Episode: 508
Title: HPR0508: Pocket Full of Miracles
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0508/hpr0508.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 22:01:31

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Hello, this is Lost in Bronx, and this episode of Hacker Public Radio is a What's in Your
Toolkit episode.
I myself don't carry a bag anymore.
I used to when I lived in New York City, but I have since moved to a especially rural
part of Arizona, and I'm in the car all day, so the car in a way acts as my bag.
I have a lot of stuff in there, and I won't go through all that.
It's just normal car stuff, so to speak.
But I have an affinity for wearing cargo pants, or pants with a lot of pockets if I can't
find cargoes.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
It's just, oh, so 90s, but I like having a lot of pants because I carry a lot of stuff.
Okay.
So, my right top pocket, what do I have?
I have a little bit of cash, and when I say a little bit, Lord knows I mean it.
Okay.
One set of keys.
I have keys for the house, the car, or we have a shed outside, and well, that's really
about it.
I have a lot of other keys.
Keys, let's over from crap, that honest to God, I don't know where they came from, but
I hold on to them out of, I don't know, some weird sense of security that I get from it.
Like, you know, someday I'm gonna come across a lock, I can't open, and I'm gonna magically
produce the key I need.
I don't know.
Don't ask me.
I don't analyze myself that deeply.
But I will tell you this much.
Here is key set number two, because I have locked myself out of my car, and my house often
enough to know that having a second set of full keys in my pocket really comes in handy.
If you have ever done this, trust me.
You want a second set of keys on your person when you need it.
Two sets of keys, it doesn't hurt anybody, carry them, okay.
What else do we have?
Oh, my pen knife, my favorite little thing, okay.
This is a little tiny, cheap, little news week international branded pen knife.
This thing was given out as a free promo.
It's got red plastic little sides, and on the other side they have the audacity to put
one of those Swiss army knife symbols on it, but I'm sure those guys all they did was
sell their brand.
Because this thing isn't that great, or is it?
Because what it's got is a blade, surprisingly sharp, which I have on occasion sharpened myself.
It's got itself a nail file with, on the end, you know, I do use the nail file part, I sharpen
my nails, my nails need it.
And on the end, it's got a screwdriver, flat head screwdriver, and I use that to know
when it's really cool, okay.
On the other side, I have a pair of scissors, little tiny scissors, very, very small, you
know, almost the kind you'd use to clip your nose hair, not quite that small, I wouldn't
recommend it with this pair, but at any rate, I use these things all the time.
I've used these things to cut paper, I've used these things to cut string, even rope, small
ropes, I've used it, it's marvelous, I use them all the time, okay, at the very end of
this little knife, I have a little set of tweezers, it's one of those cheap, I don't
know, they're almost, almost, you know, flash metal type of tweezers, and they're not
pointy, and they come to a clip, I use them occasionally, very rarely, though you can't,
you know, if you ever try to grab a sliver that might be in your skin, I mean, you'll
be there for hours, you can't grab anything with that thing, but I have it, you never know,
right?
Okay, and on the other side is a toothpick, which yes, I have used on occasion, but I
got to tell you, even though I've used it, it kind of creeps me out, I stick this thing
in my mouth, you know, it's like three o'clock in the afternoon, I haven't brushed my teeth
for six hours or more, eight hours maybe, depending on when I got up, right, and I stick
this thing in my mouth because I was chewing what peanuts or whatever, and I got something
in my teeth, and I pick, and I pick, and I pick, and I finally get it out, and what kind
of germs, what kind of bacteria are hanging on this thing, ready to infect the rest of
the world with whatever crud, whatever crawling chaos I have coming out of my mouth, I don't
know, and I stick it right back into my little knife, and I stick it right back into my
pocket, I don't know, creeps me out, but I do it anyway.
What else do I have here?
I have some pocket change.
Some people I know, actually a lot of people I know, they save their pocket change every
night or every couple of nights, they come in, they empty out their pocket change, and
they drop it into a big container of some kind, a big carbony or a piggy bank or whatever
they happen to have on that, and maybe once or twice a year, they're able to empty that
thing out and have several hundred dollars worth of change.
I mean, that's awesome, that's amazing, I think that's fantastic, why?
Because I use my fucking money, man, I use my change, I use every last penny I have,
and if I can't, if I end up with like, my pocket is choked with pennies, I drop them
in my son's piggy bank, but other than that, man, quarters, quarters are gold to me,
man.
