Tag: value

March 26, 2026 – You Know What You Value By How You Spend Your Time

March 26, 2026 /

As predicted, the hangover is on from my vacation week. Since I am always thinking a week out, I didn’t do that planning while I was off and packing. This is a picture of my partially disassembled office while I was packing to move. It actually took me a couple of days to pack up my office.

Now, to be fair it wasn’t a couple of days but a couple of days at a couple of hours each. By the time I started packing, it was already known that there is no deal in place. I didn’t really feel the urgency to be solely focused on packing. But, the amount of time I spent was quite eye opening.

The picture represents my life over the last couple of years. First of all, you are looking at the back wall of my office. I worked on it from about February 2022 to my moving in in August 2022. But, even more so than that I see how I planned the outlets, the speaker wire for the preplanned surround sound. The antenna wire for the FM antenna that I built in previous years. What you cannot see is the later added wiring for the AM antenna.

All the AV is sitting on the table that I built. This was built with the tree that I milled in 2005. It dried for almost 20 years before I built the table. I custom sized it to fit in the space. It would accommodate all of the techno-junk that I had accumulated perfectly. Not just that but it also perfectly allowed for the placement of the lamp in the corner.

You see the roll of cables on top of the box? Those were all custom sized to fit the room or custom built to fit the components. As I was unplugging everything I realized how many cables I had built over the years. All of those end plugs were ordered, waited for in anticipation and then satisfactorily put into service.

Honestly, I thought that I would spend even more time in my office enjoying surround sound or reading on the book. I should have known that this is the room I spend the majority of my waking days, I probably wasn’t going to get away with more time holed up in the basement. It wasn’t the enjoyment of the room that drove me, it was the building it.

As a youth, I spent a lot of time playing role playing games. These were primarily kids that were in my Boy Scout troop and so I saw them a lot. However, I remember getting bored after playing a couple of hours. I would start building a new character that I thought was perfect for the current game that we were playing. I have thought a lot about this over the years, its not the act of doing/using/participating that moves my wheels, it is the act of building or the thought of potential that does.

I suppose this is what has invested me into preparation. I have no desire to turn my home into a compound and patrol the perimeter for zombies. But, the idea of building the perfect pantry, shop, parts inventory is exciting. I am building for the potential of the future, not hoping to spring into action.

This process has been cathartic for me. I have made numerous trips to the donation centers for all manner of things. Tools, hardware, material of all kinds have left to hopefully find new and better homes. All that has brought countless memories for me about when and where I was when I purchased it. The funny thing is the least sentimental items were the ones that I acquired via inheritance. It was the ones that I remember getting as a present to our very first home or purchasing when we lived in South Carolina. Never mind the fact I haven’t used it in over twenty years.

My wife says that I am a hoarder. I disagree. To me, a hoarder might have good stuff but it is also surrounded by garbage. I had very little garbage, just stuff that has been sitting around and not used. It had a time and place and that has come and gone. Most of it was there, just in case.

End Your Programming Routine: I know that I am more interested in building than doing. If we do end up moving, my techno junk is going somewhere. If we don’t move, it is probably coming back into my office. That is one example of my madness. What I will say is that this is exactly why I look forward to settling again. The rebuilding cannot occur until that happens. That is what really drives me forward.

January 12, 2025 – A Starter Mechanic’s Tool Set

January 12, 2026 /

Today’s podcast was born out of some question my son was asking me. Today I talk about things to consider when starting out buying tools. It is really hard to recommend brands especially when things change over the years so I focus more on the what to do versus what not to do. Hopefully, I impart some wisdom so that you can do your own analysis and make your own decisions. There probably are some buy or do not buy recommendations but it all depends on what you are doing and want to do in the future.

September 24, 2024 – Things to Sell…

September 24, 2024 /

I find it much easier to buy things then to get rid of them. Much of the time I decide that I am ready to move on, I am willing to give stuff away. We usually have a garage sale every couple of years and I have a propensity to price to sell. Typically, after the garage sale, everything leftover goes to donation. These days, even the donation receipt is worthless because of the new tax deduction rules.

But, every now and then I end up with something that I know has value and would very much like to get better value or trade. The easiest trade is for cash, for sure. But I have some certain items that I would like to move. I have been pretty lazy on getting started but I am starting to feel the urge to get moving.

First of all, these chairs pictured above. After we sold everything to move back from South Carolina, these were the first pieces of furniture that we purchased here. Twenty years ago, we paid $800 each. I looked recently to see if the company was still and business, they are selling for $1500 per chair.

I am under no illusion to get my money back or make a profit. But at those prices, these have to be worth some money. I like the pictured chairs much better then the $150 chairs that replaced them but they didn’t fit in with the ‘décor’. To me, this is a poor way get rich, replace durable goods with lessor ones because they are not in fashion. But, less friction in my marriage is much better than being rich.

