it was a weekend. also, ponderings about stuff and space.

[rmd]

bad: my knee freaked out a few times.
good: it only freaked out a few times and not badly at all and not for long.
awesome: some folks helped me move stuff around and haul stuff downstairs (okay, by "helped" i mean "they did it for me") on sat, and now i have a bunch of stuff in the truck destined for recycling, goodwill, or otherwise out of my house.
frickin awesome: a friend stopped by on sunday, served as a massive motivator and director for sorting thru a metric boatload of stuff with the occasional urging of "no, you probably won't use that" so i now have even more trash out of the house (including construction leftovers that date back about 5.5 years), even more recycling staged downstairs, and even more stuff to send to goodwill. also, she asked really good questions about my direction and desires for use of space, here. much to ponder, here, including a fabulous idea that hadn't occurred to me for setting up an office nook in the front room on the second floor.

one thing that i've realized very recently is that there's been a fundamental shift in information - particularly technical information - over the past 10 - 12 years or so. back-issues of some magazine useful for project archives and technical data? guess what -- they're available on cd a decade at a time for less than the cost of nice binders in which to store them. suddenly, a bunch of paper is rendered obsolete in my household.

technical data -- things that used to be useful reference data -- are now 1. obsolete, or 2. now available for free on the net, or BOTH.

i'm not about to trash all my reference books, certainly, but i can get rid of some of them. if i suddenly need to modify a C or C++ program i wrote 10 years ago and need to review syntax, i can find the info i need online, not in one of the stack of programming reference books i have accumulated and hauled back and forth across the country.

if i still have easy access to the data, then getting rid of the hardcopy itself is suddenly a much different decision than before.

and now, it's off to the doctor to find out what the word is on my knee.

Comments

[istemi.livejournal.com]

You are a whirlwind! I bow to your organizing prowess.

technical data -- things that used to be useful reference data -- are now 1. obsolete, or 2. now available for free on the net, or BOTH.

Isn't that freeing? It took a while to believe it, but once I did lots of bookshelf space was liberated.

[cz_unit]

Kind of tricky though: I've had a few cases where I've bookmarked info only to find it gone a year later. Yahoo lists and archives can vanish in an instant, at the whim of a moderator.

So there's still no substitute for having your own copy of things. Part of the reason I still run my own web site with esoteric CZ things.

CZ

[unclebooboo.livejournal.com]

I've been struggling with some of the same issues. I've managed to get rid of back issues of all the journals that I subscribe to (everything is available online.)

I'm still very emotionally attached to books. Since my space is limited, I've long since stopped storing fiction (fiction gets bought and sold at the used book stores- as soon as I've read it a novel goes into the "sell" pile.) With the technical books, I've run out of space, so I have to get rid of old books as fast as the new ones come in. It's a painful process.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

This is pretty much the same revelation I had about cookbooks a few weeks ago. It's much easier to just get the info I need on the net.

[keren-s.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose you could impart some of your "when in doubt, toss it out" and get it electronically if you ever need to) wisdom to Mike? ;-)