Doh, I wanted to try posting at least once a day all month and I missed out yesterday because I was just too busy with other stuff, alas.

I had lots of work, mostly house work, to catch up on, culminating in transporting and setting up a new entertainment system, wee. I had to wire the darn thing twice because the first setup really didn’t work well and would have been damaging to the cords; and it takes like an hour each time to do the wiring. Grrrr, oh well.

I originally had all my entertainment stuff set up in my living room, as I assumed that I was going to have guests and would want to watch stuff out there with them on the couch. This has unfortunately turned out to not be the case in this apartment, and I usually only end up going to the living room couch mainly to snuggle with my cat, as she will only get close to me on the couch for some reason, while I have the TV on in the background while I work. Now I can have stuff running in the background whenever I want from my room, and can use the surround sound speakers to play my music, as I am getting tired of my crappy (though better than many) laptop speakers, and headphones are more cumbersome than not.

I bought the new parts of my entertainment system from some [married] friends who finished moving yesterday to a one bedroom in downtown Austin that couldn’t even remotely hold all their stuff, so they were desperately trying to get rid of a lot of it in a hurry. I got a 32" CRT TV [$50], the black shelving unit w/ glass enclosure [$50], and an older computer (512MB of RAM, 780mhz CPU, 80GB hard drive) [$20] to use as a new Home Server. All of these were at about 20% of cost, yay :-).

I really needed the new TV, as my current 32" TV is badly scratched up from being dropped on cement a few years back. I am leaving the old TV hooked up to my current Home Server, which I will now be using as just a multimedia station for that TV and a place for extra backup hard drives. I wanted the “new” computer as a new Home Server, as the current one uses way too much power for what it’s being used for, and is too loud to keep in my room. I’ll be just turning it on when I need it now instead; backing up and watching videos that require too much CPU power that the new computer won’t be able to handle.

The new computer is quite tiny and has no AGP slots, just 2 PCI32 slots. I am therefore looking into getting a $25 (w/ shipping) e-GeForce 5200 PCI card for tv-out. I hope it fits in the small case, because if not, I will just have to leave the case cover off.

Click for full size (I love my new camera ^_^ )