heliosten - Once you're situated, let us know how things go with saving your collection. If things don't look good, I have a few DVDs (double-dips) that I was thinking of eventually selling at a local used place but you're welcome to them. They're mainly horror-type flicks.

Anywho... if it takes a bit to get things checked out, bump this thread and let me know. Take care and hang in there

That's a great idea, Tom . . . hey heliosten, do you have an online list of your movies? If you post it, you might find some other people with some double dips or connections to fill in some of the DVD's that you lost. Let us know.

So sorry to hear about you loss. I'm just gald that your ok. I don't even know what I would do if I lost all of my stuff, my house, and so on. I can't even begin to imagine the hell you have through.

And to Scott1598, what the hell is WRONG with you???? Jezze.

How wonderful, and generous of you! I was just about to make the same proposition to him. Heliosten, from the kindness of my heart i will give you a DVD of your choice. I will get back with you for more information. Stay strong.

Ditto, let me know what dvd you would like and where to ship it.

I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. I can't imagine. Hope things will work out.

Heliosten, please do post your dvd list. I will be glad to help out by giving some to you that are either double dips or something I don't plan on watching anytime soon. I second the ban for Scott1598. I am proud of the fact that the dvdtalk forum has nothing but respectable mature posters which is why posts like the one that Scott1598 made should ban him from the site without warning. This will also teach current and future members that insensitive posts have no place on this site.

enough already!!! i made a mistake, stop branding me at the stake. PLEASE!!!!!!!!

Happy your okay. Hope your DVDs will be unaffected.

My renter's insurance didn't cover jack shit when my apartment flooded last year. Would only cover water damage from a pipe bursting or water coming from inside the building......flooding from weather was not covered. Seperate flood insurance was not even an available option. I've been told that most renter's insurance will not even give you an option to purchase additional flood protection...probably varies heavily from region to region.

I only had a foot of water in my apartment and it was awful how many unreplacebale things I lost (namely all of my photos and several boxes of notes from graduate school that were very important to me and I wish I could still be using in my future), so I can only imagine what the OP is dealing with with four feet. Most of my dvds survived as I was home when the water came in. I have 4 Ikea bookshelves that house my dvd collection, and while the water was up to the bottom shelves within the first few minutes I was able to get most of them off the shelves and up to higher areas... Only about about 50 of them or so got totally soaked. I just let them dry for a few days and then windexed off the discs and all the cases.

Letting them dry first was probably a mistake, as the covers never really dry inside the keepcases.....they just sort of dry.....they dry enough so that the ink sticks to to cover when you try to pull them out to air dry the paper...pieces of the inkwork just peal right off. So for others, I recommend taking the artwork out as soon as possible to airdry if possible. This did not even occur to me as I had to move everything I own into storage and friend's houses (I had only lived in that apartment for 6 weeks and was not going to stay in that place any longer.....I moved out right away) so I didn't even get around to worrying about drying out wet stuff I tried to salvage for a few days. A similar thing happend to all my photos that I had in those magnetic albums. When I peeled the plastic pages back.....the ink just lifted right off ruining the pictures. It might have been better had I gotten to trying to dry them out sooner, but I did not think the ink smearing would happen. It's hard to describe without seeing it, but when water gets trapped under tight plastic (like a photo album or a keepcase) and mixes with ink, it sort of dries after a few days, but not completely......and then it is too late to remove things without them getting ruined in places.

As advice to the OP, I would not bother to try to salvage any of the cases or artwork, not after they have soaked in that toxic water for days. The discs should be mostly salvageable, but I would handle them wearing gloves and not put them into folders and things until after you have sterilized them somehow...either cleaning them thoroughly with rubbing alcohol, or even boiling them would not be totally out of the question (if you do a serach, you can find thread were people on here boil dvds and cds to fix scratched discs that skip.....apparently brief boiling does not dvds).

Wait, wait, let me see if I can get this right...

..."I don't feel sorry for you in the least."

-JP

haha

Concerning Scott, it's not such a big deal - people have the right to say what they want - it's called Freedom of Speech. And unfortunately a lot of bad things happen with this law/right (for example, George W. Bush). At the moment Scott wrote his post, the comment was focused only on the loss of electronics versus the loss of life, which makes sense because everyone knows that material things aren't as important as lost lives. In the heat of the moment, he ignored the other part that Heliosten was just curious about how to save DVDs from water damage. Since this is a DVD forum and not a Save the World forum, Heliosten could of just posted "my DVDs got flooded, how can I save them from being damaged by water?" It's the same concept if someone made a post on 9/17/2001 saying "Hi, I live in downtown Manhattan and I live next to Ground Zero. All my DVDs have dust on them. Will the dust damage them?" If this kind of post appeared after 9/11, it would be a totally tasteless post, at least to me because I live in NYC and I had loved ones running from the disaster. - and I would be pretty upset at the time to hear people complaining about lost material things when people were killed. But a couple years later, it's okay. That's how it works. It's okay to make a movie about Pearl Harbor many years later, but not okay right after it. (oliver stone is being tastless right now with making a movie about 9/11 right now)..so come on people, it's not a big deal. You all know what Scott meant...it's just how he stated it and bad timing may be inappropriate....

And another thing about insensitivity and wording comments - a lot of people in here have huge DVD collections which exactly match the DVD shelves of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. I always find it fascinating, disturbing, and an interesting topic to understand why people collect, waste their money on bad movies that they will rarely watch again, and why everyone has the same collections. But I'm not just going to tell someone "Your DVD collection sucks!" (a la Scott). I'm just curious in the obsession of collecting and consuming, because i'm victim to it as well...

