December 14, 2005
Dear Everyone:
As we all know, “Jeannie” is completely addicted to eBay, the online auction web site.
Her first obsession was Wedgwood china, mostly out-of-the-way, exceptional pieces. Then she graduated to cameos, pins, necklaces. I realized that cameos were suddenly a hot fashion item when I saw a character in a particular TV series wearing one around her neck.
To do “Jeannie” justice, she does her research. For instance, she found out that cameos were the absolute height of fashion during the Napoleonic Era. More recent cameos are all done with lasers now, and don’t have the fine quality of hand-carved ones.
“Jeannie’s” latest “craze” has been vintage rhinestone jewelry, mostly from the 1930s to the 1950s. She has jewelry boxes all over the house with cryptic labels on them. I had bought a label maker for myself at one of the office warehouse stores. I loaned it to “Jeannie”. She liked it so well that she refused to return it. So I bought myself another one.
Since I have “Jeannie’s” name this year for Christmas, and since I gravitate towards all things technical, I started thinking about looking for some kind of software that would allow her to catalog her various collections. I started with the King of Software, Microsoft. I searched on inventory and got lots of form-makers. I tried “catalog” and got envelopes and forms.
Finally, someone at work suggested looking at some “collectible sites”. I went to my personal favorite search engine, www.dogpile.com. I entered “collectible software” and clicked on “Fetch!” The second hit was for something called “Collection Master”.
Following the link, I found that someone had, indeed, created a software application to catalog, inventory and report on any kind of collection you could want. And they were asking $19.95 for it, including shipping and handling. So I ordered it on CD and the disk arrived early last week.
In the meantime, “Jeannie’s” birthday was coming up and I had another idea for a great gift, although it was considerably more expensive than this software. The question was: Which to give her for her birthday and which to hold onto until Christmas?
Last Friday, “Jeannie” told me about “this software someone is selling on eBay” that would allow a person to build a database of their collection(s). But, not being particularly computer-literate, she wasn’t sure if it would work on her “old” laptop.
At her place on Saturday, she showed me the eBay offering. It was actually the older version (1.0) of the software I had on CD (1.3) for $9.95, plus shipping and handling, with an additional offering of an upgrade to the newer version. And yes, her “old” laptop had all the requirements to run either version.
“Jeannie”: “What do you think?”
Me: “I think I’m going to be giving you your birthday present early this year.”
(I had taken the precaution of placing the CD in a gift box that morning.)
This reminds me of the year that our brother “Byron” had suggested that we all chip in $50 towards buying Mother and Dad a new dishwasher for their place in Canby. The old one was falling apart, as evidenced by the fact that Mother routinely placed a block of wood under the door whenever she opened it. We all sent “Byron” the $50 and he proceeded to use his “contacts” to locate a dishwasher.
A few weeks before Christmas, “Byron” was talking on the phone with Dad.
“Byron”: “So what are you doing today?”
Dad: “Not much. Just watching these guys tear the kitchen apart trying to install our new dishwasher.”
That funny sound you heard was “Byron” banging his forehead with the phone.
I installed “Collection Master 1.3” on “Jeannie’s” computer. Ran through the tutorial very quickly, then started a collection called “Practice”. “Jeannie” is to enter some of her pieces into the database to see if the fields available will meet her needs or if she’s going to need some changes made.
When I saw how many jewelry boxes she had, I suggested that she might want to re-label the boxes with numbers. Then we could make a field for “Number” and she could enter the number for the piece she’s cataloging. There are also fields for the price she paid, the current value and the source of that value. For instance, she could note that a necklace just like the one she owned had sold on eBay for $100. That would be the necklace she got for $18.
You can even take pictures of the pieces and include them in the database. However, these have to be digital pictures filed in the computer. So now the question is: Who’s going to get a digital camera this year?
Eventually, we’ll be able to print all this information in the form of a report for her insurance company. Which was kind of the idea all along.
This Friday is my last day at work for this year.
Next week I’ll be getting ready to go up to spend Christmas in
So everyone have a Merry Christmas (Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Saturn-Is-Dead-All-Hail-Jupiter) and a safe and Happy New Year.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |