Swiss Alpenflage: great gear for the outdoors enthusiast on a budget

Recently, I have been focused on gathering enough supplies to sustain my loved ones for a few weeks to a few months.  I have focused on finding durable items that are (preferably) military surplus.  As I consolidate a good list, I will post it online so others can use it as a planning tool.

One thing I have discovered is that the Swiss make very good outdoors gear.  These backpacks (closer in size to daypacks) are a great example of what you can find at a bargain price.

Description:  These "daypacks" are modular accessories built for use with the Swiss Alpenflage camouflage uniform.  There appear to be a few variants of these packs available, and when you go to buy them, ensure that they have shoulder straps.  I have seen some of these sold online with clips designed to attach to the alpenflage shirts.  Unless you have bought those (or plan to buy them), you want the ones with shoulder straps.

Capabilities: These are truly *day packs*.  You should plan to only be able to carry a day, possibly two days, worth of gear.  There are three compartments.  I use one of them to store a poncho for use as a ground cloth, shelter, or (yes) for protection from the rain.  I have placed an MRE in the main compartment just so you have something to munch on and the MRE heater has a few different applications.  I have left the third pouch for each person's "needful things".  I personally like to pack 550 cord, a spare pocket knife, a few packs of matches, TP, etc all in a ziplock bag.

Cost:  I bought mine off eBay for around $5 each.  If you pay more than $10 each, you probably paid too much...

Is the dollar due for further decline?

In Friday's WSJ, Mark Gongloff writes that based on an analysis of the US Current Account Deficit and net private capital flows, it appears the dollar is due for further decline.

We'll see what happens, but based on this, ECON 101 tells me that stocks will continue to "appreciate" nominally while in currency valuation terms, they will remain steady (or even decline slightly).

Top-Tier Business Schools join the Yellow Ribbon Program!

An article from this week's Business Week magazine:

Among the top business schools participating in the program are: Harvard Business School(Harvard MBA Profile), Columbia Business School (Columbia MBA Profile), University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (Wharton MBA Profile), Stanford Graduate School of Business(Stanford MBA Profile), and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (Fuqua MBA Profile). These institutions have committed anywhere from $3,000 to $17,500 per student in Yellow Ribbon funds each year, depending on the school, according to the VA's list of participating schools on its Web site.

This is excellent news and will surely have many more military veterans considering an MBA!

CyFi Wireless Bike Speaker

Another thing I gotta have for the ride! CyFi has these for bluetooth enabled phones and also makes a model for the iPod crowd.

Would you ride this bike? 2.6 pound frame!

When you see a frame like this, it makes you wonder whether it's the person riding the bike or the bike itself that wins the race... Delta 7 Sports will sell you this beauty for a cool $6,000; hopefully you have the right wheels, gears, cranks, etc to go with it.

It's looks like someone figured out a use for those water bottles (Brooks' Green Silence)!

In February 2010, Brooks Running is coming out with a new shoe that utilizes 70% recycled materials. It is called Green Silence. All kinds of recycled stuff goes in to these shoes, like CDs, water bottles and tires!

2012 Server OS Projections (Gartner)

I am still catching up on my holiday reading. I was thumbing through the Processor Magazine (Dec 21, 2007 issue) and stumbled upon this blurb from a Gartner report:

Windows, Linux To Grow In Server Market Share

The Windows and Linux operating systems both gained market share in the data center server market, according to Gartner. This year, Windows has about $19.6 billion of the overall $54 billion server operating system market, Gartner says, with Windows’ share expected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2012. Linux’s market share is expected to grow from its current $8.6 billion this year to about $12.2 billion in 2012. Gartner expects Unix’s share to drop slightly over the same period, from $16.4 billion this year to $16 billion by 2012.


It will be interesting to see how the Unix market responds to this. I think the most notable players, namely Sun, are already trying to get in front of this with OpenSolaris, etc.