I was pretty productive craft-wise before the holidays, and I’ve started a couple new projects, including a Liesl sweater in a bulky wool from handpaintedyarn.com:

…and some socks in Araucania Ranco Multy, using a pattern from the very nifty Little Box of Socks my parents got me for Christmas.

However, my existence for the next several weeks is going to be centered on this.

Jag and I have packed up 30 boxes of books since yesterday evening. That’s on top of the 26 we had already packed, and doesn’t count the boxes of books and magazines we moved over in my car a few weeks ago. And I still have everything else to pack.

One of the most time-consuming things about moving is figuring out what to ditch. I used to buy a lot of technical books, and these have proven to be some of the most annoying things to get rid of. They’re big and heavy. The information in them is now so outdated that they are utterly and completely useless. Up to the minute info on the same topics is available online for free. I can’t in good conscience dump them on Goodwill, because they’re no good even for teaching someone who might want to learn Perl, or Oracle, or whatever else, unless they happen to be sucked into a time vortex and transported to the mid-90s. I have waist-high stacks of these things, and the only thing I can think to do is haul them to the recycling center. This is why I haven’t bought a technical book in a very long time.

Anyone want to learn Exchange 5.5, Perl 4 circa 1993, or need a manual for an IBM Proprinter (dot matrix, tractor feed…)?