by Matt | Dec 20, 2017 | Personal
That’s an insane number, especially for someone who blogs fairly sporadically and without consistency. It’s funny, I was staring at this blank post editor for a couple days now, not knowing what on earth to write about. There were so many negative topics: birthdays (I don’t like mine), not being in the house for Christmas, this time of year in general and stressful holidays, money, taxes, net neutrality. I could go on, but I won’t. I don’t want to talk about those things. I don’t want to be sad, or depressed, or angry, or whatever the heck this is.
I choose Joy.
I have so much to be thankful for. My wonderful wife and child, the support of our friends and family, an awesome church, a place to stay, a good job. I’m also thankful for this. This little white box I’m typing words into. Sometimes it’s the little things we take for granted. The opportunity and privilege I’ve had to have an open forum to speak my mind for years now is not something that should be taken lightly. Even if no one reads them, these 2000 posts are something cathartic for me personally. I may not post every day. I may not post every week, but when I do it’s at least something I feel like I needed to say.
Sure, some of those things might just be stupid pictures of baseball cards. That happens. Not because baseball cards are important, but because they were important to me at the time I wrote about them. It’s that sense of accomplishment, about collecting, that’s part of me. So, it’s not posts about cards, they are posts about me. That’s what we’re all doing. We’re not writing about things. We’re writing about things in our lives. Things we find interesting. It’s a little slice of our personalities.
So, if it’s a post about me, there’s only one thing I want to talk about.
I just want to say thank you.
Thank you to every person who read a blog post these past few years. Thank you to every person who listens to me ramble in real life. Thank you to our friends who love us and support us. Thank you to my father-in-law, who’s home we’ve taken over these past couple months. Thank you to my company for the time off and the gift-cards to help out. Thank you to my co-workers for being supportive. Thank you even to the government agencies who are trying to help. Thank you to two random guys from Dallas and their awesome fishing boat for coming to get us. Thank you to the local police department and fire department for setting up shelters and driving dump trucks through high water. Thank you to my friends in Dallas, who brow beat me until I accepted their charity, lol. Thank you to everyone who worked on our house, who did demo, ripped out sheet rock and pulled up carpet. Thank you for making us meals. Thank you for every message, email and card you all sent. Thank you to anyone who’s ever sent me a baseball card. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for everything.
Thank YOU for reading.
by Matt | Nov 13, 2017 | Cards, Personal
I’m trying very hard to resist the urge to go to Target at the moment. Why? Because I have a weakness for shiny cards that I absolutely don’t need. So far I’m winning, but it’s been a struggle this morning. Anyone mind if I vent a little this morning? Cool.
At the top of my rationale for not going to Target is the fact that they won’t have anything I want in the first place. I have three Targets within driving distance, 2 “super” Targets and one smaller original Target. None of them get any of the retail exclusives allegedly available these days. The only retail exclusive I’ve seen in the past THREE YEARS was Bowman Platinum at ONE of my 5 Walmarts within reasonable distance. So, there’s not really any point in going, which of course leads me to believe that “retail exclusive” cards are a giant joke in the first place. What’s the point? Honestly, the card industry is so completely backwards it’s almost, several times, lead me to throwing up my hands and just giving up.
What’s the point in collecting anything that’s impossible to collect? There are no stores I could go to that carry these products, 99.9% of my entire collection has been purchased online on the secondary market. People collect lots of stuff, in a wide variety of categories. People collect watches, and there are watch stores in every mall. People collect action figures and/or vinyl toys, and there are dozens of places to buy them (Hot Topic, Box Lunch, Barnes and Noble, Target/Walmart, etc). People collect books, music, video games, movies, dishes, gadgets, sunglasses, shoes, debt, you name it, it’s collectable. All those things have stores where you could find something you’re looking for. Even the broader category of “sports memorabilia” has stores. I went to the largest mall in Houston over the weekend: The Galleria. It has a hockey rink, 4 floors of shops, a hotel and a dozen restaurants. It has TWO sports memorabilia stores. TWO. You know what both of those stores don’t sell? Cards. I can buy a $2000 Tom Brady signed helmet, but I can’t buy a $2 pack of cards.
