Power: A tale of three chargers

Like most of you, I'd imagine, I have a cell phone charger at home and another at work.

Funny story. For some reason that escapes me now, I brought my home charger to work on Wednesday. And forgot it there. So Thursday morning, my phone had drained completely and I had no charger. I live in Tonawanda and work in Lockport, so it's not like I could just pop in and grab it. It's about a half an hour drive. Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor uses the same charger and I got through the day.

After work on Thursday, I remembered to bring home my home charger.

Friday, I get to work and find that I'm actually working out of our Tonawanda offices instead of the Lockport office, like I usually do. So in order to make sure I got through the night, I brought my work phone charger to the Tonawanda News with me ... and then home.

My girlfriend and her kids came over today to spend time with me and my girls. She brought her home charger with her ... and accidentally left it at my place. (She lives in Lockport)

After dropping my kids off at their mom's (Lockport) following the weekend, I popped into work to grab the power cord for my laptop, as I'll be sitting in the press box for tomorrow night's Sabres game. 

I would have let my girlfriend borrow my work charger, since we use the same type (Micro-USB) and I won't need it for the next three days ... but I left it at home. Along with my home charger. And her charger. If you're keeping track here, on Thursday morning, I had no phone chargers at home. As I type this, I have three.

Also, it's not without irony that the reason I had stopped into work at all was to get the laptop cord/charger.

It's all about power.

Long story short, there's got to be a better way to power small electronic devices. 

I'd imagine that most of you have a calculator in or on your desk. The percentage of those calculators that are solar is probably stellar. Calculators can be powered by the sun (or your office lights). But almost nothing else is, save those Malibu lights that seem to putter out in the short winter days.

I actually have a solar charger for small electronic devices (photo at right). It has several interchangeable tips. But not one for my current phone. My old phone used a mini-USB plug. I don't understand, frankly, why the industry standard seems to have changed from mini-USB to micro-USB. I don't really see a difference in size. Just shape ... but that's another thought for another blog. Worth noting, of course, is you still need a cord to go from the solar charger to the phone or whatever you want to power.

There's some small electronic devices that are powered by kinetic energy. You move, it adds power. There's a line of watches that are like this. I think they're cool. Like bow ties.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon. Everything I touched shocked me. There's lots of static electricty in the air. I wonder why we can't find a way to harness that electricity and use it. Or solar. Or kinetic. Or ... anything. We are just as addicted to plugs as we are to oil. There's got to be someone out there to fix this. 

Please ... be that person.