Re: Furnishing

1

How many Black-Eyed Peas albums can you possibly own? Put them on the hard drive.

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2

put everything on a hard drive and stash the plastic in the basement

This, definately.

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3

Yes, Idealist is right.

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4

A number of my friends do this - keep their CDs in the cases, at home. This doesn't work for me. I despise CD cases. I burn all my CDs onto my computer, which connects to my receiver and speakers - or would, if I presently had them recently. That's how it worked in the past, anyway. The actual CDs go in CD cases which stay in my car. The cases go in the closet, or get chucked.

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5

Ignore the errors above (i leave identifying them as an exercise for the reader). I'm really tired.

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One of my friends keeps some of his CDs in a drawer, so they're out of sight yet easily reachable.

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7

The hard-drive solution seems right -- failing that, I know I've seen binder-type things where you put the disc and the booklet (what is that called?) in a plastic sleeve and ditch the jewel case. Many CDs fit in a very small space.

On curtains -- this is actually something that a non-insane person can make for themselves with decent results. If you can borrow a sewing machine and buy some fabric, you're talking about only a couple of seams per curtain, and they're all straight and at right angles. It's still a project, but it's a doable project for someone with no pre-existing skills.

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8

the booklet (what is that called?)

Liner notes. I buy music frequently through the Internet, and I've found that I missed them so much that I may have to go back to buying CDs. It's impossible to determine who's playing what using Google.

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9

Hard drive, basement. The solution LB mentions in 7 doesn't work. I've tried it. You end up with a problem that every time you get a few new cds you have to realphabatize the entire damn book, which you don't do, and chaos ensues. (I can imagine, however, keeping liner notes in a little file box or something.)

However, if you come up with a solution other than hard drive + basement? Do let me know, b/c we'll be moving soon and Mr. B.'s goddamn CD collection is one of the banes of my existence. I also welcome solutions for video tapes, DVDs, and cord hell.

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10

Oh, re. window treatments. First, the phrase "window treatments" is appalling. Strike it now from your language. Second, I bought a sari for about $15 a little while ago that I intend to use as a curtain (or, perhaps, I shall cut it and hem it and use it for curtains, plural). So far it sits on the piano in a fuchsia-colored bunch. I imagine I'll get around to hanging the curtain rods just in time to put the house on the market.

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11

You end up with a problem that every time you get a few new cds you have to realphabatize the entire damn book, which you don't do, and chaos ensues

I recall pages having two or more slots. Don't you just initially half-fill the pages, and then interleaf empty pages as necessary?

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12

While I wouldn't presume to window shop for you, I've always liked looking through

http://www.cribcandy.com

This stuff usually falls into the category of "typically not owned by middle class peeps AND expensive."

Still fun.

R

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13

Bitch Ph D's problem with alphabetization strikes me as weird. I keep my CD's in a binder like LB mentions and they are not ordered by alphabet but rather by "when I got it". So when I get a new disc there is no need to reorganize as its correct place within the ordering is at the tail. A problem would arise if I were to get a new disc which I had had for a long time already, but this seems logically impossible to me.

A friend of mine got a CD changer with hundreds of slots and kept all his discs in the changer. I have no idea how much this costs but if it's reasonable, it seems like a good idea.

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14

Also, re: expensive furniture -- I have always thought a hutch would be a good thing, or a sideboard; but every time I see one that inspires such a though, it is very expensive indeed. So my plan is to build one one of these years; unfortunately my furniture-making skills are as yet pretty damn rough.

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15

My head and notebooks are filled with ideas on how to store media discretely in a living room, most of them bad, very bad. My latest idea is a cabinet similar to an old card catalog cabinet. Each longish drawer has a bottom and one side and a square or rectangular drawer front, (and back). The "spines" of the cd, dvd, vhs, or whatever are exposed along the opens side of drawer as it is pulled out and are to be moved in and out from the side of the drawer that has no "side". This allows a cabinet that is deeper than a bookcase, and certainly deeper than a cd-depth bookcase. Media are stored from the front to the back of the drawer thus allowing more media units per media unit width X height's worth of wallspace. Now all you need is good cabinet maker. I'd draw you a bunch of pictures if asked.

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16

Whoops,
"...I'd draw you a bunch of pictures if asked." was me, Mr. B.

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17

You can buy "poly sleeves" that hold both the CD and liner notes. They're probably cheaper and more expandable than binders. Bags Unlimited is one store with many varieties.

But you'll still need something to hold the sleeves; the Google Groups archives of the music collector newsgroups might have some ideas.