So, I ask you, what the hell is the problem with the card industry? It has multiple companies in it, who produce all different kinds of products. You’d figure someone, at some point, would have said “you know, we should probably put cards where people can buy them!”. Gas stations and convenience stores, book stores, sporting goods stores, big box stores, anywhere and everywhere a kid (or a kid at heart) could possibly be enticed into buying a $2 pack of cards. Sure, you don’t want a hobby box of National Treasures at a gas station, I get that, but 2/3rds of both Panini’s and Topp’s product lines would do fine in multiple retail locations.
It’s almost as if they don’t want people to collect stuff. It’s like a club that’s so exclusive you can’t find it, and that’s ok because they don’t want you there anyway.
Just look at the “print on demand” bullshit. They don’t want you buying a pack at a store. They don’t even want you buying a box. They want you buying your cards, from them, for $10 a piece, and that’s just insane.
The entire point of collecting something REPRESENTING something else, is that you like that “other” thing and want to capture a little piece of it. In this case it’s baseball. I love baseball. I live and breath baseball. It’s in my blood. I played, my brother played (and was going to get drafted), my father played, I coached, he coached, we were all involved. It’s enjoying baseball itself that lead me to cards. They were a physical representation of the players I enjoyed watching, and one that I could “keep” long after the season was over. I have never heard anyone say “Man, I love baseball cards, but I just can’t stand watching them play, I hate the game itself”.
Baseball cards are not a commodity, like stock, that you can short, or capitalize, or monetize. They’re not fine silver or gold. They don’t stand separately in value outside of the player and moment represented on the card. Otherwise, a lowly bench player would be worth the same as a superstar. Let’s all face it, a piece of literal cardboard is not and will never be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Fake rarity is also an abomination, and is their solution to their dying industry. 1/1, 1/5, 10/10, gold bordered, red bordered, strange foil patterns and colors do not change the value of cardboard. Red cardboard is the same as white cardboard. Foil stamping does not inherently make something valuable. When you print 10,000 cards, and color one red, you haven’t created something ultra rare. You’ve created 10,001 cards. It’s people who put the value on something. People who decide what something is worth. Wouldn’t you want to put those things into peoples hands? Wouldn’t you want to increase the number of people who think your products are neat, and that they might have value? Why would you then destroy your distribution channels and limit your options?
The only logical answer is that they’re scared. They nearly lost everything by “going big” and pushing cards on the general public. The junk wax era nearly ruined them and they’re scared of a repeat. So, instead of making their products better, and controlling production, and choosing sensible distribution, they’ve decided to change the narrative instead.
If we say something is “rare” then it is, right? If we create a fake supply problem, people will think “hard to find” must be valuable as well. There’s nothing wrong with their printing presses. There’s nothing wrong with their distribution model. This is what they want! Instead of finding new customers, they’re whipping the customers they have left into frenzies. They don’t look down on the secondary market because the secondary market LITERALLY drives the primary market forward. They’ve created a system where the initial market is so bad, it creates demand on the backend.
Imagine if any other product did that. Ice cream for example. If Ben & Jerry’s just up and decided that their ice cream was going to be sold exclusively in Vermont, and no where else, it would create an entire B&J black market. People in Vermont would be buying dry-ice, styrofoam shipping boxes and mailing that stuff everywhere for crazy prices. Real B&J fans would pay anything for some of the good stuff. The rest of us? We’d just pick whatever was in the freezer case at the grocery store and move on with our lives. That would put Ben and Jerry’s out of business, while making the secondary market temporarily rich.
Baseball cards went all high-end / specialty shop / online retailer, and the general public has turned away as a result. They’ve decided to live in their niche rather than break out of it.
