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[Torco]

Chill, you have a long time until you have to replace the flooring. the stain isn't gonna spread.

[alynnidalar]

Not sure why you think this forum would be the best place for help, as opposed to a store that sells flooring...

[malloc]

No idea, but I am truly stumped for answers on how to address this problem. At least knowing what I will need to buy would give me some sense of control over my situation. It may seem trivial and absurd, but this is one of the few problems in my life that I can feasibly hope to control right now so trying to fix it is all I can do.

[Moose-tache]

I have good news. Based on that picture, I'm 90% sure you have pine floors. You can buy replacement sections at any hardware store. They may even deliver. Be sure to measure before you buy. Also, pine floors are notorious for showing signs of aging like stains and scratches, but they are still just as durable and long-lasting as other types of wood, so you don't really need to replace them unless you just don't like the look.

The most scratch-resistant hardwoods are mostly tropical, like teak and cumaru. A good temperate substitute is maple. They are all very handsome and long-lasting, so if you are willing to pay extra for a premium wood, and scratches really bother you, you can replace your pine floors with one of those woods. Don't recommend it though, since there's really nothing wrong with your floor.

[malloc]

From what I can tell, it's not real wood but some kind of vinyl or plastic. However, my hope is that knowing as much as possible about it will help me narrow down my search for replacement panels. They need to be the exact same product so that the landlord doesn't realize I replaced them.

[Moose-tache]

Ooooh. Well, then your best bet is to rip up the section you want to replace and walk it over to the hardware store. It sounds like vinyl, which is very common and easy to replace, but the employees at the hardware store will know exactly what you need. Or just tell your landlord you scratched their shitty plastic floor and be done with it.

[zompist]

malloc, if you've never done any sort of home repair, don't make your first project ripping up your floor.

You should probably just leave it for now. A few months of normal wear might actually make it look better. Then get a relative or friend to look at it just to get an idea of how much it would cost to get it fixed. Or get an estimate from a handyman. Then, when your lease is up, contact the landlord. This is where you want that rough estimate so, just in case the landlord is a scumbag who quotes an inflated price, you know what they're up to.

Don't try to fix it yourself. You probably don't even have the right tools, and you're likely to mess it up further.

[malloc]

I want to avoid letting my landlord know that the floor was gouged up so much because it will reflect horribly on my rental history. If future landlords call my current landlord for a reference, they would hear how I trashed the apartment and shouldn't get another.

[Pabappa]

Okay,

I apologize for posting while drunk but I stand by what I said here and on IRC .... your floor is fine and your landlord isn't even going to notice that anything's changed unless you tell them. I've done worse with no apology and paid no fine.

[Linguoboy]

I want to avoid letting my landlord know that the floor was gouged up so much because it will reflect horribly on my rental history. If future landlords call my current landlord for a reference, they would hear how I trashed the apartment and shouldn't get another.

That has literally never happened to me or anyone I know ever. Landlords care about (1) whether you can reliably make rent and (2) whether you’re committing crimes on their property—and frankly not always (2). Worst likely scenario, you get an asshole who doesn’t return your security deposit. It’s going to be fine, so you’ll need to find something else to catastrophise about.

[Raphael]

That has literally never happened to me or anyone I know ever. Landlords care about (1) whether you can reliably make rent and (2) whether you’re committing crimes on their property—and frankly not always (2).

Interesting cultural difference between the USA and Germany there.

[malloc]

My brother, whose wife manages rental properties, said that having a good rental history is vital to getting an apartment, at least remotely. He really hammered that point and insisted that I need to start renting as soon as possible and take the best possible care of my apartment. He made it sound like landlords track everything wrong with the apartment and mention it when asked as references. Was he simply wrong about all that or was his wife simply an unusually strict and picky landlord?

[Pabappa]

Stop.

Stop.

Please.

Your floor is fine.

This sounds ridiculously patronizing and I am the worst person to be posting this but

You really need mental health help.

Your floor is fine. Please please think about more important things.

[Linguoboy]

My brother, whose wife manages rental properties, said that having a good rental history is vital to getting an apartment, at least remotely. He really hammered that point and insisted that I need to start renting as soon as possible and take the best possible care of my apartment. He made it sound like landlords track everything wrong with the apartment and mention it when asked as references. Was he simply wrong about all that or was his wife simply an unusually strict and picky landlord?

I guess it depends how tight the rental market is where you live? Here in Chicago the supply is too vast for their to be much competition among renters. If they look at anything, they check credit history and criminal record. Nobody has time to be ringing up a bunch of references (though I have known a couple folks with bad credit who had to have someone willing to a reference for them--not a former landlord, just a friend; they don't call you, you simply sign a document).

But Pabappa is right: Are you looking to move out in the immediate future? If not, what's the problem? Put it out of your mind and worry about something else.

[MacAnDàil]

The landlords are pickier in Germany, then?

I honestly can't see any stain. Is it Where's Wally?/Where's Waldo?

[malloc]

That's a picture of undamaged flooring. I was hoping someone could identify the pattern or product or whatever. Presumably there is some fancy name like "VinylMax® Golden Pine™ Grade 3".

[Pabappa]

I am more drunk than a fish but i can still say that you need to RELAX and stop worrying about this. You have much bigger problems that you can't see.

If your landlord bothers you then let us know then, I will help you. Who is this that doesnt even provide a carpet and expects the floor to be in the exact same state year after year?

Perhaps most importantly, I am pretty sure you can hire someone that will come right into your apartment, and tell you what you need to do before you move out, free of cost.

[Raphael]

The landlords are pickier in Germany, then?

