My digital strife...ahem, I mean life

It's been a goal of mine for the past year or so to integrate as much of my lifestyle/possessions into digital format and storage. A person needs to understand that I am a bit of a collector, I come by it honestly, and so I've got a few rather large collections. But really what I want to do is get as much of my stuff, that can be digitized(which I think is most), into a digital format and stored in a portable device(read: computer). My collections include my music(probably the largest collection), my photos(probably the most important/tedious to me), and then a variety of art and paperwork that I value or just don't want to keep the paper floating about.

I've been pretty diligent about keeping up with the whole paper thing, I mean, that is kind of a no-brainer; just saving everything I type(those that are important to me) and things like school papers(now old), and things like receipts and statements. Most of the Statement stuff is easy as I don't think there is a company now which doesn't offer the option to do everything online, which necessitates digital information rather than paper. The receipts have been a bit of a pain tho, it's amazing how much paper people use, and there is no standardization in the world of receipts. It's been super helpful to have all the receipts digital in one place, bookkeeping has benefited.

I've really hit a milestone with the music portion of this whole project; I recently got every last one of my CD's into iTunes at 320kbps, 48Hz. All nicely organized, with covers(whether automatic or made) with as much meta information as possible. This has necessitated the purchase of a 300GB hard-drive, dedicated to music. Thankfully that isn't full, but then again, that isn't all my music. I've got a few tapes that I do want ripped, and a few I've already done, so that is a bit of a time consuming process, and of course my huge record collection is a bear in itself. I've hoped to cut that portion down now that I can accurately cross reference my collection with my iTunes so that should prevent me from having go through the process of getting each record on iTunes. Still, that is going to be a long project, which I work on off and on. Thank you to all the record labels that have gone to iTunes or one of the other digital download sites; Red Light, Moving Shadow, Renegade Hardware, Cause 4 Concern, A Touch Of Class, Breastfed, etc etc.

Now I'm moving onto the photo portion of the project, which I've offered to incorporate with some of my families photos in exchange for some of the hardware. My father has offered to finance a nice flatbed scanner to do the project with, and I'm searching for a Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite 5400 film scanner so I can scan directly from the tons of negative I have. This I know is going to take a lot of time, but I really feel it's important to me to do all this so I don't have so many things, that are difficult to move, to move. Anyhow, the tedium continues, now how can I make it fun, as if.