Pocket dump December 2014

It’s been a while, blog. Good to see you’re still (mostly) working just fine. Here, have a post!

I dumped out my pockets, took a picture of the (carefully-arranged) contents, and here’s a breakdown of what it all is!

This is what’s in my pockets right now (well, this plus my trusty Nexus 4, with which I took the photo, and a white men’s handkerchief). From left to right (ish):

• My “wallet” which is really just all of my cards and cash stacked up and held together with a binder clip. I may switch this out soon to something from Saddleback Leather. Maybe.
• An orange clearance-rack 8GB USB stick. I got tired of my expensive ones falling apart and breaking in my pocket. This one was made by Lexar and is almost entirely plastic; the only visible metal is the set of copper contacts on the USB connector itself.
• My pocket knife. For a long time I carried a Gerber Artifact (I went through two, in fact). But both of them suffered from an irritating problem: Almost immediately, the ball bearing that’s supposed to keep it closed popped out of the lock arm. So I’ve stabbed myself more than once on the “craft knife” blade (think an X-Acto knife) on the Artifact. I switched a couple of months ago to a different Gerber knife, the Mini Paraframe. It’s nice and sharp, has a handy clip so I don’t have to dig around in my pocket, and it stays closed!
• A Fisher Space Pen. This model is the " chrome bullet". I’ve had it for ages, but it was sitting in a cup on my desk for so long that its ink cartridge had dried up. I got a refill on Monday, so back into my pocket it went!
• A (relatively) cheap bluetooth headset. It’s a Plantronics M25. It pairs with my phone and does well enough for voice calls. When it comes to stereo audio, it’s absolute shit. But I think that’s more Android’s fault than the headset; it seems Android has a problem with not knowing how to downmix stereo audio when streaming it to a mono destination. There are helper apps to, er, help with that. I’m just too lazy to care.
• A microfiber cleaning cloth that I got as a promo at Dell World. Based on the URL on the tag, it’s a “Smart Cloth” from Toddy Gear.
• My keys. Pretty standard; the cloth is over the teeth because you can copy keys from just a picture these days. Also on my keyring: a Gerber Shard. It’s like the Artifact, but without the nifty “stab yourself in the leg or fingers” feature. Miniature prybar, wirestripper, bottle opener, Philips and flat screwdrivers.
• My Fitbit One. I’ve lost like 50 pounds since mid-January, all from eating less and walking more.