Depends on the landlord. There are landlords who won't give you any trouble as long as you don't give them any trouble, but also others who will give you a thorough dressing-down if they visit your apartment and it's not in a state that would make Marie Kondō happy, and everything in between. Most would insist that you get any physical damage repaired before moving out, though (therefore, people who move in are generally advised to make a list of all physical damage that's already there when they move in, and get it signed by the landlord, so that the landlord can't claim that they did it).

[Ryusenshi]

And then there's the Concerto For Group And Orchestra, an attempt at a crossover between rock and classical, where the album cover features a compromise/combination between the standard rock/pop and the standard classical album naming conventions

In this case, I just filed it under "Deep Purple", as I do for pop records (here I'm using "pop" in a large sense, including rock/jazz/electronica/whatever). I mentioned somewhere else that I keep classical separate from pop, because the filing rules are so different: pop gets filed by performer, and in strict chronological order for each artist; while classical gets filed by composer, and by type of composition (i.e. all piano sonatas together, then all symphonies together, etc).

Ha! I *always* filed my music alphabetically, and here's how. This system, by an uncanny coincidence, closely resembles that used in virtually every record shop I ever visited.

We are mostly on the same page here, but the devil's in the details.

Many bands use a definite article, like "the Beatles" or "the Rolling Stones". How do you file them? By full name, ignoring the article. It gets complicated if the name is foreign and has an article, like Los Lobos: does this go under 'L', or 'L'?

That's exactly the kind of problems I have. In my case, I have English-language bands with "the" but also several French-language bands with "les", so I would do the same for Los Lobos.

Sometimes, one member of a band will release solo albums under his/her own name. For example, after the Beatles split, each of the four members made records under his own name. Do you file records by "Paul McCartney" with "the Beatles", or do you keep them separate? Separately. Why would they be filed together?

I know some people who file all Beatles solo members together. In record stores, it rarely happens for the Beatles themselves (since McCartney had a long career as a solo artist), but it's very common to see a folder "Rolling Stones solos" under 'R', or "Who solos" under 'W'.

Sometimes the name of a band is inconsistent. For instance, a Jamaican band started as "the Wailers", then became "Bob Marley and the Wailers"; later compilations just say "Bob Marley". Similarly, an American band started as "the Mothers of Invention", then had releases as "Frank Zappa and the Mothers", and later disks just say "Frank Zappa". How do you file them? According to the name as on the record.

In this case, the problem is that it's so inconsistent: I can never remember if a particular album was initially released as "the Mothers of Invention" or "Frank Zappa and the Mothers". And CD re-releases aren't consistent either (my edition of We're Only In It for the Money says "Frank Zappa" on the side, while the original 1968 LP didn't). In this case I prefer to normalize to a single name, and file everything as "Zappa". Ditto for Bob Marley.

Some artists have weird stage names like "Captain Beefheart" or "Howlin' Wolf" (real names Don Van Vliet and Chester Burnett). How do you file them? By surname, I think... but Lynyrd Skynyrd go under 'L', so maybe not. How does this differ from #7?

They are mirror images. 7 is about bands whose name sounds like it contains a surname; 11 is about individual artists whose pseudonym doesn't. It's about people like Lady Gaga or DJ Shadow ("Gaga" and "Shadow" certainly aren't surnames), or Little Richard ("Richard" is his first name). In this case I'd rather order by full name... except then we run into case 12, when I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a surname or not. Take "Muddy Waters": is it supposed to be a nickname, as in "John Waters called Muddy", or a phrase, as in "the muddy waters of the river"? In this case it comes from the second, and his real surname wasn't "Waters". In records stores, I've seen him both under 'M' and under 'W'.

Generally speaking, if the name contains both a forename and a surname, I would index it by surname unless it was a name not connected to anyone in the band (as with Jethro Tull). If there is more than one surname, index by the first appearing surname. A surname takes precedence over anything else, even in extreme cases like The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.

It's a reasonable choice. I'm just conflicted in certain cases, like Alan Parsons Project (where Alan Parsons isn't really the leader).

One thing that frustrates me is when people file everything beginning with "The" under T, e.g. "The Police" in the case of bands. I follow a policy of normally ignoring articles when sorting CD collections etc. because otherwise you end up with a very swollen T section.

EDIT: I missed that on your list before, but you're wrong that people don't do it. My father has always filed things beginning with "the" under t, much to my frustration.

Well, I did hedge my bet by saying "pretty much everybody", not "absolutely everybody"...

The real puzzler on that list, though, is... do people still actually listen to Wings?

As a matter of fact, I am currently listening to their albums for the first time. Band on the Run is really good. But on the whole, these days, people seem to forget they were a band, and their albums are considered part of McCartney's solo discography. (I'm still not sure if I want to keep the two separate, as I do with Cream and Eric Clapton, or merge them, as I do with Bob Marley as mentioned above. Some albums ).

Which is more useful for a personal collection? Unless you have your own online catalog (and some people do--there's a dedicated piece of software called "LibraryThing" for this very purpose), I would expect something closer to the record store categorisation. Even there, only someone with a truly huge collection would need to be particularly consistent or comprehensive.

With nearly 2000 entries, I'm starting to get there.

When I started buying CDs, I used to arrange them by date bought. As I was the only person using the collection usually, it worked best.

Ah,the High Fidelity method. But I didn't use that method from the start, and now it would be way too late. Like, I remember when I first listened to the Stooges' Fun House: in my mind it's definitely associated to a certain period of my life. Except, at the time, I had borrowed a CD from the library and taped it. At some point I found a cheap CD and bought it, but when??? Beats me. Conversely, I bought Radiohead's OK Computer at a yard sale sometime, and only listened to it way later. I can see it working for a library (so you just assign a code number when each entry comes along), but not for me.

[Raphael]

Not now, Nature:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... t-supplies