Epic Fail, Pt II

So I finally get an apartment closer to my job. Takes a while for me to get someone to take over the lease for the one I moved into over the summer.

Not having lived with most of this stuff all Autumn, I think it should take no time at all to load into a standard moving truck -- why, I'll probably have extra room!

Wrong....

While it is true I did not technically fill the inside of a 14-foot, 733 cubic feet moving van (there was space at the top), I did manage to take up a good 3/4 of the truck (around 550 cubic feet). And, it took 4 hours to load, mostly because of my procrastination over the last few weeks, not packing when I had the chance.

550 Cubic Feet is not actually a lot of space, especially for a soon-to-be 48 year old living by himself. But it's a far cry from the 'drown in a bathtub' scope of how far I had wanted to reduce my material footprint.

One area I had failed to consider: kitchen equipment. Pots, pans, skillets, crock pots, waffle makers, microwaves, plates, cups, glasses, mugs. Many of my boxes were filled with this stuff, and I can't see parting with any of it, because I use it all at one time or another.

Time to look at everything, again, while repacking, and find out if this goal is even possible.   --JB

Life, the Monkey Wrench of existence...

So, I put down my last box from moving across town, and get a phone call that I've gotten a new job in Houston, 75 miles away!

So, this lovely apartment I have turned into a very expensive storage unit, as I'm staying with a friend in town while I work during the week, and coming home weekends to check my mail and see my friends in College Station.

Since August, I have not unpacked my stuff from the move, with the exception of some kitchen stuff, clothing, and CD's and LP's.  No books, no artwork on the walls, few pieces of furniture. Very interesting. I can actually live without this stuff, after all.    --JB

Epic Fail

Okay, so the big move comes. I moved to a new apartment, only 4 miles from my current one. Having purged a lot of things in the past year, I figure I was close to my original goal of being able to move everything I own in 2 pickup trucks.

Wow. I was so wrong. Last year my move took 12 hours and required 7 pickup loads, and that was only moving a mile. This year it required a week (!), and took 3 pickup loads and 7 loads in my Honda Accord. I spent a total of 55 hours physically moving stuff.

I do have less stuff than last year, but why did it take so much longer?

Media. Books, LP's, CD's, DVD's. Photo albums and slides. The stuff on my 4 shelf units alone took 3 trips to transport. Compared to everything else I own, they are heavy, bulky and dense. Worse yet, most of their function is backup: they sit on the shelf until I need them, to replace a crashed iPod or computer. The rest of the time, I'm stuck with a strange multicolored mosaic of spine art on my shelves.

This year, I forewent the use of cardboard boxes. I hate cardboard. It's not really designed to be much more than a temporary container. The smooth outside surface makes it hard to grip, and it has pitiful holding strength. I put all the books I own into 4 lawn and leaf bags, which was sufficient for the short journey. When I got them to the new place, I chucked the bags into the hall closet. I'm going to conduct and experiment to see how long I can live without physical books on my shelf. (I'm loving my Kindle!)

My music collection has been backed up and duplicated so many times it's hysterical, but I'm still loathe to throw out literally thousands of dollars of vinyl and CD plastic I've been collecting since I was 12. Sometimes I think, if I could just whittle the collection down to the stuff that irreplaceable (like signed copies of albums, promos, test pressings, limited editions, etc) my physical collection would be more manageable. Even that thought doesn't make me want to part with my ultimate backup. I may be losing this battle, after all.

I'm going to see where else I can reduce, and make a new goal for my next move. Stay tuned!   --JB

Countdown

My lease on my current apartment expires next month, and I'm moving. The whole goal of this adventure was to be able to reduce the amount of material I have to move in order to change residences. I will be taking inventory over the next few days to see how I've done.  --JB

The Big Purge 2: Obsolescence

Obsolete technology really bothers me.

