing other stuff. Then I had another mini screwdriver set, another four-in-one by lots
that's black with yellow end caps. It's also a four-in-one that I mentioned. That was it for the
big flap pocket. Then I turned to the side. There's a zippered side pocket on either side of the
of the tome bag. As I'm holding the bag with the the flap facing out, I opened the left side pocket,
which is long and thin on the edge of the bag. In there, I found basically a bunch of writing
writing tools. I had a stainless steel Parker jodder ballpoint pen. I like that because it has
fairly fine point and quick dry ink, which is helpful because I'm left-handed and I tend to drag
my hand through it. I've just written. Then I had a couple of cheap big mechanical pencils.
Both of them are number two. One was a 0.7mm lead, black with yellow pocket clip, and the other
one was a my preferred lead size, which would be a 0.5mm with a black cushioning grip. I don't
really need that, but it was there. It's dark blue with the cushion grip was black,
and the black pocket clip had broken off, but it still fits in the bag. Finally, there was a beige
pentel click eraser model, ZE2IT. That just covers me when I make mistakes. I don't think it's refillable,
but it is retractable and I can use it and just erase and not wipe out the top end of all my
mechanical pencils. I zipped up my left hand pocket and went to the right side pocket. I had three
identical black graph gear 500 mechanical pencils by pentel, all of them 0.5mm, and that's model
PG, pop a golf 525. Then I had a brushed stainless pentel graph gear 1000 mechanical pencil,
also 0.5mm, and that one is model PG, pop a golf hyphen 1015. That does it for the side
buckets. Now I tilt the briefcase forward and check the rear external zippered pocket,
which is empty, and that makes sense, because I just switched back to this bag from my LLB
orange and black computer bag on Thursday, 8 May. I guess I'm not surprised that I didn't put
anything in the in the back zippered pocket. Now let's go inside.
Click the catch release on the big flap and swing it back over so I can look inside. Now on the
outer layer there are some front pockets, two of them left and right, and that's relative to looking
over the case from the back. A natural way to hold it if you're sitting in the train seat and
trying to take notes at the same time. I'd say I had a set of white headphones for an iPod,
which has a non-working volume control, but since my Sansa clips it doesn't know from Apple volume
controls, they work just fine. I then had a the coolest device or Chachka I ever got from a
professional meeting from a swag booth, and that was a double-ended laptop brush and screen cleaner
that was given to me by prior executive search. It's an X-Waryl search firm in the U.S.
Hi Pauline, and it's sort of a grayish color with a white squiggly divider between the two halves,
and on one side when you remove the end cap you have a keyboard brush to get dust out of
dust and debris out from between your keys, especially on a laptop. It works really nicely,
and then when you cap that and open the other end you get something that looks like what we used to
call a miracle brush. It's a dust remover for your laptop screen, and it's on the other side,
and that also has a cap, and it rides nicely in a laptop bag pocket, which is doing in my laptop bag.
And that does it for the left pocket. Let's go to the right pocket, and there is just a one and a half
meter cat-fied ethernet patch cable. It's dark blue with RJ45 connectors on either end,
like those big phone plugs, oversized plugs that look like they should be phone plugs,
and it still has the original wire twist ties, because I was carrying it for a particular purpose,
and I didn't have to use it that day. So that's it for the front pockets. Now let's go look inside
the main compartment, and that has, oh no, it's not inside the main compartment. It's still on
the front face of the of the inner bag. It has another set of pockets on a layer inside that,
which I guess adds stiffness and protection to the bag, and gives me another set of pockets.
And let's see, that one has, yeah, the outer pockets are sewn into this one.
And that has my main key ring with the orange squiggly rubber arm band like thing.
It's on there not because I need a squiggly arm band, but the orange squiggly arm band has my
keys, and there's another key ring that looks very similar. It has a blue squiggly arm band,
and that's my wife's, so that we don't grab the wrong set of keys. Let's say what keys are on there,
just for fun. The house and garage keys for our townhome, I've got a set of keys for my desk
at work, and the kids apartment key on a grandfather, so we back them up sometimes,
and if they need us to go do something at their apartment or receive a package, we can go do that.
Our apartment complex has a common area with a gym and a business center in a theater room,
and we have a strange large plastic black thing that acts like a key that we can use to get in there.
Got a mailbox key and a shop right price plus club key card that's registered to someone else
that I used to get coupon deals at a grocery store that we shop sometimes.
Okay, then I have a couple of accessories for my Zoom H1 handy recorder. One is a stainless
tripod, and the other is a black plastic hand grip. I noticed that I'm such a Grazniak that I
still introduce a little bit of handling noise when I use that, but it's better than a handheld
Zoom. When you're using a Zoom H1, please do yourself a favor and be sure that you've pressed
the record button. Okay, now that's it for in there. Now there's an inner pouch inside that pocket,
and in the left side I had a couple of business cards, and a Dell Bluetooth mini travel mouse.