Just yesterday I had a good friend tell me that his boys have been super excited about baseball after the World Series. I asked the boys if they wanted any cards and they kind of looked at me funny. Why? Why would they? They can’t afford to buy more. Their dad isn’t going to “hunt” for them in stores, and the retail options they have are disappointing to say the least. When your Target only has two boxes of NASCAR cards on the shelf, next to an ENTIRE WALL of pokemon junk, you’re not going to go out of your way and find baseball cards and start a new hobby you can’t possibly sustain. Right? If I gave those boys cards, where would they get more?
What if baseball cards were back at the checkout in grocery stores? What if they were in convenience stores? Maybe people would buy them, maybe they wouldn’t, but there’s no way to know unless something changes. It doesn’t even have to be all the products. Why not just flagship Topps, or Donruss for Panini? If there were packs of Flagship next to the gum at the checkout line, I would buy a pack each and every time I went to the store for something. I would. I also know that it’s a gateway product. Maybe I buy a pack here and there and all of a sudden I’m interested in buying more for “my team”, or maybe I want to buy the set now. Maybe I see what other products are out there. Maybe I become a collector. Maybe THEN I end up online, or in a specialty store.
It just seems like an industry that’s in desperate need of fresh blood should be doing everything it can to get at least a gateway product in front of new customers. Otherwise they’ll be stuck with a bunch of old grumpy dude trading slabbed and graded Aaron Judge cards online until the industry finally dies.
by Matt | Nov 8, 2017 | Personal, Tech
So, I’m at a bit of an impasse in regards to rewiring the technology in our house. I was hoping some of my tech professional friends could offer their $0.02 and point me in the right direction. Here’s the deal:
With the house/walls open and with me switching rooms in the house for my study/man cave, it’s the perfect opportunity to do things like run Cat-6 everywhere, wire for speakers, and set up a “proper” server closet. Running the actual cables I can do, I’ve done that before. The server configuration has me a bit perplexed though.
The set up I was using prior to the flood was: 2 PCs, 2 TVs with Roku boxes, 2 game consoles, and 1 older PC with FreeNAS installed acting as both a file server and Plex media server, and average coverage (from the AT&T box) wifi. The PCs, TVs, consoles and Roku boxes were all hard-wired within the network. I did drops of Cat-5e when we moved in. There were two 8-port switches on the network as well.
My immediate goal is to upgrade 1 of those PCs (my personal machine), as well as the server (storage), and to wire the house for anything and everything I might need in the future.
Here’s what I have at the moment for hardware to either use or to gut and Frankenstein something together with:
- 3 older (2008) Mac Pros (Snow Leopard and Lion)
- 1 slightly less old Mac Pro (mid 2010 – Quad Core Xeon) running El Cap (10.11.4)
- 1 super old Dell (Precision 690 – older Xeon)
- 1 slightly less old Dell (Optiplex 960 – Core 2 duo), might be dead from flood
- 1 older custom PC (Intel z77, older gen i3, 8G DDR3)
- 1 newer (wife’s) custom PC (newer gen i5, 16G DDR3)
- 1 ultra old Frankenstein PC (Athlon 6400?) – Current server
- 2 8-port Netgear Pro GS308 switches
- 1 Netgear Nighthawk Gigabit wifi router (new!)
- 1 very old 24-port Linksys rack-mounted managed switch (10/100 only)
I bought the Nighthawk just last month to accommodate us at my in-laws house while we’re staying there. Their house is a dead-zone for cell signal and their old wifi only went about 20ft. The Nighthawk covers half the neighborhood. It’ll come with us back to the house when we’re done, so I’m not concerned about the wifi at the moment.
The question is, do I use the last PC I built and turn it into a server (the older gen i3) and add storage, or given it’s age and that it was built for gaming and gives off tremendous heat (much more than your average Xeon or HTPC), do I just retire it and built not only a new PC, but a server as well? I could stuff the thing with IcyDock hard drive trays and hope the heat doesn’t kill them.
