A Place for My Stuff

AOL's Wolfenozzy 3D

Another batch ready for the trash.

• AOL installation discs.  I'm proud to say that my introduction to the internet was not through AOL, let alone at the end of the 90s.  But it seemed like EVERYBODY else was on AOL, and boy most of these people were clueless and annoying.  "Hey, you're on the internet?  Cool!  So what's your screenname?!?"  Then I had to explain to them that not everybody on the internet was on AOL, and that while I did have an email address and a number of personal websites, I did not have such a thing as a "screenname".  There was more to the internet than AOL.  Most of them didn't get it.

Of course, AOL didn't want you to think that there was a world outside of AOL.  Let me put it this way.  Instead of a search engine, they had an "AOL Keyword" look-up.  Some companies back in those days had not only a URL for their website, but an "AOL Keyword".  That way, AOL uses could just type the keyword and be delivered to the site.  Funny things happened though if you tried to look up AOL's competitors.  The AOL Keyword "yahoo" for example just took you to an AOL page explaining how you can use their own search engine to search the web.

Anyway, these free AOL installation discs, which always included "First [however many] hours FREE!"  Yes, in those days some services charged by the hour of internet use time.  But these damn discs were everywhere.  I knew some old college classmates who seriously used them as coasters. 

So why did I have these?  Well some people got so fed up with getting these in the mail constantly, that they decided to start a campaign where they wanted people to send them the AOL discs they received, so that they could do a mass mailing of these BACK to AOL.  It was a gesture to say "Enough with these damn CDs!"  I guess I was keeping them for that purpose.  Of course, I never sent them in.  Time to toss these once and for all

• Wolfenstein 3D map, hand-drawn.  On graph paper.  Aside from not having played this early 90s computer game in quite some time, I understand that maps for every level are available anyway.  Yes it sucks to have to throw away hard work, but really, this isn't needed.
• List of stuff on my old PC which I sold a couple of years back to a friend.  Or maybe this was the PC I had even before THAT one.  Regardless, the list served its purpose back then for transferring stuff.  Don't need it now.
• Extra photocopies of CD inserts from some set of Ozzy Osbourne bootlegs.  Don't need them, and I could do better if I really wanted to.  But I don't . Into the trash you go.

APlaceForMyStuff.com - We've got DOT COM!

While I'm sure most of you have already figured this out, I originally wanted the URL for this site to be aplaceformystuff.com, but that was already taken.  Fortunately, aplaceformystuff.org was free, so I ended up taking that.

I did however manage to put in a virtual bid for the .com name, which somebody had been parking for a long time.  Recently, it came through.  So now, I own aplaceformystuff.com.  If you go there, you'll just be redirected here.  As of now, I have two domain names for the same exact site.

Though I don't know how much good this does me now.  I'm sure you regular readers are already used to going to the .org address anyway.  But I figured it was worth mentioning in a blog entry.

My "stuff" featured on Terror Transmission

Among one of my several big bins of stuff-to-sell, I found a lot of stuff related to horror movies:

• A novelization of The Omen
• Promo pin for a King Kong movie or attraction ("Coming June 1986"!).  From universal studios, I think.
  
• The Ape Man, a Bela Lugosi DVD.  One of his lesser-known movies, of course
• Dial D for Demons, a Japanese horror VCD that I bought years ago in China Town in Boston
• Multimedia CD single of Iron Maiden's The Wicker Man (inspired by the movie, of course)
• Matchbooks that say "Bates Motel" on the back.  I bought these in Hollywood 15 years ago.
• Bride of Chucky mini promo poster and frame

Rather than trying to sell these on eBay or give them to a thrift store where they'd be unappreciated, I decided to send them to my friends who host Terror Transmission. From the website:

Terror Transmission is a free podcast program dedicated to horror cinema, particularly classics of the genre and/or those hidden gems begging for rediscovery. Each episode, your hosts will select a film and view it, while providing listeners with real-time commentary, behind-the-scenes ephemera, and a dash of ribald humor. This creepy cocktail will then be edited down to its best elements and presented to you. Other material related to the world of horror will also be featured when deemed applicable.

