It seems like only yesterday…

So a bit over two years ago I got into make’n shit out of leather.  I made a bunch of stuff in a brief spurt that lasted nearly a year.  Most of my projects were belt gear for personal use.  My favorite project so far is the custom holster for my cell phone.  That double belt loop goes around the single belt loop on the back of my matching tactical flashlight holster.  Makes a nice neat package that looks like its all one case on my belt.  And they stay put.

Well, time passes and technology gets old.  This elderly Tracfone is on its last legs.  The hinge is cracked and missing a chunk.  The backlight doesn’t work any more which makes the screen nearly impossible to read in all but the brightest of light.  It’s what LawDawg might call a right proper phone.  It’s just a phone.  That’s it.  No camera, no web, no features.  It has a rather pathetic calculator and a couple of games that were old back when I still used my Atari 2600.  It served me well for much longer than the two years that I carried it in the custom case I made for it.

But it’s time to move on.  The service date for this phone was coming up this Saturday and I finally decided to stop throwing good money* after bad.  Time for a new phone.  Naturally the new phone doesn’t come close to fitting in the old case.  So it looks like I’ll be back at the leather table – as soon as I decide what sort of case to make for it.

You know, the funny thing about this case is that I never did actually finish the thing!  All those grooves around the outside were supposed to have stitching to hold the case together.  The contact cement held for two years and seventeen days so far and looks like it would outlast the leather.  Who’d have thunk?

Of course now I have to figure out how to use this newfangled contraption of a phone, and camera, and sort-of PDA and…

Wish me luck!


Oh buy the way…  One of the main reasons I kept the old phone as long as I did was that I had been told years ago that you couldn’t transfer the minutes in your old phone to a new one.  Apparently Tracfone has solved that problem (or possible been legislated or litigated to…  Iduno.  As long as the old phone worked there was no need to pay much attention to what they were up to.) because after finally deciding to abandon the remaining minutes in the old phone because it badly needed replacing I discovered that you now can port over your minutes if you activate on-line.  You have to set up an account and tell them who you are to do it though.  So you loose any hope of anonymity with Tracfone to do it.  That may be an issue for some people.


* OK – fiat currency.  And it ain’t really so good any more.