Papa uniform 705 model. It's working and has batteries, which is good.
The inner pouch and a right inner pocket, and that's where my Zoom H1 mini USB to USB mini USB to
USB 2.0 cable lives, and then the inner pouch in front has a small handheld hairbrush that's a
regular decagon in shape, about 10 centimeters in diameter, has a small finger ring on top for grip and
control. I think it might have been a regular hexagon once, but it's been riding in a computer bag
for quite a while, so it's a little bit squashed that ring. Let's see, I also had a 5 meter light green
cat 5 patch cable for Ethernet, and that has been used. Then I had the two power adapters, both 65 watts,
different voltages, one for my Dell Latitude eEco 4310 laptop that is for work that runs Windows 7,
IK. The other one is for my Sony VIO TX17P 11-inch mini laptop that runs CrunchBank Linux Waldorf.
Its name is Daringer. I got it in August of 2007, as a close-out deal with running XP back when
XP was going away. Then I have a USB to power adapter, a USB mini, I guess. I'm not sure what it's for,
it's still in the twist tie, so it's not used. I'm sure I had a purpose for it once.
Okay, let's move on to the center zipped compartment, which has two outer patch pockets, the left one's empty.
The right one is also empty. Oh, and there's one in the middle. Well, that has three pen slots that
are all empty, and a center pocket that has little bits in it, has a company pin for my company,
two plastic collar stays for shirts, and a very old sandisk cruiser micro USB stick,
with a 2.0 gig capacity. I have no idea what's on it. I have a feeling that I used it as
recently as say 2007. Okay, now let's go to another area in the inner bag. There's an area between
the big zippered center pouch, the everything pocket, and the laptop retainer or the two computers are.
Now this looks like it's mostly papers, and one is my notebook, which I wrote down all this stuff,
that I salvaged from the kids trash when they moved once. It's a blue spiral bound,
originally 100-sheet college-ruled model by Mead 06622, if you want to get one,
and a copy of Best Review Magazine from May 2014. The cover says data driven, so I think that's
the latest. Then I have an outline of an ERM system, oh, a set of components that we wanted to
write a specification for an ERM system that would be useful to build. Go into ERM some of the day.
Let's see, a document, permute a monetary authority guidance number 17 on commercial
insurer risk assessment from November of 2008. I've got a printed copy of the show notes from
HPR-1502. I have a listing of code in the R-programming language for a proprietary risk model prototype
that doesn't work, and I have to fix that at some point. Okay, then I've got a later size
pad of white line paper from Office Depot that's about half used, and oh my goodness,
there's a third-generation iPod Nano. It's the red color, and it looks to be quite dead,
and underneath all that is a Sharpie highlighter and yellow with smear guard. I'm sure Encladah has
smear guard. Okay, let's move on to the laptop compartment in the side that's toward me,
because the back of the bag is against me in the train seat, and the first computer is a
Dell Latitude E4310. With Windows 7, it's got four gigabram 320-ish gigabyte hard drive,
13-inch screen, I think maximum resolution around 1366 by 768, and its lease is going to expire in
November of this year. There's other software on it, and they'll talk about that sometime.
And then my 11-inch Sony Bio-Laptop Daringer, I name my home computers, but not my work computer.
It's been running Linux since April of 2008, which is good, running full-time on Linux.
Different distributions, but it's been on CrunchBank for quite a long time, because it runs really
nicely on a core solo processor like that one. I think the clock speeds 1.2 megahertz, so it's not
especially fast or powerful, but on CrunchBank, and for the things I use it for, it's just fine.
Okay, then I have a printed document between the computers to keep them from scratching one
another, and that is a set of instructions written in color, so the papers thick for using
the podium recording software used by the casualty actuarial society, where I'll be speaking
in about a week or so. Okay, we're getting towards the end.
And now I'm going to the inner bag, the center zip compartment, the everything pocket,
and there what do we have? Got two smartphone power cords that are components, so they have a
separate transformer plug that is plugged in, and USB micro USB to USB cable
that runs between the devices. An iPad power cord that doubles as an iPod charger if I switch out
the little transformer brick for one of the smartphone transformer plugs.
I have a wooden top that was the friend of mine turned on a lathe, and that's handy when I'm
on grandpa duty, I can pull it out and start playing at like four-year-old grandson,
can watch it go and say, hey, give me that, and then keeps him occupied for a while.
I have yet another mini USB to USB cable in its original wrapper. I have a pair of two pairs of
black sport shoelaces. They look a little big, and they're 97 centimeters. I have a green
ballpoint pen from TD bank, which is now in the States. It was a Canadian bank. I have a little
little bottle of eyeglass lens cleaning fluid. It's 10 milliliters or about a third fluid ounce in the US.
