Can you put a price on that?

I’m not sure what spurred it on, but over the last week, I have been walking through my apartment looking at all of the crap that I have.  There are a lot of boxes in the various closets… boxes that haven’t been opened in years.  There are a lot of other items that don’t fit in boxes that go straight into the closet as soon as I move into a new place and don’t see the light of day until I move again.

This past week, most of that stuff has been drug into the den.  The boxes have been opened and their contents spilled out.

It all has some manner of sentimental value to me of one kind or another.  Some of it has an actual monetary value while others just are.

As the montage of crap spilled out on to my den floor, I had to start asking myself… how long am I really going to hold on to all of this?  How many more times am I going to suffer through moving it all because I just can’t seem to make myself part with it all?

Well, the reality of the situation finally started hitting home this week.  I decided that it was silly to keep carting around all of these boxes.  Those items that actually do have value get just a little more damaged with each and every move and, despite the fact that they serve as a window to the past, they do me absolutely zero good.

So, this week has been an exercise of silliness as I go through boxes and boxes of items trying to place some measure of value to everything and then dropping it over on ebay.  The best case scenario is that I’ll generate some money to pay some bills or maybe even help fund a vacation that I have been putting off for years.  The worst case is that I break even on the listing fees, unload some of the junk and the rest ends up in the dumpster.

Still, it strikes me as fairly amazing and odd that some things are so hard to part with. 

I found 2 boxes of toy Hot Wheels cars.  I had a passion for those things when I was a kid, but I didn’t even realize I still had them.  The sudden realization that they are still in my possession struck some weird cord of not wanting to get rid of them.

There was 1 box of old, original Star Wars action figures.  Most are beat to hell.  About half are missing some element to them.  None have seen the light of day in nearly 2 decades… and the child within wants to hang on to them.

There are what basically equates to 9 boxes of comic books.  I tossed out most of my comics probably 15 years ago when I quit reading them, but these were my favorites… those that I thought I could never part with.  In the years since, I had forgotten what was even in those boxes.  Will I ever read them again?  Not likely.  Do I like looking at them?  Apparently not since they were forgotten in old printer boxes.  Is it easy to sell them off?  Not at all.

There was 1 box that was a mix and match of various toys.  In that box, I found 2 of the 3 action figures I had from the original Battlestar Galactica series from the 70’s, and a Viper and Cylon ship from the same series.  I found a couple of Star Trek action figures from the original television series.  These are larger than normal action figures… about half the size of a Barbi doll.  I don’t even know how I ended up with those because I wasn’t a fan of Star Trek when I was a kid, but there they were.  I found some parts and pieces to various incarnations of the 6 Million Dollar Man in there as well.

Through the mountain of items that I am wading through, strangest of all has got to be my 2 remaining guitars.

Back when I was playing with a group and music was actually my sole source of income, I had a ton of instruments.  When I decided to leave music for good, I had no problem whatsoever in selling off all of the instruments and equipment that I had amassed over the years… except for these 2 guitars.

The strangest part of these two is that they shouldn’t have any real sentamental value for me.  One I bought before we even put the band together.  It turned into my practice guitar.  I thought it was too nice to take on the road and leave in a trailer for hours on end, so I left it home and only played it when we weren’t on the road.  The other is one that I picked up during one of our trips.  It wasn’t anything fancy.  I just liked the look and sound of it.  I bought it… I think in Denver, but I can’t even remember that part any longer.  I used it on the road, but sparingly.  I used an alternative tuning on that guitar to give it a very Irish sound… something that I didn’t need for many songs, so it probably only got played once or twice per concert.

It is strange that I have such an attachment to these two instruments.  After I left the group, they both sat in their cases for a couple of years.  At one time, I took them out again and started playing from time to time.  A group of friends would get together at a coffee house or something and I would often bring one along and we would play and sing like idiots… annoying the piss out of people who just wanted to drink their coffee in peace.

I put those two guitars in their cases probably 7 years ago and they haven’t been out since.  I think about playing a lot, but just never seem to do it.  First off, I figure it is rude to make a lot of noise when you live in an apartment, but mostly it is a lack of time and motivation.

For days now, I have been going back and forth on whether or not I should bite the bullet and list them.  They do zero good sitting in their cases in the closet of wherever I happen to be living and they are nice enough that I should be able to get a decent amount for both.

How do you weigh memories against practicality? 

That is just something I can’t ever seem to figure out.

A few changes

This post over at West Karana reminded me of a duty that I haven’t performed for some time.  I knew that I had some dead wood in my blogroll, but I’ve been dragging my feet on dropping those sites as I really enjoyed them.

However, I think it was finally time to admit that those who wrote those sites were probably done with them.  One hadn’t been updated since November and the other hadn’t been updated since December.  I have a few others that haven’t been updated since January, but I’ll give them a little more time.

