The Nightly Charging Routine

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 10:58 pm | 3,653 views | trackback url

360-degree power outletsEverything is about systems. Everything.

Packing your bag for work. Making a lunch on the weekend. Filling the dishwasher. Shopping at the grocery store. They all involve organized, structured, repetitive systems.

My daily commute to and from work has me applying quite a few of these systems on a regular basis.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

One of the systems I have integrated into my regular schedule is my nightly charging routine, to make sure all of my equipment is charged, topped off and ready for the next day’s plunge into questionable power availability.

Here’s the short list of things I have to make sure are fully charged and packed every day before I leave for the office.

All of these get packed every night in my NorthFace Surge pack. Kudos to Steve “Fish” Frishling for making that recommendation on a brief jaunt to NYC we shared on Amtrak (see his full review of this pack on his blog “Flying With Fish” for more detail).

Steve’s blog has lots of useful information for travelers, photographers and many other things. I highly recommend you pop over there and read a few posts to see what he’s been up to. I finally talked to someone who puts on more airline miles than Rasmus :)

Steve is several orders of magnitude ahead of me in travel miles, but we have very similar mileage for our efficiency with travel and packing.

  1. A Palm Treo 680 with the stock 1200mAh battery
  2. A 2400mAh extended battery for Treo 680 (bought from Seidio Online). I blogged about this previously. Seidio makes a 1600mAh battery that fits under the stock battery cover and provides 25% more power too, if you don’t want to replace the battery cover or have a PDA case that can’t accept the larger “bump-out” battery.
  3. My shiny new Jawbone II noise-canceling Bluetooth headset (see my first impressions).
  4. A Samsung WEP410 Bluetooth headset. This is a backup headset in case the Jawbone runs out of juice on a call or trip away from my charger.
  5. An APC UPB70 Universal Notebook Battery to extend the life of my laptops on the road (also charges a USB device like the Treo or headset above).
  6. My Canon SD750 Digital Elph portable camera for anything and everything that I might need a quick camera for while away from my “bigger rig”.
  7. My 80gig 5th Generation iPod
  8. My T61p 15.4″ “widescreen” Thinkpad
  9. My X61s 12″ “ultraportable” Thinkpad
  10. My Playstation Portable, for entertainment and diversion when I’m stuck somewhere or need to get my mind off of a problem for the moment. I mostly use it for movies and games, but it can also do music, Skype and a slew of other things.

Whew!

Without structure and a system in place, I’d forget one of the above steps and put myself in a pinch when I’d need to make use of one of those items.

It’s all about systems.

Last Modified: Sunday, March 6th, 2016 @ 00:20

2 Responses to “The Nightly Charging Routine”

  1. […] to keep everything small, tight and light, because I pack it all in a North Face Surge backpack (best backpack I’ve ever owned for computers and commuting) and carry it with me to/from work (a 2.5-hour train ride each way, […]

  2. […] keep everything small, tight and light. I pack it all in a North Face Surge backpack (so far, the best backpack I’ve ever owned for computers and commuting) and carry it with me to/from work (a 2.5-hour train ride each way, […]


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