Geez…kids these days.

Also, I couldn’t afford a dedicated mp3 player, and my walkman was starting to feel kinda bulky.Today, mp3 players are cheap, and my phone is a smartphone which must perform a gazillion other duties while keeping a charge all day. Making it play music for hours and hours would be too much for the poor thing. 

This is where, completely counter-intuitively, the combination of visual and tactile memory beats CTRL+F for me. ”Oh, I remember, I wrote the address down somewhere around the beginning of the notebook, on the day the person called me, and I doodled some flowers next to it, and it was just after that canceled appointment with So and So, which I crossed out multiple times in purple because I couldn’t find any other colour. And the page next to that had a luggage retrieval sticker from Bus Company since I took the bus that week to go to City where Such and Such called me and gave me their address.”*thumb thumb thumb*”Ah, here it is.”

I verified with my Samsung Galaxy Note that it is a Sissafean task to not discharge the battery WITH A USB POWER SOURCE CONNECTED no matter WHAT THE POWER SOURCE IS.  You can’t pump in enough juice at a rate faster than it drains. And that’s running only 2-3 apps with only two of GPS, Sync, WiFi or Bluetooth.

I have the car  dock.  The battery will run down with only music playing and the GPS Navigation on – WHILE IT’S ON CAR POWER.
I have 3 batteries and an (2Amp!) external battery.  It turns out that the only way back to a full battery is to swap for a charged one.

We need much less power hungry mobile CPUs or a higher amperage power connector than USB. 

When starting out on a long road trip (I’ve done two between Krakow and Brussels, and another set between Krakow and Vienna this month) I try to run through the check-list the night before:  Mophie battery pack fully charged.  Kensington brick battery fully charged (it’s little and I don’t often have to use it so it usually is charged up).  Paperclip or the little Apple tool to pop the SIM card out.  Cig USB charger thing (2x).  A couple of micro USB cables, a couple of iPhone USB cables, a mini USB cable (all to male regular USB).  Maps in Navigon, along with the address for the place in Navigon.  Phone number for the place.  

Oh and for road trips I also keep my old iPhone 3G on hand – it’s been relegated to iPod Touch status and is plugged into the car’s stereo system via it’s own, dedicated USB cable that supplies power and handles the audio (the cable is from Denison and plugs into a little box in the glove compartment which in turn plugs into the stereo system (Citroën C4)).

I also have a POS Nokia brick phone that is my “work” phone that, if all else fails, I can use to make a call to someone assuming I have their number in the phone.

If I’m flying I drop the cig USB charger things and just drop my flight info into Evernote (not that it is needed most of the time except to remind me when/where/how I’m going).  I try to get a taxi app and public transit app (or apps) for the city/country I’m going to, just in case the airport has some weird system or the taxis seem horribly expensive.

I don’t fly/drive a LOT …not like sales people or whatever… but it’s a reasonable amount and I’ve found that the little checklist, if followed, will ensure that I get where I need to go without any hassle.

Wow, a non-issue during the age of  Ubiquitous Static Anonymous Terrorist Communication Devices has become an issue.
Because that’s the only kind of people who ever used pay phones.

At least now the terrorists can’t communicate anonymously with cell ph…
Oh.

Why did they tear out the pay phones again?
Maybe it was because they didn’t want average people communicating anonymously about average stuff because that conversation needs to be retained for eternity, tied to your identity.

Talk about retentive, everyone must be a terrist in their eyes.
Authoritarian Dark Ages, because the Islam!
(Meanwhile…)

I’ve also used the same adapter to work with the cigarette lighter socket adapter I have that plugs into my motorcycle’s battery, and both charges my iPhone while powering a separate Tom Tom GPS device (which has turn-by-turn directions which won’t be on the iPhone until iOS6).