I added a link for Wil Wheaton’s blog.  Then, I got to thinking about it… his site covers all things geeky and beyond.  He talks of gaming from time to time and, if I remember correctly, he even did a voice part for EQ2, but he doesn’t play MMO’s at all so his site doesn’t really jive with the rest of my blogroll.  As a result, I have always just left it off.

Well, I decided to just create a new category and drop him down there.  I have some other sites that I read fairly regularly that aren’t game related as well, so I will add them as time and memory permits.

I’ll probably also start playing with some other themes today.  After a hectic week, things have settled down quite a bit today and I almost feel bored by comparrison.  In short, I have some free time to play around.

Dumb vs. Lazy… and the winner is…

I’m feeling pretty silly right about now.  Back in October, when I first started playing EQ2 again, people in my guild started in on me to install the maps and ProfitUI from eq2interface.  I drug my feet… partly from laziness and partly from no real motivation or desire to do so.

In the beginning, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I was learning the game and exploring was a good thing.  Even now, those things are more of a convenience than anything, but I find myself getting frustrated with myself more and more when I can’t find what I’m looking for.

I tried a few weeks ago to install both the maps and the UI… and failed.  I thought I had followed all of the directions correctly, but when I launched into the game, nothing had changed… and I declared “screw it” on that endeavor.  Since I spend anywhere from 8 to 18 hours a day working on PC’s, troubleshooting PC’s and fixing PC’s, the last thing I want to do when I get home is screw around with mine.  I’ll try to do something, but if it doesn’t work the first time, to hell with it.

I haven’t played much this week.  I’ve really just been too tired.  I have logged in to do a level of tradeskilling here and there, but I haven’t touched any of my major toons since last Sunday.

Anyway, last night, I didn’t feel like playing and I didn’t feel like tradeskilling, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. 

Which lead to me spending some quality time cursing a blue streak towards EQ2, the maps and Profit UI last night.

Long story short, I got them all working finally… and felt DAMN effing stupid when I realized what I was doing wrong.  Once I had them installed and working, I logged on my provo to make some food and drink for a couple of toons that will need such provisions soon and then I made an extra stack of each to drop on the broker.

I think the provisioner is definately one of the underrated tradeskills.  There don’t seem to be many provos out there… at least judging from the massive volume of provo nodes littering the landscape of most zones.  I have to admit that I didn’t figure the provo would be a money-making class.  I just made a provisioner for myself because I’m too damn cheap to buy food and drink.  I figured that since I was harvesting all of these nodes anyway, I might as well get some use out of them.

I didn’t start dropping stacks on the broker until a couple of weeks ago.  I always just put everything I made in the shared bank figuring one of my toons would use it eventually.  I finally dropped a stack on the broker just out of curiosity to see how it would sell.

My provisioner has become one of my most successful tradeskillers.  Granted, he isn’t rich and it takes selling a bunch of stacks of food and drink to make what I make selling 1 crafted scroll, piece of armor or any of the other items I sell, but damn he moves some inventory.  I dropped 5 stacks of 20 food and 5 stacks of 20 drink on the broker 3 nights ago.  According to my sales log, they were all gone within 9 hours of me placing them there.

And it has been that way since I first started selling food.  I’ll spend a few hours crafting some stacks, place them on the broker, and they will be gone in less than a day.  I can craft an adept 3 scroll on one of my other toons and it might stagnate on the broker for weeks before it finally sells, but I move food and drink like all of norrath is starving to death or dying of thirst.

I have to admit that it has given me a greater appreciation for the provisioner tradeskill and definately a greater appreciation for those few out there who have dedicated their crafting time in game to being a provisioner.  It isn’t the most fun tradeskill repeating combines over and over to generate a full stack and isn’t the most glamorous, but it is a service that everyone in the game needs.  The more time I spend doing it, the happier I am that I decided to make a provisioner to begin with.

Are you the Gatekeeper?

I had to travel for work yesterday which is the reason for no post.  I hit the road a little before 8 AM and didn’t get back until nearly 7 PM.  One semi-cool part of the trip was that it was to the city I was born and raised in… the place that I still consider ‘home’ in a lot of ways.  I was supposed to hook up with some friends for lunch, but we had a bit of crossed communication and missed each other.  Still, despite the fact that we didn’t eat at the same time, we did eat at the same place.  Chease Steak.  Yummy.

I ended up being on site for a bit longer than I had figured I would be.  I was planning on maybe 2 hours on site.  I had 2 other sites to stop at, so 2 hours was kind of my window.  I ended up being there for more than 4 hours, so one of my stops had to be dropped from the schedule and rescheduled for my marathon trip coming up in 12 days.  THAT trip is going to be fun.  I have 1800 miles to drive, 7 offices to visit, and 3 days to do it in.  Yeesh.

