You know what really grinds my gears? I bought a new laptop four years ago, and now I’m in the market again, and the market hasn’t improved. Yeah, so Mac introduced a backlit keyboard four years ago - I’m sure someone else did it first, but it was the first one I saw - and now, four years later, backlit keyboards are still not mainstream. My first laptop, a 17" Dell monstrosity, had a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) display. Guess what? Today, you can get a 1920x1080 display in a five-inch cellphone, but there aren’t many options in a reasonably-sized laptop. If you add those three requirements together - high resolution, 13-14" screen size, and backlit keyboard - you’ve got a product that no one makes. That really grinds my gears. And don’t even get me started on PC touchpads….

I have found that all my writing utensils are woefully inadequate, and I’ll tell you why.

My favorite four writing tools:

1. Staedtler Multi 4: This is a great writing tool: four different writing instruments. It came with black, red, and orange (“highlighter”) ball point pens and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil installed; I’ve removed the red pen and replaced it with a stylus cannibalized from the 4-in-1 below. I really like the (not rubber) grip on the Staedtler, and having four different points is pretty awesome, even if I almost never use the orange pen (even though orange is my favorite color). How could they make it better? Well, a laser pointer (and flashlight) would be cool to have built in, but my main gripe is the cheap, loose feel of the tip selection. It’s “gravity-based,” according to the website, and that just seems to mean that it rattles like the Texas Giant.
2. Promotional 4-in-1: Lasers are cool, of course, but only when they work. This would have been a great pen if it had included a pencil; with a ballpoint pen, (now removed) stylus, (weak and now dead) laser pointer, and (very weak) flashlight all in one slim metal cylinder, what’s not to love? The convenience of having all the tools in one was great, but once the laser died (less than two months after I got it free with my OpenMoko FreeRunner), the lack of a pencil made it less than cool.
3. A. T. Cross ATX Rolling-Ball Pen and Pencil: This matching set was one of the best gifts I received at high school graduation, until I lost the pen. However, I do have a few gripes… mostly that the pen and pencil were separate. And no stylus (or laser). And having a cap on the pen (rather than a retractable) means one more piece of which to keep track. Less importantly, the design of the tools was just a little too wide.
4. Pilot G2 05 Pen and G2 05 Pencil: These are like a cheap version of the ATX set above - a joy to use, well made and solid feeling; smooth flowing ink and extra-fine soft lead. The same criticisms apply - two separate instruments, and the rubber grip makes it them just slightly too wide. One note about the pencil - the eraser is awesome! Best design I’ve seen in a mechanical pencil. Big enough to be useful, doesn’t fall out all the time….

I always preferred pencils (they’re erasable! what’s not to like?!) until I had Mr. Sam Wilds in sophomore and senior history in high school. His feeling was quite the opposite - and I quote,

Wow. I own an aluminum MacBook, and it’s pretty tough, but this Panasonic Toughbook is ridiculous. Wish I could pull the video over, but Forbes’ website doesn’t allow it, so you’ll have to click through to see the ridiculousness.

Tesla Motors, which produces the all-electric Tesla Roadster, is one of my favorite companies to watch. I saw a review in Road and Track magazine that gives very good marks to the Roadster, and noticed something I’d missed - Tesla now makes a sedan! A quick look at the company’s website shows the sedan does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds, seats seven, and goes 240 miles on a 45 minute charge. With gas averaging $2.548 a gallon nationally, the Tesla Model S sedan’s starting price of $49,900 doesn’t look so bad!

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my $200 knife. A lot of frugal people might think that’s an exorbitant purchase, considering that pocketknives may be had for $3.95 and up on Google. I’ll wager very, very few knives that cheap have blades made of steel as good as the S30V in my Benchmade 943SBK.

The point is that a knife is, beyond doubt, essential gear. The convenience of having a knife close to hand makes everyday life quicker in hundreds of tiny ways. Aside from the everyday - opening letters and packages, crafts projects, etc. - a simple bladed tool increases survival possibilities in all kinds of situations. Art of Manliness has a post on the subject, and while it’s largely tongue-in-cheek about the uses of a knife, it does give a good overview about the basic types of knives and agree with me that every man should carry one.