I wrapped the items individually and gave them to co-host Matt Paradise when I saw him in Boston a few weekends ago.  I gave him the stipulation that he and Jason had to open them during an episode of Terror Transmission.  I figured they'd spark some discussion and trivia about the various movies.  So if you listen to episode #19, for the movie Black Sunday, you can hear them opening the gifts at the beginning.

Facing the Inbox

(From Mad Magazine, 1985 "Computer" issue.
The picture, not my article, silly!)

A while back I wrote a post on email clutter.  One one hand, it's great that we live in an age where we can electronically archive writings, photos and even music.  These days you can buy a hard drive for under $200 that's smaller than a toaster and holds the equivalent of a record store or a public library.  Or probably both, come to think of it. 

The inevitable downside of course is that we have a lot of "electronic" clutter: disorganized messes of old emails, mp3s that either aren't tagged right or that we aren't really listened to, too many shortcut icons, etc.  And there's also the risk of loosing or damaging a disk or hard drive and thus possibly losing your only copy of hundreds or thousands of documents.  I'm sure there are AOL-twit families from the past 10 years who've taken nothing but digital photos of their kids and family trips, never bothered making prints or back-up copies, and saw their entire family photograph collection disappear when their hard drive bit the dust.  Granted I'm a hell of lot more cautious than those types, but even so, you can't be TOO safe.

I've been using email now for about 16 and a half years.  I still have saved copies of certain older emails, which hardly take up any room since they had to be all unformatted text-based and typically didn't have attachments.  Though I've been letting the email in my Yahoo account get enormous.  I have at least 1300 in my Inbox, and over a dozen folders with other saved emails.  I needed to find out how to get copies of all of these to my hard drive, so that I could make copies to burn to disc or what not.  This way I'm not relying on Yahoo to keep everything safe.

After sifting though numerous stupid replies (e.g., "u like go highlite the email than copy and paste it to a word doc and do that 4 evry email") I did finally figure out how to transfer Yahoo emails saved to my hard drive.  As for whether the same trick will work with other web-based mail providers (Hotmail, G-mail, etc.), I really don't know, though I suspect it would for some and not others.

Anyway, in essence here's what you have to do:

1. Get a mail-reading program that you can run from your desktop (Outlook, Eudora, etc.).  For the sake of simplicity, let's say it's Microsoft Outlook.  If you have Windows, then you already have some version of Outlook installed.
2. Configure Outlook to connect to your web-based email account.  For the sake of the argument, let's say your email account is with Yahoo.
3. Let Outlook sync with Yahoo, so that a copy of all your saved emails on Yahoo end up in Outlook.
4. Export your emails in Outlook to some type of file (document, archive file, whatever).

Though even all of that is easier said than done.  Here are some details you should know:

• Your web-based email service has to allow "POP" email access.  The free version of Yahoo Mail doesn't let you do this.  But I pay a little money for "Yahoo Mail Plus", which gives you this ability, along with other perks like bigger storage space, no advertisements in your sent emails, etc. 
• Configuring Outlook to connect with Yahoo was easier than I thought, though it has to be done right.  Yahoo gives instructions on how do this here, not just for Outlook but for a variety of other email programs too.
• When you make Outlook grab mail (select "Send/Receive" from the menu) it only copies what it sees in your Yahoo's "Inbox" folder.

Soooo....here's MY plan for the next day or two:

1. Organize my Yahoo Inbox by emptying it.  This is going to take a while.  Every email that's in their now either has to go to some appropriate folder with similarly saved emails, or go into the trash.  I've already cut it down from about 1300 emails to around 650.  
2. Move emails from one of my saved email folders in Yahoo, to the now empty Yahoo Inbox.
3. Go over to Outlook and have it grab the emails from Yahoo.  Remember, it only copies from Yahoo's Inbox.
4. Save these emails in Outlook by moving them to a new Outlook folder or exporting them right away.
5. Empty the Outlook Inbox
6. Repeat all of the previous steps for each folder I have on Yahoo.

Yeah, I know.  It's a clutter project that doesn't decrease physical volume.  And it's not as photographically fun as something from my living room.  I'm sure I've bored some of you.  But it's still another long overdue "cleaning" project.

OK, here you go: Conversion of Physical Media

As promised, here's a blog about converting your data and audio/video to different media.