The drive home last night was interesting.  About the middle of the day, I felt a cold coming on.  I got the tickling in my throat going and my sinuses started pushing on the inside of my head.  Couple that with a week now of not getting more than 2 hours of sleep per night and I was struggling as the road stretched on before me.

At one point, I had all the windows rolled down and the radio cranked.  I was belting out the lyrics as loud as I could.  When that failed to keep me awake, I started making up my own words.  Let me tell you… Paradise by the Dashboard Lights just isn’t quite as good when you change it to Bowl of Rice under Buffet-bar Lights. 

It did make me giggle though.

I spent some time considering some things while I was driving and struggling to stay awake.  One was work.

I am very fortunate in that I really enjoy my job.  That hasn’t been the case for most of my working life.  The pay I make isn’t great, but I enjoy my actual job… mostly because of the people I work with.  They are a great group of people.

Still, the city and whole area that I live in is boring as hell.  There is quite honestly nothing to do.  Single people, like me, are an oddity because people get married very young around here… due to a lack of anything else to do.  Once they are married, their lives consist of going to work and going home where they just sit in front of the television until it is time to go to bed… because there is nothing else to do.

I wish that I could pick up my job and plop it down in another city… somewhere that there are things to do.  Mountain climbing, beaches, museums, zoos… I don’t care.  Just something.

Out of sheer boredom, I did start glancing around to see what all is out there right now.  Of course, the answer is “not much.”  I did find a few jobs at a few major gaming companies.  The jobs were not for developers or any of the other jobs that most people want.  The jobs were for IT specialists.  Two of the jobs I found… the job descriptions could have been photo-copied from my current job description.  I applied for them several weeks ago…

And haven’t heard a thing back.

These days, resume writing is like a contortionist routine.  It isn’t the fault of company HR people, but they simply cannot know and understand the full specifics of every single job that a company has.  As a result, many companies now use data phishing for their resumes.  The phishing software scans all resumes looking for key words and matching them against a pre-set percentage.  Resumes that meet that percentage are flagged for investigation.  Those that don’t are tossed.

There are nearly as many different phishing applications as there are companies in the world.  Trying to anticipate how the software is going to work is where things get challanging.  Suppose a company is looking for someone with experience in supporting a LINUX environment and my resume happens to say that I have experience supporting Fedora and Red Hat.  Most phishing applications will flag me as having no experience with LINUX even though Fedora and Red Hat are both LINUX.

However, the reverse is also true.  If a company is looking for a specific version of LINUX and I just happen to say that I have experience in LINUX, the software might cast me out because I didn’t list which versions of LINUX I am experienced in.

I am starting to feel like it is a guessing game.  Applying for jobs is becoming completely impersonal.  This particular gaming company will ONLY take applications online and doesn’t even list contact information.  So, I can’t call and discuss the position listing with anyone.  All I can do is execute my best guess as to what the software phish is going to hunt for and do my best to re-write my resume accordingly.

In this case, I can only assume that I guessed incorrectly.  I can go down the job postings line by line and check off every single requirement and desire as something that I have at least 7 to 12 years of experience in.  However, by all indications, the phishing application tossed me out as being completely unqualified due to an incorrect word choice.

Such is life though. 

By the time that thought process had completed, I realized that I was 100 miles further down the road than I had been when I first started contemplating.  I was tired and I was struggling to stay awake.

Fortunately, right about then, the 80’s classic Van Halen song Panama hit the radio and I set about re-writing the words as Pants And Bra.

And I giggled… a lot.

From the water cooler

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not sure.  Feeling a bit lethargic.  I hate being in a rut.”

“Yeah.  I know exactly how you feel.”

“Doubtful.”

“Dude.  That’s shitty.  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I hate that saying… ‘I know exactly how you feel.’  It’s a lie every time someone says it.  Everyone reacts differently to every single situation.  As a result, no one knows exactly how someone else feels in any situation.  It’s part of what makes us unique.”

“Whatever.  Take some freaking Prozac or something.”

So, maybe it was shitty of me to say that.  I said it with a smile on my face and I certainly didn’t mean to piss my co-worker off, but damn.  We’ve become so freaking used to being completely apologetic about every single thing that people are afraid to speak their minds.  We’re so practiced at hearing how some totally innocuous comment deeply offended someone… offended them so badly that the only way to ease their suffering is to award them millions of dollars… that we just seem to look for reasons to be offended.

Ten years ago or so, if I had made that comment, most people would have seen that it was mostly tongue-in-cheek.  Today, it is automatically me being shitty because I didn’t respond in a properly fuzzy way to a feel-good statement.