08.30.07
In The Bag
This is one of the things I’d said was coming up earlier this week; if you ever wondered just what it is I carry around with me all the time, LifeHacker posted my loadout. I don’t actually have a spiffy name for the whole deal; some folks go with “go bag”, others call it the “urban assault pack”. I just call it “my bag” and be done with it. (Confidentially, I’m surprised they posted mine– I would have thought for sure that my gear was completely uninteresting, though I bet the ’sewing stuff onto the bag’ aspect really sold it.) The ironic part about the “current reading material” is that I took the picture at 6:30p Friday, and I no longer needed the Pokedex with me as of 6a Monday (having completed LGrn). The real test of the bag’s portability, actually, is coming up in a few weeks… but I’ll wait to give you guys that news. Anyway.
I alluded there to the ‘game organization system condensed novel’… maybe one of these days I’ll actually get around to, y’know, writing that. The short short short version is: I keep the three most recently-interested games with me as well as whatever’s in the machine. In the picture, they’re: SRT:OG, Pokemon Emerald, Tales of Phantasia, and LeafGreen in the Micro; Heroes of Mana, Luminous Arc, Jump Ultimate Stars, and Diamond in the DS. (I used to keep extra DS titles in the GBA case, but it proved to be a hassle when I needed a DS game that was under one or more GBA games.) Little’s changed; I still have the same DS loadout (with LA in the machine as opposed to Diamond) but the GBA has Riviera in place of LeafGreen and SRT in the machine.
Ismail Saeed said,
08.30.07 at 1:57 pm
You carry all of this, John?
If I was ever actually on the job I’d spend too long sifting through the game gear (and looking poor while I do so) to get at the legal pad etc.
When I started my current job, I was taking a businessy bag, but gradually realized that most of what I was carrying was just used at the office and could stay in my desk there.
I realized that I only really needed lunch.
Then, for a long while there the only thing I was taking to/from this job was my lunch and a book to read (generally whichever Slayers novel I was currently on). I kept the two of them in a plastic bag at first, and eventually a small persistent cloth bag, so that I could just carry them together instead of using up both hands.
Gradually, my current project had me taking quite a bit of paperwork related to it as well as a memory stick (in the sometimes true, sometimes false hope of continuing work at home and bring the updated work back to the office). Ever since then I’m still stuck with all this paper. This is kept in the bag, and often the bag is overstuffed these days.
However, and here I knock very hard on wood, by the end of this month (by this month I actually mean September), I won’t be needing to carry all this paper back and forth anymore at all, and it’ll be back down to “just lunch.”
I intend to go back to just holding my lunch and a book to read over lunch when I get there. It will be a sweet time.
John said,
08.30.07 at 6:28 pm
I do carry most of it, as needed. Since some of the books I’m using are needed for work and home projects at once, I often have to carry a couple really heavy tomes. The idea behind carrying so much miscellaneous writing stuff is because if I want to do another writing blitz along the lines of how I handled the end of Inconsequential, I can do so without needing too much preparation time.
The game stuff is all in separate pockets from the main bag; since writing the post for LH I found that the top-pocket bags are a little bit overkill (I don’t need all three at one time, especially if I don’t want to have the gaming stuff with me for whatever reason), so I have them stored by my door in case I decide on my way out the door.
It does seem excessive, but I’ve been in situations where I needed each and every one of those things for one reason or another, and I’m a bit paranoid about being prepared.
Ramen Junkie said,
08.30.07 at 8:16 pm
Flickr has a whole group dedicated to this sort of thing.
Here’s my most recent shot, though it’s a bit dated. I don’t really carry those figures around, they were just in my bag at the time. I’ve alos dumped the Voice Recorder and my keychain rope broke.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lameazoid/482891278/
I’ve since added a smaller spiral notebook (about half a normal page), a deck of Transformers playing cards, and the Transformers movie Novel. I also keep my camera bag in my car with my heavy SLR and more equipment.
For what it’s worth…
My previous bag.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lameazoid/303566636/
and my next previous bag, before I started really carrying and caring what was in it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lameazoid/258978158/