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18

15 is insane. How much room would that damn thing take up? At the very least, you should store the cds sideways, so the depth of the piece of furniture is only one cd width. And you could construct the front of the door so it could unhinge or pull down.

But as you know, Mr. B., I think the best solution--if you must keep the things in the cases (which by the way, requires you to put them back in the cases and then away occasionally)--is to build something that doesn't have drawers, but instead fold-down vertical drawers.

Simplicity. Elegance. Not nonsensical huge pieces of furniture with drawers and no sides and what have you. There's a reason people don't have card catalogs in their homes.

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19

Window treatments? We just have curtains But then I buy cheap ones.

CDs - we have ours (my 4 plus partner's 800 odd) in an Ikea Billy bookcase (plus extra things that sit on each shelf to transform it from a bookcase to CD shelves) in our bedroom, where there's a stereo. Music elsewhere is MP3s via computers, or a CD in the DVD player, or one of the many portable radio/tape/CD players we have scattered about. We looked at loads of CD storage ideas, but for a large number of CDs, most work out stupidly expensive or take up too much room. Every now and again he says he'll burn them all and then sell the CDs, but I can't see it happening.

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20

ordinary things, owned by most middle-class people, that are surprisingly expensive.

Cars. I am unable to comprehend that people buy new cars. You put down 20K and then all you have is a car?

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21

Seriously. I can't see myself ever buying a new car.

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22

Cars in Britain! Even more expensive.

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23

ordinary things, owned by most middle-class people, that are surprisingly expensive.

Day care. It seems like a lot of two-income households have literally a majority of one of the incomes taken away by day care, to the extent that I've heard people say "I wonder if we'd have more money if I stopped working, because then we wouldn't need day care."

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24

I think we're going to spend that much to buy a Prius soon. I feel okay about it, though b/c we drove our last car (which had 114,000 miles on it when we bought it) for seven years and really, well into the "unreliable piece of junk" stage. Which is where it is now, and every time I have to drive out of town I rent a car.

Of course, I'd still rather buy a Prius used, but given that they haven't been around that long, the supply/early model bug hangup inclines me to just accept having car payments again.

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25

Shit, we drove that fucking thing for nine years. How time flies.

Also, 23 s/b "children."

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26

24: I was looking for a used hybrid a couple of years ago, and there werenone to be had. It's worse than with other cars, because the owners of hybrids are more often drive-it-forever types than get-a-new-one-every-two-years types.

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27

Yeah, so I've learned. I'm not sure how we're going to deal with the three month waiting period, but we'll figure something out.

You know what else is, imho, insanely expensive? Cable TV. To this day, I can't quite get past the idea of paying for television.

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28

To this day, I can't quite get past the idea of paying for television.

I hear that.

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29

27, 28: Just say no. 8+ years now of no cable or broadcast TV. We seldom miss it.

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30

My parents have never had cable. When I moved off campus last year I didn't really want it, but my housemates did so I acquiesced. Next year I'm hoping not to get it.

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31

My daughter is now into vinyl in a big way. I recommended the time-honored peach-crate solution, and she looked at me as if I were insane. "Mound of crap" is the only system for her.

$7000 is the most I've ever paid for a car.

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32

Mr. B in 15: I have seen such cabinets for sale on the internet. In fact, I bought the equivalent cabinets for 7” records and cassette tapes. The same company made very handsome units for holding 12” vinyl, complete with little dividers every three inches to keep too many records from pressing on each other. I didn’t end up buying their CD units, because I had already committed to this ok liking wall mounted metal storage system which came from some mainstream catalogue like Pier 1.

Oh, you want to know the name of the company that made the lovely cabinets I have? I have no memory, and the brand name does not seem to be stamped on the item anywhere.

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33

Re CDs in a binder: I did this for a while, but there are no binders out there that can hold the art that comes on the back of CDs. You can store the liner notes, but not the inset that comes in the plastic case. I was, for a time, storing the insets separately, but they started to frey, and I got frustrated, bought a bunch of Jewel cases, and put the CDs, liner notes, and insets back in them.

In general, CD binders are not aimed at collectors who care about things like insets or alphabetical order. It is hard, even, to find a binder that will let you insert pages.

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34

29 is right. I don't pay for internet either, but then, I live within walking distance of a wireless broadband connection.

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35

Also, it takes a surprising long time to burn a CD collection on to a hard drive. I burned about 15 gigs before I got bored with the whole project. (I was also trying to digitize my vinyl as a part of that, though, which may have been part of the hold up.)

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36

We got hooked on cable because our broadband is cable. We just paid for that, not tv, but until they got around to installing filters, about a year and a half, it was there anyway. We then got satellite: cheaper and appreciably sharper picture. Almost everything we watch.

