What do you waste money on?

[shadowinthelight]

Anyone who remembers my Babyoln 5 CD collection can probably extrapolate the thing I can't resist spending more money than I should on is CDs. Since I hate downloading and instead make MP3s from my own discs, when I'm converting a collection and am missing one I have the compulsion to buy what is necessary to complete it. Today I received my latest Amazon purchase, Mortal Kombat II: Music from the Arcade Game Soundtrack ($60+ used) and Mortal Kombat Musik : MK3 & MK4 Arcade Video Game Soundtrack ($30+ used). I'm not totally insane though. Click on the link and see how much the MK2 disk costs new.

[DinkyInky]

Well...

I' ve paid $60 a tube for Rose Madder(let us not discuss some of the other colours), $300 + for my Sable brushes...

Finding Winsor Newton Quinoquidrone Violet Artists colour is next to impossible to find anymore...

Oil painting is expensive.

[Julie]

Books...and movies...

My current collection of books isn't nearly as extensive as it would be if my budgetary and space constraints hadn't intruded on my purchasing whimsy with their infallible logic. I've resorted to buying almost all of my new books on my Nook of late...and I've been restricting those purchases to when I have gift cards to use. That said, I still do not allow myself to enter a bookstore alone...and if I'm accompanied by someone else, I give them my wallet with strict instructions regarding when they are allowed to give it back to me. In the past I was unable to walk out of a bookstore having spent less than $100...and don't get me started on antique stores that have decent collections of old books (definitely spent $100 on one book from an antique store before).

My DVD collection exceeds 500 movies...and that was before my collection merged with my husband's. I've also worked very hard to curtail my spending habits in that arena since I have zero space for my collection as is (see my space concerns for my books). I also forced myself to think about how much money I spent on my collection in total...and how much more money it will cost to transition my collection to blu-ray. Things were much simpler in college when my collection was much smaller and 75% VHS...and I could rent out my movies to fellow students (which is why I never spent a dime of my own money on laundry in college).

Now I just need to bite the bullet and get some really good database/archiving software to catalog all of my books and movies...partly as protection in the event of a disaster (what insurance company would believe be when I told them I'd lost thousands of dollars in just books and movies), and partly as protection for when I loan things out (why is it that no one returns the things that you loan them anymore??). It would also be handy to be able to run queries for books or movies when I'm feeling a certain way, but don't know what I want to read or watch...

Yeah...so I like to waste money sometimes...

[DinkyInky]

Julie,

I hear you on the book front. Thank Goodness for Baen free library for my sci- fi/fantasy fix.

For digital books, get a Seagate FreeAgent or a Toshiba Terabyte drive to archive them, and stick it in fire safe when done.

For antique books, they do have insurance for them, but I would recommend a fire safe for them.

A pox on my ex for taking mine in said safe while I was asleep with my then infant!

[NOTDilbert]

A pox on my ex for taking mine in said safe while I was asleep with my then infant!

A BOOK THIEF?! Hopefully there's a special circle (or icosagon of some kind) in Hell for those!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

A pox on my ex for taking mine in said safe while I was asleep with my then infant!

A BOOK THIEF?! Hopefully there's a special circle (or icosagon of some kind) in Hell for those!

A special place reserved for those who steal books and talk in theaters...

[chibichibi01]

Art. I spend oodles of money on drawings of original characters because.... well because I can't draw good enough to capture exactly what i want.

[Jabberwonky]

A pox on my ex for taking mine in said safe while I was asleep with my then infant!

A BOOK THIEF?! Hopefully there's a special circle (or icosagon of some kind) in Hell for those!

An incarsahedron?

A special place reserved for those who steal books and talk in theaters...

I can understand a book thief, you gain knowledge of some sort. But talking in a theater?

[shadowinthelight]

A special place reserved for those who steal books and talk and kick the seats in front of them in theaters...

FTFY.

All 8 of my Mortal Kombat CDs (I'm not buying the most recent "inspired by" album, I like techno but can't listen to dubstep for any extended period of time) are now ripped to my computer and triple encoded to 128kbps MP3, 320kbps max variabe bitrate MP3, and lossless FLAC. That is the easy part. Touching up scans of 20 year old album artwork is a pain in the posterior.

[Dave]

A BOOK THIEF?! Hopefully there's a special circle (or icosagon of some kind) in Hell for those!

An incarsahedron?

That's the punnish neologism of the week, IMNSHO! Very nicely done!

For best effect, each face of the incarsahedron should consist of a large flat-panel TV, each tuned to a different channel, showing a different daytime talk-television program, at earsplitting volumes, 24 hours per day.

After a few months of that, the book thief would gladly accept relocation to a small cave in a distant mountain-side, there to spend the rest of his life as a solitary hermit, eating nothing but boiled grains every day. Since it would be a voluntary move, he could not complain about the gruel and unmutual banishment.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

A special place reserved for those who steal books and talk and kick the seats in front of them in theaters...

FTFY.

But that's not as shiny a reference....

That's the punnish neologism of the week, IMNSHO! Very nicely done!

For best effect, each face of the incarsahedron should consist of a large flat-panel TV, each tuned to a different channel, showing a different daytime talk-television program, at earsplitting volumes, 24 hours per day.

