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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Every time I have to renew my Australian passport I have to buy a ream of A4 paper. Every time I forget where last time's ream was stored. I suspect someday I'll find thousands of sheets somewhere lost in my basement.

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Deep within your subconscious memories is a series of you unloading A4 from your printer, thinking about where to best store it, finding 20 reams already there, stacking this one on top, and then promptly forgetting the location.

"I don't put things where I think they should go, I put them where I am likely to look for them" - Adam Savage

I really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it.

Closest I can find is his concept of "First Order Retrievability"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCrHLYiGNo

I recently watched the video where he said it, but I can't remember which one it was. It was one of the ones on the Tested channel, either an ask Adam or one of the questions from a live stream they made in to a video.

One of his "Ask Adam" videos, I believe the same one he discussed Pica pens.

> I really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it.

Maybe, instead of attributing the quote to someone who said it, they attributed the quote to someone who they'd think would've said it.

No, Adam Savage has said something to this effect every time he talks about how his shop is organized and why it shifts around over time. The gist of it is that while most of his tools and common materials are first order retrievable, but theres a whole world of stuff in the shop that can't, so he thinks about where it should be stored and puts it there or there are times when a particular tool or set of tools is always used with some other thing in the shop, so it lives next to that other thing rather than on some rack of the same tools. What is most likely happening is that its all been in videos of which no readily searchable transcript exists, and he is not always very concise about explaining his core practices, so finding the exact quote is non-trivial.

Here's a Q&A where he says something like this: https://youtu.be/og0yYQAN1JE?t=233

I'd be better off putting them where I wouldn't look, that's probably where I'd look.

I've been following this since I heard him say it a few years ago, and I try to impress this upon my family as well

Periodically I buy things like Post-its because I can't find any--and then the next rare time when I really deep clean my office or attic, I find enough office supplies to open a stationary store.

A4 is an antimemetic paper size

I went the other way with it. Bought a ream of A4 and I use it for everything. I hope it causes chaos.

The trick is, next time you need it, make note of where you first look for it, and when your acquire more, put the newly acquired paper on the first spot you looked for the old stuff.

Ah, but now I need to figure out where to put the "remember to leave a note" note so I find it in 2026.

Leave it as a reply to this comment.

Wherever you store your passport of course.

Just buy a printer with two paper trays and reserve one for A4 paper. Problem solved!

Seems pretty heavy handed for something that happens at the cadence of Australian passport renewal (10 years in most cases). I believe I replace my printer at least that often.

Why doesn't renewing it online work? is there still a paper based component to it? I don't think I had that problem last time I renewed mine online.

Sounds like a PC LOAD LETTER issue.

PC LOAD A4, you mean.

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