Category Archives: About Me - Page 14

But, Is It Art?

Posted by anachostic on May 14, 2019 No comments

I’ve started an art project, which is usually bad because I am not good at art. To forego any buildup and drama and suspense, the project is painting my couch.

You might have an image in your head of a early 1900’s couch with velvet cushioning and a painted wood frame, but that’s not it. I have a modern couch, entirely wrapped in white vinyl, no wood. And now you may have some confusion. Painting your couch? Yes, did you know you can paint vinyl? Vinyl is just plastic and you can buy paints for plastic, Krylon being one well known brand.

My couch is nearly 15 years old. It’s probably due for replacement, actually. As I said, it is white, but that white is not as white as it used to be. It’s that sad kind of off-white now, with some stains that refuse to come out. The original idea for painting came as an outgrowth of an idea I had that maybe I could dye the vinyl bright white again. Do they make white dye? I don’t think I ever got a good answer to that, and I stumbled on articles talking about painting vinyl furniture. So that’s where I am.

They do have white vinyl paint, but I figured if I was going to fuck something up, I should at least fuck it up in a bold way. So I decided to change the couch to grey, which is another common vinyl paint color. The paints I was buying were intended for car upholstery and dashboards. I guess if you want durability, a car seat is going to take a pretty big beating, so this paint should be pretty solid.

The paint isn’t available for store purchase, so I had to order it to be shipped to a store. Home Depot was probably about 50% the cost of Amazon (really). I bought a 6pk of spray cans, not just so I would be sure to have enough, but because that’s the only cost-effective way to buy them. The paint showed up in about a week and I brought them home and got ready to fuck it all up.

I made a shitty little paint booth in my garage, which just means I draped a sheet over things I didn’t want painted and stuck some fans in the windows to pull out the fumes. I took one of the cushions off the couch, wiped it down with some degreaser, and set it on my little painting pedestal. Ok. There’s no ctrl-z on this, let’s hope it goes well.

I sprayed the paint on and immediately noticed it was actually kind of a brownish color. This better work out. I tried to keep in mind the tips I’d read in the articles I’d read. Try for multiple light coats. But, I do suck at painting of any type, so at the end when I surveyed my results, I was underwhelmed. Hopefully it would dry better…

After a little while, I came back and checked on it. While the color really did turn out grey and not brown, the coverage would be what I would call blotchy. Definitely not uniform. And that was even after I tried to even out spots that seemed too light the first time. Some of it seemed to be caused by the “grain”, as if there is a grain to vinyl. But what’s done is done. I have to keep going now.

And that’s a little problem. Just that one cushion used up almost three cans of paint. I have another cushion at least as big as that one, plus two frames that have to have at least twice as much surface area. That night, I immediately ordered a second case of paint. I might need to buy a third, too. That would put my art project budget at around $135. Granted, that’s nowhere near the price of a new sofa, but based on the results of my first cushion, if I don’t level up my painting skills as I go, this is going to end up pretty embarrassing. Well, I’m sure a thrift store could use a new donation.

Back inside, I removed the legs from one section of the frame and a realization came over me. I think my couch is handmade. The couch was not purchased at a large retailer, it was from a tiny retailer that specialized in modern design furniture. I think they built the couch themselves or maybe bought it from a builder. The first thing that struck me was that the legs were held on with drywall screws, not wood screws. Then, while I had the couch on its side, I wondered where the little tag was: “UNDER PENALTY OF LAW, NOT TO BE REMOVED BLAH BLAH”. There was none, which is concerning when you know why that tag is required. It’s there to guarantee to the buyer that the cushion and filler are made of all new material, not reused materials. And not only that tag was non-present, there was no other indication that the couch was made by a company. No stamps, labels, tags, nothing.

So you can take that however you want. Either I have a custom, handmade, one-of-a-kind couch which is really awesome, or I have a handmade, one-of-a-kind couch that is seriously sketchy. “Nice couch, what brand is that?” “No idea.”

The next day, I hauled one half of the couch frame out for painting. I managed to complete an entire coat with most of one spray can left, so it’s possible I can do the whole couch for two cases of paint. On the plus side, my technique did get a little better. Even so, you can’t mistake there’s something “off” about the final result. It’s probably good enough for a staging picture, but when you get closer, it becomes more obvious. Oh well, I’m going to take this project to the end and the couch will serve me well for a couple more years or whenever I decide I really want something different.

