I haven’t written in a while and wanted to get something up so I’m allowing myself an extremely indulgent “what’s in my bag” post.
I switched a while ago from a shoulder bag to a small backpack, the North St. Meeting Bag. Going team tiny-backpack has done wonders for my back. It’s super light and balanced and fits my laptop, tablet, and other tech essentials (with my headphones attached via carabiner on the back).
I had been using a loaded 13” Surface Book 2 in my previous role, but when I took the sys-admin job I switched back to my older Mac laptop. The Surface Book was really nice but I went Mac for the integrated terminal, better portability and a general slight preference for the OS (at least in my work environment where Windows is heavily managed/limited by IT). So my current work rig is a 13” MacBook Pro (2015 model, core i5/8GB RAM/256GB SSD). It’s not the fanciest or fastest these days but it more than gets the job done. I take it into work and plug into a dock with wireless mouse and keyboard and two 27” 1440p Dell monitors. Also making the switch with me is a 10.5” iPad Pro I have from my work with the untethered teaching initiative at my institution. I do the vast majority of my work on the laptop but the iPad gets used for light work on the go (email from the coffee shop, digital white-boarding, notes at meetings, watching training videos, etc). Since I use Termius I can even SSH in to servers on the iPad if I need to.
Aside from my devices, I carry a Moleskine notebook, an Anker external battery pack, various power cables and A/V dongles, a few pens and Apple pencils, a back-up pair of earbuds (with the stupid iPhone lightning dongle) a spare power brick for the Mac, and a slide advancer for presentations.