Or, if I build a server, what’s a good (and current) option as far as hardware, given that it’ll be literally in a closet? Do I build or would something like a Synology NAS also work? I need something to run cool and silent but have enough horsepower to trans-code 1080p to the TV in the living room. It’s primary job will be as a Plex server. I also want to do things like setup a PiHole, DD-WRT and/or possibly a VPN, Sonarr, Radarr, Couchpotato, and be able to access OwnCloud or SyncThing from the outside. Would any of the old hardware work for those things? Should I built a server box that can handle all that, or use specific older systems for specific tasks?
I also want to run Cat-6 to at least 6 rooms, if not more, with multiple lines per room. The living room for example, will need at least 4 lines (TV, Roku, game console/bluray), or 1-2 lines and a switch. I’m thinking I’ll need at least a 24-port switch in the closet. Any recommendations on panels, or ways to organize all those cables coming into the closet?
Lastly, I’m planning on venting the soon-to-be server closet with a ceiling mounted “silent” bathroom fan, but I’ll need some way to store all these things in a small hallway closet. I do, technically, own a rack. It’s an old 8ft HP cabinet, got it at a yard sale, no joke. Should I put a rack in a closet, or just use shelves?
Any thoughts, ideas, configurations, tips, etc. would be very very helpful at this point. Although I dabble, network configuration is not my forte. I tend to “cobble together” what I have sitting around, and for once I’d like to do this properly and future proof it a bit. HELP!
by Matt | Oct 31, 2017 | Personal
Where the heck did October go? I swear it was just September and I was posting about cleaning out soggy drywall from the house. That’s moving slowly by the way. I know I haven’t been updating because, honestly, it’s kind of a bummer to think about as it’s happening. We’re still a long way off from being back in the house. Funding has been secured though and we’re moving forward with bids and estimates from contractors. The plumbing work has begun in earnest. It needs to happen first before walls get closed up. We decided to do a whole house re-pipe. Every wall we opened up exposed more and more old galvanized pipes. They were deteriorating pretty badly, some nearly rusted through. It made more sense to do it all while the walls were open than to put drywall back only to have to tear it out again if we had a leak or a plumbing problem down the line. The same goes for the electrical. The house has old 14-guage un-grounded wiring. It makes more sense to do that now rather than risk a fire (or something just not working) later on.
So, when people ask “are you done with the house yet?”, and I just kinda laugh and say “no”, they get confused. Most people are thinking it was just a matter of putting sheet-rock back and moving on with our lives. Nope. While we could have, and did contemplate that, it made more sense to do all these actual repairs and improvements. Yes, it will take ten times as long. Yes, we won’t be back into the house for at least another two months. Yes, it’s expensive. It’s also getting all those “remodeling” projects that people do over their lifetimes completely out of the way all at once. Seriously. I won’t have to re-tile a bathroom, update a living room, repaint a bedroom, refinish a cabinet, or any of those other weekend DIY projects FOR DECADES. That’s kinda neat.
There’s other projects that have a higher chance of actually happening now as well. A home server rack for example. While I haven’t decided if I’m going “rack mounted” or “old PC in a closet”, there’s going to be some network upgrades happening for sure. I’ve already gotten the ok to take over what was the wrapping paper closet in the hallway, and I’ve been looking up ventilation solutions (hint: silent bathroom fans, who knew?!) and wiring ideas. If anyone has any expertise in that, I’d love to pick your brain.
The other thing that’s kinda neat is that I might be able to “finish out” the garage. We’ve already gotten it sheet-rocked and last weekend we installed a window A/C unit to keep the room cool. We’re using it as storage for the furniture that was salvageable. So, it’s filling up quickly, but it’s cool and dry, and after all is said and done, it’ll make a great work space for all sorts of other fun stuff. I’ll have new walls, A/C, and I’ll probably epoxy the garage floor when we’re done with it.
So, where does that leave us? Well, we’re about a mile or two down a very long road. Lots and lots of hard work ahead. We’re trying to save money any way we can while getting the most out of the remodel. So, that means things like sanding, cleaning, demoing, putting down laminate floors, putting up drapes, painting, etc, will all be done by us. The harder stuff like plumbing, electrical, AC, tile and cabinets will get handled by our collection of professionals.
