Packing 2012 Style

I’m taking off for two weeks on a working vacation defined as I will be working while the rest of the family is on vacation. I found it interesting that the list of what I NEEDED to do in getting ready was

  1. Go to the Apple store and pick up a 500 GB hard drive. The second computer I ever owned was the original Macintosh – 128K RAM and all the storage you would ever need (!) on a 400K floppy. So, I am carting with me the equivalent of 1.3 MILLION of those disks, because, of course, I need that storage space.
  2. Install and license copies of Webstorm and Dreamweaver on my laptop.
  3. Copy thousands of pages of books on to my iPad, including Eloquent Javascript, the SAS documentation on logistic regression, Beautiful Data, Javascript: The Definitive Guide, SAS Documentation on Proc Mixed and six SPSS manuals.
  4. Downloaded an app my friend recommended for calling and texting internationally – Viber. I’m not so sure about it though, because some people told me they got charged for calls and texts even when they used it. If you know anything, please chime in.
  5. Charged my iPad, iPhone and laptop.
  6. Synced all my files using dropbox
  7. Saved the web pages I want to go back to on Delicious.
  8. Shared files with a collaborator on Google Docs
  9. Shared more files with other collaborators on our company intranet

The first thing I packed was a book, Practical Text Mining. I started reading this book right after I picked it up at SAS Global Forum and after 200 pages got sidetracked with work. It is the only book on my reading list that does not come as an ebook, which is unfortunate since it is over 1,000 pages long.

Since every story I ever tell about anything includes the line,

“I was out of town …”

it can be concluded that I travel A LOT. Packing has changed greatly over the past 30 years but here is one thing that hasn’t – Never put anything in a checked bag that you absolutely have to have when you get there. 

So, the second thing that went into my carry-on was underwear, along with an extra pair of contacts and an extra pair of glasses. I don’t know what it says about me that I packed a book on text mining first. I was actually thinking about the weight limit of the one bag the rocket scientist is checking when he flies out the next day with The Spoiled One. She insists on packing enough beauty products for a very ugly small country, so I figured I would take the heaviest thing I had in my carryon bag.

It goes without saying that my computer, external drive, iPad and iPhone went into my briefcase, along with one cable for charging. The other chargers could be packed.

With all of that done, I was almost packed. All I needed to do was throw some clothes in a suitcase – which at one point in distant memory was actually the definition of packing!

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