a while back i bought a fair number of containers from office depot. i also purchased some more metal bookends. i’ve been buying the 3-liter, 4-liter, and 9-liter sizes of the really useful boxes. (that’s their brand name.) they’re stackable and such, but i’ve been getting them because they are really good sizes to fit in the ikea storage cabinet and the teknon metal cabinet i have. i’m trying to organize my various junk into containers, so i’ve got one for audio cables, one for computer cables, one for computer-related hardware and accessories, etc. we’ll see how that goes. i’m also hoping to be using the bookends to help get my books into some kind of better order.
over the last week or two, i picked up a few cds. borders had a 40% off coupon on cds (limit 3), including multi-cds and box sets, so i picked up these:
- nashville rebel – waylon jennings (legacy/rca)
- the complete atlantic sessions – willie nelson (rhino/atlantic)
- at folsom prison – legacy edition – johnny cash (legacy/columbia)
interestingly, those three guys are all linked in numerous ways. waylon and johnny were roommates in an apartment in nashville for a while, waylon and willie both left nashville and ended up recreating themselves in Texas, and all three of them were in the highwaymen (their song “highwayman” is on the waylon box). (i just checked my itunes catalog and i have one song off a compilation by the 4th highwayman – kris kristofferson. although i’d like to at least get a copy of “if you don’t like hank” at some point.)
the nelson box has three albums: shotgun willie, phases and stages, and live at the Texas opry house, plus a bunch of bonus tracks from those three recordings that weren’t on the albums.
the folsom album is both of the complete concert recordings (he performed two shows that day, so they’d have two takes to choose from for the album), plus a dvd about that day with photos, video, witness accounts, etc. thus it does rock mightily.
i also picked up a couple of “bargain books” while i was at borders, as well as using a 40% off coupon (good on one book). here they are (the first two were bargain price):
- flatland – edwin a. abbott (dover)
- lord of the flies – william golding (penguin)
- Texian macabre: the melancholy tale of a hanging in early houston – stephen l. hardin (state house press)
i’d heard a couple of math teachers talk about flatland over the years…i think at some point in high school and then again in college. i’d never read it before though. it’s a story from a square that lives in flatland (2-d space) about his encounters with pointland (0-d), lineland (1-d), and spaceland (3-d). all telling is done based on what inhabitants of each land can see inside of their own perspective. the story is a satire on victorian social systems (it was written in 1884) and talks a lot about the hierarchical caste system in flatland, but also provides a lot of mathematical explanations about dimensions. it was a cool find.
i had gotten some coupons in the mail for “buy one, get one free” at yankee candles, so of course i had to go and use them. here’s what i purchased for myself:
- black cherry (large jar)
- mango peach salsa (large jar)
- berry jam (medium jar)
okay, so if you were to combine my first topic (organizing) and my second (purchases of cds, books, etc.), what area would you end up in? the organization…or perhaps cataloguing…of purchased items. which leads me to my third topic…
a few days ago i broke down and bought delicious library (by delicious monster, of course). what is it? a mac only app that keeps track of your stuff. originally movies, cds, and books — it now adds gadgets, clothes, tools, toys, video games, software, and anything else you want to force into those categories. the cool bit is it uses your isight or webcam to scan barcodes, and then automatically scans amazon (and maybe some other places?) to add info about your product and a picture. or you can enter isbn, asin, upc, title, author, etc. and search. you can also enter info by hand. it’s really a pretty slick piece of software. and if you have tons of things (like me) and aren’t cheap (unlike me), then you can buy a wireless bluetooth scanner ($215 iirc) with your purchase and use it instead of your isight. when you walk too far away from your computer, the scanner stores what you’ve scanned until you get back into range of your computer and then uploads them all. very slick.
so i’ve been scanning some of my books and cds, and i’ve scanned all of my dvd and blu-ray movies. i even scanned some a/v cables and my blu-ray player. (did i mention delicious library is very cool?)
and i scanned all of my yankee candles. it found a few, which were placed in “gadgets”. (i had started placing them all in “tools” but eventually i gave up and went with where the few pre-entered ones already were.) and since you can build custom shelves in the software, i built a view of only yankee candles. once i publish my shelves to the net, everyone can see my yankee candle collection for themselves. (and the complimentary remarks about my fine taste in scents can commence.)