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.

 

End of Year Babbling

 

Alrighty then. It is the end of 2022. Hey on Christmas day I had an Ebay sale. A lot of 20 Topps 1978 Jaws 2 trading cards for $4.99 + $4.00 shipping. Headed to Florida. I think that makes 4 maybe 5 sales this year. The number of items in Ebay store is now at 71. So there is that to yack about, which I just did.

What the heck else?

Oh I have a CD on order from Discogs. It is my 4th purchase from the site in the last 2 years. Without disclosing the album I will say it is a somewhat hard to find title. I don't know why it doesn't seem like it would be that obscure of a title but apparently it is. I have had this CD on my wishlist over there for sometime now and every once in a while I would get a notice that a copy was available from a seller in Japan, but the shipping was outrageous (at least twice the cost of the CD often much more) and the sale price before shipping was also high. Granted often times they were brand new and sealed copies, but even used copies of Very Good or lesser condition were super expensive. Every time a copy would show up it was very expensive and only available from Japan. Also it was always the same 2 or 3 sellers, sometimes they would have 3 or 4 copies for sale. I kept refusing to give in, until near the end of November. I decided to bite the bullet and order it from a seller in Japan. I'm not thrilled about the idea since it is coming from the Orient which is the most problematic area for ordering stuff from, but that is mostly China that is awful. The overall price is good and cheaper than the previous copies and other copies that are sometimes twice the price I am paying, even cheaper than one of my previous purchases for a vinyl album that is even rarer and an Original Master Recording that was worth the price I paid for it and much cheaper than OMRs of that album usually go for. So this CD has been shipped and is on its way. It has been almost 5 weeks since I placed the order, and the expected ship time is 4 to 6 weeks. So I have another week before I expect the disc to show up. In the meantime another copy for the same price I paid total is available here in the US. UGH it figures when it is finally available in the US I am already waiting for a copy from Japan, Oh and the condition of this CD is marked as being VG+.

Random Stuff Episode 1: DVD Update & Ebay

Random Stuff Episode 1:

Updates: DVD & Ebay

For quite a while now my regular DVD player attached to the TV in my living room I have not used because it gradually stopped recognizing DVDs. It accepts audio CDs but sadly the laser that reads DVD video information has been broken for something like 2 or 3 years. It has been even longer since I watched DVDs on a regular basis. When this problem started back whenever at first it was just an occasional DVD disc. Then it became every DVD disc I would put in a disc and it would give me a "no disc" error. I noticed I could put an audio CD in and it recognized that and played the audio from them, but didn't recognized DVDs. I had purchased a cleaning disc that is supposed to help, but it didn't. However  I have still been buying occasional DVDs via Ebay and elsewhere, but mostly from EBay.

I have a CD/DVD ROM player on my ancient Windows XP laptop but ages ago whenever I would view videos the computer would overheat and crash. I also have an external DVD ROM Drive but that is a pain to have to plug in all the time plus I had the overheating problem with that laptop so I got out of the practice of DVD viewing.

This lack of a DVD player problem was on the back burner for a long time. I finally got a really cheap DVD player from Best Buy ($37 and some change including sales tax). I was going to get one at Target for about twice as much, but my Target no longer carries DVD players or DVDs and I don't like buying electronics online or trust getting electronic equipment shipped. Ironically that is how I got my Chromebook. My biggest concern with that isn't with the risk of damage during shipping but rather the porch pirates when it gets delivered. Anyway now I have a basic DVD player again. I hooked it up and the first disc I watched was a Doctor Who episode on DVD. Felt good. 

Also related to the DVD issue and my past computer problems, which my Chromebook has helped recover from somethings. My lack of activity for my DVDProfiler cataloging. I need to get things updated and try to see if I can transfer the base program from my ancient XP to my Chromebook. I don't want to have to download the program and learn that I have to pay for it. I think I paid for the software ages ago to have an account tracking more than 50 DVDS. I have way way more than that in TV series alone. A few years back they added an Android app. Not sure if you can add stuff on it, but I can at least see my online collection on it. 