Halfway done; before and after:

And here, fully complete:

Changing My Tune With A New Band

Posted by anachostic on May 10, 2019 No comments

I posted before about the recent death and dismemberment of the Microsoft Band. I had pretty much given up on fitness tracking and fitness in general about a year ago. In that time, as you might expect with someone not as young anymore, with more health issues than none, it had a detrimental effect on my wellbeing.

Without dwelling on the negative aspects of that situation, I powered back on again. With a new blog tagline to lead the way, I began mentally preparing myself for change. Positive change, I mean. I’ve had plenty of other changes already. Along the way, I happened to see something about a high-feature, low-cost fitness tracker, the Huawei Band 3 Pro. Very interesting.

In my mind, I was just imagining it as the next version of the MS Band (which stopped at v2), but the design was more standard – no extra bits in the strap and clasp. But, it did have the one feature that kept me from immediately replacing my MS Band – built in GPS. And the price was about 25% what I paid for my last MS Band. And it’s waterproof, which doesn’t mean much to me, but might for others.

I bit the bullet the other day and ordered one, in blue of course. I’ll be able to use it this weekend. In the meantime, I’ve begun walking on work breaks again, which is something that ended with the departure of AK, right around the time I gave up on my Band. Of course I would begin this just as the furnace of summer heat is kicking on. But a start is a start; building momentum and all that shit.

So, to remember a little about my last post, I’m putting my trust in a new company to let me use their hardware and software for as long as I can. Will the hardware outlast the software this time? We’ll have to see. At least I won’t have paid too much for the experiment.

Old And Desirable

Posted by anachostic on May 7, 2019 No comments

Today, out thrift shopping, I happened across a couple of pieces of stereo equipment. You know, that’s exactly what I need is more stereo stuff. I must have a third stereo in my house. Maybe it will go in the guest bathroom.

That’s not what I was thinking, exactly. The thought I had was, “I’ve seen this before.” I’d seen pictures of it in forum posts of people bragging about their systems and others drooling and praising those people’s stereos. This was one of those stereos. It was old, like older than me, old. And it was neat looking in that retro way. From pictures I’d seen, I knew what it would look like powered up. The power level meters would have a beautiful, soft aqua glow. But on the whole, it’s not my aesthetic.

BUT, it is one of those impossibly rare finds, and the price was reasonable. Only $20 per piece, $40 out the door. This is the same thrift shop at which I bought my other retro stereo. That stereo only cost me $18. So I walked swiftly back up front to get a shopping cart (because these components are easily 60 pounds together) and made off with my spoils.

Back at work and back online, I do a quick search on the eBay for the components. Each one is selling for about $1000. So, assuming these pieces work, I have a $2000 stereo for the price of $40. But again, it’s not really my thing. There seems something sacrilegious about running a CD player through a 60’s era stereo. This system was made for vinyl, and that’s not what I do.

In fact, to give an idea of what the preamp is capable of, it has inputs for two turntables, three (3!) tape decks, radio tuner, and another input. You can output to three different destinations including a monitor output. It almost seems like a piece of equipment you’d find in a broadcasting studio. It has a function called “expansion” that is supposed to work the opposite of a compressor: make quiet parts more quiet and loud parts louder. Crazy.

So my initial plan is just to clean it up and flip it, assuming it works well. Even if it doesn’t work well, the place I plan to sell to is a repair shop.

It Just Doesn’t Come Cheaply

Posted by anachostic on May 3, 2019 No comments

In another blog of mine, I discussed improvements I was making to my house. In some posts, I talked about making quality purchases and how we have all become conditioned to expect great stuff for low prices. In reality, that doesn’t happen. You might get good or ok stuff at low prices, but when you really want something good, something unique, something that will last and continue to look good all the while, you’re really going to have to pay for it.

Of course, I’m not talking about a $12,000 chandelier, although there may be a rationale for it, especially for uniqueness. But I am talking about buying things 3-4 times more expensive than you might originally have in mind. In my current situation, I want a chair. Just one chair.

You might think, ok, go to Walmart and buy a $30 chair. No, this is a listening chair for my music room. Ok, go to Staples and get an office chair, maybe $150. No, I really want something like a recliner. Then go to Ashley Homestore and get a recliner, they can’t be more than $300. I want leather. Ok, $400. I want a modern style. (After searching modern leather recliners) You’re not thinking of a $5,000 Herman Miller Eames, are you? No, but you’re thinking the right way. You have to see where you could end up so you feel better about where you actually end up.

