I've carried one pretty much every day of my life (so, starting at about 14 or 15; I'm 55). A tool that can trim a thread, open a box, open a bottle of wine, tighten a couple kinds of screws, punch a hole, and pluck a splinter while still being small enough for EDC is a big win in my book.
Is it the BEST screwdriver? Certainly not. Is it the BEST corkscrew? My WineRabbit is losing no sleep on that question. Are there better tweezers in the house? Absolutely. But the SAK is in my pocket, and is good enough for most tasks.
Yesterday the knob on my office door was loose. It's the kind of household issue that often drags on, bc you notice it when you're doing something else, kinda make a plan to get a screwdriver and fix it, but then forget about it until the next time you touch the doorknob.
But because I had my Swiss Army in my pocket, I took 10 seconds to tighten the screw right then. Problem solved.
As they say in photography, the best camera is the one you have with you.
We appear to agree it sucks at everything and is better than nothing, which is why I have one in my satchel but not on my keyring. Why did that need so many words? Meanwhile, I haven't intentionally installed a Perl interpreter so far this decade.
We don't really agree, though, because I don't think it sucks at ANYTHING.
It's pretty good at everything it does. Are there purpose built specialist tools that are better for many of the things it does? Sure! But the efficacy of a Swiss Army Knife shows that, most of the time, you don't need to bother chasing down the perfect screwdriver (e.g.) if there's just a loose screw to deal with.
Oh. Spoken like someone who's never used a really good screwdriver.
Myself, I like Wiha's fullsize multibit one that I got in 2018 or so, first because it's an excellent, versatile, thoughtfully designed, and very repairable tool, and second because keeping it and one big flathead in my toolbag is all the screwdrivers I usually need around the house. Granted, that's about a 20-pound toolbag. But it's also everything I'll need in the 90+% home repair/maintenance case, along with my socket set ~99%, and I never have trouble finding it or anything that lives in it. (Unless I forget to put things back, of course. But that's on me.) Same for everything else a Swiss Army does, which is why there isn't one in my toolbag.
I don't really need to convince you, of course. I'd just hate to see anyone inadvertently misled into overspending on a broadly unsafe "all things to all people" social statement play, the exact equivalent in taste and quality of a Mont Blanc fountain pen, rather than invest the same money in more reasonably priced tools worth using. And what's on my keyring is a Leatherman Squirt.
The last time I wrote code every day as part of my job, it was in Perl as part of some site development using the Mason framework.
I am unapologetic about my love for Perl. Something I learned in that role was how much more important transparency is than cleverness. Perl has a way of enticing you to do very "clever" things -- there's more than one way to do it, as the saying goes, and some of those ways are VERY NEAT! Unfortunately, a large number of the "neat" approaches also approach brainfuck-levels of oddness.
Most languages don't have that rabbithole, or at least the hole isn't that deep. But with perl, man, you can do some ridiculous and awesome things that even YOU won't immediately understand six months from now.
About the 2nd or 3rd time you get bit by that particular snake, though, you start to build your code much more conservatively, and with much more of a long-term intentionality built in. The code I wrote in that job after those lessons took root is still probably the best work I've done as a programmer -- neat, clean, consistent, and above-all understandable to whomever ended up needing to work on it later. And I put a lot of that down to just how easy it is to write HORRIBLE Perl.
I'll chime in here and note that, until very recently, there wasn't an airbag system that really appealed enough to ME.
The affordable ones, now long in the tooth, required a tether. The nicer ones were built into vests that weighted more, were hotter, and sometimes required a subscription, meaning a billing error could result in a nonfunctional safety device. Um, no.
AlpineStars released one that was ALMOST right a year or two ago called the Techair 5. It was (is) accelerometer driven, so no tether, and while it has an app it doesn't require a subscription. However, it IS heavy, and it IS hot, and it DOES require that you mail it in to be serviced after a deployment, so that was still a no-go for me.
