These days, I've consolidated to a cashclip, an iPhone 4, and a key chain (with an innocuous 19-in-one tool set).
How about you?
Usually also either a vest or one of two shoulder bags with first aid and mags, sat phone, laptop and or iPad or kindle dx, some snacks, cisco console cable. Bigger bag (3 day assault pack or one size bigger) for trips, and spares in my car or the truck, and my trailer. I have a good point and shoot in most bags or on armor, and I have etymotics or ultimate ears canal phones. I also sometimes carry a canon in a dedicated d slr bag.
In civilization, largely the same, except sometimes ruger LCR 38 and or a sig mix and match with the g19 in some combination, or just knife and flashlight if carry is unadvised. Also I carry a wallet instead of ID holder.
Holy crap.
Have you been in any firefights ?
Almost involved in 3 possibly fatal car accidents in Kuwait earlier this year though, but luckily I am a fairly competent driver and swerved around or braked ... Riding a motorcycle in the USA would he great preparation for driving a car here.
Technically, it's basically either "learning how to do increasingly advanced satellite tech/eng work in the field, starting from a strong IP networking and sort of college ee/rf background" at the same time the industry itself was developing (late 1990s-mid 2000s). Also, political crap trying to deploy linux based servers on windows/activedirectory centric networks, with multiple layers of policymakers involved in every decision. Very very little worthwhile technology. The only people in the overall government space doing commercially-normal interesting tech seem to be TIGR, and for mostly-awesome (but still inferior to b2c webapps, by a mile!), Palantir.
On top of that, the whole sealand thing from 2000-2002, and anon ecash stuff in the caribbean from 1995 (mit) through 1999 or so.
Then, learning more about defense contracting and how the military works, having zero background to start, from 2003 onward.
And the "going to iraq thinking it would just be reconstruction and a technology land-grab, and it turns into a shooting war after the war itself is done" thing.
Combine that with generic startup things with somewhat more fraud and logistics problems than you'd face in the US, and living in a mix of crappy (iraq, afghanistan) and boring (5-star hotels in dubai and kuwait).
If you're interested in the war part, actual soldiers have way more interesting stories from iraq or afghanistan. For the tech part, the technology itself is really boring. For the military psychology part, just read catch-22 and slaughterhouse five.
Plus, writing it fully accurately would make me either look dumb or naive most of the time, and there are OPSEC and liability concerns detailing what other people have done or failed to do.
I think the most workable solution would be some kind of "techno-thriller" set in relevant places, but fictionalized.
I would love to read it no matter how infrequently you update. I think that you should think seriously about writing; your life would make for one hell of a memoir. It could even become an alternative career left to be pursued someday down the road.
If a well written book describing a life like that comes out then I would buy it hands down.
I blogged for a while (but it was all password-protected due to OPSEC issues). Then I mainly switched to just use quora.com to replace most of my other "recreational" computer time.
It is slightly crazy, but I think I am going to Strongly Encourage that everyone in my next startup get concealed carry permits, plus own firearms, even though it is not at all core to the business -- mainly because friday afternoon at the range once or twice a month might be a fun team-building exercise.
If it is concealed, no one should know. Open carry IMO is a bad idea in a lot of places, and not something I would want to encourage. That is what Starbucks seems to have a problem with. Open carry is bad because it makes weapon retention a much bigger problem, plus it negates the "no one knows who MIGHT be armed" value of citizen concealed carry. Also, if I were doing open carry, I would feel obligated to carry something like a $3500 Les Baer 1911 or a Colt Python, vs. a $500 Glock.
In pockets:
* Wallet. I looked around for a looong time for the perfect wallet, then I found these guys: http://www.all-ett.com/. I use one with leather lining, and it's an amazingly thin wallet, but which looks like a regular one. Has space for all my cards (not that many), plus some money.
* Cellphone (Samsung Touch, a terrible phone I'm stuck with)
* Keychain - An openable metal ring for easy removal of stuff, which right now include: Car keys, house keys, 8gb flash disk, and an old CPLD chip from my former job with a hole in the middle.
In back pockets:
* Coins, rarely. I almost never keep coins on me, but sometimes you get stuck with them after cash transactions (I prefer credit cards any chance I can use them).
* Extra keys, if I need (taking a different car than my regular one, etc.).
Used to have or want:
* Used to carry a small LED flashlight (don't remember which), but it lost its battery and hasn't been replaced (sadly).
* Wish I had a small pen.
* Have a Leatherman Squirt pocket everything, but don't usually carry it around.
eBay would appear to be the place to get them. Cheaper and, more importantly for me, international shipping.
I treat my phone like a phone, and generally leave it at home. It has voicemail, so if you leave a message I'll call you back in a day or so. Unless I'm out of the country in which case you should probably just email me.
I mean sure, if I'm going to be meeting up with people it's nice to have along in case plans change. But for the most part I just don't want people to be able to break my concentration whenever they choose to.
