stuckinstuff

Please Feel Free To Come Over

A few of you have noticed that I've been shifting my blogging focus.  Basically I'm consolidating my three blogs into one.  I'd love for you to come over.  Subscribe to my feed.

There are about 250 readers of StuckInStuff.com.  You all are great.  In fact, it was one of you (sorry, I cannot find the comment now), who encouraged me to do what I'm doing.  One kind follower suggested that I ought to spend more time coming up with positive solutions to the problem of being stuck in stuff.  I tucked away that comment and then took it to heart.

So I'm consolidating my blogging life at guynameddave but also starting the more positive version of StuckInStuff.com - "ChallengeStuff.com (.org)."  For now, Challenge Stuff will be a category at guynameddave.  I might expand that to a tumblelog in the near future.

Do you want to be involved in making something out of ChallengeStuff.com?  Let me know.

Oh, and I'll be updating guynameddave with the news of how our intervention garage sale fared.  See you soon...

Bold New Journal

I bought a new journal yesterday.  It was the utterly impulsive kind of consumer purchase that StuckInStuff.com bemoans.  If I am an anti-stuff booster, even so I'm still regularly a sucker.  The new colors of the Moleskine Volant journals just caught me off guard.  That new red journal there at Barnes & Noble did not just sit on that plastic hanging display, it jumped right off into my hand.

What can I do?  I'm conflicted.  Without a Moleskine journal I'm not sure how to get through a week.  But I really did not need a new one, since my perfect good boring black Moleskine journal has plenty of pages left.  It will have to retire unfilled.  And the new red journal will now go with me.

Perhaps the joke is on me.  The new Red Volant Moleskine lined journal is, let's just say, very red.  And so my impulse must now turn into a kind of amusement bordering on humiliation.  I anticipate note taking at meetings to be kind of showy.

Soon and very soon

It has been way way too long.  And I have no good excuses.  Well, I sort of have a good excuse for not blogging in a while.  I've been appreciating non-computer-related life, and frankly enjoying it a lot!  Much of my time away from the computer has been recorded by nothing more than my memory and the memory of those I've spent time with.  Honestly, I like it best that way.  Let's just say I've never been a big fan of home video, despite its many merits.  Here is a picture, though of my President's Day morning jaunt to the desert:

Anyway, I plan to get back into the swing of things very soon.  There is just so much stuff-news.  Blue Ray vs. HD-DVD thanks to Walmart.  Microsoft vs. Yahoo! thanks to insanity.  Oh, and perhaps I'll tell the story of how I resisted the latest REI and Patagonia sales - and just in time to hear a wonderfully convicting sermon on financial stewardship, which would have been fidgety if I had actually spent money.

Oh and finally, the next Challenge Stuff Reading Group is in the works.  It is going to be great!  A real stuff-oriented challenge.  More soon...

Happy or Sad?

There are quite a few reports out that Christmas spending is down.  I'm wondering, are you feeling "happy" or "sad" that you will likely not get as many things this Christmas from your penny pinching family and friends?

The Powerful Pull of Stuff

I'm attending a conference this week.  The event is taking place at a hotel and convention center right next to a mall.  It's a nice mall.  There's an Apple Store there.  The Apple Store has iPod's Nanos and Leopard and other stuff for sale.

It is simply astonishing to me how tempting it is to spend money.  It's almost like retail stores are made of super compressed matter and their gravitational pull is stronger than the earth itself.  I don't like lots of stuff.  And I want stuff.  Astonishing.

Heat And Apathy Go Hand In Hand

Just a quick observation, perhaps mostly about myself.  Heat and apathy go hand and hand.  Sitting in front of a computer trying to think rationally and act productively in a room without AC wearing a shirt that will not allow you to reach for the mouse because the sweat has sealed your arm in the keyboard-only position is not a good way to stay chipper and Web 2.0 handy.

Looking forward to a break in the weather and a good productive week to come!

About to Fall Off the Wagon!

Yikes, Patagonia is having an amazing sale!  Looks like my list of stuff to get rid of might need to grow by a few items...

IKEA 2008 Catalog - Ambivalence Never Looked So Good

Like you, I too received the 2008 IKEA Catalog this week.  Oh my.  What to do?

Don’t you wish you had a dime for every thing pictured in the IKEA Catalog?  Not just the IKEA furniture and frames and rugs and cabinets and dishes and bath towels, but also all the stuff that IKEA’s way over attractive Scandinavian models litter their houses with.  This has been a busy week for me.  So crazy day-long blog projects are out of the question.  But I bet if I counted all the things in the 2008 IKEA Catalog and multiplied them by ten cents, it would baffle all our minds!

In fact, since I’ve been throwing around sort of rash challenges of late, I’m making an IKEA Challenge.  If some IKEA deity reads this StuckInStuff.com blog post and offers me one U.S. dime for every thing pictured in the 2008 IKEA Catalog, I will count all those things and announce the results on this blog.  Moreover, I will take my payment in the form of an IKEA gift card.  Further still, I will remove from our house all furniture, pictures, bookshelves, kitchen utensils, textiles, garage shelving - everything except our piano and our clothes - and replace it all with IKEA bought items using only the amount of money on the IKEA gift card.  And finally - though I don’t know exactly how - I’ll find a way to incorporate the IKEA Challenge into the 100 Thing Challenge.

IKEA creates so many feelings of ambivalence for me.  You cannot argue their commitment to quality, good-looking furniture at a reasonable price.  And the designs of their furniture and other products give an impression of minimalism and frugality.  Though some how, for me at least, a trip to IKEA rarely ends in either.  Even though I truly have hit the end of my stuff rope and I am clearing stuff out, even so, yesterday I enjoyed browsing the 2008 IKEA Catalog.  What’s that about?

Disclosure: This post has been written at an IKEA Jerker Desk.

Can You Help Me Understand Why I Like?

I'm trying to figure out why I like Makezine and Craftzine so much.  It seems to me that the O'Reilly zine audience must be made of he geeks and her geeks who live in massive clutters of circuit boards, scrap paper, knitting needles, and malfunctioning electro-magnetic copper coils.  The garage or closet of just one Make or Craft partitioner must be filled with more stuff than all the stuff everyone I know owns.  Yuck!

So then from where does my complex emotion originate?  I kind of like Make and Craft magazine.  Is it voyeurism?  Is it Freudian?  Help me...

Silence

Sorry, I'm a Harry Potter fan.