Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbqmaster999 | Hacker News Reader

These are great! For less than $10 each, I’ve bought a bunch of them and left them scattered around my apartment and various other places so I can always find a watch. If it’s starting to take me too long to find a watch then the watch density must be getting too low, so I order some more.

View on HN

Here I am designating a place for my watch and always putting it away in that same spot like a pleb.

I must be odd. My designated place is my wrist.

That's hard unless you're Buzz Aldrin and wear multiple watches at once :-)

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/opinion-being-one-watch-gu...

The linked article does not mention Buzz Aldrin, or wearing multiple watches?

I guess they probably intended to link this: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/buzz-aldrin-rocking-three-...

The others laugh, but this is great (my house isn't big enough to bother though).

Another baby game changer along these lines - buy a 20 pack of small microfiber cloths and hide them in all your coin and inside jacket pockets. Never be without a glasses wipe when you need one. I even give them away to people who forgot theirs, since frequently I'll have two on my person.

Supposedly microfiber cloths are awful for the environment as they leach microplastics if you ever wash them.

https://www.wired.com/story/microfibers-are-the-new-microbea...

So just not wash them?

All synthetic fibers are awful for the same reason, microfibers just start out smaller.

I always just use my cotton shirt. Is there really that much advantage to using microfiber?

Only small ones

That was perfect. Thank you.

I've done this with laptop power bricks.

I'm laying on my couch right now, with my laptop plugged into a brick perched permanently at the end thereof. There are two more at the table (sometimes work and personal laptop are up at the same time), and one on my nightstand, and one in the kitchen for when I'm using a recipe from online or just youtubing while cooking.

All my old Thinkpad bricks with the gray round plug have little converter cables on 'em, so they work with the modern yellow rectangular socket now. I got a new brick with the work lappy, a new one with the personal, and I think there's one knockoff cheapie in the mix somewhere.

I do this same thing, except now with USB-C chargers it's even better. Charge my laptop or my phone. There's some great charger bricks that go on sale for ~$10, so I have a lot of those.

You can also convert usb-c charger into specific laptop chargers with the appropriate barrel/rectangle adapter (search for usb-c pd trigger + laptop model on aliexpress). Caveat: the laptop doesnt know the max wattage of the charger, it's your job to make sure it gets 60W or 90W from the USB PD adapter

Historically USB chargers have consumed power when connected to the wall socket, even when not connected to a phone. Some phones have even displayed an alert "Disconnect power supply from wall to save energy" when you unplugged the USB cable from the phone. Do modern USB-C chargers suffer from the same drawback and so shouldn’t be left plugged in all the time?

I'll have to plug in a power meter to check, but I'd assume the ghost power draw is negligible.

It ends beings negligible, when you start to have 10 devices sipping 0.5-1W each.

Doing some quick math in my head, even at 1w draw each, if they're constantly drawing that 24/7, it would end up costing about 80 cents per month (at $0.11/kWh). The cost of purchasing the chargers easily outweighs that. But I probably only have 5 around the house, so I have no problem spending 40 cents per month.

> There's some great charger bricks that go on sale for ~$10, so I have a lot of those.

Is it against HN norms to put a specific recommendation here? I'd love to know some reliable chargers in that range.

60w charger: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08786SHXV/

90w charger: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B083ZBXXN5/

Thanks! I'm glad to see the recommendation for Nekteck; they looked kind of generic knock-off-y to me, but I went for https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0712252ZQ a while ago, and have been very happy with it as essentially my sole charger.

No problem. Nekteck always gets good reviews from The Wirecutter, and they did some decent testing on the chargers: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-usb-c-macboo...

Yep, bought a bunch on ebay for ~ $7 each and keep them around the house.

An aesthetic benefit to placing the ThinkPad bricks strategically around the home is that you can mount them in a way that's more tidy when you're using it, than dragging a brick around. (Though there can be an aesthetic downside to having a cable around when you're not using it.)

