More Random Natterings

1) I'm sure it's all in my mind, but in the couple of weeks since I started doing the EA Sports Active workout, I  swear that I'm seeing slight changes in my body shape.  Like I said, it could all be in my head, but I don't care.  I like what I'm seeing.  I'm hating some of the stuff the workout is making me do, but if I continue to see results, I'll be a happy boy.

2) I mentioned a few months ago that I'm transitioning about half the comics I read from monthly issues to semi-annual trade paperbacks.  For those that don't know the difference, the monthly comic is just that.  A single comic that comes out (usually) once a month.  About 22 or 23 pages of story.  It seems most comics these days take exactly six issues to tell one story, which is long enough to make the perfect trade paperback, which is a single volume reprinting (usually) six issues of a comic.  Anyway, last week it was announced that two of the books I'm currently transitioning over are being cancelled this spring.  This means that I now need to go back and start picking up the single issues again.  No sense in starting to read them as trades if the books are being cancelled.  Bah!

3)  I spent a good portion of the weekend packing again.  My office is now about 90% packed up and the boxes are now stacked in the guest room.  Ken thinks we should get a storage unit and stash all the boxes there while getting the house ready to sell.  I was against the idea at first, but the more I think about it, the more I think we should do it.  Not only will we get all this clutter out of here, but it won't be anywhere when it comes time to stage the house for sale.  The less stuff we have in the house, the better.  Plus we can start emptying out the basement, which is full of crap.  Just the thought of moving all this stuff is making me a little queasy, though.  Thousands of comics, thousands of cds, hundreds of toys, tools, furniture.....  Moving is one of the most unpleasant things in the world to me.  Probably because we did it so often when I was growing up.  I never want to move again.  Our next house WILL be the house I die in, mark my words.

4)  Out of sheer boredom, or just because I never thought of doing it before, I've been faux-celebrity hunting on Facebook.  I started with trying to friend everyone who was ever a contestant on Survivor, but that's now changing into finding celebrities from my childhood.  So far, Alison Arngrim (Nellie Oleson), Robbie Rist (Cousin Oliver), Betty White (Betty freakin' White!) and Geri Reischel (Fake Jan Brady) have accepted my request.  I'm having a lot of fun doing this.

5)  I think I have some mild OCD going on.  I tend to find little OCD fueled projects to do.  For the last few weeks, since Christmas actually, I've been working on a project.  Since getting this computer in December 2007, I've been obsessing over my iTunes library.  I finally had a computer big enough to hold all my music.  My first project upon uploading everything was to make sure everything got listened to at least once.  It's been a while since that project was finished.  I got it in my head that I now need to get everything up to at least two plays.  So I created a smart playlist.  I set it to hold 39 gig worth of music with a play count of 1.  It self-replenishes itself, so I don't have to worry about that.  And here's my daily routine.  First thing in the morning, I play my new podcasts of the day.  Then, if I have any new music that hasn't been played yet, I listen to that.  Once that's done, I go to the Played Once playlist.  I have the playlist sorted by the largest file in size to the smallest.  I start with the largest and play in order by size.  That way, when I sync the iPod at night, it will take off all the biggest files first and replace them.  That way I get rid of a bunch of bigger files and they get replaced with even more smaller ones.  At the beginning of January, that playlist had about 9,000 songs in it.  Right now it's up to almost 10,300.  What's nice is I'm getting a chance to listen to a lot of stuff I haven't heard in a while.  I've been averaging about 150 songs a day at work.  I have a total of about 28,900 songs left that have one play each on this computer.  iTunes figures it will take about 74.7 days of straight listening for me to get through them all.  Let's see how long before I can't take it anymore!