 

I sold another card on Ebay on 29 June for $6 ($2 plus $4 shipping I don't use the Ebay Standard Envelope or PWEs when selling) the last sale was on May 3rd for $7 total.

Random Thoughts And Stuff

Here I go the end of another month and I have to scramble to find something to rant, chat, talk or ramble on about. Not sure where this will take me. Maybe I will delete this before posting it because I found something else to yak about. So yeah I didn't have anything planned. Well that isn't entirely true I do have a few posts planned. A couple have been gathering so much dust they are now buried under several feet of peat moss.

I can't help but wonder if I have used the same post title before. Have I? Don't know. Maybe. It is sort of generic and does mention its randomness.

I guess I can post about this idea that I was going to post on Facebook at one time but decided not to. I live in a pretty typical suburban neighborhood that has it's share of crime but is far from a high risk high crime area. I live in a garden style apartment. You know the kind that has a handful of apartments per floor and the stairwell is exposed to the outside elements. The front "porch" landing area has our building's bank of mailboxes and then the stairs leading up to the units and some stairs leading to the first floor/ground floor apartments. My apartment is along the same side as the mailboxes on the second floor which if I have a large box or package waiting at my front door can be seen from the mailboxes. I am certain that in the last 3 or 4 years I have had 4 or 5 packages or boxes stolen from the front door. When the post office or UPS tracking says your package was delivered and there is nothing by your front door, then yep some low-life scumbag stole your package. You can't blame the person who shipped your order they kept their end of the agreement by shipping the package. You can't blame the delivery service, unless there were specific orders to not leave the package unattended. The only person to blame is the low-life scum bucket that nicked the package. I hope they enjoyed the worthless books, or beat up comics, creased trading cards, or the oversized t-shirt or whatever was in the package. One of the more recent packages stolen from my front door was a book about the Collyer Brothers, Homer and Langley who were among the first recorded Hoarders in the US. I find that almost ironic someone taking a book about hoarders, but it still pissed me off since the book is a little hard to find, not very hard, but difficult to find at a decent low price. But I digress somewhat.

So my thought about my neighborhood is this. In theory I could close the front door to my apartment and leave it unlocked, leave for the day and return without anyone ever attempting to open the door. I could probably leave it unlocked for several days and nobody would ever know. However, I'm sure if I left the door slightly ajar, or completely wide open and was gone for more than a minimum half an hour the chances of someone coming by and being curious about this completely vulnerable apartment would increase and I'd come home to having many items missing. The longer I was gone the more stuff that would be missing. Of course there is also the likelihood that nobody would disturb anything (depending on the day of the week I guess)  but that is less probable. I wouldn't expect anyone to be kind and close the door. I would never test this open door theory.

I also recall a few years back that after a yearly or biannual exterminator visit, I noticed a nice pocket knife was missing from my kitchen that I usually kept in a kitchen drawer but might have left it out on the counter that day. I can't prove it was taken. I don't recall enough details of the make of it to describe it well enough except it was all silver. I don't recall what exterminator service was used during that time or which year it was. Now days my apartment management company uses a different extermination service that comes twice a year at least, and they require that all kitchen and bathroom cabinets are emptied to make spraying easier and that all counters are clear. Plus no dishes in the sink. The time the pocket knife was taken the only prerequisite was that the counters were clear, oh and the no dishes in the sink. This totally empty and clear requirement also puts your apartment in more of a disarray than it normally is. I haven't recovered from the last round of spraying. Heck I never really recovered from moving into the apartment 11 years ago.

Wow this post turned out to be a bit of a bummer. I didn't think it would go to the dark side.

Blogging: Lack Of Motivation Mind Blank

This is sort of a blogging rant to myself for being so unproductive on the blog front for the last several months. Maybe even for the last several years.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis will have noticed that for quite sometime now I have barely been keeping up with my blogging here on my self appointed 1 post a month quota. My last few annual "State of The Blog" year end posts and occasional in-year updates have shown my lack of activity here. Sometimes I have the dreaded writer's block and can't come up with something interesting. Ironically I do have 6 or 7 in process posts in my draft queue. Those drafts include a couple of book reviews and a DVD review or two. For the most part my reasons for not publishing some of those is either I haven't chosen a quote for the review or I haven't scanned the cover of the DVD or Book, or I haven't gotten past the initial setting up the page for the review.

