050226 • Thrift Store Finds

Found a few things for next-to-nothing that were very new, such as three expensive, recent books, and two newer classical cds… usually classical cds are rare after the year 2000, but today I found two of them, one was 2011 and the other, 2019! I don’t think I’ve ever found a classical cd that new, and it was also a double-cd, and of a very appealing nature, Bach transcriptions for piano! Amazing that I was able to find it.

I have three general kinds of cd categories when I go to thrifts:
1 – The older, cheap, generic collections or releases.
2 – The big, or boutique labels up to the year 2000.
3 – Any non-generic post 2000. (The most rare to find at a thrift)

If one goes to Amazon, most of the cds there are exactly what doesn’t make the thrifts, and never will. Anything new isn’t out in enough volume anymore to be found. I’m thinking it is a better use of time to get box sets, that package cds into more compact forms of storage, are far cheaper as a box set per cd, and are all new and clean. Plus, you know what you are going to find, wheras thrift stores, the case could be broken, most are scuffed up or have cracks in them, and the cds could be immaculate, but easily, not immaculate. And you never know what you are going to get. Trying to piece together an entire set, or artist’s complete work… that is an ongoing task that is often never completed.

The John Williams collection is from 2011, and has three discs for the price of one! For one dollar!

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But, if I’m at a thrift, it doesn’t hurt to pick out the few gems that might be there. At a dollar apiece, the price is right!

As for the books, one of them was from last year and sold for thirty dollars new! There are no bad selections here, as usual. The Diary of Vikenty Angarov is the oldest book I bought, and one I’m never going to see in the wild again; these memoirs of former Gulag or other death camps are always of intense interest. The Endurance is a true story recommended to me about a year ago, and this book has a lot of really good photos, of which I am surprised they survived considering what all of those explorers went through.

Hero of Two Worlds is about Lafayette, a guy who is always overlooked when I read about the American Revolution. It looks to be a smooth and very interesting read.

PowerMac G4 Tower

This is my PowerMac G4 Tower. It has long since been relegated to my boneyard of old, treasured Macs along with a G3 tower, Quadra 605, and a nice aluminum Pro Tower which was a gift from a friend. I wish I’d kept the PowerComputing 150 clone I used for nine years, but I can’t keep them all. (I try, though.) That one had been Frankensteined with every upgrade possible to keep it relevant. I was so upset when Steve Jobs returned and killed clone licensing, but he was correct to do so.

Because the Quadra 605 requires a simple battery to start up, and the G3 has a bad power supply, this is my only OS9 computer that works. Eventually I want to replace the hard drive with a solid state one, as this old example has just begun to fail.

I have no real need for anything OS9 (Who does?) but there are a lot of old, treasured games that I’d like to have available as well as the nostalgia of firing up QuarkXPress 3.0/4.0, something I spent a lot of time working with back in the day. It is a familiar, comfortable environment that brings back good memories. Plus, although this isn’t as pretty as my aluminum Pro Tower, it is a nice example of computer design done well and not just a box on the floor.

The beige G3 tower had the ability to fold out flat for upgrades, which at the time was pretty fancy. This one did better with its more simple open-door access. It was nice to have a computer that was so much better thought out than what everybody else was using. And that went for the operating system as well. Still does.

That PowerComputing clone I had for so long actually cut my hands more than once when upgrading it because aside from the operating system that it ran, it was just another beige box from the beige world of beige computers, with no thought at all to anything other than slapping parts together in the cheapest way possible.

Efficiency and design must be in balance in order to do the best work, and Apple has always had that going for it while all other computer makers were just slapping parts together in the cheapest way possible, and calling it a day.

I have watched the evolution of Apples’ design over the years, and in this world where there are so many ugly things, it is nice that this company has it in them to make something positive and appealing out of what everyone else overlooks. Which leaves us with tools that are aesthetically pleasing instead of more plastic-generic mediocrity.