I feel weird posting about stuff other than baseball, baseball cards, BBQ, and everything else I normally enjoy. There just hasn’t been any time for that stuff. It’s going to be a long, tiring winter. We’re up for the challenge. It just might not make for interesting blog posts. Hopefully we’ll get back to normal soon. Fingers crossed.
by Matt | Sep 18, 2017 | Personal
So, we’re sort of in limbo at the moment. We’ve gotten to the point where most of the house is cleared out (material wise) and everything has been drying for two weeks now. They say you need to let studs and concrete dry for 2-3 weeks before spraying the mold control solution on it. That time gives everything a chance to either bloom (mold) and be identified as a trouble spot, or to dry completely and be treated as a preventative. We’ve had fans going full blast since the week of the storm. The electricity bill is going to be ridiculous this month, but if it helps prevent mold, it’s probably worth it.
Unfortunately, as we’ve been assessing things, and trying to make plans for repair, we keep finding little spots we missed. The kitchen cabinets for example. We thought they were fine a week ago. Yesterday we looked deep into the backs of them and two of them have spots we’re concerned about. They’re also “job built” cabinets (built directly onto the wall, not an enclosed box that can be removed), so we’ll have to crawl into them, cut out the sheet rock from the backs of them, and spot treat them to prevent more mold.
Mold. Man, what a pain in the ass. If you don’t get it all, it will kill you. Literally.
A lot of people also keep asking where we are with the rebuilding process. Unfortunately, “nowhere” is the answer. You see, for situations like this all sorts of processes and systems swing into action (or lack there of). Here’s how the basic process works, for those of you unfamiliar (and I hope you are) with natural disasters:
First, you call your insurance agent and start a claim. You do this whether you have coverage for whatever actually happened or not. Even if you don’t, as was our case, being “denied” is actually an important step. So, we have “home owners” and “wind storm” coverage, but not flood. We didn’t live in a flood plain, it hadn’t flooded in the recorded history of people living in this area. 500 year flood. Literally. So, we’re going to get ZERO from our home owners policy, but the inspector has to come out anyway. He’s not coming until NEXT WEEK. For those of you keeping track, that’s 4 weeks after the storm. Obviously, they’re busy people, but that’s kind of a long time, and starting to get on my nerves. We might be shopping for new home owners quotes next year. I digress.
Second step is FEMA. We applied for FEMA assistance while the storm was actually still on-top of us. This past Friday (3 weeks post storm) we went to a FEMA support center and waited for 2 hours to actually talk to someone in person. The way FEMA works is that they help if you don’t have insurance, and/or that you’ve been denied by your insurance (see why the above step was first!). A FEMA inspector needs to come out now and do an assessment, after you provide proof that you’re denied coverage. That’ll be some time in the next 20 days. We learned on Friday that our case has been assigned an inspector and that they’ll call to set up a time to meet.
Then, FEMA sends you to talk to the folks at the SBA (Small Business Association). They have a loan program for natural disaster relief. See, if you’re not completely and totally poor, they’d like you to pay back a loan rather than get a hand-out, which makes sense. I’m not opposed to paying back the repair cost, and the loans are long term with very little interest. So, we went through that process, but that process relies on the assessment of the inspector to get a ball park range for the cost of repairs.
The step after that is to contact Texas ONA, which is a supplemental agency designed to help replace person possessions. FEMA helps with the house, the ONA helps with your stuff. As is apparently the case for every agency, they ALSO send an inspector. That’ll be a couple weeks from now (like 5-6).
This has all made me borderline crazy. I’m an impatient person, and bureaucracy is the very definition of slowness. I WANT TO FIX THIS… and I can’t. I have to wait for all of this to run it’s course because people coming to assess damages want to SEE DAMAGES. I can’t fix things until they see them.
So, what’s MY plan? My plan is to do everything in my power to make things stupidly easy for an inspector. Everything has had a picture taken of it, everything has been documented. I’m creating spreadsheets, I’m printing photos, I’m burning DVDs of all this, etc. By the time an adjuster comes out, I want to hand him a folder of stuff with an already tallied number and be done with it all.