What does this have to do with clutter combat?  A lot, in fact.  Many people own tons of albums and movies on physical media that they simply don't listen to or view anymore: VHS, BetaMax, 8-track, vinyl record, 8-mm film, 8mm video tape, Hi-8 video, DV camcorder videos, audio cassette, 12" video disc, and so on.  Not to mention photos and projection slides that would need to be scanned in order to share on-line or printed bigger.  These take up space.  Sometimes, they take up a LOT of space.  On top of this, they deteriorate over time.  As I mentioned a couple of posts back, old computer disks are like this too, though not nearly as common for most people.

So, what can you do about it?  Some of this stuff you could sell or give away, especially if you have a rare collector's item (though the chances of that are much slimmer than you think) or can give away a lot in bulk. 

Well that might work for some of the store-bought stuff, but what about those personal things?  Like videos you made of weddings or kids birthday parties?  Or old music that you still can't find anywhere on CD, or don't feel like buying for a second time?  In this case, you want to find a way to extract what's there.

To transfer old audio or video, you basically have three options: get a professional to do it for you, buy a special all-in-one device that will do the job, or do it all yourself using your computer. Naturally, there are advantages and disadvantages to these.

1. Hiring a professional.  There are professional audio/video people who, for a fee, can take your old home movies and put them on DVD, or take your old music collection and put it on CD.

• Advantages:
  • You don't have to be tech-savvy at all. You let the professionals handle it.
  • Sometimes this can be your only choice.  For example, I have old 8mm reels of family films from the 1970s, and while I do still have the original rolls of film, I don't have the means to project them in a way that I can properly capture the picture and sound, and there are (as far as I know) no really good products on the market that let me do this.

• Disadvantages:
  • You have to pay them.  This might cost a lot.
  • You also have to trust that they know what they're doing.  Some will just rush through the process without trying to optimize for best results.  Some might even cut off the videos short, and not give you everything.
  • You don't have much choice in how you want to edit the videos (or music), what order they appear in on the final product, etc.

2. Buying a device that does the copying.  Places like Best Buy and Brookstone carry devices that not only PLAY different types of media, but let you COPY from one to another.  For example, I bought my parents a combination DVD/VHS player that let you convert from one to the other.  I liked it so much, that I bought one myself.  I put a blank DVD-R disc into the DVD tray, put a movie into the VHS tape slot, and in 90 minutes I had a DVD copy of the movie.

• Advantages:
  • Again, you don't have to be too tech-savvy. Just load up the stuff you want, press a button, and let the machine do it for you.
  • Although buying the new unit would cost money, you could use it multiple times, unlike going to somebody who provides the service.
  • It's much quicker and simpler than #3 (which I'll get to in a moment).
• Disadvantages:
  • You still have to buy the new unit in order to do this.
  • Editing capabilities are limited.
  • This sometimes won't work for store-bought VHS tapes.  For example, some movies on VHS secretly have a copyright protection signal build into the video so that if you try to bub it on to DVD using one of these devices, the device might refuse it.

3. Using your computer.  What you do is play the video (or vinyl record or whatever) on its own player, then feed that signal into your computer.  From there, can capture the signal and store it as a file. Once you have the file (a movie file if it's video, or something like an mp3 or a wav file if it's audio), you can burn it to a DVD or CD, or share it on the internet.

• Advantages:
  • The cheapest method, by far.  Chances are, your computer already comes with software that will do this for you.  Though you can get better software plus jacks that let you plug your device into your computer, and spend less than $50 for it.
  • You have complete freedom to edit things however you want!  For example, you can make your own DVDs these days with chapter breaks, titles on the menu, your own professional-looking display when people watch it on their TV, etc.
  • Most transfer software also gives you "cleaning" capabilities.  You can eliminate pops and scratch sounds from vinyl, add brightness to old dim videos, and so on.
• Disadvantages:
  • You have to know what you're doing.  Fortunately these things aren't TOO hard to learn, in my opinion.
  • The act can be very, very time consuming.

Personally I'd only suggest #1 if you know the professional who's doing the work and can trust him or her to do a thorough job, OR if the medium you're working with is so old and weird that you really can't use the other two options.

