END-OF-YEAR MEDIA TOTALS

Since I'm leaving town tomorrow morning, I've been updating the databases where I list such useless information as what CD's and DVD's I've burned and played.  I doubt that I'll burn any media while on my travels, nor do I plan to watch any further DVD's, so I can safely announce a few totals today:

In 2005, I burned a total of 530 DVD's.  Many of those were copies for various trading vines/weeds that I participated in; others were downloads (mainly through BitTorrent) or copies I made for friends and family members.  A good portion of these DVD's were Netflix "back-ups".  I didn't record which ones were burned to DVD+R or DVD-R, however.

I also burned some 880 CD-R's, missing my goal of one thousand.  It was probably an even split between downloads and music trades.

And the final total would be the 234 DVD's that I completely watched from start to finish (however, I no longer watch all of the bonus material where it exists).  Obviously, I'm receiving many more DVD's than I have a chance to watch (there are HUGE stacks of unwatched DVD's crowding my entertainment center).  I suppose one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2006 will be to attempt to clear this backlog of unwatched movies and concerts.

This past year, I only managed to completely read 33 full-length books — significantly shy of my annual average of just over 60, maintained since I started keeping track in 1997.  I guess I was too busy burning all of those CD's and DVD's to do much reading.  I plan to remedy that in 2006 as well.

With two weeks to go in this year, I have already listened to 862 CD's.  I rarely listen to portions of CD's or individual songs, so this is the number of complete discs that I've listened to (I don't count those where I fall asleep before the CD has finished playing).  Of these, 102 were Marillion CD's (with very few repeats); interestingly enough, I only listened to 55 Bruce Springsteen discs, all of which I played in the first five months of 2005 (I have NOT listened to any Springsteen since May 14!).

I have loaded my Nomad Jukebox 3 with a number of albums and plan to listen to these during my upcoming travels.  I will count those as individual CD's as long as I listen to the complete albums.  It will be interesting to see what music I'm in the mood to listen to while laying on Kamala Beach.  (The player has a wide variety of music, many of the "usual suspects" plus a fair amount of jazz, classical, Latin, and Christmas music.)

I think that next year I will also track new music I obtain, either through downloads or direct purchase.  Although I've been hard at work the past six months or so inventorying all of my media, I've never really kept tabs on WHEN a particular CD came into my collection.  Some I remember, many I do not.  It's this type of organization that brings order to the chaos of music and videos everywhere you look in my home...