Random Ramblings Maybe Even A Rant

 

MMMKAY I got to thinking of things I could blog about and one of my thoughts was about recent changes to my life due to decluttering and several months of a change in how I approach the various things that I collect. When someone collects stuff they do it for many reasons. When it gets out of hand it turns into hoarding or the maintenance of a hoard if the accumulation has stopped. Rarely does the accumlation stop.

Many people get attached emotionally to the collection or some of the idividual items which makes it that much harder to declutter the mess. That was me yep. Also emotions of how the stuff was acquired can contribute. For me it has been a lot of emotional attachment combined with a lifetime of collecting the stuff. Sometimes with the intent of "sometime selling it because it is worth a lot". The problem is you never give up on the stuff and keep it anyway. You procrastinate on finding a selling venue, or place too high a value on it. 

I saw the collections more as "libraries" for whatever media they were. I still see my music collection and videos in that way a library. There is so much I could never listen to, watch or read each and every item in the collection, thus the library label. You have a bunch of stuff you like and would like to experience sometime, even if you never end up experienceing most of it. It is there for you whenever you want. Many people have switched to streaming services and the cloud to store stuff, but the streaming services periodically get rid of stuff or make upgrades to the latest version of something so you can't access the original or in some cases what you want at all becuase they dumped it.

During my decluttering, which I am still in process, I don't think I will ever be totally clutter free, one of the emotional attachment things I cut loose was 90% of my comicbook collection. It went along with a large dinning room table that was much too large for my apartment, 4 chairs, lots of electronic equipment, and a small entertainment center on wheels, boxes and boxes of VHS tapes mostly home recorded off the air tapes, but some pre-recorded commerical product tapes, boxes of magazines, a pole lamp that was shorting out a couple of verticle cubbie organizers storage units, a very nice footlocker the size of a small steamer trunk. No room for the stuff. I used one of those junk hauling companies that will attempt to donate or recycle stuff before they go to the dump. So I feel a little relief about that. I hated having to "dump" a lot of stuff, and still did a lot of dumping before the junk hauling company came. I was in a panic mode to prep for an inspection that if I had failed they could have kicked me to the curb (due to the clutter). I wasn't sure if I could get the "junk" hauled away before the inspection, but I was able to. My cluttering was never any nasty moldy food, or animal feces (or human), just lots of clutter in boxes with very little organization at all. There were "areas" of stuff where I knew mostly what was there but not much specifically.

My attitude of "stuff" in the last couple of years has been "It is 'just' stuff". No reason to be attached to it. It doesn't make it much easier though there is still the emoitional attachment thing, and the logic games of why to keep stuff. You can't take it with you. Mortality is also a factor for all of this. I'm single no kids. The youngest of 4 siblings (1 deceased) . I do have 2 nephews now in their 30s, one by blood the other by marriage. Neither one seems to be interested in the stuff I have been into, so they would probably just trash the stuff anyway. Right now though I don't have a will so living in Maryland all my stuff would be in the hands of the state and they usually dump stuff anyway.

 

Nantucket Nectars: Bottle Cap Facts

So what is "under the hood"?

The subject of this post is a bit odd but I'm not the first to ponder it. A not so quick Google search landed me with just about all the dang links in this post. OK so let me start at a sort of beginning...

A few years ago, I forget exactly when, after discovering this trivia topping thing I started to collect a little bit. To clarify a little of this vagueness. I acquired a liking to the various fruit juice flavors from the Nantucket Nectars Brand. The company prints facts about the island of Nantucket (and people although I don't recall seeing any about people) on the inside of the bottle caps. This practice of printing facts on the inside of bottle caps seems to first been done by Snapple. At least they claim that, the practice might go back farther. Well now as in currently the mother company that owns/runs Snapple owns/runs Nantucket Nectars. According to the online sources I found there have been over 750 different Nantucket facts printed with 100 some being produced in any one year. In doing some poking around I found this "Put a lid on it" article which is interesting.

When I was first trying to figure out how many different ones there were I discovered this 101 Things Blog from a 2011 post which updated her 2010 post on the subject. Back then she seems to have 70 some caps. I found an archived list that someone else came up with that has 257 caps on their blog from sometime earlier. That is the largest list I have seen from the semi-quick research Googling I did for this post.

Back those few years ago I was going to try to collect them all before I discovered there were over 100 per year made at any one time and a grand total of 750 or more. I don't know why I have kept the ones I do have, other than to write up a post about the phenomenon of it. I wonder if I can sell the collection on Ebay? Or find out if the 101 Things Blogger Amy still collects them. Maybe I have some she doesn't.

More recently I noticed they now use plastic recyclable bottles with plastic caps. They still print local facts about Nantucket under the plastic caps. The caps are dark purple and the facts are printed in white or light gray which makes it difficult to read the facts now.

NOTE: This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for ages and ages. When I first began the draft for this post the company was still using glass bottles with metal caps. I don't know when they made the switch from glass to plastic. The switch to plastic bottles takes some of the fun out of getting the juices. I tried adjusting the plastic images to read the inside sayings better but I'm not an expert at photo editing. Sorry those don't look right.

comics tracking.

I haven't seriously collected comics for many years. Probably not since the late 1980s. I've got many boxes filled with comics most of which I want to eventually sell, giveaway or possibly trade. Anyway like with some of my other hobbies I figured there was probably some sort of online "collection tracker" site. I was right.

The first place I checked out I had found from some chat forum that was the result of something I had been looking for or possibly a sidetracked idea from an Ebay search. Anyway I found comicspriceguide.com.

It looked great. You can search your collection and it also gives price info on your issues. Great right? I noticed you can sign up for free, but there is also a higher level pay membership. The difference? I found out after I signed up that the difference is the free membership only allows you to list 50 titles the paid membership gives you unlimited space of course. The paid membership is something like $45/year or some silliness that I think is too expensive. UGH that is like the book site Library Thing, which is why I use Good Reads.

OK so then I found another site that looks a bit more promising for us cheap guys.
stashmycomics.com is also a free to use site. It has some forums, and it also has a way to find out the prices of your comics but it is not as accessible as the comicpriceguide prices were. There the prices are shown in the list view of your books, at stashmycomics you have to click on to the specific issue to get a full detailed page with pricing info. I think I can live with that even though the site title makes me think I'm hiding my collection from my mom in the basement.

US Quarters

Regular US Quarter. WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN?

It has been 10 years since we have seen a regular release (minted) US quarter. The kind like this with George Washington on the front and an Eagle on the back. The kind of quarter you don't bother to look at and admire the design, because you know what it looks like. You might check out the front just to see what year the thing was minted. Sometimes it's fun to see a coin with the year you were born on it, or some other special year for you.

1965 Quarter front

Front and back of Regular US Quarters (1932-1998)

The George Washington Eagle Quarter went mostly unchanged from 1932 to 1998. The profile of Washington went through a couple of slight modifications once or twice over the years, but they were subtle and only coin collectors really cared that much to notice. The eagle on the back has also gone pretty much unchanged. In 1976 for the Bicentennial the US Mint made special Bicentennial Quarters. The special commemorative quarters still had George Washington profile on the front with the years 1776-1976 underneath in the regular spot for the year of mintage. The back had the portrait of a colonial drummer. Then in 1977 they returned to the standard George with the Eagle back.

This regular familiar design was interrupted in 1999 when the US Mint started their 50 States Quarters Program. Each year from 1999 - 2008 they minted a different design for each of the 50 states. They released 5 different state quarters each year in order of when that state joined the republic of the United States.

Front of US State Quarters (1999-2008)

The Front has similar George Washington Portrait as the old quarters, but the writing on the front was majorly changed. United States of America was brought to the front, the word Liberty was moved down from the top to the side and made smaller. The words Quarter Dollar was also brought from the back to the front.

Back of Delaware State Quarter 1999

The backs were each unique and distinct for each individual state. The state name along with the year the state joined the United States and the year of mintage were put on the back. More details and all the designs can be seen here: http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/50sq_program/

OK so now it's been 10 years since we've seen an eagle on the back of a quarter. Sure there are still tons of these coins in circulation, but new ones have not been produced since 1998. Sometime during the 10 years of the States Quarters Program people seeing the schedule for the coins started wondering if or when they would produce a quarter for the Nations Capital Washington DC. Technically not a state DC was not included in the States program. This past year 2009 the US Mint released a Washington DC quarter in their six quarter District of Columbia and U.S. Territories quarters. The quarter for the territory of The Northern Mariana Islands by the way is the most difficult one to find as they minted very few of those and the distribution of them was more limited than the other designs of the Territories coins. To see the list and links to their designs visit http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/dcandterritories/

NOW the US Mint has started a New Quarter Program. This is another 10+ Year Program. Called "America The Beautiful" this program features designs with US National Parks. The coin fronts will still have the familiar 1932 George Washington Portrait on the front, with the Park design on the back. The release schedule seems to be when the park was designated a National Park. This program starts this year 2010 http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/atb/ and will end 2021. There are 56 quarters in this set. Each year they will release 5 quarters with a design of a State Park. There is already a generation of kids who haven't seen the regular design as a NEW quarter. By the time the Parks series is finished those kids will probably barely recognize the regular design. This will be a large set for collectors to acquire. It also means it will be at least the year 2022 before we see a REGULAR QUARTER ever again.

Why CNET Why?

It was a sad Monday today 29 September, 2008. A beloved website designed to keep track of DVD collections was given the old heave-ho by the corporate weasels that had bought it about a year or so ago. I am talking about one of the best, if not the best, DVD collection tracking websites. DVDSpot.com was an excellent resource of DVDs that are available world-wide. Each entry for a particular title had just about any and all information you would want to have for a DVD release (so long as it was a legitimate release, no bootlegs or pirated copies were allowed). I have yet to find a compatible collection website for other hobbies, or even for DVDs. There are a few that come close, but I really loved the feel of The DVDSpot.

Well during the day on Monday 29 September, the following message was posted on the main home page of my beloved DVD tracking website from the current corporate owners of the site CNET.com. Red text on a bright yellow background.


"On Wednesday October 15th DVDSpot will be closed permanently. This decision was made to allow us to focus on other great web properties. We sincerely appreciate everyone's contribution to the DVDSpot community and hope you enjoyed the free services it provided. We understand many people will not want to lose their personal collection data, so we remind you that you can export that data to file by going to Membership Tools while logged in and clicking the Export to File button. This will create a file with all movies in your Owned and Watched lists. Also keep in mind the editor system for approving DVD additions and edits has been disabled, so no new or edited DVDs will be added."

To say that this angered many of the regular users would be an understatement. The site also has a forum board, that I visit and participate in on a daily (when I can) basis. It has many people who share a common interest, the collection and watching of movies and TV shows on DVD.


Similar sites and forum boards have come and gone. One that stood out was called Guzzlefish.com (a petstore website occupies that domain name now), even though it had a neometal/punk type feel to it, the GF site was a useful site. Unfortunately I didn't take full advantage of it when it was around. It had categories for music and the VHS format in addition to DVDs. I took a break from it for a year or so, returned (never completely filled out my music collection or videos) and then 6 months to a year or so later it was gone. For a while there was a forum board website called Guzzlefish Forums Refugee which was an attempt to give former members a nostalgic feel on a different site. Well the traffic on that site died down and so did the site. Now the url to that site, which was somebodies personal ID name from the old GuzzleFish site, is some sort of personal website of some guy (I guess the same guy) and his hobbies which I think include hunting and para-military groups or something. DVDSpot.com has followed in the website death march.