I highly suggest #2 if you have a LOT of stuff you'd like to transfer, and where quantity is much more important than special features.  This is precisely what I did when I transferred my VHS collection.  Could I have done it all on my computer?  Yes.  I do have the skills and software to do that.  But it would have taken me FOREVER to do it.  So what I did was use my DVD/VCR combo unit to transfer the bulk of my videos.  Just load a video and a disc, hit a button, then work on something else while it did its thing.  I didn't care about where it put the chapter breaks or things like that.  I was just happy to have it transferred.

As for #3, I suggest this route if you have very special videos or music whose details you'd like to pay additional attention to.  If you think it will be worth the time to remaster those old music recordings you have or to make a really nice video of your cousin's 3rd birthday party from the 1980s, then go ahead.  Stores like Best Buy carry a lot of capturing devices like this.  For music, I personally suggest MAGIX Audio Cleaning lab.

Conversion of Physical Media. But First, More About floppies.

In my next blog entry, I'm going to address the issue of transferring physical media.  In layman's terms, that means: "What do I do with all of these old VHS tapes, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and other things that I don't use a player for these days?  Is there hope in salvaging what's on there?" 

But for today, I'm just going to give you a quick addendum to yesterday's floppy issue.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I successfully transferred a bunch of PC floppies to my current PC.  However, my old 5.25" floppies from ye olde Apple IIc are another story.  They're not that easy to transfer, and not just because I'd need to get a drive with a 5.25" floppy slot.  Apparently, Apple did things completely different back then.

Yes, yes, I know you zealous Mac cultists think Apple can do no wrong and that all things Apple are compatible with all things Apple, but that really isn't the case.  I asked for advice on one of the forums I frequent, and a user I know by the name of Chess gave me this very informative reply:

It's not just a matter of obsolete filesystems, either. If I recall correctly, the old Apple II method of disk access used a completely different system of tracks and sectors, and "modern" (PC or Mac) floppy drives aren't physically capable of operating in that way. From what I've heard, the best way to get data off an Apple II disk is to find a working Apple II and then rig up some sort of serial-cable null-modem arrangement to a modern PC. (No, really.) Needless to say, this is a considerable hassle, even to a tech geek with a do-it-yourself spirit.

That's why all your favorite abandonware classics were transferred this way ONCE and no one since has bothered to so it again. For example, if you download a copy of the original Oregon Trail disks and play them in an emulator, chances are excellent you'll run across a tombstone engraved with the epitaph "peperony and chease" [sic], left by the saved game of some kid who thought he was being clever, sometime in the 80s. "Peperony and chease" has even become something of a catch phrase on account of this. (No, really.)  [See point #7 on this page for the explanation. - Bill]

If I absolutely had to get the data off these disks myself? If they were program disks, I'd just look for emulator-ready images already on the Web somewhere. If they were personal data disks... well, I'd wish myself luck and then start trying to find a community of vintage hardware enthusiasts. Maybe someone there will know someone who knows someone who already has a serial-cable setup.

Fortunately, there isn't really anything important on these.  It's mostly just Apple software and games.  If I really wanted to play the games, I'm sure I could find hacked copies of them made for emulators.  There were some personal creations like stories I wrote and little computer programs I made.  Though I'm pretty sure I still have all of my stories printed out somewhere.  I'd like to see the code of my old programs just for the sake of personal nostalgia, but if I can't, no biggie.  I may just junk 'em or make a new coaster set.

The Wonderful World of Floppies!

"If you stick your pencil in there [the opening of the floppy drive] it will show up on the screen really big [in video]."

- Stephen, the dumbest kid in middle school,
on the first day of our computer class, fall 1986

I spent some time over the last few days going through over 120 old floppy disks, and transferring the data to my hard drive.  These disks have been sitting under my kitchen table for years.  I don't think they've been there for seven years (which is how long I've been in my current apartment), but they've certainly been there for while.  I might have gotten them out of my parents' storage when they moved.  In fact, I inherited a LOT of stuff when they moved: both stuff of theirs that they managed to hand off to me, and stuff of mine that I had been keeping in their basement as storage.

So, those of you who never touched a computer before the 1990s, if not this decade, may be asking: what is a "floppy disk"?  And how come personal computers put everything on a "C:\" drive, and don't have a "B:\" drive?