So, I’m not planning on getting an iconic art piece of furniture for $5k. More reasonable is another famous brand you might have heard of, Stressless by Ekornes. I was surprised to see they’re almost in the $2k range. But it seems you can get them just about anywhere. Stressless is a very popular brand and that lends it to a lot of flattery in the form of imitation. So yeah, you can get a chair that looks like a Stressless for $300. Great, you say. Cheap and done. Looks the same, is the same.

Well, no. Far from it actually. First and foremost, I’m not buying a piece of furniture my ass has to enjoy until my ass has given it the thumbs up. So no blind internet ordering for this piece. With that restriction in mind, I begin stopping at furniture stores in my surrounding area. One thing I quickly learned is that my vision of “modern” is not the same as theirs. If it doesn’t look like an overstuffed box with tufting and pillowtops on every edge, then it’s “modern”.

I began being more specific in what I was looking for. I started with a half-apology because the question could rub a salesperson the wrong way. “I hate using a brand as a description, but I am looking for a recliner in the style of Stressless.” You might think I was just a cheap bastard – wants a Stressless, doesn’t want to pay for a Stressless. One salesperson clearly had no idea what I was talking about and showed me a typical recliner, (as I’d begun referring to them) a box. You’d think if he was selling furniture, he’d be knowledgeable about top brands. I guess not.

So I looked on and on. Of the six places I visited, only one had any recliners of the style I wanted. So I guess they won by default. But I didn’t just concede the win. I went online and researched the chairs and found out who the manufacturer was and compared prices to Internet stores (it was comparable, actually). And I went back to buy the chair the next day, while the store was having a 20% off sale. The chair is on backorder for oh, about a month, so I have plenty of time to look forward to it.

And how much was this not-$5k chair? $700 before discount. I did see similar chairs online for $300, but during my research after finding this chair, I learned a lot about leather. The key takeaway I got was that a lot of “leather” is of “bonded leather” construction, which is complete garbage. What you want is top-grain or full-grain leather. A lot of the lower-priced chairs were upholstered in bonded leather, which is why they were so cheap. They wouldn’t last a few years before flaking apart.

The chair I bought is top-grain leather with a caveat. It’s leather on all seating surfaces and vinyl everywhere else. I’m actually ok with this design since I won’t be sitting on the back of the chair, nor on the sides. It saves natural resources and keeps the cost down, but still has the durability wherever it will be used.

With my recent purchase of patio loungers, I will soon be able to nap just about anywhere in my house I want.

I Made It Work Again

Posted by anachostic on April 30, 2019 No comments

Over the weekend, I made a roadtrip in the interest of thrift shopping. It was a generally easy-going, low-stress trip that turned up plenty of CDs, mostly smooth-sided cases. Along the way, I also picked up an early CD player, 30 years old, for $7. I figured it would be interesting to have an opportunity to experience newer and older players and see if I could determine sonic differences between them. The price was good, so why not?

When I got it home and fired it up, I found out why not. It wasn’t operational. When powered up, it would immediately eject the CD tray. Pushing the close button did nothing. If you pulled the tray out a little further, the close button would work, but after a second or two, the tray would eject again. Huh.

My first thought was that there were some sensors that were dirty. The ones that tell the player when the tray is fully opened or fully closed. It seemed like something I could fix. So I opened the case and disassembled the tray assembly. I didn’t really see any sensors like I expected. I did see a pressure switch that would toggle when the drawer was open or closed. Opening and closing the drawer, I could see that when closing, the switch was not being contacted. I think I was on the right track here.

Considering why the drawer wouldn’t close fully, I had a memory of a web page I had read about CD player troubleshooting and the primary takeaway was that the great majority of player failures can be fixed by replacing the drive belts. I inspected the drawer assembly and found only a single belt. It seemed to be in good condition, maybe a little loose, I don’t really know. But I figured I could change it out easily and maybe that would do it.