So, I am now the proud owner of my very first firearm: the Springfield Armory XD Sub-Compact 9mm.
It was a gift from my lovely fiancée, who also bought me a SuperTuck concealed carry holster from CrossBreed. She received from me the XD Service Model 9mm, as well as an “adorable” (her word, and I agree) dress she’d picked out at Caché. We’ve been thinking about buying pistols since last May (before we were engaged) and we finally had the money in our “Goal” account to do it. So we did.

The Simple Dollar had an article a few weeks back where Trent explained each item in his messenger bag (and Lifehacker has several such articles), so here’s my response. Trent wrote about the frugality behind each item in his bag; my bag is about convenience and readiness. I think that a man should be able to respond to his situation when necessary; part of that readiness is knowledge, and part of it is tools and equipment. It would be ridiculous to carry around enough gear to respond to every situation, but a minimal amount of gear can account for most of the likely situations I encounter.

We are rapidly approaching the point where your phone is your computer.

Here’s your future:
The 5x optical zoom, 10-megapixel digital camera is built in.
Video playback (which means audio, duh) is built in.
Instant messaging is built in.
Internet browsing is built in.
Mobile gaming is built in.
“eBooks” are built-in.
Video capture is built in.
Video conferencing is built in.
Once you pair your earpiece with the phone, it automatically, and wirelessly, connects whenever it is turned on.
When you set your phone down on your desk, it will automatically, and wirelessly, start charging.
Once you pair your external keyboard, mouse/trackball, display, and speaker system with the phone, they will automatically, and wirelessly, connect whenever you set your phone down on your desk.
Once you pair your car to your phone, keyless entry, remote ignition, and other “car key fob button” functionality will be right there in your phone.

What is “essential gear”? Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar wrote earlier this month about the Suitcase Test. The premise, as he states it, is “If you had to fit all of your belongings in a suitcase and walk away, what would you pack?” From a personal finance standpoint, this leads to getting rid of a lot of stuff

• anything that doesn’t fit in the suitcase - and only buying new things if they fit. I think that a suitcase for your whole life is a little extreme, but I am certainly on board with the underlying idea: there are a few things in life that you need. Things that are essential to survival, either in the wilderness, the post-apocalyptic urban jungle, or mundane life today. These things are essential gear, things that a real man should always keep close to hand. As the Boy Scout motto states, “Be Prepared.”

So, my basic needs as a human being are air, water, food, protection from the elements, and communication with others. Assuming I’m on planet Earth and not kidnapped and released at the bottom of the ocean without a scuba tank (both pretty decent assumptions, since I’m not a millionaire with space-travel hobbies or a high potential ransom), I’ll have air, so that’s one down. Water isn’t much trickier; in day-to-day life I have a faucet, but it’s always nice to have it close in either a bottle or a pack, especially when I’m out of the house. Food I generally assume I can buy, but a knife in my pocket prepares me for the possibility of being stuck in the wilderness. Protection from the elements means shelter and clothes. Easy enough; I tend to consider a waterproof jacket in this category as well; depending on your climate, you’ll need other items as well, like sunglasses, parkas and boots, or sunblock and chapstick. Last necessity is communication. While I could certainly survive without it, I put a cellphone in this category at the very least.

In my first post about notebooks, I mentioned a green Army-issue notebook that is roughly the size of a moleskine, 5.5" by 8" and 92 pages. I couldn’t find them online at the time, but now I have: the Federal Supply Service item 7530-00-222-3521. Price? $2.33 each, shipping included. Moleskine notebooks run $9.60 and up.

Add a piece of duct tape and you’ve got a pen holder - wrap it sticky side out around a pen to form the holder, place that against the spine of the notebook, and wrap another piece of duct tape around the whole notebook cover (sticky side down) to hold it in place. Too easy, and it makes a nice contrasting stripe around the cover!

Yes, yes, I have fallen to Steve Jobs’ evil empire… I bought a MacBook. It’s the lower-end of the two new aluminum 13" laptops. And it’s a thing of beauty. The one thing I regret about it is that my local PX didn’t have any with the backlit keyboard available.