The Olden Days

My first computer was an Apple IIc (pronounced "two-see"), which my parents bought in 1984.  This was the age when a lot of homes were getting their first computers, because they were now being marketed to families.  "Dad can use it to do business stuff!  Mom can use it to file recipes in a database!  The kids can use it to play video games!"  It took 5 1/4" floppies, like the kind you see in the middle of the above photo.  And no, their casing wasn't always orange.  99% of them were black or gray.

On a side note, what I find funny is that the numeric price of computers back then hasn't really changed that much: $2000 will always get you the latest and greatest state-of-the-art package, $1000 will get you the everything but a notch down.  They do however become better and better values because their speed and capacities are always increasing.  (And no, this isn't some vast conspiracy to keep you buying new machines every few years.  If a company in 1999 could have created a computer that had ten times the memory and hard drive space like they do now, AND make a profit when selling it at the same price of competitors...believe me, they would have done so!.)

So getting back to "floppy" disks.  Why were they called "floppy"?  Well, they're physically flimsy, that's why.  This was different from "hard" drives, which were (and still are) physically rigid.  Floppy disks were actually flat and round, with a square plastic covering on the outside to protect the data.  Even when the 3.5" disk came out with its rigid casing, these too were still called "floppies" even if they didn't flop around much. 

The earliest computers basically had to be programmed beforehand for anything you wanted to do.  Floppy disks made it easy to run different programs on the same computer, because they gave you a way of storing and retrieving the data.  But you could only run one disk at a time.  My little IIc had no hard drive, and instead had a floppy drive.  Did you want to use the computer to type a paper?  Then you put in your disk for the word processor program you bought, and turned on the computer to load it.  Want to play a game?  You'd have to shut down the computer, take out the word processor disc, put in the game disc, and start the computer (or if you were tech-savvy, just swap the disk when it wasn't being read, and hit the keys to reboot).  Did you want to save anything?  Well then you had to put in a formatted disk for that to save the changes, then put your program disk back in.

I Can "C" Clearly

Eventually, home computers did have hard drives.  They also had some interface like Apple Macintosh or Windows so that you could graphically navigate what was on there.  But we still had floppy disks.  They were very helpful for transferring files.  Wanted to bring some work home from the office?  No problem.  Save the data to one or more floppy disks, then bring them home with you.  Just make sure you didn't touch the exposed surface, put them near a magnet, bend them, or keep them in your car on a hot summer day, or else the disk might get damaged.  "Wait, Bill.  Couldn't you just email files to yourself?"  Not really, considering how slow modems worked back in the day, let alone the fact that not everybody used them.

At some point, the popularity of the 5.25" floppies (top photo, center) gave way to the 3.5" floppies (top photo, right).  They were smaller, immensely more durable, and eventually could hold more information.  During this transition, there were many personal computers that had place to insert 3.5 disks and a place to insert 5.25" drives.  That is why there is no "B" drive on your computer.  The 5.25" disks were largely discontinued, so the "B:\" drive that normally took them was removed from newer computers.  This still left the "A:\" drive for 3.5" floppies and the "C:\" drive as your hard drive.  But in recent years the A:\ drives have disappeared too.  That's why your hard drive is "C:\" and your CD/DVD-ROM drives are named after higher letters in the alphabet.

When my father first tried playing with blank CD-ROMs just a few years ago, he didn't understand why he couldn't save anything to them.  I found out what he was doing wrong: he was treating them like floppy disks.  He thought all you had to do was put a blank CD in the tray, close the tray, and then try to save the file in an application TO the drive with the CD-ROM.  I don't him that it doesn't work that way.  You have to BURN an image to a CD-ROM.  Parents; go figure.

The "A" Files

Getting back to the combat clutter, here are some things I found when I looked through my floppy disks:

• Useless Disks.  These included boot-up and recovery disks to computers I no longer own, and software for things like printers and CD-ROM drives I no longer own.  20 of these disks were recovery disks for some machine I had running Windows 95!  There were also the back-up files to some resume program I got from my college during my senior year.
• Old emails and other files.  Some of these were saved about as far back as 1994.  These will certainly be interesting to go through.  Or will they?  There's always the embarrassment of reading an old diary and thinking, "I said THAT?!?"  I deleted the content from the disks once I had everything copied over to my hard drive.
• Games, screen savers, etc.  OK, they were only games that could fit on a floppy disk, but hey, that was state-of-the-art stuff at some point.
• Old work stuff.  Yep, still using floppies into 2002.
• Some nice oddities.  One of these was a disk my brother got at a Beastie Boys concert some time around 1992 or 1993.  It was basically a way to access their website at the time on Sprynet.  That sort of thing was unheard of back then.  This is something worth putting on eBay.

The total amount of data I took from the disks only came out to about 50 MB.  Easy to burn to a CD-ROM.

So what to do with these? I have a weird suspicion that there's SOMEBODY out there who still uses floppy disks, either for personal use or because it's what's needed for some company who hasn't upgraded their technology in a decade.  I'll probably throw out a "Free floppy disks!" ad to Craigslist.org and see who bites.

How Big?

This got my mathematical mind thinking.  How much cheaper and bigger has data storage gotten over the years?

A lot of these floppy disks were double density.  These were the "better" kind that could each hold a whopping 1.44 megabytes of data.  What's the biggest "non-hard drive" source of data you can buy in the stores today?  CD-ROM discs carry about 700 MB of data.  DVD-ROM discs can carry around 4.7 GB.  But a Blu-Ray data disc with dual layering can take a burning of 50 GB!  The discs aren't cheap, and burners are hard to come by, but they're around.

So I did the math.  To get the number of 3.5" double-density floppy disks it would take to cover as much data as a single dual-layted Blue-Ray data disc...you would need a stack that was around 120 yards tall, the length of a football field.  That's running the whole length of the football field, plus end zones.  Laid edge to edge, that would be 8 times longer than the height of the Empire State building.  Hooray for technology!

Taming the Paper Tiger

Before I get into today's subject, let me just ask: so as far as the lay out goes, what do you readers think?  Too many links?  Too few links?  Not enough features?  Too many features?  I've been actively using the internet since 1993, but when it comes to making websites, sometimes my mind is still stuck in 1994.  I'm used to just whipping open Notepad, and typing pretty straight-forward HTML code.  So in a strange way, handling every new widget that comes along is somewhat new to me.  Oh well, you know what my email address is.  If not, uh...look to your left.

And now, on to the subject of paper.  More specifically, SAVED paper.

THE PAPER

The title of this blog entry was taken from a chapter of Don Aslett's Clutters Last Stand.  I've seen some people give this book bad reviews, whining that it didn't present too much for ways of organizing stuff.  I have seen those sorts of books that do that, showing a lady proudly standing by a 10-foot tall stack of cardboard file drawers marked with a Sharpie.  However, Aslett points out that this really isn't getting rid of clutter; it's just a way of creatively hiding it from view.  To quote the book:

Files are one of the greatest repositories of "invisible" clutter going. Just because it's alphabetized and tucked away in a drawer doesn't mean it isn't junk.

And another quote:

Locked or hidden away, collections can be a mental drain to their owner, because they generate no love and appreciation, yet the owner has to store, insure, clean, and protect them.

(On a side note, this is why I have my autograph collection framed and on display along my living room wall.  I'm sure I'll get into more detail about "collections" on another blog.)

To say I have a tendency to save papers would be a gross understatement.  Here is an example of what I saved:

• School papers.  I have saved every single piece of paper from high school, college, and graduate school.  No lie.  Every note taken from every class, ever quiz, every homework assignment, every exam, you name it.  Pretty much the only things I didn't keep were the final exams at the end of the year, because quite simply they never physically gave them back to students.  If I stacked it all up, I know it would be much taller than me, if not twice my height.
• Pay stubs.  Every pay stub to every job I ever held.
• Utility and other bills.  Every mailed bill or receipt from every phone bill, electric bill, heating bill, car payment, health insurance, 401k, and who knows what else.
• Bank and credit card statements -- and receipts.  In all fairness, I am very organized with this!  I don't think I have every checking account statement since I got my first checking account at age 18, but certainly every one from the last 12 years.  I save every debit or credit card slip so that I can balance my checkbook and verify my credit card statement.  Then I fold the statement around these slips, staple it shut on either end, mark the date span on the outside, and toss it into the pile.  But that's still a lot of paper.

I have plenty of other things too: movie ticket stubs, concert ticket stubs, losing raffle tickets, and then some.  But the ones I've listed above are the significantly big collections.