I’m also trying to prep a work space. Since my garage was totaled, and is now empty, that seems like a logical place. Re-sheetrocking it will take 10 sheets total, which is doable on our current non-existent budget. My father-in-law has an unused (still on box), window AC unit he’s giving me, and I have a couple saw-horses as a make shift table. If I can get the garage clean, dry and below 100 degrees, I can store furniture in it, cut sheet rock, paint stuff, etc. My friend Jack has also arranged a “POD” to be delivered next week, giving me storage space for all the hard case furniture and stuff that might be ruined in a garage. So, next week, if I can get those two spaces up and running, we’ll essentially “move out” of our house, so that work can be started the minute we get past all this inspection stuff, which should (and I’m being optimistic) be sometime in October.
Then we rebuild.
That’s easier said than done, but I’m sure I’m going to have lots more posts on that.
That brings me to the final part of this post. I’ve had dozens and dozens of people ask me how they can help, and I’ve had a very hard time answering that question. I’m normally not one for charity, but I also recognize that people want to help and that I should respect that. My friends made me accept donations last week and it brought me to tears. It was so meaningful and powerful, and a good reminder to check your pride at the door if you’re ever in need of help. They felt good about giving, I felt overwhelmed by their generosity.
With that in mind, someone suggested I make a list of ways and means that people can help.
First, we set up an Amazon Wishlist called “Because of Harvey”. On it, I’ve just been putting immediate needs and things we discover are broken/un-salvageable because of water damage. It’s mostly random, and runs the gamut between respirator filters, bed pillows, and a pair of shoes. It’s little stuff that I wasn’t thinking of “putting up” when we were trying to get things out of the way of water. The kiddo had toys on the floor in the playroom that are now covered with creek water/slime. I had shoes under the bed and my pillow fell off and was on the floor. Stuff like that. I don’t expect anyone to buy any of that stuff, but if you feel lead in some way, it’s an open and public list, and it directly replaces things we lost.
Next, home repair is obviously going to be huge this fall. I’m sure I’m going to be buying truck loads of sheet rock screws, paint, base board, and all the random tools to do all of this with. I’d never turn down any help in the form of Home Depot or Lowes giftcards. They would be well and truly used to help put this mess back together.
If you would rather support organizations that helped us directly, there are two outstanding groups of people that came through in our time of need:
First, our church, Second Baptist Houston, organized entire crews of people to help not only church members, but our entire community. They had, at last count, 30,000 volunteers who cleaned/demoed/mediated 2500 homes in a two week span. If you feel lead to support the work these awesome people did, they set up a Flood Relief Fund through PushPay, and I can attest to it personally that every dime of it is going to help Houston families clean and rebuild.
Next, the people who actually rescued us were part of that rag-tag group of heroes known as the Cajun Navy. The boat we were in was driven buy a couple Texans from Dallas, but they were part of the Zello network of Cajun Navy guys who were operating in our area. They’re slightly harder to donate to, but as it’s a citizens group, I’m sure they’re dispersing the funds with the least amount of red-tape possible. These guys, literally, saved our lives and the lives of hundreds of families in our neighborhood. They have websites here, and here, and a facebook page here, both with ways to contact and donate.
Last but not least, there are several groups who came from far and wide to help Houston and Friendswood in general. The Glen Burnie Volunteer Fire Department drove all the way from Maryland and set up shop at the elementary school and cooked hot meals for two weeks! The group from Samaritans Purse was in our neighborhood demoing houses. The First Methodist Church of Waco drove all the way down and handed out 5 gallon painters buckets filled with cleaning supplies. The list goes on and on, but I know those specific groups were very visible and right in the thick of it these past couple weeks.
There has been such an outpouring of support that I just can’t thank everyone enough. I’m constantly overwhelmed by the love and well-wishes from everyone. You are all amazing. Thank you all again, from the bottom of my heart.
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