15 thoughts on “November 19, 2022: Power Up”

  1. Periodically I think of how much nicer deployments or even regular month-long exercises out at 29 Palms would have been with a Kindle and a solar charger. When I deployed, every spare cubic inch of my sea bag was full of books or cigarettes. I kicked one habit, but the other is for life.

    As it was, buying an (at the time) very costly 40GB Creative Zen MP3 player and a tiny Canon digital camera was one of the best decisions I made.

    1. With Mrs Runner and I doing more travelling, we're getting a lot better at loading up the backpacks (checked luggage fees be damned). It's not ideal, but I've used the Libby app on my phone and read ebooks from our library. On extended trips I also bring our Chromecast gen 4 so we can stream TV/movies. And those wonderful cube universal power adapters are not only handy in foreign countries, but provide a handy USB charging connector too.

      1. Thanks for the cube tip! We're considering a Japan+Korea trip next year, and this will be handy for South Korea by the looks of it.

      2. I’m very much into one bag (or one bag+personal item) travel. After a dozen years with a duffel, I bought a nice 45L bag for longer trips this summer when I went to my conference. I’m hoping to buy its 30L equivalent for weekend/holiday travel as soon as I see an exterior/lining color combo I like.

  2. We had an eBook reader years ago but I never used it because I just like the tactile sensation of books. When I travel these days I bring whatever book I'm reading. I also bring an HDMI/Lightning adapter and connect my phone to the hotel TV and stream movies and shows and Mrs. Twayn brings her iPad. She never showed any interest in computers outside of work until I got her that iPad and come to think of it, she probably could use an upgrade by now, that was many years ago.

    1. I bought a Kindle on sale from woot.com (Amazon's even more annoying affiliate) about 9 months ago.

      I think I have used it twice. Even had to figure out how to get it to re-start after a complete battery drain (has to be plugged into a laptop or desktop).

    2. I have a Paperwhite which for whatever reason is just close enough to a book to be acceptable (say, compared to a phone or tablet screen), and having that little bit of backlight can be so helpful in certain situations.

      1. The backlit screen & ability to carry multiple books in one form factor sealed the deal for me. It’s not my preferred format, so I still buy books all the time. I do believe paper books should come with a download code for an unlocked, DRM-free copy of the book, just like buying vinyl with downloadable FLAC/mp3 files.

        Our library system has a pretty mediocre e-book collection. I’m thinking about getting a Brooklyn Public Library membership after perusing its collection in Libby.

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