However, last year AStars released the updated TechAir 5 Plasma, which has all the goodness of the original TechAir 5 while also being materially lighter and cooler -- plus, the canister can be replaced by the end user. It's spendy ($800 or so), but I bought one immediately. I wear it more or less every time I get on the bike. I live in the American South, so when I say I'm not any hotter wearing it than I would be without it, you know it's vented well.
(In fact, I wore it on a 4-day road trip between where I used to live (Houston) and where I live now (Durham) 2 weeks ago. Was it a hot trip? Absolutely; I was riding a motorcycle in TX, LA, MS, TN, and NC in the summer. Did the airbag make me less comfortable? No.)
As a motorcyclist myself, I always felt drivers should be forced to do a certain number of hours on a motorcycle to make them more aware. But, those atrocious drivers would probably get injured so quickly that the idea would never fly. Now they are just driving.
It's nuts, right? I mean, I ride, but I know plenty of folks who are subscribed to the F9 Youtube channel who don't just because so much of the content they do scratches nerdy itches.
Some of my favorites, in case anyone's interested:
* Ryan's periodic "check out this weird bike from the past" clips are always great, but I really LOVE the one about the Honda Rune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjuWiKz9zno
* Their "trilogy" of sorts about Harley, and the hows and whys of their odd and honestly self-defeating decisions, are all great, but my favorite is the one that compares an Indian Scout to its then-corresponding Harley model; the Indian made 43% more power, and it's all down to Harley's genuflection at "tradition". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ooue7i73zo
* They did a "how to deal with dealers" video that is really a thinly veiled tribute to a particularly excellent and longstanding dealership, which is just lovely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbr3JZAXDxA
* And my personal favorite is the FANTASTIC film homage built into Ryan's vid about the Ducati Desert X, which he ended up buying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcFqVIadWYo
I mean, look at Meta. The stock you can actually buy through your broker is not actually a stock that can control the company, so in a very real sense it's not a "share" in Meta. Zuck controls nearly all the "preferred" shares that have supervoting privileges, so he can operate it as though it's essentially a private firm. The board, which in a conventional public company could exercise control over the CEO, has no ability to remove him.
Excellent tip, and one I rediscovered earlier this week when I realized my Mac wasn't sleeping (the culprit: I'd left Powerpoint open and in slide-show mode).
I used to use DevonThink, but I quit long ago. I'd be interested in hearing how you use it, especially if you're not an academic.
"Anymore?" At what point has the GOP worked for "the people" at all?
I'm 55. At no point in my life has the GOP pushed any policy initiative that would help regular humans. Instead, they've been the party of fearmongering -- about women, about drugs, about immigrants, about African Americans, about gay people, and the devil, about trans people, etc.
The Dems have been the party that advanced actual helpful policies, but holy crap do they ever have a messaging problem IN ADDITION to an effectiveness issue. But at least their marching orders are actually helpful.
Nixon created the EPA, he expanded the Clean Air Act, he signed the Endangered Species Act. He did a lot of good for the environment in the early 70's.
> I'm 55. At no point in my life has the GOP pushed any policy initiative that would help regular humans.
You're overstating the case a bit. Nixon and Ford were not bad for most people. Nixon's motives might have been extremely self-serving on domestic issues - but he was re-elected in '72, amid the Vietnam War and many other troubles, with 60.7% of the popular vote. Take a peek at his domestic policies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Domestic_policy He didn't need Watergate, nor any other dirtywork to easily win the election - he just couldn't keep himself from scratching his Paranoid Creepy Idiot itch.
Yes, after Ford, the GOP was taken over by a team-up of "Conquer, Loot, and Pillage" fiscal conservatives, and "Dump Jesus and Jimmy, 'Cause Our Rightful Kingdom is of This World" religious conservatives.
Flip-side, I don't see the Dems nearly so favorably. In the Carter-ish years they phased out most of their historic concern for ordinary Americans. In favor of hanging out with rich & slimy, and performative concern for ever-smaller minorities.
Perl won't stop you from doing insane things, true, but you can write garbage unmaintainable code in any language.
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