So small, so light… battery life of four to five hours… Bluetooth… Energy Star qualified… there’s no way I could have gotten all the features of my new MacBook from another retailer. After my abysmal experience with the T-6330U, I was ready to pay well for a new laptop, and pay I did… $1,299. But the hardware is so beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong; the software is nice too, but I’m not a huge fan - at the moment - of the OS X look and feel. At some point in the near future there will be a Fedora-On-A-Mac experiment. However, I can say that I’ve never had a computer that was this easy and this painless to set up before. Did I mention that the keyboard is a joy to use and the machine is virtually silent?

Well, my old Dell finally bit the dust. HDD just couldn’t keep up any more. So I bought a new one… and then I returned it. DO NOT BUY a Gateway T-6330U. They do not work. During normal usage, the T-6330U freezes every 5 to 8 minutes. Normal use. Freezes. Don’t buy it.

After my recent (and sporadically continuing) laptop woes, I was reading through the Uncrate blog and found the Voodoo Envy133. Good grief this thing is pretty. While the technical specifications fail my wishlist expectations, it’s still a tempting buy. The big killer, which also rules out the new Samsung X360 line, is the lack of an optical drive. I can live with only 2GB of ram and a 1.8 GHz processor (current laptop has 1.5GB and runs at 1.7 GHz); the 64GB SSD more than meets my requirements. But the look is fantastic. You should go check it out. Try building one with the “Sunset” color… amazing.

I’m traveling away from home each week this month, and my laptop harddrive failed last night.

Horror.

Although all my data was backed up on an external (aside from the presentation I’d just started), it all became useless. Thankfully, it magically rebooted six hours later, but not until I had seriously considered a new laptop. Having done the consideration, I figured it was time to post ’em. So here’s my wish laptop.

I demand a lot from my sunglasses, just like all my other gear. AR 670-1 states that sunglasses must not be “trendy, or have lenses or frames with initials, designs, or other adornments.” The lenses must also not be “extreme or trendy colors, which include but are not limited to, red, yellow, blue, purple, bright green, or orange,” but rather “traditional gray, brown, or dark green shades.” Since my sunglasses have to go with everything I wear, brown is out… can’t wear those with a black suit or jacket. As an avid shooter and future second amendment participant, I want sunglasses to be rated at ANSI Z87.1-2003 high impact standards or better. Lastly, I want polarized lenses, but I also want to be able to swap the lenses out any time I want.

Guys, let’s face it. Women got the better deal whenever it was decided that they could carry stuff around in bags during the day, and we couldn’t. There are plenty of blog entries on the net defending the murse, but this isn’t one of them. I am proposing something completely (sort of) different.

Backpacks.

Yes, that’s what I carry. I do have an “Urban Plumber’s Bag” from the now-defunct Bohemian Traders, and it gets a lot of compliments. It also draws a lot of attention as a murse. However, I recently bought a CamelBak Transformer. It’s a great bag for a lot of reasons. First, I’m a big fan of hydration packs in general. Not having to take the backpack off and dig through it to find my Nalgene bottle when I’m on the go is a great deal. Plus, the Transformer is modular. The basic pack is just a camelback sleeve with shoulder straps, two small zipper pockets, and a single open flap pocket. However, it comes with two other pockets that clip on whenever I need them.

“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.” –Beryl Pfizer

One essential piece of gear for anyone who needs to remember anything is a notebook. I have one with me, either hand carried or in my gear bag, ninety percent of the time. Bible study and sermon notes, shopping lists, to-do lists, and things to remember are all in the same place; as long as the notebook is long enough, everything current is there.

Here’s what I want. A good quality weapon that I can use to maintain proficiency shooting on a target range once a month or so, with ammunition in a caliber useful for personal defense that also won’t break the bank on those monthly range outings.

My pick: the Springfield Armory XD 9832HCSP06. A .40 S&W caliber pistol, small enough for concealed carry, but the right size (with a magazine extension) to practice shooting as if it were a Beretta 92. Yes, I realize that there are plenty of other weapons on the market which meet those conditions, but having fired the XD .40 and .45 service models, I really like the XD. It fits my hand, feels like a natural extension of my arm, and fires as smoothly as anything else I’ve used. The 9832HCSP06 also has Trijicon Night Sights built in from the start, always a good thing.