Today I'm considering the fate of the following:

1 - 15" Dell CRT Monitor, still works great
1 - 17" Dell CRT Monitor, still works great
1 - Gateway computer tower, runs Windows 2000, has a CD drive, a DVD drive, a floppy drive and a Zip Drive
1 - Blue and White G3 Mac

I think the next hazardous disposal in our town isn't until October, but these are slated to go. What bothers me the most is that, at one time, each of these were top-of-the line machines that cost a fortune and made huge profits for the companies that put them out. Now they're just wasted space. I've replaced them with a larger flat panel Dell monitor, so Dell continues to make money, even though everything they've made before 2009 is obsolete.

That's not right. Why are we, the consumers, responsible for disposing of these highly toxic machines, when we didn't make them, and we did not profit from their purchase?  Dell (to name one, but all computer manufacturers) should be charged with buying back obsolete equipment, and disposing/recycling them at their own expense. It may cut into their profits in the short run, but it would be a better solution that what we have now.

I tried for a month now to obtain a converter so that I could at least attach a DVD player to the larger monitor. The converters themselves are hard to find (no brick-and-mortar company has one, they're only online), and cost almost as much as the DVD player does. I have newer monitors, so it's not really a necessity, I just hate wasting something that cost that much money.

And I stub my toes on them a lot when I walk around my apartment :(   --JB

Big Purge 1: 2011

Today I seemed to be in the final grips of Spring Cleaning Fever. I tackled my two closets, with the aim of throwing out everything that wasn't useful or worth anything.

I also had a goal of better utilizing the shelf sets I have. Two 6-tier shelf sets have been sitting for a few months now with lots of empty space on them. Time to consolidate.

After 7 hours of work, I now have all my books in one place (at long last, none in boxes). And, I have a new empty set of shelves, on which I can now consolidate various electronic components. My hallway closet is now a repository  for empty containers.

The casualties for this purge were many, but a couple warrant special notice:

     -- my Pentax ME-F camera, purchased at the PX in Augsburg Germany in 1985, along with the 50mm lens it came with, and a 23mm lens and a 70-210mm zoom lens (costing a total of $2200 back in the day). After I got my first 2MP digital camera, I never picked up my Pentax again. It's very sad. But, most film cameras aren't worth a thing anymore, and film just doesn't compare with a digital  image.

     -- my model USS  Enterprise-D, which I spent 2 years applying various details to. I just really have no where to put it right now.

With a few exceptions, I've whittled things down to a place nearing the minimum amount of stuff I can use and keep.   I'll have to do another sweep in a couple of weeks.   --JB

More Records

The other half of my Dick Clark collection, the Music Machine (1974-76), is what I started selling this week. I put a show up for auction at eBay, and... no takers. It's never easy, is it?

Next week I turn my attention to about 30 years' worth of magazines. Should actually be easier to deal with than the vinyl. --JB

Daunting

I thought that a good-condition, Billy Joel test pressing of Streetlife Serenade would be a hot seller, but right now on eBay it's going for $5.50. I still have two days on the auction, so we'll see.

I really thought that the Billy Joel would be my most valuable LP. If this doesn't sell, I'm going to assume the rest of my collection to be totally worthless. They will be chucked in the dumpster next week.

It's time to get brutal with my stuff. I only have 5 more months till my lease expires, and I really don't want to have to haul much out of there.

Why is it so hard to release...stuff? None of it's worth anything, it just takes up space, as I've said here before. Bizarre...   --JB

Close One

eBay can be nervewracking sometimes...

The person who bought my records didn't pay me for a good 3 weeks after the auction. But, he did pay me. So, I have 54 lbs less vinyl in my place right now. What's next?  --JB

Follow Up II

Hey, the Dick Clarks sold! Got $300 for the collection (well, half the collection. There were two shows that I actually have copies of). I'm glad that paid off. Considering I paid $12 for this half of the collection, not a bad return on investment, even if it wasn't the thousands I thought I'd get for them. --JB

Follow up

Interesting. I got a note from someone who was watching the Dick Clark auction, and asked if I would be relisting the collection. Since someone's interested, I relisted them; the auction ends next week.

