At SBUX in Target, waiting for roasted chestnuts at the Asian
grocery. I love the chestnuts here and usually get them
every weekend during this time of year. We would usually
have them in the winter time growing up, but we would have to
buy them raw and prepare them ourselves, so we didn't usually
eat them regularly. With the stand at the grocery, it is
much easier to enjoy them.
Regarding my device collection, man, there's so much that I
have accumulated over the years. Most of them still
work, but the batteries are not good. Some of them don't
even have user replaceable batteries. I hate that. So I
have been trying to bring some order to my collection and
even cataloging the devices.
I used to keep a spreadsheet ages ago for device inventory
but have not kept it up to date. It's stored in a mix of
"places where I keep data" which includes a variety of USB
flash drives, flash media (CF, SD, MS, etc), interal/external
drives, optical media, active servers, old PDAs with
non-volatile memory, magnetic media, Oy vey! Good thing I
was never really sold on the idea of storing data in
cloud...I always felt that it would no longer be mine...maybe
that's how I ended up in this mess. At least I know where my
data is. I should probably consolidate all of this data,
duplicates and all, onto a large external drive, and mount it
on a NAS where it can be properly organized and place an encrypted
offline backup at my folks place for safe keeping (sommething
I have been meaning to do over the years.)
I wonder why I still keep these things? Maybe because they
are still functional? Maybe because of my hording
tendencies? I don't like throwing stuff away, but my stuff
is so cluttered, especially with having 2...make that 3
places where I work on these devices. The game room, my
office, and the garage. Perhaps I should consolidate the
madness into one location...as far as repairs and storage
because I found myself looking all over the place for stuff,
like adapters and various peripherals, instead of
working on them or using them. First World problem.
Speaking of personal data archiving, this is a topic/project
that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time but
never really completely materialized into the way I would
like to picture it. I would get so caught up in
brainstorming the details that the ideas would never come to
fruition. Also the task would seem so challenging at times
that I would get overwhelmed and just put it on the back
burner again. Since it has been brought to the forefront
again with this whole cataloging of devices thing, it would
probably be best to take some action now and do something.
I'm not a big fan of building the plane when it's in the air,
but sometimes you just need to do it.
In ruminating about all of this, the personal data mess and
the electronic device archive, I think another reason I got
to this point probably has something to do with my internal
consciousness and the mess that is there as well. Even
writing about this and the stuff I have written previously
has been very helpful and probably even theraputic. The
order that I bring to my consciousness through writings is
starting to manifest itself in the external by my desire to
consolidate, catalog, and clean house. All of this mess
has been kinda like some sort of psychic blockage preventing
me from bringing balance to the force. Since writing seems
to be a step towards this balance it seems to help me chip
away and bring different perspective to the mess. Perhaps if
I keep up with all of this and further the momentum, I will
eventually end up with an organized device inventory, a
consolidated, user-friendly personal data archive, and an
uncluttered mind (ha!) All of this could be temporary unless
I continue to actively maintain and adapt these things. TIME
TO DEFRAG!!!