And the posters that disagree with Scott and/or find his remarks offensive have that same 'Freedom of Speech'.

AL-TAHOE: yeah that's totally fine - I agree with you, but people demanding Scott to be banned? DVD Talk is for DVD fans and Scott is a DVD fan and can make interesting posts about DVDs just as anyone else. Just because he says inappropriate things not related to DVDs, it does not mean he has to be banned...

If you manage to salvage your dvds I'm sure you won't be able to salvage your cases. And since you have to buy new electronics just purchase one of those 500 disc changers.

Something like this

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...QS=dvd_changer

Well, you made me do research. Thanks, actually.

Yes, sorta, but you need to understand what material is used. The real definition of glue that I use is a certain group of bonding agents, not every type.

The bonding material in DVDs is not glue/epoxy, like in LDs. It is a UV-cured agent. These are much less susceptible to damage/leakage once cured. I can't seem to find a formula anywhere. I think it's acrylic or something. Meaning they are essentially melted together with another plastic.

Agree, I was going to mention this. Thought I'd add:
You can generally only get flood insurance if you are in flood plains, defined by the fed govt, no doubt. And then you are generally required to get it. So it's really yes or no, no choice. From what I've heard. I know that I can't get it where I am.

So...I would assume that New Orleans proper is a flood insurance area. But what about the other places, like the OP's house. Are they just screwed or is FEMA, Red Cross, etc. doing something about helping? Any news? Where're Dr. Phil and Oprah?

Might also add about renter's vs homeowners: Renter's insurance is possession-based. Homeowner's is house-based. Probably why renter's seems/does cover this kind of loss better. I can only give mine as example, I have additional coverage stated for possessions: $108,400 for my house, plus 20% over so really 130,080. $81,300 possessions. I have to add something to that for my HT, though.

Collecting personal items, or memberabilia is considered as an hobby. Whether it's: DVDs, Comic Books, Rare Coins, Stamps, Dolls, Action Figures, etc. There is not a specific reason for this existence, it's a natural development in general. Everyone maintains a likeness of their own personal preference of interests, willfully investing additional finances in order to fulfill this aspect of life.

Personally, I would rather spend extra money on positive, contructive material possessions as stated above, than on negative habitual addictions
such as the use of: cigarettes, alcohol, and illegal drugs. All devices can be detrimental to your health. Long duration of use will evidently result in death.

I have a few objections here. For starters, allowing this guy to hide behind the first amendment is ridiculous. I'll touch on that in the later parts of this post, though.

Second, I think it's ludicrous to say that it's okay to dramatize a tragic event "a couple years later," but that Oliver Stone's 9/11 film is "tasteless." What makes Stone's film any different from Michael Bay's film? The victims of the September 11 attacks are no more deceased than the victims of the Pearl Harbor attacks. If you take objection with somebody dramatizing a tragic occurrence, that's fine...but don't say it suddenly becomes okay once X number of years have passed. Is there a specific point in time where exploitation becomes dramatization? If so, when exactly...and why?

Third,

That's the problem. Your idealism is getting in the way of logic. People die every day, and people deal with material belongings every day. You seem to think that just because death is brought to the forefront via the media, that things should be put on hold. According to a United States CDC report from 2003, 6,674 people die, in this country alone, on a daily basis. Read that again, and let it sink in. Then think about the hypocrisy in labeling somebody "tasteless" for worrying about their material possessions, simply because the deaths of 700 people were blown into a media frenzy.

I'm not saying it's wrong to mourn for those lost in this hurricane (or in the September 11 attacks, the tsunami, Pearl Harbor, or any other noteworthy event). I am, however, saying that it's ridiculous to ask somebody to put their life on hold simply because 700 of that day's 6,700 person death-toll made the eleven o'clock news.

Now, regarding your dangerous misapplication of the first amendment;

If you're in the middle of a university seminar, and you blurt out, "fuck, this class blows," you'll be severely reprimanded. If you're in a meeting at work, and you call your boss a jackass, there will be consequences. The whole notion that, "people can say whatever they want because there's freedom of speech" is, in a word, bullshit. This forum, like most communities (be it the workplace, Sunday morning church service, school, or the dinner table), holds a certain expectation of it's members. Our country's constitution is not the end-all. In a community of any sort, there are consequences for irresponsible actions and comments.

-JP

People don't have the right to say what they want in a privately owned forum such as this. There is no freedom of speech here. Just what is tolerated by the owners. And if they choose to boot Scott for his comments, they're well within their rights to do so.

That said, I think Scott made an ass of himself and is getting some well deserved heat from it. But I think banning him is a bit of an over reaction. Especially since he seems to have learned his lesson. Or maybe I feel sympathetic because I too have put my foot in my mouth on occasion.

Sorry to hear about the possible loss of your DVD collection. That must suck. I'd have to say my DVDs are my favorite material possession and I can't imagine loose them.

scott1598 apologized for his remarks. They were insensitive and not very well thought out, yes. He has acknowledged his mistake and made a sincere apology. I don't think we need to ostracize him or continue to berate him to death. We've all said stupid things from time to time that we wish we could take back. I think we can all let it go now. Continuing all this criticism long after he renounced his comments and made a sincere public apology is really starting to smack of self-righteousness. Come on guys, live and let live.

He only apologized because SO many people flamed him.

Excellent segue to a point I wanted to make. Scott knows that people are ticked off at his comment (that's been made abundantly clear) and, I'm sure, his post has been reported to the mods. One mod has already responded within the thread and I'd be surprised if Scott hasn't been talked to separately as well. The "owners" will handle things the way that they see appropriate and I suggest that we leave it at that and get back to the thread topic.