Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Last night, this morning, and this afternoon, I was bored. Didn't feel like doing much of anything. While looking for things to do -- and believe me, I have plenty at home to do -- I came across a plastic basket filled with little slips of paper. Lots of little slips of paper. Post-it notes that were folded over, notes that came with a note cube. All of them had writings on them. Some were old to-do lists, some had contact information (names, phone numbers, email addresses, and websites) on them, and some had dates and bank balances.

So, I have a huge pile of unsorted data. How do I turn this into meaningful information?

I unfolded the notes and brought out a few pads of half-sheet (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") paper. I placed the Post-It notes on the papers, and used tape or glue to place the other notes on the paper. Soon I will sort them by category, and put them in small 3-ring notebooks. Eventually I'll type them into a computer.

One of my long-term projects havs been to build an address database. That would be a lot easier to maintain than a paper address and phone book. Of course, I can use the one that's available to me in Google. But is Google going to go through my contacts list and harvest this data?

Someday, when I have "disposable income" again, I hope to get one of those TryNeat scanners, run these notes through, and capture the information on these slips of paper -- either via saving the image or OCR'ing them into text.

[Updated 23:55]: In the future, I need to have pads of half-sheet paper by every phone in my house, so that I can eliminate the floating pieces of paper and put the information in the binders more quickly and efficiently.

This afternoon, I took out another box of computer printouts from storage and started going through them. This was a combined box, having printouts from two previously-gone-through boxes. (The last time I accessed it was 2000 or 2001.) Most of it was old email. Some of it was copies of what I already went through. Some of it was too painful to read. So I pitched most of it into the recycle pail. I culled a few things I'd like to either save or scan, like "The Companion's Holiday" poem that a friend and fraternity brother (now deceased) sent me.

I have enough pieces of paper floating around or filed away, and I'm fighting an ongoing battle with reducing it. Unless it's a club newsletter, I really don't need to have paper floating around if I haven't looked at it in over five years. I'd rather store the information electronically. I couldn't do that in college because I didn't have a computer.

I also pulled out box 131, which had plastic carrying cases for floppy disks, some floppy disk mailers, an old 5 1/4" floppy drive, some 5 1/4" disks, and some brand-new QIC-80 tapes that were still in the shrink wrap. I'm going to freecycle most of it after the Thanksgiving holiday is over.

Once again, I get the itch to start cleaning my my hopelessly cluttered house. But I don't know where to begin. I don't have a clear spot to work. I should just pick an area, or a box, and start working.

And then there's this part of me that believes I'll be judged by the amount of trash I throw out. Hell, that's what I do.

Now comes the fun part: loading stuff into boxes for easy transport. I tend to have everything spread out and/or stacked in piles. I'm visually oriented, so I like to be able to see what I have. This, of course, leads to the appearance of having things cluttered. Hopefully when I box everything together, it would appear less cluttered.

But I gotta go through the stuff. Most of the clutter is paperwork. That takes time, unless I blitzkrieg my way through the piles. Tonight I found a pile of pizza coupons and coupon books from early 2007. Into the recycle bucket it all went, one piece at a time.

Oh, and I did see Part 1 of "The Stolen Earth", the series 4 finale for "Doctor Who". As I said in a comment to another LJ-friend who was blown away by the episode, "Excuse me while I pick up my jawbone from the floor." Part 2 is next week.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday agraywitch!

One of my decluttering tasks is to reduce the amount of floppy disks I have. I still use them occasionally, but I certainly don't need a boatload of 'em. Before I try to sell them or give them away, I want to wipe them and make sure there are no viruses on them. That may take some time.

I also have copies of old software on floppy disk, including DOS 5, DOS 6, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1. Will I ever use them again? Highly doubtful. But the packrat in me wants to burn copies of the floppies onto a CD for possible later use. (Except for the stuff that isn't Y2K compliant, like Sidekick 2.0. This stuff is so old that the local computer recycler probably won't take them. Would I ever come across an old 486 or older machine? By this time, it would be over 10 years old. I can still keep the boot disks, or if they get misplaced, grab a new one at bootdisk.com.

This is the dillemma I face. I don't want to throw out the floppies and take up landfill space, especially if the disks contain something that somebody might want.

Any takers?

I have a small collection of infant and toddler toys that my daughter has grown out of and is no longer using. I'd like to donate them to a worthy charity for redistribution, but I can't think of any orgs other than Goodwill and the Salvation Army. I know there's a Project Christmas Smiles out there -- a charity Dayton's "Dr. Creep" founded -- but I don't know if they restrict donations to new toys only, and I don't have any contact info. Are there other groups out there that accepts used toys?

Now I've reached the pile of wedding cards. R and I were married in August of 1999. I want to save these and make a scrapbook, along with the rest of the wedding stuff, but a part of me says it's a moot point, a wasted effort.

We were so happy together back then.

I've been wanting to continue the cleanup of the upstairs loft and spare bedroom. But when I come home at night, all I want to do is lounge around, watch TV, hop on the computer, or sleep. In my mind, I know that I'll never get things done that way. I know that I should devote 2 hours an evening doing cleanup.

I think the next step for me is to take some of the outgrown baby clothes I still have and take them to a consignment store. That will take several weeks, if I drop off one tub a week. But then I'm thinking, "Should I wash these clothes again before I take them out?" I know I -- or ultimately, mariasmom since she bought the clothes -- won't get much for them.

I probably should thin out the comic book collection as well. But again, I know I won't get very much for the ones I sell. I won't get what I paid for them. :(