#463

Hackers, Bags, and History

So today was kind of crazy, but it had a few highlights.

  1. Meeting two employees I had seen on the net, in person I met Dominic and Ken in person at Dreamweaver’s Frumpy Friday. Dom I had been following on twitter, and Ken I had found on Flickr.

  2. Read a good review of one of my favorite companies. I love Timbuk2. They make amazing bags, and their new Hacker bag looks pretty schweet. Laughing Squid has a great review of the Bag. And I think that this bag will sell very well of the SF based company. But I do have a little hatred to send Timbuk2’s way. My hatred is in the from of their pricing. WTF. $120 for a bag? You guys make great stuff but this is a total stretch. If someone can justify why they can charge so much for their bags, and other lower quality bags are one third the price, then all hush up. But $120, plus another $20 for shipping is ridiculous. Now I say lower quality, because they are, but I don’t see why the upgrade in quality is worth triple the price. Also, hit me if I’m mistaken, but if it’s not a messenger bag, it’s not even made in the USA, one of the big reasons they charge extra. So ya, WTF Timbuk2.

  3. Came across one of original “inspirations” I spent another ten minutes browsing the Laughing Squid Archives, and came across a link to Jacob Applebaum’s photography of two recent hacker conventions. Jacob has a special place in my heart, although he doesn’t know it. My freshman year of high school, I moved to Santa Rosa and started attending NBLUG meetings. One of the early meetings I went to was a presentation on Wireless networks and the security related to them. Jacob was the one giving this presentation (he had black hair at the time) and was one of my bigger inspirations at the time to spend more time jerking around in Linux. So it was neat to see him on the front page of Laughing Squids blog, and taking amazing photographs, something I have also gotten into since high school started (although not because of him).

  4. Finally my experiences on the train today. This morning near Redwood city, a car was stuck on the tracks. So in the brilliance that is CalTrain, they shoved everyone off of the train and said buses would show up. Two showed up in an hour. Sadly two buses cannot fit the same capacity as a fully packed express train. So after an hour waiting in the sun, a local train picked us up, and half an hour later, we got to sf.

Then this evening, I got on the wrong train. And CalTrain does this stupid thing were they close the doors two minutes before they leave. So when I realize that I’m on the wrong train, I can’t get off. So I’m stuck adding 45minutes to my train ride. So lame.

And with that, I sign off. /Nat