WHY DO I KEEP IT?

I certainly know why I've been reluctant to ever throw this stuff away.  For the school papers, that's easy:

• The school papers represent a major part of my life.  I worked hard through a private prep high school, then went on to get Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics.  With all of the countless time and mental energy spent on this stuff, it's hard to just toss it like junk mail.
• School was expensive!  Wouldn't it feel like throwing out something myself and my parents paid many tens of thousands of dollars on?
• "Hey I might want to read up on this some day!"  Though as I've said before, if I haven't gotten around to doing something in 15 years, chances are I'm NOT going to get around to it in another 15 years either.  Is there REALLY any value in the notes I took in my sophomore year of high school for Julius Caesar?

For all the rest of the stuff?  That's easy too:

• "I might need this information for something!"  The fear of course is that I'm going to have to solve some financial mystery involving something major I bought in May 2003, and neither myself nor the bank will have a record of that.  Or some collector will claim I didn't pay my bill when in fact I did, but I don't have the confirmation number anywhere.
• The popular scare stories out there about identity theft certainly makes me a little more reluctant to toss something with my social security number into the trash.

And there's also an excuse that applies to all of the above: "I have such a complete collection here, and such a perfect record of keeping 'everything'!  I'd hate to break that record.  I can't claim that anymore if I get rid of something."

HOW CAN I DEAL WITH IT?

Here are some things I've thought about.

• Scanning.  At first, this seems like a good solution.  Just scan everything and save the images to my computer, thereby reducing all 10 miles of it down to a couple of DVD-Rs.  Unfortunately, I don't think this is practical.  I have a LOT of papers.  From experience, I know how long it takes to just properly scan ONE document whose size and resolution I'm happy with.  Even if I paid some broke college student to sit there and do it, it could take years.  So as awesome as having digital images of everything would be, I don't think this is going to happen.
• Shredding.  I bought myself a small paper shredder.  And guess what?  It's still in the box.  Since you can usually only shred a few pages at a time with these things, I should probably find some service who can do it for me in bulk.  Though I have to wonder if, ironically, criminals work or go to these places to gather stuff for identity theft.  Maybe that sounds silly and paranoid on my part, but it's still a pause for thought.
• Burning.  This might prove to be a quicker way to deal with it.  And a good excuse for a party.
• Photographing.  A simple idea I picked up from Aslett, and I wonder why I didn't think of it before.  I might be happy with just taking pictures of myself standing next to my huge stacks of school papers, then getting rid of the stuff while keeping the photographs.  This gives me the "proof" I want to keep for myself while getting rid of the volume.
• Something ritualistic.  See blow.

I have always been a very ritualistic person.  I've always had a love of symbolism and ceremony.  People into metaphysics would argue that these things I've amassed have a special "energy" to them.  Whether it's metaphysical or (as I more suspect) purely psychological, I'd have to say they're correct.  What would be REALLY fun, I think, is giving this huge mass of things to a really keen artist who can create a real statement with it.  Or, again, having a bonfire party but filming it too, complete with introductions and speeches and what not.  Could make a great YouTube clip.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I'm open to hearing ideas.

The Collyer Brothers and Other Famous Hoarders

Man, the things you can find on Wikipedia!  Somebody recently showed me this link for an article on the Collyer brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers. Here's an excerpt.

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd Police Precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house. A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a very difficult time getting into the house at first. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. Eventually, an emergency squad of seven men had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman, William Barker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue and white bathrobe.

Firefighters even refer to an overly packed home as a "Collyer mansion"!

Then there's Edmund Trebus.  "Eccentric and tenacious hoarder whose loads of rubbish brought him television fame."

I may do another "installment" on these types of historical packrats when I find more really good examples.

And...we're live!

After having some technical difficulties trying to get the right domain name and get it mapped here, I'm happy to say that APlaceForMyStuff.ORG is finally working as expected.  So that's why I haven't really started to put up entries yet.  I might tweak the looks and what not as time goes on.

I'm going to try my best to keep this updated with new entries at least a few times a week.  Speaking as an avid internet user for over 15 years, I know how much a pain it can be to maintain a site, but likewise I know how easy it is to lose interest in a site that isn't updated much.