So far, 2011 has been very good for me, albeit a bit busy. I have so many projects going on right now — so many that I’m not sure where to begin. I was reading a “guide” on how to manage this situation, and it said to list them out, and then pick the easiest things to get done and go from there. I’ve started to do this a little bit, but I feel like this is a project in and of itself!
Since it’s now spring, people have been selling things on Craigslist, and I, of course, have been buying them. Today’s finds came in the form of three different posts. The first was an Apple ][e, the second was an Intellivision and the third was a Neo Geo Pocket Color. These were going for decent (i.e. cheap) prices, so I couldn’t pass them up. Here’s how my day went:
Went to pick up the Apple. The guy had it set up on his back porch and had me come take a look at it. It worked fine, although it didn’t have a disk drive, just the CPU/keyboard and monitor, for $30. Sold.
Next was the Intellivision. It was at an estate sale, and he had a big box full of stuff. For the right price (in this case $30), I don’t even look at stuff closely — I just grab. He had some vintage toys as well that he threw in for a total of $35. Into the back of my Highlander it all went.
Third was the Neo Geo pocket color, plus 6 games. The unit was in great condition, games in cases, etc. Picked it up for $40.
After a nice day out with the family, we finally got home and I unloaded everything. I then started looking at what it was that I actually bought. It turns out, there were 2 Intellivision II’s and 1 Intellivision III (boxed), plus like 20-30 games (complete) – I still need to go through them all, but I did some preliminary searching on the net and was a little shocked to find that a lot of the games were very rare — for example, “Spiker”, complete in box goes for around $240. Others were Commando and Body Slam (complete) — each going for like $70-80 a piece – crazy!
So, here’s where I’m at with my new finds — I know I got a killer deal on everything today (that’s the way I buy stuff), but wasn’t expecting to get *that* good of a deal. Now, I need to go through everything, inventory them, clean up the consoles, test, put the games into box protectors (just bought 100 today) and figure out what I want to do with them. On one hand, I really like having lots of systems and games, but I’m not sure I need all of this stuff. I’d like to eventually set up a store on eBay to sell everything, but until then, I gotta figure out my plan. I’m glad I bought the stuff, but I need to get a handle on everything.
One project that I’d like to work on is a database to keep track of the stuff I have. I’ve thought about using off the rack software for this, but it always gets to be a situation where it doesn’t quite work the way I want it to. My current thought is to create a generic web-based database solution, that makes it so that I can easily modify it for the collection du jour.
I still want to work on MyPixelPal ver. 2.0, but with everything else I’m working on, it’s hard to fit it in. I have another program that I want to write to manage music collections (the way *I* want to) I want to work on restoring the Atari 1040 STF I got from my cousin when I was out in California last month, using a hydrogen peroxide treatment. I want to work on hacking my 2600′s to have S-Video and analog audio out ports. I want to finish organizing my music collection. I need to finish organizing my family photos.
These are a few of the projects that I have going on right now, and I’m going a little crazy trying to keep track of everything, to the point where I feel overwhelmed and don’t do *anything*. What do you do to keep some sanity when you have many projects going on at once?