I bought this knife when I was about 12 years old. I still have it. As you might guess, it’s a lit­tle too bulky to carry around in my pocket. But I do throw it in the lug­gage when we’re head­ing for an overnight.

When I bought it, I was under the illu­sion that big­ger was bet­ter. And at the time, the Vic­tori­nox Cham­pion was the biggest and most feature-laden model avail­able. I paid $19 for it, which was a lot of money to me back then. (The lat­est equiv­a­lent has a few more fea­tures and costs $99.)

I am amazed that the basic design has remained the same over all those years. The seventh-generation Porsche 911 looks sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal 1963 model. When a design is good, it’s worth­while to explore deeply the rea­sons for chang­ing it, before a re-design.

What is the thing you’ve had longer than any­thing else?

I went to Tar­get a few Sat­ur­days ago and was amazed to see a black Lam­borgh­ini parked in a dis­tant cor­ner of the park­ing lot. Not a usual sight there. I couldn’t resist the oppor­tu­nity to whip out my cheap cam­era phone to take a picture.

I zoomed in here for you to see the whim­si­cal con­cen­tric starlight pat­tern that makes up the tail­lights. This is a very seri­ous car. Seri­ous price, seri­ous per­for­mance. But the designer felt the need to inject a lit­tle bit of fun into the equation.

I’d urge you to do the same.

While we were vis­it­ing my sis­ter and her fam­ily in Bel­gium, we went to the Kring­winkel in nearby Herentals. I had a great time pho­tograph­ing things I would have enjoyed buy­ing. One was an old bicy­cle, circa 1975. It had full Cam­pag­nolo com­po­nents. When it was new, this derailleur was state of the art. Alone, it then cost some­thing like $60 or $75. The alu­minum was forged and not cast... ultra-strong and ultra-light.

I didn’t think to look at what the bike’s price was. Trans­port­ing it back to Amer­ica would have cost a lot. Stor­ing it when I returned would have been a chal­lenge. And restor­ing the old bike to its orig­i­nal glory would be about num­ber 3,000 on my list of priorities.

But it was fun to fantasize.

If you liked this post, here are two more you’ll like: Go dig­i­tal and Archive it and More Kring­winkel fun.

Yes, you’ve heard me say this con­cept before, many times. But I think it’s vital to add excite­ment to what­ever you are doing.

I took this photo at the W Hotel in Austin, Texas. The supreme tour guide Sheila Scar­bor­ough was giv­ing me a tour of down­town Austin, Texas, and we popped into W. (It’s named that way since it’s part of the Westin/Sheraton Hotel Group — not after a for­mer president.)

Every­where we turned, there was an excit­ing detail to catch. Noth­ing was left “normal.”

Admit­tedly, it’s hard to give that much atten­tion to all you do. But choose some­thing today to add spice to. It will make your life more inter­est­ing — and also the lives of those your “some­thing” touches.

This falls under the cat­e­gory of bad art direc­tion... Notice where the hands are on this com­puter. If the model’s arms were at the angle shown, an ampu­ta­tion would have taken place before the shot.

Thanks to 1and1, the com­pany who paid for the ad this photo came from.

Ikea is open­ing up a store about 8 miles from our house on July 27th. The heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tem has some environmentally-friendly aspects that are unparalleled.

I love so much of what they sell. Cool. Some­times inex­pen­sive. Often high qual­ity. But I know that many of their prod­ucts were built with labor­ers work­ing under non-ideal con­di­tions in China. And Ikea has had some prob­lems with the rights of work­ers in their fac­to­ries out­side of China.

Alter­na­tive to that? Not much. If we all bought fair-trade every­thing, we wouldn’t drive any car. Or watch any TV. Or enjoy using any computer.

On way for­ward is to do some things to make a dif­fer­ence. Buy­ing fair trade cof­fee or choco­late is a small thing, but it will impact the farm­ers who worked hard to get you those beans. Maybe some day the fair trade move­ment will extend to fur­ni­ture. And cool lights.

We got this vac­uum cleaner about a year ago. My mom died and we inher­ited it.

Any­how, I like the bag-less aspect. Heather doesn’t.

But the one thing that they did wrong is the power cord. It comes out of the side! A very sim­ple way to make clean­ing rugs with it eas­ier: have the cord come out of the top of the han­dle! As it is, I have to hold the cord with the other hand to keep it from run­ning under the brushes.

(And yes, I miss my mom. I wish she were using it and not us.)