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37

Oh, you want to know the name of the company that made the lovely cabinets I have? I have no memory, and the brand name does not seem to be stamped on the item anywhere.

THANK GOD.

I am intrigued by the possibility of not having internet in the house. The possibility frightens me terribly, but I would get other things done....

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38

I'm not sure how we're going to deal with the three month waiting period

There's a guy in LA who's made a business out of locating Priuses for immediate sale for MSRP. He charges a flat $500 fee for it; a friend of mine found him on Craigslist and bought one through him, and was quite pleased with the experience.

Not sure how that helps you, though.

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39

Hmm. New ones? Will you email me?

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40

They're not, like, stolen or anything, are they?

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41

B gets it completely right with the need to realphabatize the CDs if they are stored in binders.

I was at a flea market about five years back and they had the authentic card catalog cabinets for sale that our local library was getting rid of because they computerized their records. They were things of beauty. I still kick myself for not buying one but I couldn't justify it with my semi-nomadic lifestyle.

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42

But why, if they're looseleaf binders?

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43

Well, I did always leave some empty slots so that it wasn't necessary to completely realphabatize the whole collection whenever I got a new CD but it still required some shuffling. Part of it is because I was fussy and didn't like too many empty slots on any page. I'm using the past tense, though, because now I just have everything on my hard drive and toss the CDs into a drawer.

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44

My girlfriend embarked on a massive CD-in-binder project a few years ago, covering about six hundred CDs. She went with large binders with rearrangable pages (though they're not as easy to arrange as a three-ring binder, and extra pages are hard to come by), and left ample room for additions. She broke it down with a binder per approximate genre, and then alphabetical within that. The liner notes go in the binder, and the jewel case back page was folded and put with the liner notes if it was actually different - about half of the time it was a copy of the back page of the liner notes anyway. This was in addition to ripping them all to her laptop.

I was slightly lazier with my smaller collection (maybe 100 CDs); I just ripped them and put the originals, jewel case and all, in a plastic box in the basement. It's been two years since I've put them there, and I haven't yet had a desire to go look at any of the art or liner notes.

"window treatments" - for months now I've been thinking that this is some exotic thing that homeowners do (I'm a lifelong renter, and the child of lifelong renters). It's quite releiving to realize that it's just "curtains and that stuff".

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45

I have a tall set of shelves the width of a single CD, more or less. They are pretty cool and suprisingly elegant considering they cost about the equivalent of $40 new.

Holds a hundred or so CDs. The other 200 or so I have in wire racks.

I just couldn't bring myself to put them into binders. Nor could I stick them all on a PC. That'd mean having a PC with attendant PC noise and inconvenience in my living room. I do have about 1/4 of my CDs ripped and on the kitchen computer though, so I can listen while cooking.

New cars *are* a crazy expense. We got our car for the equivalent of $30 second hand. We've had it 6 months and so far, fingers crossed, it's been fine. It's done quite a bit of mileage and had no mechanical problems.

I'd be surprised if it lasts more than a year though without requiring minor repairs that will be uneconomic on a car that cost so little. It'll be cheaper to buy another 2nd hand heap and run it into the ground.

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46

We got our car for the equivalent of $30 second hand.

You sure you've got the exchange rate right there?

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47

Check yer e-mail, B. And no, they're not stolen.

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48

re: 46

No. It was an old car owned by someone who wanted basically to give it away. We paid them the cost of the tax disc - 25 UKP - on the car (British road tax) so they wouldn't be out of pocket.

It's not uncommon for people to give away unwanted cars here. There's some free recycling web-boards that list that sort of thing, which is where I picked it up from.

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49

Man, that's awesome.

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50

Also, it takes a surprising long time to burn a CD collection on to a hard drive.

this is so true. I'm only a third of the way through my not-very-large collection, and I've already rejected about half as not worth the effort. I'm the anti-collector, though.

I didn't feel like learning to understand wirelessness, so I've got a nano ipod and one of those jbl donut-shaped speaker things, and I copy the music I want to hear to the ipod from my computer hard-drive. The ipod sits on the bookshelf in my living room, and sounds pretty great, considering the size of the thing. I used to have a Bose sound-dock, which had uncannily good sound quality, but then burglars.

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48: Hmm. Maybe that is what we'll do with the Subaru.

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52

Talk of human sexuality disgusts me.

Gooey hairy vagina!

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52: that's a CD-storage container I hadn't considered.

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"container" s/b "option"

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Binders. 3-ring, with loose leaf sheets. Just drop in a fresh sheet where you need it to minimize the hassle of realphabetization. Liner notes and backs in archive sleeves in another set of binders. Jewel boxes in the basement. Anybody need some?