My favorite means of mounting a brick is to use a large pair of Velcro. For undersides on some IKEA tables, I once had to augment the Velcro pad adhesive with Gorilla Glue. Sometimes I use zip ties instead of Velcro.

When buying extra bricks, in addition to the presumed-good one that came with the laptop, I advise going to some effort and guesswork to try to get genuine, non-counterfeit ones. I've seen some corner-cutting in circuitry in other power adapters and chargers, and that seems like a fire hazard.

For people who don't like the idea of bricks plugged into the AC when not in use, Leviton and others make little switches that plug into the AC outlet.

With all those dangerous F-91W's arriving at your door, have you been paid a visit yet from the bomb disposal squad?

i keep 5 watches in each pocket of my jacket, in case some of them fall out.

Surely every jacket, and not just the one?

Just like underwear and pants, why would you ever need more than one jacket?

Do underwear have two pockets if the pocket is accessible from the inside and outside?

Why would your pockets fall out?

Because they have too many watches inside them.

HAHA! I do this with pens! The Pilot G-2.

If it takes me too long to find one, then I up the number of pens scattered around the house.

Nothing irritates me more than being unable to find a pen when inspiration strikes.

I guess I'm not the only one to maintain a specific density of a specific item I want on hand.

at first I had to laugh, but then I realized I do apply the same strategy to chocolate

It's all about the quality of life.

Perhaps you are now on some watchlist.

pun intended?

I sure hope so!

Another, but much cheaper trick is to always leave the alarm on: then you have around 10 seconds of chance every morning to find it, if not - then better luck next day!

Imagine the symphony of 50 Casios playing the same tune, scattered around the house :D

I do the same with clip-on guitar tuners.

Snark? There are easily 20 of them kicking around my house haha

Have you considered a clock or perhaps wearing your watches

Yeah interesting - I always keep my watch on, even showering - it cleans the watch and I have a water resistant one. I only take my watch off to put on a different one for style.

At this point, are you wearing the watch, or is the watch wearing you?

We're symbiotic

Good idea. See this Matt Might post - he had the same; I've started doing it some:

End artificial scarcities to increase productivity

http://matt.might.net/articles/artific

I have them scattered around my place for a different reason in that I keep finding the watch itself far out lasts the cheap plastic band (especially because I use them almost primarily for swimming and other places a "disposable" watch makes more sense than wearing a smartwatch like I more regularly wear), so I keep leaving the band-less watches in interesting spots where I haven't bothered to put a clock or wouldn't otherwise need to have a clock.

I call this Object Saturation.

I don't do it with watches, but I do it with charging cables, socks, and toothbrushes.

(Of course, I avoid buying things, so I don't buy them.)

I do it with mechanical pencils.

Makes sense; watches are harder to steal (/s).

Nail clippers. You never know in what room, in what car, or with which pack you'll be when you realize it can't wait any longer.

oh my god i'm not alone

dollar store earbuds

This is genius and a great quality of life improvement. $50, I have a watch somewhere in my house that I can find and wear.

That's my box cutter strategy.

What do you do when the hour changes?

If the BIPM redefines how long an hour is, I guess we'll just have to ditch our Casios and start using Swatch internet time.

One can only hope, it's a beautiful concept that would make life easier for non Americans consuming a lot of live media produced in the US

Honestly, if it'd been UTC-centered instead of UTC+1 where Swatch is headquartered, I'd probably have pushed harder for it. I really like the concept.

Some countries/states don't have that issue.

My grandmother had severe arthritis and her fingers lacked the fine control needed to set her watch. So she simply kept it set to the same time zone all year round and made a mental note to subtract one hour for half the year.

Same here but with reading glasses.

How often are you (A) needing to know the time and/or (B) misplacing your time pieces?

I am afflicted by (B), which impedes measuring (A).

Reminds me how shortly after losing mine I found another on the ground to wear

What?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com