I have a little box of glide pro-health dental floss, four meters of the original size.
I have my Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, the one from my company. It runs on the T-Mobile network
coaching. I've got another, oh yes, a short USB cable that came with the Sands Eclipse. It's
micro USB to USB, which is redundant because I have all those others. I've got a Samsung
travel adaptor transformer plug that would have give, which would that little short cable
gives me yet another power cord for smart devices. I have a tube of Keel's lip balm number one,
which is a, it gets a 15 milliliters tube. Then I have a tiny Brookstone leather man style
multi-tool that has a non-working flashlight. It has a small pair of pliers, tiny little scissors,
a screwdriver, both standard and Phillips head, a cap lifter, which new englanders will know as a church
key, a nail file on the side of the church key, and a very small but very sharp knife blade.
You can see there's one small binder clip, because I print a document, don't have a way to
staple it or clip it, and then there's the final content, which is the Ziploc bag of everything.
And what does that happen? Well, it has four unlabeled CDs with offline reading documents that
I copied from my work computer, all non-proprietary stuff that is just taken up space.
My Zoom H1 sound recorder in its leather-like case might actually be leather, but I couldn't tell you.
And then there's a small rectangle of red paper that has on the front, it has sort of a heading,
www.french.about.com, and then two bullet points using hyphens as the bullets.
One is Chapito, and the other one is Amazon.fair, and a question mark on each of those.
I am not sure where that came from, but there you go.
Okay, then I have a case with a plastic case with two little microSD adapters.
One goes from micro to full SD, and the other one adapts from microSD to mini SD.
It would be handy when I want to take the card out of the H1 and put it into some of their device.
Okay, I see I have a stereo out cable that I could use. It's got three and a half millimeter
connectors on each end, so I could connect something from a headphone jack of one device to
you know, sound in, sound in port or an aux plug from another stereo or sound making device.
I have, oh boy, another mini SD to USB 2 cable.
Then I have a Western digital mini USB 2 God knows what cable.
I have no idea why it's in there or what its purpose was, but it's in there.
And five more pairs of collar stays in case I have, in case I have a shirt that doesn't button
down and need them. And then I have a cartridge of Intel SuperHB hotel Bravo, 0.5 millimeter
pencil lids model Charlie 505. And that's it for the computer bag.
And now I'll go to my other bag, which is a lunch bag. And what's in there?
Well, my lunch bag is a black, a black insulated bag with a foil-like lining that I
purchased for $10 US at the end of 2010 from the ground cow restaurant in Newport, Vermont,
which is where I grew up and my mother still lives. And let's see, what's in there?
It's a really good bag. And if you're in the northeast kingdom of Vermont, I'm sure all of you
are dying to visit. You should stop in and have breakfast.
So what's in my lunch bag? The first thing that went in were two plastic cooling bricks.
They're filled with some kind of cooling medium. I throw in the freezer at night,
and I take it out in the morning and it's basically two blocks of ice inside nice
safe blue, blue plastic prison. I throw it into my lunch bag and it keeps it nice and cool
until I'm ready to eat lunch. I have six Starbucks napkins that I rescued from
my coat pocket from a weekend trip somewhere. And I have an orange spork that was made by a Swedish
company under the brand Light My Fire that we purchased from the, yes, we purchased from the
container store. And then I've got a rubber-made container with my secret concoction that I'm sure
all of you will want a copy. And it's very simple. It's about 225 grams of 2%
faye Greek yogurt and about 28 grams of toasted wheat germ,
crutchmur, or whatever suits your fancy. I don't like raw wheat germ. It usually gets
rancid almost instantly. Or it tastes rancid even when it's fresh. And then just to make it extra
awesome, I put in about a tablespoon of sesame oil. And then I just stir it up and I've got
nice little way to kickstart my lunch. And then I've got three sandwich-sized ziplock bags with
chopped raw vegetables. Today I had carrot, red pepper, and cucumber. And that kept me crunching
for a very long time. Eating like this with protein and some vegetable, or in this case,
wheat germ is a substitute. A little bit of oil to add what I don't get from bread because I'm
not eating that. And of course a lot of chopped vegetables. So I'm always the best friend of my
produce man. I've lost about 60 pounds, so something's working. And even spending all that money on
fresh, fresh food and keeping the rule. If it's convenient, spit it out. I feel better and
look better and don't have as many aches and pains as I use it. So that's all good. And that's
it for my lunch bag. That's it for what's in my bag. And that's it for this episode. I hope
that you've enjoyed some of the ridiculous detail to which I've gone. Oh, my spork is orange.
Okay, so I didn't mention that. Orange is right up there on my list of favorite colors.
And so having divulged all this stuff about my bags, I bid you a due and hope to listen to your
episode very soon on Hacker Public Radio. Record a show, won't you? Take care. Bye.
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