Spreadsheeting

It’s not a hobby. I have an unhealthy obsession with spreadsheeting.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a disorganized, dumpy piece of shit. That is true for the most part; however, I spend a lot of time organizing the things that I actually care about (i.e. music, movies, books, video games etc…)

My DVD’s are organized alpha by title and sequestered into movies, box sets, television, documentaries and music. In similar fashion, my books are organized alpha by author and split up into fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. My video games are alpha by system, each NES game cleaned by hand with a Q-tip, every XBox game carefully de-stickered. My music is always “Artist – Album Title (Year)” and carefully checked and rated in iTunes (though I will likely be making the switch to Songbird).

In this same anal retentive vein, I have a tendency to spreadsheet everything. All of my collectibles are on spreadsheets. I can sort movies by date, then genre, then the imdb rating. About eight years ago, a friend at the time and I developed a spreadsheet that employs a complicated algorithm which rates albums based on a dozen or so statistics and generates a score out of 100. For instance, Beat Happening’s “You Turn Me On” got a 97.021 (it does help though it is utterly ridiculous). I’ve even gone as far as to spreadsheet pros and cons for women that I’ve dated (those poor souls).

So, the kid who got his desk overturned by his teacher in 4th grade for being a slob can now locate any of his books in seconds and rate music and movies in an instant (for his own critical masturbation). His room still has dirty laundry all over the place and smells like cat shit. *sniff* Yup, there it is.