Meanwhile, I had a tough decision to make. I have about 190 remaining commercial LP's (down from almost 400 some years ago). They really needed to be reduced, leaving the most valuable ones and tossing the rest.

My criterion was this: if you can download it on iTunes, and there's nothing else special about the LP, out it goes. I ended up tossing all but a dozen of them. Bill Cosby, Tracey Ullman, the Go-Go's, The Who -- gone.

What I kept, though, were irreplaceable -- Promo copies of albums, LPs that were never released to CD (Americathon soundtrack, anyone?) Even a couple of test pressings!

What will be harder, and I haven't done it yet, is going through my Barry Manilow vinyl collection. For a few years, I would grab any copy of a Barry album I saw in a garage sale bin or a discount rack, just because I couldn't bear the thought of his music being tossed away. But -- I now have 9 copies of Barry Manilow II, and just about every other vinyl release of his. That's a little much. I will have to sort them for the absolute rarest ones (I have two promo copies of his original 1st album on Bell Records, for instance).

This is not for the faint of heart... --JB

Setback

So, 10 long days of waiting while I put 1/2 my Dick Clark Collection for sale.

No bids.

So, I have a bit of a dilemma: on the one hand, I know these discs are valuable. Someday, I know I can get upwards of $10K for this collection. On the other hand, the pragmatic side of me is saying 'you can't sell them, therefore they are worthless'.

I would hate to dump these, and a few years from now be kicking myself for letting go of a fortune. On the other hand, to have hung on to worthless plastic since 1994 would be just as awful.

There's still some time on this one. I'm going to put them back in the closet, and see what else I can reduce in my home. --JB

Big Surprise

Just proving that there's so much in this world I know so little about...

I finally (finally!) got up the nerve to sell my old comic book collection! Problem is, I'm not a DC reader, or a Marvel reader. I don't do Spider-Man or Green Lantern or any of that, I could care less about the X-Men.

I read Warren comics. Between 1964 and 1983, the put out (among others), Creepy and Eerie, two of the finest horror comics ever made. Over the years I had collected quite a few of them, and had gotten to the point, about 15 years ago, that I had to make a decision to either finished the collection (I had about half the known issues at the time), or give up and sell them.

Years and years later, they were still sitting in a trunk in my closet. This year, out they go!

Problem is, I know nothing about comic books, other than the fact that certain issues of certain comics are quite valuable to collectors. I had about a dozen of the really good issues of Creepy and Eerie among the 113 issues that I put up for sale, but other than Creepy #1, I didn't think anything else would be considered particularly valuable. So, I would have been thrilled to get any money at all for them, just to get them out of my place.

I started the auction the day after my birthday (Dec 27), no minimum, and (crossing my fingers), no maximum or "Buy it Now" price. I hit the "post" button, and we were off.

My first bid was for $3.00. I figured that would be all I'd get. I check on it again just before New Year's, and it had gone up to $10! Whoa, cool. Still didn't expect anything big.

Right after New Year's I got a note from the then-highest bidder (at $20.00), who offered to buy it for $50 if I stopped the auction right now. I thought it was a generous offer, so I looked to see if it could be done. Well, Meg Whitman didn't become a billionaire by letting sellers come and go as they chose: I was there for the duration. Sorry, chum...

I felt bad about the decision for about an hour, when the bid shot to $42!, the next day it was over $50!

I'll never be good at the stock market, because my gut was telling me this was topped out. I didn't check the auction for a few days, just to give myself a break from disappointment. I needn't have worried: I checked the auction yesterday, and it was up to $95! I was astounded, I had no idea these silly comics would be worth anyone's time or money.

Today was the final day of the auction. When I woke up, the bid was up to $205!

By lunchtime, it was over $300! I could barely concentrate on my work, wanting to peek in and watch the auction. I finally gave in at the last 10 minutes.

14 seconds before the end of the auction, someone put in the final bid:  $361.78! That's over half what I paid for my computer!  I'm thrilled, but astonished that it sold that well.

I wonder what I'll get for my Dick Clarks?    --JB