I ordered a pack of various sized belts from Amazon and they arrived the next day. Without too much trouble, I installed a new belt of near the same size, maybe a little smaller. The reassembly was a little sketchy since I wasn’t exactly sure where to set the gear so that the open/closed pressure switch would get hit in both directions. But for my first test, the drawer stayed closed when I powered on, which it should because the switch indicated the door was closed. I pushed the open/close button and the drawer ejected. I checked the switch and it indicated the drawer was fully open. I pushed the open/close button again at the drawer closed. Then I saw something I hadn’t seen in previous attempts: the laser lens moved up and down trying to focus on a non-existent CD. And the drawer stayed closed. I ejected the tray and put a CD in. I closed the tray and the CD spun up. I pressed play, the CD spun and the display counted up the time. I fixed it!

That’s a plenty good feeling to repair something so easily, just a single part replacement and the part was a tiny piece of rubber.

What Has Brown Done To You?

Posted by anachostic on April 26, 2019 No comments

I mentioned in another post that I was expecting a package and got a solicitor instead. So, now on to the story of that package. I was at my computer at around 8:00 and an email came in saying, sorry we missed you. Your package requires a signature and you weren’t home. Bull. Shit. I’ve been here all night. I went to the front door and there was no post-it saying they had been there. There was no doorbell ring (and I know it works because, solicitor dude).

I’m buying a box of wire from Amazon. No shipping notification from either Amazon or UPS said the delivery would require a signature. Why would a box of speaker wire require an adult signature, anyway? I think someone ran late and decided to go home for the night. I’m sure their tracking software doesn’t have an option for “Don’t feel like it”, so the driver flagged it as needing signed and no one home. All done for the day!

Some part of me is annoyed by this, but another part of me isn’t. It’s not like I needed that wire tonight. But what if it was something I needed right away? And this driver, he’s lying. I’m not sure what sort of repercussions he could face if I should call him out on it. He’s human, he’s a lazy American, just like the rest of us, he wants to go home after probably a 12-hr day. And I can’t fault a person for not working hard at their job. I’m a lot of things, but not a hypocrite.

Here’s how that one progressed.

I went to UPS’s site and changed the delivery to go to my nearby UPS Store. I chose this for a couple of reasons. If they were correct about the delivery needing a signature, I didn’t want to miss out again. If they were lying about needing a signature, I wanted a person to confront about it. I submitted the change and stewed about the situation for the night.

I had plenty of time to stew. The missed delivery happened on Tuesday. I got no notifications and the tracking showed no movement for the rest of the week. The next Monday, I stopped by the UPS service center and asked if they could find my package. The manager there took my phone number and said he’d call me with an update. I told him, “I don’t care if it comes to the house, the UPS Store, or here. I’ll get it.” Oh, and I did ask about the signature required. He said that the package probably came back and was scanned incorrectly. So I guess, there is no commitment to deliver everything on the truck for the day. Huh.

I did get a call later from the UPS manager who said the package could not be found and I would need to call the corporate office and “open an investigation”. So I call their number and tell them I need to “open an investigation”. The operator said I’d be transferred to the right department. I ended up getting a voice menu of options that were way above my head, full of international shipper industry terms. I heard “lost” in one of the options and chose that. The person that answered, after hearing the full story, and probably expecting to be talking to a fellow UPS employee, said that Amazon has to initiate the claim, not me. Ugh, fine.

So by this time, I could have re-ordered the speaker wire 3 times over and gotten it delivered. An “investigation” doesn’t sound like it’s going to get me my package anytime soon, so I place a new order on Amazon for the same thing. Then I research my options for filing a claim for the old order. The option I was steered toward was contacting the shipper to file a claim. Great. No one wants to take responsibility here. Eventually I found Amazon’s general chat help link and got a resolution. They refunded my money. But I wasn’t all that happy, because UPS should be paying for this, not Amazon. I apologized that they were being hurt for this, and actually, it’s not them being hurt, it’s the small business seller on Amazon being hurt, because Amazon just won’t give them the money they refunded back to me. It’s a shitty resolution.

I’d already received the replacement and finished my project when, two weeks later, I get an email. My package is ready to pick up at the UPS Store. I jump back on Amazon’s help chat and ask if I should just refuse the delivery and have it sent back to them. The CSR says, the refund has already been issued, take the package as a gift from Amazon.

On one level, I get it. The amount of money already spent on the package to ship it, then again to return it would be a waste of time and money, resulting in a net loss. But that’s Amazon’s loss. Or is it? The seller still won’t see any money for the product lost. UPS is getting off the hook and if I returned it, would be making more money of their fuckup.

