Richard’s Personal Blog

Filled out a change-of-address form for our Brentwood home and came across some online coupons, courtesy of the US Postal Service. About the only interesting one was for JCPenney — code MVP811 for 15% off at jcp.com (exp. 1/31/09). And if you also use GIVETHX, you should be able to get free shipping on orders over $49 as well (exp. tomorrow), but I don’t know if JCPenney allows coupons to be combined.

On top of today’s earlier post on what I’ve managed to accomplish recently, there are a few more things that I wanted to add to the list.

• Completely recycled the full contents of another work-related storage bin — except for a single software CD which I mailed off to the owner of the company.
• Archived more than a dozen picture CDs to the media server, mailing off some originals to those who might have more need: Monica’s wedding pictures, Anna’s trip here to the United States (not mailed yet), etc.
• Repaired the Shop-Vac that hasn’t worked in a year or so. Turns out the switch was faulty, and the repair was quite easy. Fortunately, I didn’t garage sale it earlier this summer like I’d originally planned.
• Dug out the backyard sprinkler valves. That wasn’t just for fun, mind you. In order to spruce up the backyard with only three sprinkler zones, two need to be combined into one, the third remain as is, and another new zone to cover the sides. Requires about 15 feet of new pipes, new valves, a splice or two, and a couple taps. Messy work, but more efficient, and better over all. Of course, when I dug it out a little too easily, I found out why — a massive leak (fortunately) on the sprinkler side of one of the valves helped keep the dirt moist and loose. Without six inches of dirt covering it, the spray from the ill-fitting pipes arcs almost reaches the neighbors’ house. Actual repairs and modification to occur later. Maybe I should just build that atrium while I’m at it…
• Put all my tools away. Sounds basic, but it included all the tools that I used at the Antioch and Brentwood homes recently. Since the garage has been such a mess lately, I couldn’t even approach the tool chest, let alone put the tools away.
• Cleaned out a Hefty-bag-full of clothes from my closet to donate to charity. If I haven’t worn it in ten years, why keep it around? Heck, some of the suits and jackets were almost 20 years old.
• Dismantled the old RedHat Linux server. It was time. No longer needed, the multiple drives, over-powered power supply, and seven internal cooling fans were using up lots of electricity. Saving pennies wherever I can, at this point. Plus, now I have more places to store stuff.
• Upgraded the non-Richards-Ramblings blogs to WordPress MU v2.6.2. One less security issue.

Not that I expect anyone else to care about all this çráp, just that having a significant list will help me feel like I’ve actually been getting stuff done. All leading hopefully to a bit less stress. Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

My life has become some unhealthily stressful and cluttered lately that I have had to make the decision to purge as much as possible (or at least “practical”). I am a packrat, both physically and mentally, and I’m starting to drown in my own obsessiveness.

Stage One is attempting to address much of the physical clutter, beginning by trying to declutter the attic, the garage, and my office. Granted, fortunately nothing’s so bad as to warrant being featured on the news or in one of those reality shows, but something’s gotta change.

• Fortunately, I grew out of obsessively collecting Beanie Babies several years ago, but the collection of about eight storage bins in the garage and attic has taken up too much three-dimensional space, and the fact that they were never properly inventoried has taken up too much mental space. Just knowing the task was uncompleted for years was itself a burden. Result: 360 Beanie Babies and 80 McDonald’s Teenie Babies are now consolidated into only five well-catalogued bins; more available storage space, three empty bins, and one less daunting task.
• About three vertical feet of collectible newspapers and magazines from the ’80s and ’90s has been reduced to a single storage bin, most of the rest dumped into the recycle bin since the local library (and local college) already had the periodicals in their collections. Result: more storage space, one extra bin, and one less task to hang over my head.
• During World War II, my father bought a massive set of crystal glasses while stationed or on leave in Japan. For a decade I’ve had them stored in the attic in two large cardboard Xerox paper boxes. Now they’re carefully packed in a single storage bin. The master packer that I am, even I had to repack the entire set three times in order to make it fit in that one bin. I even reused some of the 1980s newspapers to replace the older deteriorating newspaper padding. Result: more storage space, and a little more peace of mind due to safer, better storage.
• An overflowing collection of 1960s through 1990s film cameras was reduced to a single storage bin. Basically, I just culled a few of the no-value plastic knock-offs, and I’ll throw them into a single lot on eBay sometime soon. Result: Sure, I knew about the Minolta Autocord (and it’s nice collection of accessory lenses) and the Rollei 35S, but I didn’t realize I had two Argus cameras! Now I know what I’ve got, and it’s nicely packed and catalogued enough to lean back towards sanity.
• Work memorabilia, most of it from the defunct Zoho Corporation, took up three storage bins. I’m still obsessive enough to retain as much unique stuff as possible, but duplicates were taken out and destined for wearing or sale. Granted, I’m still accumulating stuff from my current company, and the storage needs will grow accordingly, but culling what I did still feels reasonably fruitful and not too painful. Result: more storage space, one extra bin (for now), and a few more ghosts dissipated.

So far, that means 15 storage bins have been reduced to only eight. And that’s only about one-fifth of the attic/garage contents that need organizing and purging. More to follow, the sooner the better.

Although I’m not nearly done with Stage One, progress on Stage Two is overlapping recently, and it involves purging unnecessary tasks and mental stresses.

• Lots of websites means lots of maintenance. While I plan to revisit or rebuild them later when time and stress permits, www.georocks.us, www.cortney.us, and coloradish.com have been archived and removed from the web for the time being. Result: fewer websites to stress over. [Yeah, except that whole "archive" thing got screwed up for coloradish.com. Since it was hosted on a separate server, I forgot to back it up before deleting it. Brilliant.]

Granted, I still have another 50 or so websites to consider. And decluttering tasks is not limited to websites, but it’s a start.

Remember that my server was recent almost completely filled up a few weeks ago? Good timing on the purchase of the NAS — I had backed up about 1/3 the data onto the new server when the old server took a dump and crashed.

It would no longer mount the RAID-1 drives.

And I couldn’t remember the dámn root password.

Nor could I remember the grub password.

Since the hard drives wouldn’t mount I couldn’t even boot into single mode.

It took me until 1:00 in the morning to get past the lack of passwords.

It’s been four days and I’m still lacking basic IT services: email, iTunes, and access to pr0n.

Not to mention that stupid laptop that I finally declared virus/spyware-free as of last night. It took, what, two weeks to clean?

Things just keep getting better. I can’t even begin to figure out how to spell the frustrated noise I am making as I type this.

Didn’t get as much done as I wanted to this weekend:

• published Devowelizer v1.10 on WordPress
• upgraded family wiki to use the latest version of DokuWiki
• upgraded Richard’s Ramblings to use the latest version of WordPress
• (hopefully) finally cleared off the viruses from the laptop, taking almost five days to fully clean
• almost got within 200 feet of a geocache

Cleaning up that dámn laptop has cost me an incredible amount of time this week; at this point, I’d happily support the death penalty for virus/spyware creators. Better yet, put all their computers in a driveway, and let me and my Jeep spend some quality time with them.

Hope your weekend was better, Sean. Happy Birthday!