My bag traditionally carries more stuff: water bottle, MacBook, caffeine pills, pens, note cards, power adapter, highlighter, calculators, post-it notes, whatever paper I have accumulated since I last garbage-collected.
Really, a bad idea. Modafinil (provigil) or ritalin (methylphenidate) or adderall (d-amphetamine salts) are probably safer physically than caffeine pills, but potentially more addictive.
I only get generic caffeine pills, mostly because generic caffeine pills are amusingly called "Stay Awake". I wish all drugs were named in this manner.
Perhaps I'd better explain about the handkerchief. I discovered that, if I fold an unironed one, put it in my pocket and pull it out later, it looks like it's been ironed and is getting a bit crumpled whereas the truth is that it started out really crumpled and is getting flatter. Saves ironing and ends up looking the same.
Mine's a bit older but has (for the time) especially good light sensitivity, so that in most settings I can take a decent picture without flash (which would wash out a document): Fuji F31fd. I also had a Canon A640, until it was stolen. Much better lens, but a generation prior to vibration dampening and so the same shots were chancy at best. I guess anything with dampening would suit the purpose, though the Fuji gets 500 odd shots on a single charge.
P.S. If the document has sensitive data, make sure you don't lose the camera! (You might want to pop the storage card and carry it separately.)
I like a clean handkerchief - useful for everything from an acute bout of the common cold to the acutely embarrasing spillage of a colleagues coffee cup while on the phone.
As a boy, I always wanted to be the one with the string and the buttons and the matchbox full of interesting odds and ends in my pockets. It never happened, so the fixation remains. Perhaps a smartphone will solve that for me - Twine? They have an app for that!
In the bag: MBP, power adaptor, 20' extension cable with several sockets at the end, belkin travel surge protector, spare battery (I have an old-gen MBP), beats-by-dre studio headphones in protective case, two pairs of v-moda bassfreq headphones, iPad, iPhone USB cable (for iPad), (paper) notebook + pen, DVI-to-VGA adaptor, epi-pen + antihistamine drugs, emergency Cliff bar for energy drops, business cards,.
Also, the current Economist. It's small and light and ensures I always have some good reading available.
If I'm not going to work, I'm down to: Wallet, 1 cellphone, car keys. The ipod comes if I'm going somewhere with internet, or I think I might be bored.
* Phone (HTC Droid Eris, was great until VZW botched the 2.1 update)
* Wallet (always too full; I tend to accumulate receipts in here)
* Pen (Charcoal black Lamy Safari fountain pen. Never go anywhere without it)
* Moleskine (if it wouldn't look too out of place. I nearly always throw it in the car and take it in to many places)
Inside pockets: wallet, crappy LG phone, and my ipod so I can ignore others on the train.
I usually get the daily newspaper to occupy my time on the train otherwise.
That's all, what do I need else? (Sometimes I bring a Usb Flash)
I keep it limited to a wallet, which has my I'd two credit cards and cash.
My blackberry bold 9000
And my car key. Sometimes a lighter/cigarettes
in briefcase:
squared paper moleskine, car keys, pencil case (various 0.4mm pens, toothbrush, felt pen, lighter), wayfarer sunglasses, passport, business cards, 15" MBP & display port to vga adapter.
The 2" of extra screen real-estate doesn't give me a huge benefit usually (not enough to put two windows side-by-side); but it does widen the laptop enough to make it harder to use in tight spaces (ie. airplanes), and it does make the laptop heavier.
On the other hand, at the time I bought my MBP, the 13" MacBook Pro was not a Pro. I'm honestly not sure what I would get these days. I might go for the 13", and get a bunch of external stuff (display, mouse, keyboard, but mostly the display).
I am considering getting a 13" MBP or maybe an x301 or panasonic s9 whenever they next get bumped. I don't care for netbooks (too weak), but a long battery life small laptop would be a nice tool. The lack of a keyboard on the ipad cripples me; often, the blackberry is more useful.
Linux itself on laptops sucks more than on any other platform -- driver support, ACPI/APM support, etc. all suffer vs. Mac. OSX is a pretty decent Unix OS (although since I use ubuntu for most of my servers, the slight syntax variation vs. linux gets annoying). I also really like having Keynote, Pages, and Numbers available -- OpenOffice just doesn't do it for me. And, I use Adobe CS4 (mainly Illustrator and Photoshop). And for a gui text editor, TextMate is nice. And OmniGraffle.
Basically, Mac commercial software is a big plus, but fundamentally it's about having a great working Unix laptop which requires minimal tweaking out of the box.
Mac is for hackers in general.
Besides, I'll get a MBP (you can't beat the hardware quality) and put Linux on it. So who's to say they don't have Linux on it?
* locking folding knife ($1 from Walmart so I don't care if the TSA steal it)
* Phone
* Car keys