A Towering Project; or What I'm Doing Rather Than Working On This Blog

“I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.” - Goethe

 

What you are looking at is approximately two and one-half years in the making.  The tower of CDs represents the 240+ Christmas albums I've downloaded in that span of time from various Christmas blogs and sharity sites around the Internet.  Various blogs?  Half of these came from that mad genius Ernie (not Bert)...  thanks for doing your part for the economy Ern!

At the beginning of 2009, I was overwhelmed by the task of getting everything organized and burned.  So it began to pile up here, some over there, and everything that was downloaded was uploaded onto a Western Digital 500 GB external hard drive.

After getting a new computer last year, I began cataloging all of the albums onto my master spreadsheet; a task that probably would have taken me a month if I really worked at it.  But I didn't work at it that hard.  I took a rather leisurely pace, causing it to stretch on and on well into the summer and fall.

As soon as the cataloging was done, I began assembling and labeling the CD-Rs for each CD, printing out the artwork for each CD, and keeping each CD in alphabetical order so the burning process would be streamlined.  

About a month into this phase, the 2010 Christmas season was underway.  Another 100+ albums were added thanks to Christmas gifts, my own purchases, several donations to my P.O. Box, and the generous (and boy do I MEAN generous) Christmas sharity community.  Back to square one with more cataloging and assembling.

In the middle of all of this physical assembly and organization, I made an important decision.  Since 1/3 of my collection had come from Christmas shares and was digitized already, I bit the bullet and began to make plans to digitize the other 2/3 of the collection - possibly eliminating the need for burned CDs in the future.

So while I was adding new entries onto my spreadsheet, I was working on FOUR other spreadsheets: the first was keeping track of all the Christmas downloads for the past year, the second was organizing what Christmas shares I needed to burn to CD, the third was determining what Christmas albums (including artwork) that are or aren't digitized.

Armed with the lists, I now go forth.  Starting with A&M's 1997 In Store Christmas Sampler and ending with Christmas With Zamfir, I will be working on digitizing all of the Christmas CDs in my collection.

Count as of 3/5/2011:  

1,572 albums

25,508 songs

During this process, I will try to post links of the albums I've downloaded over the past four years.  This way, the two or three people who read this blog will be able to listen to the albums I've burned or will be burning.  

I'll actually be able to listen to some of these albums for the first time (remarkable, huh?) and maybe add a one or two line comment on each album.

The whole purpose of this blog was to keep track of new additions to my collection.  In posting the links, I'll be doing two jobs at once.  We'll see how this will end up...  Stay tuned.

Capt