Oh my God, I walk by a vending machine, something like a bubble gum machine.
I collect, they're these little action figures called homies, I collect those things, don't
ask me why, it's stupid, I just love them, and I collect those things, and they sell
them out of vending machines, and if I have a quarter, well you need two generally,
if I have two quarters, I'll buy myself a homie.
Those are great, nickels are great, dimes are great, I love these things, I don't collect
my change, I spend my change as part of my money, and I hold on to it till I spend it,
and brother, I spend it, okay, I'm not too proud to buy a cup of coffee and count out the
dollar and a half it takes in change, in tens, you know, in nickels, in pennies if it takes
to buy that coffee, because, well, I'm a caffeine addict, but anyway, okay, the next pocket
down, that is where I keep my phone, now, sometime in the far off misty future, I'm going
to have a horrible rant about Verizon wireless and their service, but I'm not going to do that
today at any rate, that's the type of phone I have, and I do not care for it, however,
it fits very well in the pocket of these pants, so, my phone, as of right now, has a pocket
all of its own, I don't use some kind of belt thing, now what do we come to on the belt?
I do have a case attached to my belt, this case carries my portable media player, what
I have is a Sansa E 270, running Rockbox, and I have talked about Rockbox in the past,
and others have done whole episodes dedicated to Rockbox and the Sansa, so I won't cover
that again, other than to say that I think it's fantastic, anybody who is looking for a quality
media player should look into buying an old Sansa product and putting Rockbox on it, do
a little bit of research, beforehand, and look at what they have at any rate, my particular
media player, what I did is I made a handle for it, I find them a little bit too small and
I dropped the damn thing many times, and it scared the crap out of me, I thought I'd break
it, so what I did is we bought a case for it, I have a plastic case for it, clear plastic,
acrylic, or something like that, polyurethane, or polyethylene, or whatever the many
polys are, and it's clear, it completely encloses the thing, leaving openings for whatever
plugs I might need to put into it, I then took that thing, used some Velcro and attached
it to a large handle that I have, in turn put into a case, now I have a small Bell and
Howell cell phone case that I picked up at a second hand store, and I cut that thing
out to make room for the handle, to put it on my Sansa, and it fits in there beautifully,
it attaches right to my belt, the handle sticks up, I grab the thing, undo the Velcro and
pull it out, it holds like a microphone, I can hold it easily, I don't drop it unless
I put it down, the only time it's hit the floor is when I put it down and walked away
for getting I have the ear plugs in my head, alright what else, we switch to the other side
of my pants, and I'll pull out my wallet, now everybody's got a wallet right, the difference
between my wallet and a lot of people's wallets is I don't keep any money in my wallet,
I keep my money in my pants pocket, and I keep everything else in my wallet, my cards,
my credit cards, my bank cards, and my driver's license, and a whole bunch of other stuff
like that, so anyway, I have my wallet, I have my bank card, I have some miscellaneous
bank statements that I might have jammed in there, I have my credit card, I have, oh what
is this thing, oh hmm, I won't talk about that one, let's see I have my library card,
I have my Safeway card, Safeway for those not in the know is a chain of supermarkets
in the United States, and I have a card and you can get some relatively good discounts
if you use the card when you buy there, but of course they log absolutely every single
thing you buy every time you go there when you use that card because they have it key
to your name, except of course one day my card didn't work right, so they gave me an
application and a card, fill out the application, bring the card back, right, well I never
filled out the application, I brought the card back, and the card works, isn't that awesome,
so now I am completely anonymous whenever I get my discount, I don't think that's so
bad, I wish Google could do the same, anyway, oh what is this, a fortune cookie insert,
I jammed it into my wallet to keep it for the future, let's see what does it say, there
are no limitations to the mind, except those we acknowledge, words of wisdom, words to
keep in mind, well I'm trying to, but I generally forget I have it, what's the next thing,
oh another Safeway card, I have them from you know times past, lots of business cards
from oh my god, these people are photographers and they're were terrible, actually a little
bit crazy when in person, let's see I have a very old insurance card, let's see what else
do I have, another business card blah blah blah, let's see old credit cards that I should
have cut up, less said about that the better, okay here's one item of possible interest, I have a
very very thin, the size of a credit card when seen on an edge, a very thin paper abacus, yes,
an abacus, believe it or not, I went to the trouble of designing and creating an abacus made of
