Taming the CD Collection
Rob and I have an enormous amount of music CDs. I can only guess at the number because we stopped counting at 500 and that was seven years ago. I am the type who handles them by their edges, always puts them back in their case and returns the case to the shelf, in proper alphabetical order. Rob pretty much just makes piles. Piles of naked CDs and piles of CD cases, some with CDs inside, most without. If he does put something back on the shelf, it's not in alphabetical order This has been driving me crazy for over ten years. The only CDs I am ever likely to find with minimal effort are the ones he never listens to and there's not a whole lot of those. I can easily sift through a pile and find something I'd enjoy listening to, but if I'm looking for a specific CD, say I'm in the mood for Helmet's Meantime, then I'm pretty much shit out of luck unless I ask Rob who might remember which pile in which room the CD is currently residing.

Now I'm not interesting in nagging him to put the CDs back in their cases and back on the shelf in alphabetical order. He obviously doesn't have a problem finding CDs. Well, not usually - there have a been a few temper tantrums when he just HAD to listen to something and couldn't find it. But it's not normally a problem for him. I'm smart enough to know this is MY problem and not ride his ass about it. In fact, this is probably a pretty good example of why our relationship works and why we don't fight all the time like some of our friends. I will guarantee you that I have plenty of habits that are equally annoying to Rob who, being the wise man that he is, keeps his mouth shut. We both know there's a lot more important things in life than arguing over how to properly use a half-empty tube of toothpaste.

And so I've learned to live with the CD chaos, trying a variety of methods to ensure I can listen to the music I want to hear, when I want to hear it. The first attempt was to try and pick up after Rob, putting naked CDs back in their cases and constantly re-alphabetizing the shelves. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at picking up after myself, much less after another person. At one point we bought a 50 CD player and I meticulously added the programming information of which CD was in the player so I could find them, but Rob swapped out CDs on a regular basis without changing the information so that didn't help much. I tried using Napster and Kaaza to just download the music I wanted to hear at the time to the computer, but I couldn't always find what I wanted and the RIAA got involved and I decided to have nothing more to do with that. When Mercora came out I had high hopes (no RIAA to worry about), but the user base isn't usually broadcasting what I want to hear.

I have now begun the arduous task of ripping our CD collection to MP3s. I've had the software to do this for years, but never had the hard drive space or the time. I currently happen to have an extra 20 gig of HD space that I'm not using and I figure if I rip 4 or 5 CDs on some nights and maybe a couple of dozen on the weekends, I'll be finished in a couple of years. At some point I'll need to buy some additional storage, but eventually I'll be able to listen to anything we own at any time. And time will only tell if this is less or more of a hassle than the current system of pile sifting; I might give up before the couple of years are done.