Does your craziness of game documentation cross-over to anything else?

Jumpman Jr.

So I'm sort of poking fun of my man, Al(bailey) when I pose this question, but:

A lot of us are crazy with are games. Crazy in many ways. One of the "crazy" things that most of us do, I would say, is keep a very documented list of what we have. Some people do it more crazy than others. Especially guys that collect variants, they have detailed documented lists of exactly what they have, what it contains (CIB or not), condition, variant, etc...
I mean, some peoples lists look like this:

Game Cart Manual Box Variant           Condition           Notes
1942   Yes  Yes       No   Round seal Cart is poor        Paid $5 from Nick
1942   Yes  Yes       Yes Oval seal      Box is average  Paid $10 from Dain

Etc... etc...

BUT, what I'm asking, is does this madness transfer to anything else in your life?

Here's my story:

So me and Al are driving up to Toronto (~5 hour drive) a few months ago to go to a swap meet. And we start talking about Halloween. I'm like "yeah, we didn't really get that many kids this year." And then he says:
"We got 43 kids this year"
"How do you know how many kids you had exactly?"
"I document it... Last year we had 38 kids, year before that we had 35 kids... I've been documenting it for years."

And then later on he stops to fill up his car with gas. After he fills up, he grabs a book out of the glove compartment. Then I realize he is documenting: the Date, How far he went on the previous tank of gas, how much it cost to fill up, etc...

He's just as nuts with his NES collection. You should see his NES excel sheet.

Some people

wrldstrman

get him a woman and quick!!!!!!!!

Nistle

Thats funny and awesome at the same time. I say keep it up Al.

OzNEScollector

yeah, i go a bit crazy with guitar sheet music & guitar magazines and have a list of what songs are transcribed for which guitar and what versions, page numbers and so on - it stacks up about 4 foot high and weighs a ton. i also have my concert dvds and music doco's which im a bit obsessive about.

jonebone

well my NES Excel sheet has all kinds of crazy graphs and projections in it too because I'm a reseller. It's pretty

Nistle

I would love to see some of you guys excel sheets. Mine is pretty basic just a check box for cart box and manual. Then i note rather or not i need a condition upgrade.

wrldstrman

Originally posted by: Nistle

I would love to see some of you guys excel sheets. Mine is pretty basic just a check box for cart box and manual. Then i note rather or not i need a condition upgrade.

im the same just cart, manual ,box

mb7241

If you've downloaded and read my guide, you've seen my NES spreadsheet . I used to be as OCD with documentation on my coin and currency collection (last updated sometime in '02 or '03, btw), as well as my MTG card collection (which died once I got up to around 5000-6000 cards) and Yu-Gi-Oh card collection (I used to resell Yu-Gi-Oh cards when I was in college, but my list for those died quickly).

gavmasterflash

all these sorts of figures are stored in the ever cluttered dust bin of my brain.

arch_8ngel

I always intend to document fuel consumption and maintenance better, but always forget...maybe with my next car.

It's actually a really helpful statistic (much more so that how many kids came by for Halloween )



I'm extremely meticulous with regards to my financial accounting, though. Back when I was in college I had a huge spreadsheet, but a couple years ago I switched over to Quicken and it dramatically reduced the workload.

gavmasterflash

i always analyze shit, just about everything. i make lots of calculations, but the only thing is i don't keep track of it all.

projectingstars

Yeah, I've always tried to remember little things like how many miles the last tank was, how many $ it cost, etc, but I've never taken the time to write it down.



Al...that's really cool that you do take the time to write it down. Soon...you may begin predicting future events based upon past trends. You never know

dangevin

When I ran my game store, I was very anal about my stock. My POS had an entry for every single card we sold, a computer terminal for public use that could access it and display each one, and my employees would all constantly do inventory of about 1,000 cards each shift as one of their tasks.



For my other personal CCG/TCG collections, they're mostly complete, but I'm a stickler for condition and completeness and I'm still hunting almost daily for auctions.

xARSEFACEx

I think if Al saw the state of my NES documents, he would scream, pull his hair out, and then have me killed.

sirwilletts

I have an extremely detailed excel file for my chicago bears football cards. There's NO way i could put ALL my sports cards into this detail of file due to lack of time, but I love my Bears and can always find time to document those cards and stuff. I used to even have pricing trends over the past couple Becket's at that time. Card collecting has taken a halt due to the NES collecting.

RunUover

what ever the exact oppsite of obssive compulsive disorder is, thats what iam



its ironic, my g/f of 3 years is really OCD lol

Penguin

I've been working on a spreadsheet for all of my games spanning all my systems, but i'm really waiting until after I move to do it because it will be a lot easier to catalog everything when it's out of boxes and in a bigger space.

the tall guy

I'm still in the process (several years long) of sorting and IDing all of my Christmas lights. The maddening thing about it is that to my knowledge there's one good reference book out and one good website to refer to. So I end up having to speculate a lot, especially since all of the things I find online are with their original boxes.



I've had many failed attempts at taking down what I've got, almost every time these attempts have ended in me throwing away pages of paper that stopped making sense.

catfriedrice

My brother did it with his trading cards, game collections, car parts, places where he can get car parts and what they have, animal crossing items,



Oh look, I'm making a list of my brother's OCD's... does that make me OCD too?



I did once decide to go make a list of every "Psycopath 'secret thought'" in SMRPG. God only knows why.

albailey

Theres some method to my madness.



The Halloween thing is so my wife and I know how much candy to buy.



The fuel thing (and I also record where I get the fuel) is to get an idea of trends and behaviour. I can tell if theres a change after changing the oil (there isnt), seeing whats up with ethanol (you get 10% less distance), etc.. I also tried driving the speed limit (or less) on the highway for about a month and determined I wasnt seeing any real fuel savings compared to going around 10% over the speed limit.



For NES games, it mostly because I do most of my online searching at work when I should be working. I like having the spreadsheet handy. And since I collect variants, its almost a necessity. For example, I have a superman manual and a box. But the box is the round seal and the manual is the oval seal (oval with the tm to be precise) so if I see either piece I need, I can pick it up.





Al

arch_8ngel

Oh, I don't think tracking the fuel is weird or extreme at all. Like I said, I always INTEND to do it, but never muster the patience to keep track. I just kind of have a floating number in my head that I check against the trip odometer when I fill up.





The Halloween thing cracks me up, though. I just buy a couple bags of candy no matter what. If not enough kids show up...I eat it. If you run out, you shut off the porch light. Of course, around here, kids have to be done trick-or-treating by 8PM or something, and the city has a 13-years-of-age cap on the activity.