Deacquisition; Reformatting old journal entries; Discoveries in the reformatting of old journal entries - Harold Norse

A couple of months ago, I finally ended any idea of having a garage sale. At this point, most of the items on the carport have been there more than a year.

I think I made three trips to Gateway Rescue Mission with all the boxes and cartons. Last week I took two chairs, two side tables, a round table, a small lamp table, and a magazine rack Lately, I've taken them two cardboard boxes and two plastic milk cartons of books. Yesterday, I drug, (GRAMMAR ALERT - I know, I know, it should be dragged), ok, scratch that. Yesterday, I DRAGGED an old bookcase and an old broken leather swivel chair to the street. Thirty-minutes later, a man in a white van, pulled into the drive, and wanted to know if it was all right to take them. ("YES, by all means! Thanks!")

Last week, for the first time in a year, I was actually able to park the car on the carport. No more carrying stuff in the rain.

Three items are left on the carport: a tread mill, that most likely is broken; a wooden chest in good condition; and the pieces of the wooden dining table that the cats broke several years ago. (It was an expandable solid oak table with two leaves, the cats kept jumping on it until a couple of the runners for the leaves snapped. I've looked at it several times, but I can't figure out how to repair it. And if I did, what would I do with it.)

My ultimate goal is to have a consistent "look and feel" for all the journal pages. I've discovered about ten different formats that were used over the years.

I've always been an advocate of numeric dating for file names. For example, the page for August 6, 2005, would be named as 050806.html. That way, when you look at the index of files, everything is in order by date. Well sorta. Remember that when I started the journal, it was 1999. So the page of August 6,1999, would be named 990806. If you give that a little thought, you'll see that the files from 1999 will always be listed at the end of the index instead of the beginning. A nuisance that upsets my mathematical sensibilities.

I'd been renaming files manually, one by one. Then I thought about the fact that there had to be a free file renaming utility somewhere. And indeed, I found one, "Smart File Renamer," and it is terrific. (Visit "Smart F.R. - the Smart File Renamer - Advanced File Rename Utility for Windows").

I renamed files left and right, and now the index starts at 19990217.html and runs to 20070228-2200.html. For multiple entires on the same date, I add the hour of the day in 24-hour notation.

Then a very unpleasant thought hit me. As with a sledgehammer. All the links in the documents refer to the old file names. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! There is no way, outside of something like Dreamweaver, to internal changes to multiple documents. Plus, it would not help with the reformatting issue. So the yearly indices will get you to an entry, but using internal links will give you a "404 not found on this server" error message. So you'll have to come back to the yearly index to move to another entry.

Although the reformatting is VERY tedious process, I have come across some forgotten nuggets.

In the entry for journal - 2000-0105 - wed 2100, I came across a reference to some books that I'd totally forgotten about. Here's the selection of interest.

This year I ordered the few Christmas presents I needed from the Quality Paperback Book Club. In addition to the presents, I treated myself to some gay-related items - "Homme, Masterpieces of Erotic Photography"; "Pictures and Passions, A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts""; and "The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature." The last two arrived yesterday, and I dipped into the Anthology last night in bed. I did more than dip, I skipped all over the place. One of the items I came across was a poem by Harold Norse who I'm not familiar with. It's called "I'm Not a Man." A couple of lines struck me. "I'm not a man. I won't play the role assigned to me. I'm not a man. I cry when I'm unhappy. I'm not a man. I don't want to destroy you."

What a glorious find!

PAX! Erin Go Braugh!