In the Pocket

[kevin_standlee]

The reason that my employer-issued smartphone went smash a few days ago is that it slipped out of the belt pouch in which I was carrying it. That in turn was because the Velcro might have worn out, and because of the way the pouch hung on my belt. Lisa bought some supplies from Tandy Leather in Reno and worked on making better belt pouch.



At left is the older pouch, which would hold one mobile phone. The new one on the right will hold both of my smartphones: both the company-issued iPhone and the older Android Galaxy S5 that they retired but that I kept as it has applications on it that I can't get on the locked-down iPhone.

You'll notice that this pouch kit was originally designed to be held closed with metal snaps. I did not want those because it looked to me that the only way to snap them shut would require putting too much pressure on the phones inside the pouch. so Lisa removed the male snaps and put in large Velcro straps that you can't see here. The old pouch had only a couple of small Velcro dots that wouldn't stay shut.

Besides being bigger (in order to hold two phones), the new pouch is designed to hand a bit lower on my belt. The way the old pouch hung, I had a tendency to bump it in ways that made it pop open. That wasn't the first time that I'd had the phone pop out; it just was the only time that it landed catastrophically wrong.

The new pouch seems to be working so far, but it needs to wear in a bit until we see how it behaves. Of course, if I would lose weight, there would be less of me hanging over the belt acting as a hazard to my phones.

Comments

[garyomaha]

I'll have to tell M about Lisa's purchase. Every time we hear "Tandy Leather" we smile, knowing that's Radio Shack's original parent company...and look at which one has survived. (Don't ask how often we wish Radio Shack were still around.)

[kevin_standlee]

Lisa used to be assistant manager at a Radio Shack back in her college days. (A dealer store, not corporate-owned.) We made a point of visiting the Tandy Center in Fort Worth when we drove back from SMOFCon in Lexington KY back in 1993. (Mainly to ride the privately owned subway that connected the parking lot to the center.)

Ironically, there's a Tandy Leather in Sacramento across the main road from where Radio Shack tried to take on Fry's Electronics with their Incredible Universe stores that the eventually sold to Fry's. The now-Fry's is located on... Tandy Drive.

[garyomaha]

I saw an Incredible Universe store in, I think, Kansas City. That seems like 100 years ago. It set off my "inner geek" like no other store had done, but apparently I was in the minority. Here in Omaha, the Nebraska Furniture Mart opened what they called the "Mega Mart" which was basically their electronics department re-imagined similar to the Incredible Universe vibe. So, I finally had a local spot to visit -- and spend money.