After a few months of that, the book thief would gladly accept relocation to a small cave in a distant mountain-side, there to spend the rest of his life as a solitary hermit, eating nothing but boiled grains every day. Since it would be a voluntary move, he could not complain about the gruel and unmutual banishment.

Just make sure Jerry Springer and Murray are included, and it will merely take a matter of hours...

Put enough facets into the incarcahedron, and you might end up with a bucky-ball-room...

*deposits one mole of C60 molecules into the Pun Vault*

[Jabberwonky]

Okay, the inward facing screens of daytime talk shows is borderline cruel and unusual.
Adding Jerry Springer is definitely over the line...

[chibichibi01]

A pox on my ex for taking mine in said safe while I was asleep with my then infant!

A BOOK THIEF?! Hopefully there's a special circle (or icosagon of some kind) in Hell for those!

A special place reserved for those who steal books and talk in theaters...

And who take advantage of (not so) Innocent young red heads?

The special hell.

[scantrontb]

Now I just need to bite the bullet and get some really good database/archiving software to catalog all of my books and movies...partly as protection in the event of a disaster (what insurance company would believe be when I told them I'd lost thousands of dollars in just books and movies), and partly as protection for when I loan things out (why is it that no one returns the things that you loan them anymore??). It would also be handy to be able to run queries for books or movies when I'm feeling a certain way, but don't know what I want to read or watch...

Yeah...so I like to waste money sometimes...

while you put it here in the "what you WASTE your money on" forum... i find that the need for some sort of database software is a not-to-be-missed, must-have piece of software to keep track of my 2000+ books, and about 500 DVD/BD's (with a few VHS thrown in the mix too.)...

I'm recommending that you take a look at Readerware then, i splurged and got the whole suite of three separate programs, one each for books, movies, and music for $75, though the CD backup copy was an extra 10 (with all three programs on it)... it does very well at what it does, not all flashy graphics that take up more computer space than really needed, and confusing menu items... you can search and sort by any of the headers, keep track of loaned out items, etc... since you have a lot of books and movies like i do, i also, HIGHLY recommend getting a bar-code scanner to read the ISBN's off the packages/covers... Readerware will also work with various types of readers too, Cuecat, tethered laser scanners like in grocery store check-outs, and also wire-free hand-held units like the Opticon OPN2001 that are only connected via USB cable when uploading the bar-codes (I've got this one).... you REALLY don't want to have to type in all those numbers by hand, blech...

as for antique books and such before bar-coded ISBN's were around, it can keep track just fine but on those you will be doing a bunch more hand entry of data first.

i have another program that's for my not-too-big comic book collection (maybe 100-ish) called "comic collector" from CLZ (for $29.95 Std or 49.95 Pro) they also do books, movies, and Cd's, and they also do ones for PC games, and for pictures, and mp3's... they work alright i guess, but there is just a bit too much of a flashy gimmicky feel to them that I'm not entirely satisfied with, and I'm not sure i like them enough too swap everything over to them totally, but unfortunately Readerware doesn't do one for comics (yet, i hope!)... add to it the fact you really aren't really searching the internet for your data, all you are doing is downloading from their central server database, and if it doesn't have it, then you have to input anything you actually want to keep track of yourself... then, if you upload it back to them, you update their database for every one else in the future, with out them really doing anything... whereas in Readerware, you have a choice from 38 different sites, Amazon (7 different ones) Barnes and Noble, Library of Congress, to name a few... and if THEY don't have it... then you've got a really obscure book, or an antique that wouldn't have been able to BE cataloged yet, AND... all your data is not being stored out on some website for John Q Public to look at... i like that better.

both sets of programs have mobile versions, but i don't use either of them this way, i just export my lists as an HTML file with the fields i want/need then look at them on my iPod as a non-interactive listing. basically i just use it to avoid getting duplicates, though sometimes i forget the sorting rules and end up getting two of something... i think the newest version of the CLZ programs are able to input and upload new entries to your cloud-stored database with them, and then when you synch it at home your new entries are downloaded from their cloud-server to your home machine... I'm not real sure what the mobile version of the Readerware can do... i don't really NEED that functionality so i never looked either too closely... YMMV...

[Jabberwonky]

Okay, maybe not the best solution, but it's an option...

Book Maze.jpg (250.45 KiB) Viewed 9924 times

[scantrontb]

where the HECK it that?... and are all those walls SOLID "books" or are they stacked up against both sides of a central "filler wall" with a layer across the whole thing on top, so they stay standing once somebody tries to take a book out? is this a "read-more-books" sponsored by XYZ gimmick? or is it a real place that is set up permanent-like, and that's just how they ended up storing the books for use? personally i think it's just a publicity stunt, because you can't read any of the titles, or spines of the books (if they're even REAL BOOKS) because of how they're stacked, let alone what will happen to that little kid if she pulls out the wrong book and the wall collapses on her...

[Jabberwonky]

I have no information on it. I found it at a picture dump site.
It smacks of an 'art' exhibit to me. It's too impractical on so many levels.

[Dave]

Impractical to the point of being potentially lethal... it looks like an accident waiting to happen (and rubbing its hands in eager anticipation).

[Jabberwonky]

You are so wrong!

[jwhouk]

Art exhibit in London from last year.