Category: Foo

Cabin Fever Induced Pre-Spring Cleaning

It’s that time of year again. Time to realize holy crap I have a lot of stuff and eesh that’s not even plugged in and okay I obviously didn’t keep up with this series of graphic novels. You know what I’m talking about. Here’s a list of “crap” I want to get rid of.

  • The Watson.
  • The gargoyles. I used to have a lot more. Now I don’t even want these.
  • My graphic novels and comic books. I used to have a lot more. Now I don’t even want these.
  • My turntable and record collection.
  • The dozens of board games we never play.
  • A lot of coffee table books.
  • T-shirts. For the love of Ganesha, why do I have so many t-shirts? I am hereby instating a moratorium on the acquisition of t-shirts.

Things that are on the short list.

  • The VCR. We only keep it because of one exercise video. Which, now that I think of it, I could probably get from Amazon for $5.
  • The CD player. We still have a lot of CDs. We don’t play any of them outside of the car. Can you tell I’m getting really tired of physical media?

If any of these things sound appealing to you, let me know.

The Mondays

This was originally drafted as an email to my good friend Grant. But I think it’s appropriate for public consumption.

Increasingly, any development I do follows this pattern:

10 ask for specs
20 wait
30 get (new) specs
40 build (more)
50 test
60 goto 30

Yes, that is an infinite loop. No, nothing is ever done. Even if it’s live, even if it’s production, it’s never done.

It’s hard to feel good about anything you do when it’s temporary. I was trained/educated to build robust systems that last.

But I am not my job. Right? There is life after programming.

Good weekend. Saturday was a lot of fun, despite being tired all day. Sunday morning I finished the book I was reading and decided not to start reading another book until at least Monday. Kathleen has been suggesting we ride our bikes to Starbucks for coffee. Which is pretty cool. I’ve been riding my new bike. It’s got some kinks that I need to work out. Braking is weird. We went to a few open houses and saw something we like but can’t afford. Kathleen went to the studio and threw two pieces. I’m really happy about that. She stopped doing pottery while her father was sick. It’s been a few years now. I’m glad she’s back at it. I always liked her work. It’s not perfect and shiny but it has a sort of honest character that I appreciate. A lot of her pottery friends can make a dozen pieces that all look the same, and while that makes you “good” at what you do, every piece Kathleen makes is unique and experimental. While she was out, I did some bike maintenance on the Bastard Son of the Disillusioned Yeti King. Rear brake was off, thought my wheel might be misaligned in the dropouts. Turned out I had a broken spoke. Probably not a good thing to be riding that around. And because I’ve been doing maintenance on a roughly weekly basis, I know that broke last week. So I’m on the new bike this week. Obviously the more I ride it, the more things I think about. The brakes are different, so my pannier will push against it if I put it where I think it ought to go on the rear rack. And, like I said, the front brake is doing some thumping thing that isn’t right. I will need a kickstand. I need to copy down the serial number.

But I digress.

You have to move on. I have to figure out how to get my busted wheel to the bike shop before they close at 6pm. That’s a bit more rushing than I like to do. Possible. I am already not as prepared as I could be to do it today, but I will probably try anyway. A little hustle. I like the word hustle. I don’t like the word hurry. I need get to pick out a new book to read. I need to get up to Stuyvesant to see about ordering the other books I want. I’ve decided that while it would be cheaper to order them from Amazon, and while Amazon would give me all kinds of reward points, I miss going to an actual bookstore. Wednesday we’re getting Brooks BBQ, which is a rare treat. And we’re trying to work something out to get together with my parents, though nobody has any idea what to do or where to do it.

Let’s focus on what’s ahead of us.

Built to Last

I am starting to favor things that are built to last.

Electronic gadgets frustrate me. They are meant to be obsolete in less than a year. They are designed to be replaced in less than a year. People pay hundreds of dollars for something they are going to throw away by next Christmas. (And they “have trouble making ends meet.” You have too many ends.) Batteries are rechargeable, which is nice, but after a while they don’t keep their charge anymore. And you can’t replace the battery. Well, you can, but most of the time it’s actually cheaper to just buy a new one. Which is the point. (And then you buy fancy cases and whatever other junk for your gadget, too.)

These things are not meant to last. In many cases, clothes go out of fashion. Sneakers are “made by little slave children” and come apart. Plastic flatware (and this is a rant for another time) is created to be used once and then thrown away. They wear out and we happily go buy a new one. Or worse, we replace them when something newer and shinier comes along. Which is almost all the time.

I am interested in things that are built to last. I am willing to pay more for something that is rugged and serviceable. I can pay $1000 for a bicycle that will still be on the road 20 or 30 years from now. If anything on the bike breaks, it can be fixed. It’s not like my iPod which, when something breaks, renders the entire thing trash. I could go to Mall*Wart and buy a low quality knife, with a blade that will dull in its sleep and a cheap plastic handle that will fracture the first time I need to put it through some abuse, or I can shell out a little more for something from Benchmade that will continue to cut off parts of my fingers when a lot more of my hair is gray.

I think people who are okay with tossing and/or replacing their stuff are not really attached to it. They don’t rely on it. They probably don’t really need it in the first place. I need equipment that I can count on. I need bags that are not going to leak like a blue light special, because I take my stuff out in the rain. I need a helmet that isn’t going to shatter into bits when I drop it, because I will drop it. I need a first aid kit put together by/for people who are actually going to get hurt in the middle of nowhere.

I guess I have higher expectations of things.

Rampant Consumerism

Earlier I wrote about how I was trying not to buy every shiny thing that caught my interest. Here’s why.

Let’s say I come across a cool bike tool kit. Now, I can afford that. That. But something like this comes up every day. At the end of the week, I can’t really afford all of these things.

And I already have a nice bike tool kit. I don’t need another one. I should be using the things I have.

At some point I realized I already have everything I needed. The feeling that I don’t have to buy anything is unsettling in our society. If you’re not buying something, you’re unamerican.

There’s also this: it never ends. It never, ever ends. If I bought the tool kit today, there’d be something else tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. It will never stop. This is how people get into trouble with credit cards. They cannot keep up, but it’s impossible to keep up. So don’t. (The whole concept of “living within your means” appears to be a foreign one.)

And where am I going to put all of that stuff? When I started to think about this, I became aware of all the things I already had that were stuffed away somewhere, things I’d forgotten I even had. Those things were, once upon a time, shiny new things I had lusted after.

It’s pointless.

The next time I write about this sort of thing, I’ll write about buying things that last. With a detour through our disposable society.

Things I Am Not Buying

Occasionally I come across things that make me think super cool, I want one. But I am “making sacrifices.” I am trying to not buy every shiny thing I see. The reasons for this are many, and would probably make a good post. Here’s a list of things I am not buying