Too Much Crap, Part II

This weekend, sitting around my daughter’s house in San Diego waiting for her to poop the kid out, I became bored and decided to clean out my green computer bag as well as my newly-acquired “electronics backpack.” My wife and daughter claim this is my man-purse, or murse, but I fiercely deny it, even though I do feel far more comfortable now that I don’t carry around that big fat wallet in my back pocket.

Here is what I found:

 A 35mm Canon Rebel EOS Camera, which I acquired free of charge after accruing enough points on my VISA credit card rewards program. To this I added a zoom lens, charger, remote control, and numerous filters. There’s also a Speedlight extended flash, which she purchased for me after I boned the Christmas photos, blaming the low-light conditions in our living room.

A Canon Power Shot Digital ELPH, because the other camera’s too big to lug around and I still take crappy pictures with it, even after the new flash.

A Logitech Quickcam Pro webcam, in case my wife wants to see my face when I travel, or in the unlikely event she wants to have long-distance video camera sex. It doesn’t get used much.

A Sony Bloggie video camera, which I bought under the pretense of taking home movies of my grandkids, but I really got it because it’s cool and I wanted to post stuff on YouTube

A Motorola Droid cell phone (sorry, I mean a “smart-phone,” whatever) and a docking station, since I finally ditched that POS Blackberry Storm. More on this later.

My iPod, containing thousands of songs, hundreds of photos, and 3 or 4 movies which I definitely downloaded legally. And still, I can’t find anything to listen to.

A personal Toshiba Satellite laptop computer, because I’m not supposed to keep my crap on my work computer (even though I do sometimes, hope I don’t get caught). I got this one free on my VISA rewards program as well. I buy a lot of crap.

My Dell Latitude D830 work computer. I brought it along because a vacation’s not really a vacation where I work. There’s also an AT&T Aircard poking out the side, so I can always get online if something breaks at work.

A pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones, great for flights to Mexico or drowning out Desperate Housewives on Sunday nights.

A spare set of cheater glasses stored in a Ralph Lauren eyeglass case which I stole from my wife.

A red Nintendo DS, used for playing Mario Bros or Sudoku when I’ve had too much beer to do something useful.

A Memorex 4GB memory stick, to store, transport, and share illegal files with others.

A Logitech Cordless mouse, because I hate cords and I don’t like the touchpad on my laptop.

My work phone, a Blackberry 8300 Smartphone (it’s not so smart), in case they need to get hold of me.

A power adapter for European power, in case I have to go to Germany again. They have crazy electrical outlets there.  

A Logitech slideshow remote control thingamajig, so I can wander around the room when giving boring Powerpoint presentations.

A Western Digital external hardrive, for backing up all my crap.

A little black notebook, a.k.a My Diary, for jotting down my thoughts. Keep out.

A leather case for my Ray-Bans. I used to buy Target cheapies until my wife dropped $200 on a pair of Maui Jims, so I finally bought myself a nice pair of sunglasses. They’re scratched now, just like the Target cheapies.

In addition to all this, there are several miles of cables, enough chargers to power a small city, carrying cases, and instruction manuals (I don’t read them), four magazines, two notebooks, nine pens, forty or fifty business cards, chewing gum, and several hundred dollars in pesos.  After doing inventory, I now realize why my back hurts.

But I’d really like to get one of those portable DVD players. I think I’ll take a run up to Best Buy.

My son-in-law took this picture on his iPhone.  Thanks, Eric. Sorry I laughed at your 1.3 megapixel camera.