But really, we’re talking about a $10 purchase here. This is nothing to a large business. But multiply that by however many fuckups UPS can make, and it could be terrible for some smaller businesses along the way.

In the end, it didn’t matter. I got an email from Amazon saying, “give us our shit back or you’re going to be charged for it.”

Parenting

Posted by anachostic on March 27, 2019 No comments

Anyone that knows me well knows that I don’t have a fondness for children. Those same people probably know that I have a great fondness for my own children, who happen to be feline. Some people think it’s cheating to consider yourself a parent to pets, because animals are somehow less worthy of love and care than humans. I’ll be honest, it is easier to raise pets than humans, which is why I do it. However, this last week or so has leveled the experience between kids and pets for me.

One of my kids had the shits for an extended period of time and the other one needed caught up on shots (no anti-vaxxers in this household). So I took them both to the vet and left them for the day for their procedures. When I picked them up after work, I was given a prescription and a special diet for shitty. Yay, we get to spend $50 for a bag of cat food now.

As soon I got them loaded in the car and we started moving, the big boy sneezed. I was like, “no fucking way.” Little girl had an upper respiratory infection early in her life, so I knew what a sneeze means. Over the next couple of days, he seemed to be fighting it off pretty well. However, little girl did not. I took her back to the vet and got her diagnosis and a prescription. $100 for meds! And that’s where I felt like a parent. I took my kid to see you and you got her sick and now I have to pay all this money for drugs and I have to dose her 2x a day and she’s going to hate it and what the fuck cat wants to eat berry flavored medicine?

Surprisingly, she bounced back after only about 3 dosings, which I think is impressive. But, while she was improving, big boy was failing, hard. I called the vet to get a second prescription for him, and unfortunately, I lost a full day in getting the new drugs. If they could have told me the dosing for his weight, I could have just used some of my existing medication. But whatever, my cat is miserable.

Having a sick, miserable kid makes you sad, which is my next parental experience. All you want is for them to get better. And his little sister wants him to get better, too. I could tell by the way she would constantly check up on him. And he was in really rough shape. He wasn’t responsive to any stimulus. For a couple of days, he didn’t want to get out of bed at all. He stopped eating wet food because he couldn’t smell. But he still had the energy to resist medication.

This cat has a big fucking mouth. In fact, one of his potential names when he first came to the house was “mouth”. It’s like a bear trap, and like a trap, he can clamp it right down and refuse to have any medication shot in. My eventual success came when I switched from a 10cc syringe to a 3cc syringe. He needed 12cc dosings, so 4-3cc shots was much easier with a skinny syringe than working with that fat one.

Big boy did not bounce back after a few dosings like little girl did. It took a few days and the improvement was really slow, but faintly noticeable. Yesterday, he turned the corner and I knew it when I went out on the patio to check on him and he came and greeted me with his tail held straight up. It was a pretty joyous moment to see him happy again. He still sniffled and sneezed, but his mood was improved and that was a sign that things are going to be ok. Later in the evening when I checked to see if he was ready to come inside, he bounded away with his tail up. After a couple of days picking up and carrying a limp and listless bag of fur, it was a wonderful sight.

And that’s the last parental similarity. You want to see your kids happy. I’ve been very lucky in my time to have not gone through the experience of having sick pets. This last week or so has been revelatory in how much emotional investment you have in your kids and what they mean to your own happiness.

The MegaBenno

Posted by anachostic on March 15, 2019 No comments

I’ve had a plan for a long time to display my CD collection in a large shelving rack. When I last had my CDs organized, they were in rotating towers. First one tower, then a larger one, then, because of growth, both towers at the same time. I currently have about 1500 CDs and I should be planning for many more.

Early in my collecting days, I used the Ikea Benno shelves. I still have the three that I used (capacity 540, for reference). I still think they are the best for display and storage, so I gave consideration to getting more. Now, the Benno is called Gnedby, but most Ikea fans know both names.

Because I would be having so many towers to hold my large collection, I studied the hack to eliminate one of the side panels to reclaim some horizontal space. The result of the hack was pretty good, but the more I considered it, I was still turned off by having a grid of squares repeating over and over. The Benno was designed to be a vertical storage unit, which is how I laid it out when I used it. A-Z from top to bottom in the first tower, then top to bottom in the second tower and on and on. That’s not how I wanted my new shelves to be. I wanted a horizontal orientation.

