Taking control of your collection

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Tue Feb 5 14:14:56 2002

At 12:00 AM 2/5/2002 -0600, Lawrence Walker wrote:
> I have a connundrum. I want to thin out my collection of computer artifacts
>and I'm having problems on what to part with.

I see plenty of pathological behavior on this list, and I see it
when I look in the mirror, or at least when I look in the basement
of my office building. It is possible to leave the realm of
the reasonable. Your life can be viewed as unbalanced.

This packrat pathology reminds me of the behavior of old
folks who lived through the Depression. Do you really need
fourteen boxes of crackers? It's like shopping obsessions,
where people buy things and never use them, and buy the same
things over and over.

I've gone through a few purges, but I'm due for another. In the
last purge, I tossed the all-too-common varieties of PC, everything
386 or below, and even most of the 486s. I decided they'd never
be rare or useful, and that I could always find another if I needed one.

Giving away stuff is always problematic. It takes a lot of
time to adequately describe items, and then there's packing
and shipping, or even the hours spent on local pickup.

For the receiver, there's no doubt a limit on what they'll
pay to get something. Who wants 100 pounds of old magazines
from the computer graphics market? Chances are slim I'd find
someone near me who'd want them, and they're not worth shipping.

- John
Received on Tue Feb 05 2002 - 14:14:56 GMT