paper, something you can carry in your wallet, something that small that you can calculate
numbers on, well I was pretty good for a while, I could actually get up to multiplication with
an abacus, I couldn't do a division yet and I couldn't certainly couldn't do any advanced
mathematics and this was about a year and a half ago, right now I'm out of practice and all I
can do right now is addition which pretty much a well-trained parrot could do, but I'm doing my
best and my paper abacus does very very well in that regard, if anybody's interested I'll probably
at some point do a tutorial on how to make one, I can't imagine however that anyone but myself
would be interested in an abacus made entirely of paper and box tape, but other than that,
I do have one just on the off chance that I need to calculate numbers while I am somewhere out
in the wide, wide world, more cards that I probably should cut up, a photograph of the family,
virtually the only photograph of the family that I have in front of a car that I no longer have,
but only a couple years old and well surprisingly touching when I happen to run across it,
and that is about it in the wall, alright what else could we find in this pocket, a safety pen for
God's sake, I have no idea where it came from, I think it might be a leftover from Halloween,
now this is three months gone, so why would I have a safety pen left over from a Halloween
there in Liza Tale, and not when I'm going to sell today, okay next we have the pocket in back,
and I have a small, very small pocket sized notebook, it's one of those marble things black with
you know fake marble white going through it in a nice black band, this thing is very ancient,
but it's mm, I would say a good 80% used up with a massive amount of notes, drawings of ideas,
I've come up with recipes, I even have extended notes for podcasts that I have done for HBR in the
past, written here, I mean it's just a mixed bag, I highly recommend anybody who might be considering
putting together some sort of daily survival kit to have some small notebook that they can refer
to on a regular basis, I don't know how many groceries are listed in this thing, but I have at
least 50 or 60 different grocery lists on this as well, it's just a daily thing to have
and refer to, that in and of itself can be an unbelievable comfort,
in that same pocket I also have some tissues, why because I have sinus issues, what else do we have
in my pocket, well more tissues, I have three kind of three coffee coins, now unless you happen
to live in the same place, at the same time that I do, these will have no meaning to you, however,
a coffee coin on one side, a jester's head, he has a jester's cap and quite a smile in a small star,
painted on one cheek, on the other side we have a crown surrounded by a starburst,
it is the color of gold, it is made of plastic, it is quite cheap with flash on, the north pole
and the south pole of the coin, what a coffee coin gets you, if you have 10 of these you can go down
to the local coffee shop and redeem them for any single coffee product that they have on the menu,
that might not seem like a big deal, however when money is tight and maybe you have a sweet tooth
for one of their really decadent caramel, fudge ripple, special blah blah blah, crappy, mostly sugar,
coffee products, my god, you can indulge yourself because you have been buying so many of their
products in the past, some of those things go for over $5 a piece, if you have 10 of these plastic
coins you can drop them into their hands and get something for effectively, well I won't say
nothing, effectively for whatever little bit of excess you paid and all the other previous coffee
products you bought, however sometimes you don't have any pocket cash and you have a screaming
need for caffeine and it's nice to have these coffee coins and one last thing, my son, I don't know
exactly how it started but my son collects something called, that we call peas, now they're not
peas that you would eat, they're not green peas, they're not goober peas, they're not anything
like that, what in fact they are are what in America we call BBs and they're not made of metal,
they are in fact made of plastic, if you go to Walmart, if you go to Kmart or any of the various
star dot martes, you will find in their sports section a small set of shelves reserved for
BBs or as they're often called today air guns, okay, these are rifles that shoot plastic, well
pellets I guess, they're small, they're round and they're made of various colors and they're
also made of plastic, these things cost I don't know what maybe $5 for a case of a thousand,
they're no big deal and you can get them in a wide range of rainbow of colors, my son has several
hundred of these but every single one of these were found on the ground, somewhere here in the
white mountains area of Arizona, that's no big deal but imagine bending down several hundred times
to pick up a small pea, and we're talking about a true collectible, some of them are quite
beautiful, and every time we find one if we're not near the car where I keep a bag of these things,
I put them in my pocket, and I guess that's about it for my pants, this has been Lost in Bronx
and all of the things in his pocket, you can contact me at Lost in Bronx at gmail.com that's L-O-S-T-N-B-R-O-N-X
at gmail, take care.