[mightybyte]

My answer to your initial post was: be able to converse about your previous work in-depth.

To your first edit, I say I do keep a log of what I've done over the course of my career. That log is my resume. I typically update my resume multiple times while I'm at a job even when I have no plans to leave any time soon. I do this to keep it up to date while projects are fresh on my mind.

Some comment about edit 2. That's what the resume is for. It's my list of great innovations and cool things I've built. For me, this includes personal projects. This is where open source contributions can be really useful because they're public and everyone can look at them. IMO open source projects are one of the most impressive resume builders out there.