I have a rifle case that I bought in college. I have never used it because it is for a 46″ rifle and now I know that mine are 42″. It means that it is extremely floppy and oversized. What did I know that cases come in different lengths. I literally paid $10 for it; I suppose it could be garage sale fodder. After thirty years, I am sure that I will never use it but I would happily to trade it for a similar value shotgun case. With everyone in the family possibly shooting sporting clays, it would be nice to have enough cases.

When my oldest son started shooting trap, I bought a traditional length shotgun barrel that had screw-in chokes. It was cheap because it was an after market maker. What I found with it was that it was not the same quality as OEM (hence why it was cheap). It is not just ammunition finicky, but I have observed many, many misfires on all brands of ammunition. I would like to have an OEM barrel that I feel would be much more reliable. I know that I will never use this barrel again based on my testing.

I can list multiple other items that I think have value and/or would rather have something else. It is just so much easier to not do anything and find a place to stash forever. This is something that I think I want to change. I don’t want my kids to have to figure out what to do with and I don’t really want valuable things just thrown away because nobody wants to put out the effort to clean up after me.

As a result, I am thinking of doing something on eBay. There are better platforms for each specific item, even locally. But, if I had some sort of online account, it could be considered play money. When I sell this, I will do that. I haven’t fully decided yet on a platform but the most important thing is to have stuff that is used and not be owned by stuff.

I hesitate to write about something I am going to do. There is some history about saying something without a lot of follow through from me. But, I am feeling the urge to purge. Part of my ruse was for me to take pictures for this post while at the same time getting the pictures to list. I am crossing my fingers that this is win/win.

End Your Programming Routine: I heard a podcast recently that hoarders start by buying things and then just never doing something with it. Then they buy more and more and it becomes overwhelming. I am not a hoarder by any means but I certainly have things that are in my way or at least are sitting around with little chance of being used. When I have a list a mile long of things that I would like to do, like upgrading my hiking/camping equipment for my trip next year, it makes sense to me to try and wring the value out of things that I no longer want.

February 29, 2024 – It Has Been a Long Time Since I Have Been To the Range…

February 29, 2024 /

Happy leap day everyone. It may be that I am getting older and lazier but I haven’t been to the range since November. My renewal date is around the first of the year and I haven’t hardly even thought about going. It kind of makes me wonder if I should keep up my membership if I am not going to use it.

Another possible reason is that since I have setup my basement, pellet trap I use it multiple times a week. So, I feel less of the need to go to the range because I am always shooting without going anywhere. Recently I upgraded the scope on an air rifle so I am going to talk about the process today.

My son has a Crossman 760. It is a straight tube (non-rifled), multi-pump, bb/pellet combo. It is one of those classic bb guns. I can remember my cousin’s had the same one in the 1980s. My son’s looks exactly the same but today’s model has a sleeker, more updated design. It has a 3/8 rail for a scope addition.

When I purchased my first air-rifle, it also came with a very in-expensive 4×15 scope. It truly is better than nothing but for not much money you can do much better. But, the better part of my motivation was to put a scope on my son’s rifle. I figured I would upgrade the scope on my rifle and move the old scope to the 760.

Since the 760 is not rifled, it is not likely to be the most accurate of the bunch. By my reasoning, a significant scope upgrade would only marginally be of value on that rifle. The sights aren’t that great either and my groups are more like 2 inch groups with the 760. Additionally, I am noticing my eyesight is starting to degrade rapidly. Even this scope would help.

I took the old scope off and sighted the new scope on my rifle. It is shooting pretty good and I think the $40 investment was worth the cost and effort. I put the old scope on the 760 and the picture above represents how things went. Despite the fact that things were pretty dialed in my first shot was six inches to the left. As I kept working at it, I kept walking right and up. The final three shots above the center is where I left it.

Keep in mind that changing the number of pumps or the projectile will also change how things work. In my case eight (out of ten) pumps with a BB (5gr, one of the lightest projectiles) at ten yards will likely yield lower impact for heavier projectiles or less pumps. Given the same conditions, farther distance will likely have some drop as well. I think it is about perfect.

One other thing about inexpensive scopes is the adjustments are kind of poor. It is marked as on click per 1/4″ at 100 yards. So, at ten yards 1/4″ is supposed to be 10 clicks. But when it makes no clicks, you are not totally sure what the adjustment actually is. They also tend to act erratically sometimes by having different results the next day because something finally sprang into place. Some people actually tap on their scopes after adjustment to try and help them set in place.

End Your Programming Routine: I am happy to report that things were still in place the next day and I think this is an improvement over open sights. I do have a picture here somewhere with some previous testing I did but I couldn’t find it. And there is a real improvement in my rifle with the new scope on it. Win-win, I say.