Category: Random (Page 2 of 6)

I like these Friday Fives, even if I do answer them tardily. This week is all about organization, a subject about which I know plenty, even though the fiancee would likely beg to differ.

I like these Friday Fives, even if I do answer them tardily. This week is all about organization, a subject about which I know plenty, even though the fiancee would likely beg to differ.

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?

I am organized but cluttered. Life for me gravitates into piles: a pile of to-do items, a pile of things to put away, a pile of CDs I listened to and haven’t refiled, I pile of receipts I haven’t deigned worthy of the trash yet. Within that clutter, I usually know where my things are.

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?

I do. Palm Pilot, Schmalm Pilot: I have a Charing Cross weekly planner, in leather and paper and gold foil, filled with black-ink-handwritten notes. It looks like this. I carry it in my back pocket and buy two each year, because the spine tends to wear out after six months of sitting on it.

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?

Um … not really, no.

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?

I used to alphabetize, but quantity outstripped utility after a while–putting a new Beta Band CD into the B’s would mean pushing 800 CDs one notch to the right. My CDs are arranged in roughly two dozen self-designed genres. I have labeled dividers waiting to be installed, too. The books in the house are similarly arranged, not for any good reason but because it made sense; the DVD/video collection is too small to require any sorting.

5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?

People.

News from Texas states the famous cloned cat from last year is much different than the original, proving that cloning is not duplication. Fascinating, and evidence that when used appropriately, cloning may not be as evil as it seems.

Lots and lots of New York City maps in this Metafilter thread. Yeah maps!

If you’re like me, you a) love media, b) love getting stuff cheap, and c) have stuff that you can’t bring yourself to throw away because it is potentially worth something to someone else.

Time was, you’d go to half.com, but the site’s been overrun by two-bit commercial entities that undercut your sale prices, and you started to feel a bit dirty buying stuff from unknown retail outfits in Idaho, so you stopped going there. Plus the deals weren’t that good, and you didn’t get much money back from your sales.

Good news! Now you can go to Trodo and get new stuff for free. All you have to do is share some of your stuff in return. All users pay their own shipping costs, and it’s a give-one-get-one model. It’s peer-to-peer filesharing for physical media.

Trodo is the brainchild of my top-notch colleagues Adrian Holovaty and John S. Rhodes. Go forth and share.

I’m in sunny rainy Florida. I’ll be back in the daily routine Wednesday. More news as events warrant.

Update from last week: the Times ran those conflicting editorial columns after all. They weren’t very exciting, although the national news about their withholding certainly was.

The New York Times sports section chose not to run editorials by esteemed writers Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton because the editorials’ viewpoint didn’t match the opinion of the main editorial page. Marginally understandable, but surprising to hear. Isn’t this exactly why newspapers have editorial columns?

~ Leonid meteor shower visible in North America November 19. If it weren’t a Tuesday, I’d drag my family to my elementary school again.

~ The Guardian gave Pete Townshend a forum to review Kurt Cobain’s “Journals” and rebut Cobain’s “Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend” line. And did he ever. “These are the scribblings of a once beautiful, angry, petulant, spoiled, drug-addled middle-class white boy from a divorced family who just happened, with the help of two of his slightly more stable peers, to make an album hailed as one of the best rock records ever.”

~ Speaking of petulance, Mad Magazine turns 50 this fall. The Sunday New York Times ran an article compiling some of Mad’s greatest letters to the editors. “I have been reading Mad for several years now. Mainly, the first issue I ever bought. I just couldn’t see wasting a quarter on another.”

Chez Daniel by Rosecrans Baldwin in The Morning News. “It’s like going to a bachelor party where one of the guys drinking with you is a member of Sonic Youth, and he mentions, over your third or fourth beer, that he’s read your Web site, and actually liked it. Well, okay. Yes: He’s a dude, like any dude at the bachelor party, and he even skips out on the karaoke part. But he’s in Sonic Youth.”

I have one pair of black dress shoes, a European-sole Allen Edmonds lace-up, and one tuxedo shoe, a soft patent-leather To Boot New York slip-on.

My everyday black dress shoes are formal Eccos. They need replacing.

I have brown summer loafers (also To Boot New York) and brown Kenneth Cole half-boots for the winter.

I own three pairs of Camper shoes: blue and beige suede, brown leather stitched, and black with tan laces.

With two negligible missteps, my sneakers have been Nikes since I was a boy’s size 1. My most favorite—for both appearance and comfort—were the second-generation Bo Jacksons from the late 1980s. My current pair has green-gray and black leather with bright orange laces and black soles.

My throwaround summer shoes, once the sole province of Top-Siders, are now a form-fitting pair of black Reef flip-flops.

And I have two pairs of Timberland work boots for inclement weather (one comfortable, the other more suitable for the office).

Footwear recently dispatched to Jersey Mini-Storage included the aforementioned Top-Siders, a beat-up pair of basic black To Boot New York military-style dress lace-ups, and Adidas-ripoff slide-on flip-flops with a New York Yankees logo.

I was going to write about the suits I’m having altered but my mind wandered.

Spent the weekend registering—it’s shopping without money!—and the lady and I are pretty much set. Got four registries (well, three registries and some gadgets on Amazon) established and, of course, live on the Internet.

Buying, selling—I am practically innn-saaaaane.