Category: Uncategorized

So a question comes from me: How long without listening to an album do I need to go before it is safe to sell it off, forsaking listening to it altogether?

I ask because I keep taking CDs down to Zia to trade for DVDs. Like tonight I stopped in Zia and they had Lilo and Stitch and Spiderman DVDs used for about $20 for the two, and asked them to hold them. Tomorrow morning I’ll take the stack of 15 CDs I just selected from my collection (only one of which was from the dozen or so rejected the other day) to see which they’ll offer credit for, and hope they take at least 4. The average trade credit per normal CD is $5, sometimes more for double CDs or rare CDs, and I’d like to get those DVDs without paying more. I was trying to pick CDs I thought they’d like this time, choosing some I feel should stay part of my collection. Not because I ever listen to them, or intend on listening to them, or could conceive of a situation where I would listen to them, but … because … I don’t know why.

Some are less so; albums like the ‘Songs of Iroquois Women’ or the album with 13 versions of ‘Route 66’-themed songs that I had gifted to me one way or the other, and doubt they will take, except that they were never really commercially available… Or the two Phillip Glass CDs… I like Phillip Glass, but it rarely if ever occurs to me to listen to his music. And will Zia think one of their customers would want to listen to Phillip Glass? But I’ve also got a couple of never-opened CDs that I bought and just never got around to opening. And a couple of soundtracks; people like soundtracks, right?

Where was I? Off topic, huh? What was the topic again? Oh yeah. So in an effort years-long to try to reduce the number of unlistened-to CDs in my collection, I began marking my CDs with dots about 18 months ago. That is, every time I put a CD into a player of some kind, I put a tiny colored dot sticker on the edge of the jewel case. I’ve been doing this consistently with my CDs the full 18 months, and with my DVDs for about 10 months, so I know that the 300+ CDs without dot one have not been listened to in the last year and a half. Probably longer. Which brings us back to the question:

How long should I let these dot-free CDs go before I get rid of them? I try every time I need to choose something to listen to to choose something without a dot that I might like, but it’s been slow going. Most of what it occurs to me to listen to is the same stuff that it occurred to me to listen to before. Worse, for music I’ve never or rarely listened to, I often don’t know what the tone or emotion of the music will be. I used to buy albums for a single song a lot, so I have a lot of albums I’ve only ever put in on that one track and hit repeat, or never at all if I forgot what the track was. (I’ve got two albums by Blessid Union of Souls in my stack that I’m listening to right now to try to figure out what song or songs I bought them for. If I don’t find at least one song I like, these albums don’t even get a dot, they get to go to Zia.) Is it safe to just rip the one song and sell the album? What if I would have otherwise liked the music?

Aargh. In another 18 (or 12, or 6, or 36, or whatever) months do I just sell off everything without a dot, no matter what? I’ve definitely been making a very strong effort to listen to every new (to me) CD I buy at least once. What is the expiration date on un-used music?

My “circadian” rhythm for the last three months has been a little … long? 25 hours instead of 24, on the average, though actually a little less. Actually, it’s like I’m slowly travelling backwards around the world’s time zones during the month, so that my waking/sleeping schedule is a full 12 hours off around the 15th of the month. You know, because I don’t have to wake up at a specific time for work.

Except that the six or so hours off I’ll be by tomorrow morning means that making it to my morning interview will be an exciting and fun challenge. Not too hard; I’ve managed to finish putting together that web portfolio (yes, at the last minute) before one AM, which is nice, because last night I went to bed after 2, and the night before around 1:30 and so on such that I sure hope I can get to sleep right now. My body wants to stay up another couple hours at least. Except I have to wake up in the morning and try to make myself look presentable for this interview. I have excellent interview skills. I don’t remember ever interviewing for a position and not being offered it. This may be the first, considering I’m not actually as qualified as they’d like me to be.

Good thing I ironed all my clothes. Now I get to try to choose a color. I did mention that I have shirts in every color of the rainbow, right? Sorted in rainbow order, too. And eww.. hair. That just doesn’t want to behave. So, do I not try to make it behave so that the bits that would never in a million years behave look like they are part of something larger, or pretend I think all my hair is behaving my ignoring the stand-up bits? Or shave my head tomorrow morning and go in with a red, bald scalp? or die before the interview?

I’m a little upset (not too much; I might end up with a job! Yay!) that I’ll only get to see the first hour or so (less, really) of Steve Jobs’ keynote speach tomorrow. Not that by missing the end the technologies won’t be released, just that for the hour or so (or longer, who knows?) I’m away from home I’ll be just a smidge behind the curve. Look, if I could afford it, I would be an alpha geek. As it is, I end up doing things like getting the first color mobile phone to hit the market, six months before color mobile phones get big, but then can’t afford to upgrade when the better ones come out. Though I doubt I’ll be able to resist getting the new Nokia 3650 when it hits the states (assuming I have income of some kind). I saw it on the european Nokia site a couple of months ago and emailed all over Nokia requesting that it come to the US, and am now on the list of people who will be emailed when they get permission from the FCC to sell me the phone, and have mixed feelings about the ad campaign for it. See, if everyone gets it, it’s not really bleeding edge, is it? Except it has everything I’m looking for in a mobile. Polyphonic ringing, GPRS internet access, a larger color screen, a built in camera, bluetooth, everything. I literally made a list of features I’d like to see in a phone 7 or 8 months ago, and this phone is the first to have it all.

Anyway, falling behind on sleep, falling behind on bills, falling behind on tech, and falling behind on comics. After doing the first New Comic, I wondered whether they would have to be bi-weekly or monthly, since they take so long to do. After working off and on on the next one for the last several days, I’m prone to say monthly, though I had originally aimed for weekly. We’ll see. Right now, I’m going to try to get one done ASAP, and get started on the next one as well. obviously, I didn’t make weekly; there was no comic yesterday. Maybe in another four days. We’ll see. There are some impressive and time-consuming things I’m having to to in photoshop for a couple/few of the images in this comic that I won’t have to do in future comics. Except that I’ll have to do other time-consuming and difficult things instead. sigh… You like it though, right?

I’m really going to bed now. I didn’t intend for this post to be this long. Just supposed to be a short thing before hopping into bed.

Hey everybody. Sorry if you experienced some strange things or no pages @ all on FYTH in the last couple of hours. I was going to update one thing, then I thought I’d try to fix another thing that someone mentioned was a problem with certain browsers, then everything started falling apart and I had to delete over two thousand five hundred files and regenerate them from scratch using updated templates and file naming conventions. Probably that was so vague that even tech people didn’t get anything from it. nevermind. Just, I’m sorry. It should all be working fine now. If you run into any problems, don’t hesitate to let me know. it’ll only take you a minute.

Okay, so … I haven’t been buying DVDs lately, what with the having no source of income. When I had a job, I spent probably an average of $300/month at Zia on DVDs and a few CDs. I haven’t (until today) even really set foot in Zia in probably a month, and haven’t spent money there in two. So when I went there today and there was a huge “ALL DVDs ON SALE!” sign in the front door, and almost all DVDs were marked down $2 (including used DVDs, meaning some are as cheap as $6.99!!!), and the DVD section has expanded to fill a fourth seven foot high four foot wide shelving unit, I naturally assumed that it was because I hadn’t been shopping there enough.

I had been planning on getting together a batch of old CDs I never listen to and taking them down to Zia for store credit (or cash, if they accept enough of them), but I haven’t yet put anything together. I felt it was a safe enough gamble to not put the couple of DVDs I want the most on hold while I come home to see about getting CDs together, and I hope they’re there when I get back later. I also hope that Zia is doing well enough to buy my CDs.

I’m feeling pretty good today. In addition to the “Little things” I mentioned last night, there are some other things I won’t go into today, but will go into later, when it is more safe to talk publicly. Still, good things. We’ll see how they work out in the next few days. I’ll let you know if I get the DVDs I want, and what they are, later.

The following are the top 15 terms typed into search engines that resulted in people clicking through to something, somewhere on Modern Evil. They also happen to be the only ones that were typed in exactly the same more than once. My tracking software only pays attention to the last day or two’s worth of searches, but here we go: