The man is almost a personal incarnation of the old Silicon Valley DIY computer culture. He’s living the dream. He isn’t hurting anyone. Let him be.

As you can see, there was quite a bit of liquification, and some pretty gnarly scorching on the housing.
Please note both the black and orange plugs to either side of the adapter: those are all now fully fused and have proven too bothersome to attempt trying to separate, so screw it.

Where’s his Zune?

For me, I like the fact I just have one iPhone… No need for anything else.  Perfect!

 I guess having multiple smart phones on multiple carriers is just in case he doesn’t get reception and doesn’t want to relocate a few hundred yards?

the AirPort Express and MacBook Pro 85W magsafe adapter, which are out of sight in this photo,• bluetooth mouse,• binoculars,• projector connectors,• multiple Gameboy Lights (a Gameboy sold in Japan but never in the U.S.),• Gameboy link cables,• plenty of foreign AC adapters,• prism glasses for watching movies in bed,• sunglasses,• earplugs for concerts,• Ultimate Ears UE18 earplugs for flights,• Gameboy link cable,• tons of pencils for pencil games on flights,• tons of pens,• tons of sharpies,• tons of paint pens (signing),• red-blue-purple-yellow-green laser pointers,• credit cards,• hotel cards,• airline cards,• hard rock card,• medical cards,• small accessories like olloclip iPhone lens adapter,• Square,• flash keys,• flash media adapters,• cigarette lighter dual USB adapter,• audio doubler cable,• iPad USB/SD Card adapters,• toiletries for hotels,• batteries of many types (AA, AAA, CR2, CR128, odder types for things like my bag beeper for locating my suitcase)• eyedrops,• $2 bill pads,• pencil puzzles,• itineraries for upcoming travel… 

That’s rather a lot of things.

Samsung Galaxy SII (Hercules/T-mobile) – personal cell phone
Motorola V860 “Barrage” (Verizon) – work’s phone, they won’t give us stipends for ours
Gerber 400 series multitool in belt pouch
Mini-Magline 2xAA in belt pouch
Four screwdriver bits – Phillips 2, Phillips 3, small flat-head, large flat-head

Occasionally I carry a very small Lithium-ion powered screwdriver and it’s just easier to keep the bits in my pocket.  I also occasionally carry a six-in-one modular screwdriver, both are based on predicted need.

Sometimes when my wife and I travel overseas we bring her Lenovo Thinkpad X301, buy a foreign SIM card for one of the phones, and tether the laptop to it if it’s cheaper than using hotel wifi.  We obviously also bring charging equipment, but have gotten into the “iGo” stuff so we don’t have to carry a whole lot.  The phones get put into airplane mode and we use headphones to listen to music and can read books on them, and the phones let us check in.  We can also download maps for certain areas (like Paris when we went there) so we don’t need another GPS for when we know with certainty where we’re going.

I used to carry a whole lot of crap.  2m Ham radio, miniature POTS phone with a cable with alligator clips, small meter, pocket butane torch, camera, Palm, several different sharpies, some cable, etc.  I realized I never used any of it.  Once the smartphone with all of the basic communications features and many of the network-connected features that I wanted was available then I could carry a lot less.

I thought that was the point of the smartphone- it essentially did everything that one used to use three or four devices for, and one now didn’t have to carry those discrete components when the all-in-one solution would do 90%+ of what one could conceivably need…