Technology & MSG

The Ginormous Office Project, Week Three

Aug 13th, 2007 by Alex

I am making progress in my office cleaning project. I tackled three boxes yesterday over a period of two hours. They were filled with a lot of loose items so it was slow going. Most of the things I’m finding now fall into the recycle or throwaway pile, although some of the bigger items are destined for resale. Few of today’s boxes contained items to keep with exception of some loose office supplies.

Those are empty cardboard boxes stacked up on the couch in the upper right-hand corner. The carpet is making a comeback too.

Amidst a lot of birthday and graduation cards I located my old Sega Genesis. I still have Sonic the Hedgehog and I have every intention of testing my skills.

I found a quasi-functioning DVD player that I had long written off as dead because the motor wouldn’t spin the DVD; I was recently told that this is easily fixed and might even be worth it, the model has onboard 5.1 decoding (which is more common now, but wasn’t when I bought it). I always see the TV repair shop on the side of Ritchie Highway at the intersection of Route 10 and I wonder what they’d charge to fix it. Even with DVD players costing $30-40, there doesn’t appear to be anything else wrong with this one and I think I shelled out $250 for it originally. If I can get it fixed for $20-30, that’d be worth it.

Whenever I have a party we usually play a few card games. Kings, Asshole, Find the Two, etc. Yet finding a deck of cards is a problem more often than not, despite there being a clear space in one of the kitchen drawers for the cards. They tend to migrate, get misplaced or stolen, or someone takes a pee card and never returns it (and thus screwing up lots of games that depend on pairs/quads). Today I found twelve — yes, TWELVE — decks of cards today, including two unopened packs and a Marilyn Monroe pack. I’d lock them away but I’d be afraid to lose them again, so I’m think about scattering them all over the house.

I found some cash money, mostly in bills. A crisp one dollar bill, circa 1999. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal except that it is so crisp it looks as if it were ironed. It’s smoother than a fresh bill from the bank, so I’m thinking it may have been ironed. Three crisp two dollar bills, two circa 1976 and one circa 1995. The kicker was a non-crisp ten dollar bill, circa 1934. The bill looks a lot different than the 1990’s version, although it isn’t a silver certificate.

I remember at point I was collecting movie ticket stubs for some silly reason but I thought I had thrown them all away. Apparently not. I found a huge pile of movie stubs dating back to 2000. One thing is for certain, I went to a LOT of movies back then. A lot more than I do now. Of course back then a matinée cost $4.50 and an evening show $6.50.

A large stack of diskettes. I’ll have to dig up the floppy drive for the laptop so I can figure out what all is on them. Hopefully nothing of value so I can throw them all away. From what’s labeled there is the original Doom (on four diskettes), WWIV BBS Software (and 4.24a source code) that used to power my board, and a lot of Windows 95 boot disks. Guess we needed them back then.

I’m pleased with this so far. It may not be quick, but at least it is getting done.