My first idea was to stack the Bennos horizontally, which has been done already in the Ikea Hacks archive. That’s ok, but you still have the issue of doubled side panels. So I considered a means of stacking the Bennos and only using one side panel between each tier. I designed it to use short legs that would keep it up off the ground. My sketch was something like:

The problem with this is that I would have to buy 10 towers and I would end up with a bunch of leftover side panels. So I reconsidered the design. What if I used side panels for the sides and side panels as the shelves. That eliminates the two vertical end pieces, which can then be repurposed as center vertical pieces. That works out to 7 towers, a savings of $150.

My original design was for 10 shelves – 10 Bennos stacked on top of each other. However, if I’m using the side panels as designed, a Benno has 12 shelves per tower. That’s a CD capacity increase from 1,800 to 2,160. That’s almost an extra year of growth at my current pace. However, that now requires 8 towers, so that’s an extra $50. With shipping and taxes, the whole purchase was $468.

The first step after unpacking all the Bennos is converting side panels to shelves. This is accomplished by sawing off the base of the side panel where the floor trim cutout is. This needs to be done on all but two side panels. When we’re done, one of the cut off bases will be used in the center for support.

The next thing I did was lay out the two side panels and position the bottom shelf. I drilled some holes from the inside out for the bottom shelf, then screwed the shelf to the side panels. Then I drilled holes and attached the center support to the bottom shelf.

When I attached the center support, I planned to have one screw up from the bottom and another down from the top of each shelf. So I attached the shelf’s bottom screw first, then once the shelves are attached to the side panels, the screw down from the top will be attached. This is a cross section of five shelves.

I brought in a group of shelves and center supports and attached the center supports to each (one screw from the bottom). With enough shelves to fill up half the unit, I marked which holes I would need to drill out to fasten each shelf to the side panels.

The next step is drilling holes through the side panels for each shelf. These don’t have to be large holes, just large enough so the wood won’t crack when putting screws through.

For the shelf that will be on the bottom, take one of the cut off bases from the shelves and position it where the center support will be. Screw the base to the bottom shelf for support between the bottom shelf and the floor.

The fastening of the center supports is a little convoluted because we’ve eliminated the two side panels in favor of one. So where normally, each shelf panel would screw into the center support, we have to connect each vertical support to the upper and lower shelf. Screw the front of each shelf up into the center support and the back of each shelf down into the lower center support. You can use the included Ikea screws for this. Finally, attach the side panels to the twelve shelves. The holes have already been drilled, so it’s just a matter of lining up the shelves with the holes. You should have enough Ikea screws to get through this as well.

Stand the shelf up and attach the backing. Because some shelves with be left hand panels and some will be right hand, you can attach the backing in a louver fashion either upper or lower facing.

Then the fun part, filling the shelving. The whole purpose of wanting to have horizontal shelves is so the collection goes from A-Z from left to right, top to bottom. One of the appealing design considerations for organizing this way is something I saw in a picture of someone else’s collection. That element was having small letters indicating the alphabetical progression through the collection. My research has shown that really nice crafted letters to divide the collection are not cheap. Cheap if you want your initials. Not cheap if you want the whole alphabet. While I was disappointed by that, I pondered how else I could have alphabetical dividers in my collection. One idea that came to me was alphabet blocks. But I think the bright multi-colors would be too whimsical. I found a modern set of blocks, but beyond their size being too small, 1.5”, they were also $85.

My solution was to repurpose all the shelves that would not get used with my redesign. I could glue two together for visual weight, then stick a large letter sticker on the front. Alphabet stickers can be bought in any craft shop for very little money. Less than a single fancy letter figure.

The State Of Collecting

Posted by anachostic on January 11, 2019 No comments

When I started collecting seriously in 2015, I had about 620 CDs. Some people would say that’s a lot. I remember in the 90’s, I started really building my collection by visiting pawn shops. CDs were usually $5 each. Now, they are $1-2 each at thrift shops. The low cost allows me to indulge in albums I wouldn’t have taken a chance on at $5.