And then burn them all onto the hard drive as well, for ease of play and backup. Use this free program for maximum anality, since errors do crop up when ripping. Keep lossless copies (FLAC). Buy several big honking hard drives.

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56

I am as I write looking at two 6 foot by 2 foot bookcases of cd's. A black wall of slimline cases. This thread has given me the idea of painting them.
Spray paint? Brushes? Stripes? Some op-art or trompe oeil thingy?

Nietzsche"It is not the intensity of an affect that determines its value, but it's duration."

I add 1-2 cd's to the harddrive every day. Got two 80s on the shelf, an 80 and 120 in the case. Added a 250 gb in February, still have 50 gb free. When I fill it I will change out the 80 for a 300.

Need another window ac though. Runs 80-85 in here.

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57

My brother-in-law has given his 1988 Honda Civic LX to me. I can donate my 1985 Honda Civic Std to some charity. I'm busy trying to swap the alternators. Gift declaration meant it cost me about $70 to transfer registration.

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58

Gooey hairy vagina!

What happens when you type Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with your fingers off the home row.

No, not really. Throbbing cock meat.

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59

"What ordinary things, owned by most middle class people, are surprisingly expensive?"

Trees. I have a 30 ft ash in my front yard, and a 65 ft mulberry in my back yard. Just try buying something like that for home delivery.

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60

Curtains: LB gets it right on how easy they are to sew; tension rods are your cheap, easy friend when it comes to hanging them up. If you care about style, then you are talking "window treatments" and they're neither cheap nor especially easy (Some Installation Required). Which is why they're so often listed as exclusions when you buy a house.

CD storage: Spatial intelligence is not my strong point, and I was skimming, but have to admit that Mr. B's proposed solution and the subsequent discussion made me think of nothing so much as a kind of Murphy bed. Yes? No? Completely off base?

Cars: Just unloaded an '89 Corolla on Craigslist. Took 90 seconds to write the ad (didn't even put a photo), got three phone calls within the hour (on the Fourth of July, yet), guy came to look at it four hours later, bought it. Only got $300, but hey -- I thought we'd have to donate it somewhere.

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61

Talk of human sexuality disgusts me. Let us speak instead of interior decorating.

Would a discussion of furnies fall into the former category or the latter?

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62

Please say that 'furnies' is a typo for 'furries', rather than that there are people who costume themselves as chairs for sexual gratification.

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63

people who costume themselves as chairs for sexual gratification

Interesting. I assumed that it was people who were excited by home heating devices.

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64

I assumed that it was people who were excited by home heating devices

Personally, I get more out of turning them on...

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65

Kind of makes you look at "carnies" in a whole new way....

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66

62. We don't pass judgement on Labs, LB.

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67

Hook 'em America woo!

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68

the awful truth:

http://www.eatpes.com/roofsex.html

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69

68: That's charming!

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70

My neighborhood sounds like Baghdad right now. I think every 12 year old kid must have invested a summer's worth of allowances into illegal fireworks.

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70: Mine too. I'd much rather be a chair on the roof.

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72

I'd rather be having explosive sex.

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73

70: Spend New Year's Eve in Honolulu some time. The noise starts about sundown and is pretty much a continuous roar from about 11:30 to 12:30, and the whole town is covered by a thick pall of powder smoke. I generally pray for rain.

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74

I wouldn't mind it so much if they weren't setting them off so close to my car and our wooden deck. I am about to literally go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

This is distressing.

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75

Moving, Dr. B? Does that mean that Mr. B got that job? Or did he get a different one? Is this good?

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68 is NOT charming! PK says, "bad person! nice kitty!" and I agree.

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77

It means they called back the next day and made the offer for, what, the third time? And they haven't cancelled it again yet. Since Mr. B is really excited about the position, and it gets us out of here and someplace he really likes and I like pretty well too (though with some reservations), he's taking it and we are keeping our fingers crossed that the nightmare of getting hired is not going to be indicative of what it will be like working for them, or that the fucking job itself is gonna disappear a month after we've up and moved.

It's good, yes. And thanks for remembering. We both oscillate between being stressed out basket cases and completely ignoring everything in an attempt not to be stressed out basket cases.

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78

I posted a comment in the Tie Me Up, Tie You Down thread without my name attached to it. I wanted to post a comment saying that I was its author, but I can't get all of the comments to load. At around 522 it stops. I just ctrl clicked it (on my powerbook) so that it would open in a new large window, and I was able to make it to 708, but then I reloaded and it konked out at comment 282 or so. Weird.

