That's like IEC line cords for me. I think they reproduce when I put two or more together.

This doesn't happen very often with me because, while a normal person might walk through the house and not be able to find anything for all the disorganization, I know where every individual zip tie is, though they might all be in different locations.

I have random access location memory.

I do this with sealed, mint in box Adlib Gold sound cards.

... I kid I kid. 🤣

But seriously... I don't have too much trouble with this generally, though I'm sure its happened at some point. What does happen to me is that I NEED a certain thing that I don't have, I spend more than I normally would for that one tiny thing (often waiting weeks for shipping from Chine), then not much later get some boxed lot of stuff (either given to me or purchased cheaply) that contains at least one, if not dozens of them. Derp.

Or, I need that one single thing and I have 500 of a slightly different variation that simply cannot do the same job, and in fact I purchased those to alleviate this exact problem, not thinking I'd ever need "that other type". This is a huge problem with audio adapters when I'm trying to rearrange my MIDI equipment, amplifiers and such. Going through it right now actually... 😵

Power cables, sata cables, large capacity hard drives. Then I find where I have them stashed when I don't need them! Also flash drives.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I know where every individual zip tie is, though they might all be in different locations.

Reminds me of a Ricky and Morty clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXLIGGbBhRU

Eggs, usually eggs. Sometimes rice or brown sugar.

Working IDE hard drives

Ozzuneoj wrote:

...
What does happen to me is that I NEED a certain thing that I don't have, I spend more than I normally would for that one tiny thing (often waiting weeks for shipping from Chine), then not much later get some boxed lot of stuff (either given to me or purchased cheaply) that contains at least one, if not dozens of them. Derp.
...

It heppened to me more than once 😢

Bugs in my [insert programming project]

I often find myself in the following situation: I really want some part, spend some time searching and then I pay premium for it. After that I inevitably run into something similar for a lot cheaper. Examples:

- LPT Backpack CD-ROM for my Compaq Presario 433. 13 bucks isn't a lot, but I did find LPT drives for a lot cheaper after that.
- MIDI hardware. I remember ordering a Dreamblaster X2 only to find a Yamaha SW60XG for 9 bucks a couple days later.
- 486 VLB boards. I think I've paid 15 bucks for a somewhat shitty Chaintech board only to eventually find a great AOpen VI15G for 6 bucks.

The list goes on.

Women. But in general it's called the pareto principle and you can apply it to many things.

HDMI cables. All the damn modern consoles (since PS3/Wii) need them and when you have lots of them, you need lots of HDMI cables. Add to that cable boxes, RaspberryPI's and you soon both need and have lots of them.

Same for composite cables, got tons of them.

Here are a few examples of things I occasionally run low on:

- Spare laptop parts. I needed a new keyboard and, eventually, a new motherboard for my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop, when I had issues with the keyboard, I ordered another keyboard, a day later, I ran into trouble getting it to turn on, so I ordered a Dell Latitude C800 to use for parts to get my Inspiron fixed up. There have been other examples in this category, but listing them all would make this post too long to be worth reading.

- Floppy disks. There have been times when I was running low on floppy disks, until I found NOS 10-25 packs of them, now I have two 25-packs of 1.44MB floppies to use. 😀

- IDE Optical drives. A few months ago, I only had one CD-RW drive to spare, now I have a few different spare drives (two working ones (an ASUS 48x CD-ROM, and a Samsung 24x CD-RW) and two broken/parts ones (a Compaq OEM 8x CD-ROM, and an NEC 16x DVD-RW)).

Heh.. I had pretty much no extra CD/DVD drives.. then I was given a whole bunch from one person that was cleaning out their old stuff. I now have a whole file cabinet drawer full of drives.

Don't get me started on 3.5" floppy disks. Had almost none, and then somebody at work was cleaning out there stuff and gave me a couple hundred that he got years ago when AOL stopped using floppies... blank floppies with the AOL symbol on them.

Then later I found a whole bunch more 3.5" and 5.25" floppies and holders in various closets at work.

Backed up everything to the server that I though maybe, could possibly be needed, but hadn't been needed in the past 10+ years and then wiped the non-blank ones. (not with a rag 🤣 )

Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga

Seriously, I bought the game around 2008 or so, and it was very rare back then. I had to claw and elbow my way to the top to win the auction. The Kilrathi Saga was so rare that each individual CD was offered as "replacement CD" during that time, for about US $50 or so, and people still buy it.

But that was then.

Now, suddenly The Kilrathi Saga isn't rare anymore. Somebody tell me what the hell is going on.

Game titles that suffer similar symptoms include Task Force 1942 (Microprose) and Air Combat Classics (LucasArts' package consisting Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe). They were very hard to find when I bought them on the first place, now they're everywhere. Could anyone enlighten me?