Storage

Took my dad’s truck to storage today. My intent for this trip is to donate tons of stuff to the Salvation Army instead of dealing with Craigslist. I already sold all the really valuable stuff and the Salvation Army gives me a receipt for everything I donate, which is good for a giant tax writeoff. I took about 1.5 truck loads. The first load used just about every cubic foot of the truck bed and camper shell. It was packed. The Salvation Army people seemed annoyed that I was giving them extra work to do. Last time they were so thrilled at the stuff I was bringing them. This time I felt like a nuisance.

I gave them a microwave, printer/scanner, rocking chair, toy box, overhead projector, 2 VCRs, a dual cassette deck, boom box, trash cans, probably 4 full boxes of clothes, stuffed animals, a 2-drawer dresser, about 10 – 15 board games (good stuff like Perfection, Clue, checkers, Monopoly, etc), kid bed sheets and quilts, pillows, sleeping bags, my roller blades, the kids roller skates (they wouldn’t fit anymore anyway), 2 radio control 4×4 trucks, 2 sleds, 2 large boxes of hot wheel tracks, a 6 foot ladder, doll house, tons and tons of books.

Aw man, I gave away so many books that I didn’t want to. I’d forgotten what a kickass collection of hacker books I had. I had all these books on the history of the phone companies, 2 or 3 on Kevin Mitnick, another on the Masters of Deception, tons of Unix security books and general programming, probably 50 issues of 2600, and lots of others that I just can’t remember. Lots of other hacker books, though. Oddly enough, I kept all my bank robbery books and donated my hacker books. What does that say about my future? HRRMMMMMMM. Plus tons of kids books. I mean lots and lots of kids books. Stuff I read to the kids from when they were 1 until just a couple of years ago. And it sucks to get rid of those since we have so few in the house in Oregon. At least we get to the library a lot, though. Two or three of the Harry Potter books, lots of comedy books. So many books. Oh yeah, dozens of home improvement books. I had books on all kinds of cool woodworking and remodeling projects. And just general stuff like plumbing and electrical. I’d say a total of 5 large boxes of books. Spessa would be disappointed in me.

Throwing out all my old shirts was slightly less disappointing, but still sucked. I had a lot of weird shirts and a lot of hacker shirts. Defcon, Rubicon, Phreaknic, and even a couple PLA shirts got donated. The original YOU WILL PLA shirt got donated. As in, the very first one from 1996, from the first batch of 6 that were ever printed. I would have kept it and sold it on phonelosers.org, but it was looking pretty terrible. It was white and had pit stains. I was glad to get rid of a lot of those clothes, though. I had way too many shirts. My old closet in my Alton house was too big. Plus I got rid of a lot of clothing that a cousin gave me for Payton that didn’t fit him yet. Clothes that had no wear on them at all.

Later in the evening, the kids and I all went to storage again. I had them sort through a few boxes of stuffed animals and toys. I told them they needed to get rid of most of them and they did a great job with that. We ended up filling 3 large totes full of toys and bringing one back home to take back to Oregon. So I’ve already got a bunch of new stuff to donate on my next trip to Salvation Army. Plus I filled up a suitcase of stuff that I wanted to bring back. Mostly office supplies, picture frames, and some CDs. I’m bringing back my original factory car stereo for my Focus since the one I got for 50 cents at a garage sale is starting to malfunction. I’m probably going to mail a box or two, then bring back the rest in suitcases that I’ll buy from Salvation Army, just like we did during Christmas. I just hope the cab in Portland can fit all our suitcases.

I know I probably said this back in a December entry, but it feels great to get rid of all this stuff. Just to eliminate all this clutter from my life. 20+ years of collecting useless shit and finally being able to rid myself of it. It’s like that old man I met at the Eugene flea market who was selling all the baseball cards and baseball memorabilia that he’d been collecting since he was a boy. He said he wasn’t doing it for the money, but he just had no use for it all and wanted all the crap out of his house. It sucks to lose those cool hacker books, my giant phone collection, and all my electronics and wires. But if I didn’t get rid of it now, I’d just be selling it all at a flea market 30 years from now. I just wish I could have given it to somebody who would want it. Plenty of people on the forums would have loved all that stuff. It’s too bad I didn’t give it all away when I could. My goal from now on is to not accumulate tons of useless shit.

We’re having a good time in Illinois so far. Yesterday we went to the City Museum. I hated myself for forgetting my book. I did a lot of wandering around by myself and a lot of playing games on my cell phone. After the 20th or so visit, I’m really bored with that place. But the kids still have a great time there.

Man, I love my new Dell laptop. It’s so nice to have everything on a laptop that actually works. My old laptop was slow (it was a 1999 or 2000 model that I’d been using since 1999 or 2000) and the battery never worked right. It’s so great having a laptop with everything I own on it. And being able to use it for hours at a time without plugging it in is so new to me. I’ve even got a spare battery for it, so it can go for about 6 hours. It just rules. I hope this one lasts for years.