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79

Great, BG. You've broken it.

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80

I can't get all of the comments to load.

I'm having the same problem. I'm using Firefox on a Mac. It stops at 100-some, or at 200-some.

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81

Yeah, I'm having trouble getting TMU, TYD to load, too. I have to refresh a few times to get it to work. I think we're reaching the maximum number of comments one can have in a thread before creakage ensues.

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82

Best of luck, B!

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83

oh. I hadn't watched it to the end. I thought the bad person was me, and I was getting all affronted.

good luck with your move!

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84

I'm having the same problem getting the thread to load.

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85

Me too! I experienced the same failure to deliver!

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86

Loads OK for me, but apparently nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded.

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87

Now that cable has been "arranged", it's time to check out Design to Sell on HGTV. Shows what can be done, why, and what the effect is. Gets you thinking. Probably half moving out, so that rooms look less cluttered, is the big thing anyone can do. Easy to move directly from storage.

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88

Huh. I'm using Safari--and it loads just fine.

Thanks for the good wishes, everyone.

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89

I can get it to load some of the time, but I don't see why people don't just move threads. I haven't caught up yet but it appears the last topic of discussion was billable hours, for which (lo!) we happen to have another thread.

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I got it to load as far as 800 once, but usually it stops in the 400s or 500s.

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91

62: I'm pretty sure that was a typo, but I'm sorry to say that a desire to be treated as human furniture is a genuine fetish.

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88: I was having problems using both Firefox and Safari. I don't post using Safari anymore, because my computer's version has been cursed with the double name thing. It says "Bostoniangirl" in the Name field, but out comes "Bostoniangirl Bostoniangirl".

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62, 91: Now that I remember that the fetish is called "forniphilia", which I hadn't remembered, I realize that you probably knew this. But it needed to be linked.

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92: Dibs on chair.

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95

It's mighty frustrating to see that people are commenting on a thread but not be able to read their comments.

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Teo, you can try the RSS feed. Also, I did post a comment to that thread asking people to stop commenting there.

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And while it is frustrating, Teo, I hope you at least take some satisfaction in knowing it was your topic that spawned that 800+ comment bonanza.

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98

Nothing interesting --Becks is waving her cane and yelling "You kids get offa my lawn!"

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I do indeed take satisfaction in that. Thanks, Becks.

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The kids did indeed get off of my lawn when I yelled at them. If only Unfogged commenters were as easy to corral.

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101

Okay, I signed up for Bloglines just to read the rest of that thread. It wasn't really worth it.

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102

"Jewel boxes in the basement. Anybody need some?"

Your public library will take them. They have to re-box a lot for breakages.

I have my 2000+ CDs in 9 albums on shelf, with inserts and back covers in 10 filing boxes. But box sets of CDs like the Proper sets or big ones like the Sam Cooke or Specialty boxes are shelved to much annoyance.

Continuing problem - 500 cassettes. I suppose they should go onto hard disc, and 128 kbs should be enough.

Another continuing problem - the Seeburg E160 jukebox as seen in "In The Heat of the Night".
I'm gearing up to sell it, but it'll be a wrench.

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#91: 61 was not a typo. Indeed, if it were, the comment wouldn't make sense.

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104

I still don't really like computer + HD as a music-delivery method.

It's great when at work or in rooms in the house without a proper hi-fi. I have my PC in the kitchen/office attached to a decent set of speakers and an old hi-fi amp.

But I don't want a whacking great PC (or Mac) and screen sitting with my hi-fi in the living room. I especially don't want to hear fan noise, etc. while I am listening to music. My main PC is really quiet -- I use it for recording music -- but it's still loud enough that late at night, listening to music quietly, the fan noise is noticeable.

I know there are those fancy standalone devices you can get that will control a remote HD music store elsewhere in the house, but they seem a hassle and expensive.

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because my computer's version has been cursed with the double name thing

Noticed that. I thought it was some kind of celebration chant, like "Yay, BG!" You could sing it to Tannenbaum.

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106

Here's some library card catalog-like CD storage cabinets. This site also has other media storage furniture.

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107

Annie, you and I are gonna rumble.

Re. computer noise/big PC in living room: people. Mac mini + airport express. Voila.

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108

or as in 50, above, which gets it exactly right--iPod and sound dock.

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B, yeah, I thought you'd be none too pleased, but I'd really like for someone to get these and tell me how they work out. CD storage is kinduva backburner project for me. Ours are on a very boring, very bachelor pad-like wood rack. Not so ugly that finding something more aesthetically pleasing is a top priority. Translation: I'll probably die with the CDs still on that rack. But these card catalog cabinets are so neat!

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