I sort of tossed around the idea of just abandoning this blog, or going into a blogging hiatus. I do after all have two trading card blogs that I have the same 1 post a month personal quota for. I really hate going a month without a post for any of my blogs. This blog seems to be the most difficult to come up with stuff for of the three. I guess my regular life is just that dull and routine.

I do occasionally have ideas for posts to do. Some of those ideas I have written down a few keywords for the idea, or the basic synopsis of the idea. I just haven't gotten around to putting "pen to paper" or rather formatted text saved into binary code on computer data storage drive.

Random End Of Month Post

Eek another Month gone, and I didn't really blog about anything significant here. Typical Typical so typical of me. Well football season is way over the Super Bowl was both exciting and disappointing. The New England Patriots are #NOTMYSUPERBOWLCHAMPIONS. I am glad that it wasn't a Patriots Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl like many had been predicting.

We enter March now (well in a about 12 hours after this gets posted) and "March Madness". We shall see where that leads us and which Cinderella team wins the NCAA Championship. For me Baseball season is beginning. The Spring Training Pre-Season games are in full swing which means opening day is right around the corner. This Winter has been a pretty warm one here in the greater DC Metro area. We only had one real snow storm but it didn't last but a few hours.

Maybe I'll get around to finishing some of the posts I have had in my draft queue for ages upon ages. Then again maybe not, maybe they will stay there for another couple of years.

Get Me To The Kirk On Time!

Get Me To The Kirk On Time!

Those who are worldly wise of course know that Kirk is Scottish for "Church" and that Kirk is also has some old Norse and Germanic roots. As regular readers know often times I have gotten some strange misspellings on my order receipt from those restaurants that ask for your name rather than bother assigning your order the number that the cash register automatically assigns to it. I guess they do it to be more personal and friendly. It is also a test of the intelligence and spelling skills of the order takers. How well they listen and hear what you said. I am often tempted to give my name as "Captain Kirk" and see how often they screw that up, but my normal name of Kirk is butchered enough by some of these kids who can't give the proper change if the cash register goes on the blink. They will also stare at you if you give them an amount that will give you full dollar bills or silver change instead of a few odd pennies.

So the entry for this post was more divine intervention I think than just some punk order taker not knowing how to spell the simple name of "Kirk". This guy came up with "C-U-R-C-K". Hey he got it Foneticallee excuse me phonetically Correct sort of. "Curck" if I spelled my name that way most people would think my name was Church, which in some ways it sort of is.

If I had my way I would rather be mistaken for someone like OH the current Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins.

Happy New Year: Good Bye 2013 Hello 2014

Yeah, yeah, yeah I've been using this same old picture every new years for the last hundred years even though technically it isn't from a New Years Party. It was a costume party I think during springtime circa 1995 or '96.

I am also posting this entry early evening on the thirty-first of December twenty-thirteen. I am doing it so some people will at least see it before the New Year begins. My first post of 2014 will be later on the First of January. It will be my annual "State O' The Blog" type post. I was going to post that one exactly at midnight, but I realized I hadn't attached my unofficial-official "Party" Pic (The Klingon thing up top)

This post is a sneaky way to up my December posting by one post, and really mess up my total for the year. Got to edit my "SOTB" post and the posting numbers.

Anyway Happy New Year Folks.

Random Pic Fun

Sexy Magic Card Trick

While searching for some pics to use for a logo for a random "Pay It Forward" type of contest I'm going to have at my trading card blog I came across this picture:

Image via http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pick-a-card-any-card-292311648

It reminds me of the DC Comics character Zatanna a sexy female magician/superheroine mixed a little with Hollwood bad-girl actress Shannen Doherty. I would like to know who the model is.