I say that I started collecting “seriously” in 2015 because that is when I started tracking my collection online with Discogs. From that point onward, I am able to see when I added more to my collection. The online site doesn’t give any statistics over time, but they do allow you to download your collection for you to analyze yourself. I’m no Excel guru, so although I tried to create some pretty pictures and graphs, I was unable to get anything that was suitable.

In 2016, I added 207 CDs. Looking through the filtered list, some additions catch my eye. This is the year I got a couple of holiday CDs from a secret santa. It’s the year I first heard Kraftwerk, one of those legendarily influential groups you should hear. In fact, that was probably when I started really trying to experience “the legends” when up to that point, they were out of my normal musical orbit. Some other artists that I’d never owned before, notable and not, include: Vince Guaraldi, Steely Dan, Eurythmics, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, and The Pretenders.

In 2017, I added 254 CDs. I was more actively seeking out sources for cheap CDs. I would hit thrift shops and flea markets on a regular basis. I learned that some thrift shops didn’t really have the turnover that others did, so some places had to be hit weekly and others could be visited less frequently. I was also visiting my local record store for the more elusive titles, which came at a premium price. Some new artists from this year: Madonna, Autograph, Roxette, Loverboy, Billy Ocean, Pointer Sisters, Billy Squier.

In 2018, I added 327 CDs. My local record store had moved father away, so I was spending more time at thrift shops and travelling longer distances for flea markets. I was also discovering other sources for CDs. ReStore by Habitat For Humanity was a newer discovery. Antique malls and indoor flea markets were another. The latter were good sources as they were usually personal collections being sold. Some of the new artists this year: Testament, Exodus, Dio, Krokus, Black Sabbath, Mercyful Fate (good time for metal), Adam Ant, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Level 42, Aretha Franklin, Annie Lennox, Bruce Springsteen.

All of the purchase counts are exclusive of the duplicate CDs that I bought. Usually they were upgrades to existing CDs I already had – maybe a foreign pressing, maybe an earlier pressing, maybe a target CD. In 2018, I sold off 80 of those CDs to a local store. I have about 30 queued up again.

Is it weird that I am adding to my collection every year a quantity that exceeds most peoples entire collection? Maybe. But as in just about any sort of addictive hobby, there will always be examples of those much worse than yourself. I mean, I have 1500 CDs, but there are people out there with 10x as many. I’m not even sure I have enough musical interest to span 10,000 CDs. Since my music tastes only span a couple of decades, that should keep me from going full hoarder. One collector posted his collection of 40k CDs and it consumed the entire wallspace of two adjoining rooms, plus multiple island cabinets in the middle of one room. He also said he just returned from a trip to a couple of stores and bought over 160 more CDs. So, it’s not as bad as it could be.

Pack It Up

Posted by anachostic on December 21, 2018 No comments

As far as house projects go this year, 2018 has been a significant year. Probably my most productive yet. In relative significance to the prior projects, the next project is the most disruptive. While changing the HVAC unit and resurfacing the pool are huge, expensive projects, reflooring half the house is just massive.

Six spaces in four rooms are going to be converted from carpet to laminate. The carpet has been in place probably as long as the house has been around, so… 25 years or so? It’s time to update that. The contractor came out and gave me a quote, which I just accepted and we set an estimated install date two weeks out.

From the sounds of the work plan, it sounds like they are going to do one room per day. That includes moving the furniture in and out of the room. The only thing I have to handle is getting things up off the floor and removing breakables and personal items. The master closet is going to be all on me because the wardrobe cabinets were actually assembled in the room, you can’t move them in or out of the room assembled. One other thing I committed to was packing up my CDs from the tower racks. I don’t see any way of moving those towers with the CDs in place. To accommodate that move, I bought some magazine boxes on the recommendation of a poster on a forum I frequent. They were a great fit.

IMG_20181220_185704

A lot of people despise packing. I am one of those people who actually doesn’t mind it. Well, unless the deadline is too close and I’m scrambling, but otherwise, I like packing up. The process is a physical affirmation that change is coming, and that change should bring excitement and hope for the future. In the near term, this means I’m getting a new floor; in the mid term, it means I’m going to be in a totally new environment.

Packing up is like making a deposit on your future. If you don’t follow through with your plan, you lose all the effort you put out packing up. Right now, all my music gear is packed and stored. Now my CDs are packed and stored. The more I pack, the less I have keeping me in my place. And of course, packing provides some time of reflection, to make sure you really need to hold on to that thing anymore.

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