Good news is that some of the die hard moderators who helped on the DVDSpot have started a new Refugee Forum for DVDSpot members at bulletpointreview.com. Many of the regular DVDSpot folks had been old GuzzleFish folks so a lot of them have tried all sorts of sites. Most agree that The Spot was the best. Others have said that DVDProfiler is better, well it does have the offline aspect to it, in addition to the online database. There is also DVDAFicianado.com (DVDAF.com) which not as many like, mostly because it is slow to get updates, hard to make additions (or wait for approval to make the additions) and it looks awful. A semi-recent update made it even more unbareable to use.

Well I guess it's back to the slide rule, colored construction paper and paste.

Books, Books, Books And More Books!

Recently I had been having problems with one of the book tracking sites I use, bibliophil.org. First I was having problems logging in, it turns out I was trying to use what I thought was my password except I had an extra character. UGH all these passwords for every single little website. Then their forums go down, well actually it has been taken down now due to problems with hackers and spammers. No problem I rarely use the forum anyway, but the list I tend to refer to now and then, although not very often.

Anyway I had intended to use listal.com as an alternate several months back, but haven't gotten around to populating it too much. There you can also track Movies, TV Shows, CDs and I think make lists of stuff. Then the realization that I didn't have a reliable back-up to my collection as listed on bibliophil sort of sucked. To complicate matters some (besides the fact that I don't have ALL my books listed on any site) the bibliophil site was down for at least a day, maybe it was down for longer, I'm not sure.

Well the time came to search for another reliable book tracking site (similar to my fave DVD site DVDSpot.com, and the long gone GuzzleFish.com Multi-media site) I found an article or two and a blog post or three for possible sites and of course kept running into my longtime book site enemy LibraryThing.com but I don't like that site. The main reason I don't like it is, it is only free if you have less than 200 books to list. If you have more than 200 books you need to upgrade to a paid membership ($10 yearly or $20 Lifetime I think). I also kept running into some of these book community trading/book club sites that would be cool if I wanted to trade books around, but I'm a selfish bastard and want to keep my books. I suppose for some of my books I may sometime trade, give away or sell them, but I don't want that as my main focus.

Long story short I found a site that suits my needs and is similar in someways to bibliophil.org, except it seems to be more reliable and probably gets updated faster. It is called Goodreads.com and it seems to be pretty user friendly. The community aspect of it reminds me of the early days of amazon.com when they had a forums/community section. You can explore the world of books, browse other members collections, contact them, make friends socialize or do whatever bookwise. I LIKE IT! I think I will still keep my bibliophil list active as long as they are still around, or I grow tired of them. LOL.

So in short some collecting sites.

BOOKS:
Goodreads.com - Very Good site for collectors.
bibliophil.org - OK site for collectors.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site. Seems to cater to those who want a community atmosphere.
LibraryThing.com - OK book site for people with small collections or those who trade their books often.

CDS/Music:
rateyourmusic.com - OK site for tracking CD and Record collections. Mostly alternative and specialized genres, but good for overall. Sometimes the moderators are picky about what gets added or how to do it.
CDComplete.com - Barebones CD tracking site, not updated very often, needs major improvements and needs to become more user-friendly.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.

DVDS:
DVDSpot.com - Excellent collection tracking site for DVD collections. This is the creme of the crop in my opinion. The moderators have some strange attitudes, but then you don't have to visit the forums if you don't want. LOL! This site is my litmus/acid test for all other collection tracking sites. Very user friendly and the people there are very helpful.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.
DVDAficionado - Was a decent DVD collection tracking site, but is slow to update. A fairly recent update to the site has made it super ridiculous. It isn't as user-friendly as it once was (it was never really great in that department). The front index page doesn't look like a site that would be for DVD collecting, I don't know what to expect from it. Well that is what happens to sites that are run by huge mega corporations.
GuzzleFish.com - Dead and Gone but not forgotten. This site was a great CD,DVD,Record,Video Game collection tracking site, it might have done comics too I forget.