Leave Cali day 18

A part of the move to Florida was making plans, almost daily. Part of this is just to reduce the stress of a major life change. But it is also a function of what the founder and CEO of Velobind taught me, "The better it's planned, the easier it will go."

Above I'm  making notes about what rooms have tasks. I abbreviate COD, for chain of dependencies. I cite the living room as a place to scan all the documents I refuse to lug to Florida. I note I need to repair two motorcycles, as well as sell off an air compressor and a phase converter. I also note to call Allied Van Lines as well as Mayflower. I should have used Allied. The local guys I used were good, but not great.

In the next column I sketch out the house in Florida and plan where I will put the stuff I am going to move there. I also sketch the garage to plan out where my toolboxes and motorcycles will fit. This really helped when I moved.

The Florida house plan for where stuff goes.

Back in the shed of the Sunnyvale house was this prototype control panel I built for the mill.

I sold it cheap at the eFlea, I scrapped the mill.

Retrofitting a new control on the mill was one thing. Inventing a new control methodology was wrong. Don't invent what you can buy.

I wonder if I could have interfaced all the wheels and displays to the Delta Tau Data Systems control.

It had a feed-stop as well as an EMO.

Some of the Delta Tau control boards got sold at the eFlea or eBay.

This is the control board for the Delta Tau interface, that I ended up using instead.

The Delta Tau panel had what was needed to control a mill. If you can avoid design, do so.

I packed up my CD albums, if only so I could throw away the shelves I was storing them on.

I tossed both these shelves. The top one I had build specifically to store the CDs.

I moved the Alpha 5 clock as well as this treble clef clock I found in a dumpster.

The chipboard cabinet is already gone. The move looks chaotic, but there was a method.

This became the main desk I used, with the lab computer and work computer packed up.

Some air fittings in the dining room are destined for the eFlea.

These work binders are getting tossed. The garbage people are your best friends.

The kitchen was messy but getting cleaned out as well.

I packed the DVDs so I could dump the bookshelves.

These were used to store floppy disks and CDs. I sold them at the eFlea..

I emptied the cabinets and saved the software I still used.

These are VHS tapes my dad made.

I sent them off to an outfit that would convert them to video files, and then return the tapes. I made sure to have proof of mailing.

You could just set packages in the back of the Sunnyvale Main post office, faster than a line.

Here is a little music alter I built over the years. I packed it and moved it to Florida.

I used this cassette player to transfer some music I made into the computer.

The stereo receiver I kept, the cassette player I gave to a friend.

The music room computer with the Fireface 800 I used to record the tapes into files.

I make big binders for every computer I own. It really helps to fix, maintain, and upgrade them.

II had dozens of cables in the music room. I used the door to try and organize them.

This is the setup I used to record any cassettes into the computer. I did keep the tapes.

I had fixed the Teac 3440 reel-to-real, so I could play those tapes into the computer next.

I needed to fix one channel of this Heathkit tape player, because I had some songs on those tapes to play into the computer. I sold it at the eFlea.

The guitar amp made the move, as did the music stand.

More binders are ready for the trash.

I packed up my work desktop, and used a laptop with the two TVs as a workstation. Here are the two printers and flatbed scanner I used to scan in all my business documents, photos, and work papers. The Brother printer on the left could scan B-size. I gave it to Dave Mathis when I left for Florida. The A-sized printer on the right I gave to analog guru Paul Grohe. The flatbed scanner made the move to Florida, to scan receipts and other stuff. There was no need for the document feeder like on the printers.

The overall timeline worked out something like this. I had sold some stuff just on general principle in 2013. I used eBay, Craigslist, and the eFlea. In February 2014 I realized the house I bought in 2008 was finally above water. I started selling stuff in earnest then, going to every eFlea with some stuff to get rid of, as well as selling on Craigslist. I found I could put anything metal out on the curb, and the next morning it would be gone, This included desks, nuts and bolts, and even a fire safe file cabinet that was more concrete than steel.

I decided to list the house empty of furniture. So I rented an apartment to live in the last six months of 2014. I moved the content of the house in July, and listed the house. It sold it in September, and left for Florida in December. I kept my day job the whole time.