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Just got a call yesterday, furniture is in and ready for delivery

Art Van called yesterday to let me know they are ready to deliver the furniture.  Setup saturday and the delivery date.  Got home and there was another message.  Said the special order couch and loveseat are in.  That is great and all but we ordered a couch loveseat and rocker/recliner chair also.  I will call today once they open and find out if all 3 are in.  They messed up the original order so I would not be suprised if the chair is not in yet.

Posted in Home Stuff.


Took the plunge last night

Last night after dinner jenny and I took the plunge.  We had been thinking about what we would like for the basement.  Well last night we went ahead and ordered a new couch, love seat and rocker/recliner.  They should be in in about 4 to 6 weeks.  They are made by berkline.  The couch has two reclining seats and the love seat also has two reclining seats.  The couch also has a center console that flips down that has two cup holders.  I now have something to work towards.  I would like to be able to have all of the paint touched up before the new furniture comes in.

Posted in General.


Well it is that time of year again

I have officially switched from working inside to working outside.  Over the weekend my neighbor stopped me at meijers and asked about mulch.  We always try to clean up our grass and stuff at the sametime every year because we have one area that crosses into each others yard and we like to make it look as good as possible.

I picked up a few bags of mulch and picked up a bag of stuff to kill the grubs.  Man this year is bad, I have an animal that keeps diggind up the backyard, my neighbor thinks it is a skunk.  Could be I have not seen anything yet.

I was able to weed a bit and cleaned up the one area in the front yard on the left side of the house if you are looking at the house from the road.  Brush pickup is today and I had a few bundles of ornimental grass to be picked up.  I still have to mulch the right side of the front yard and around the front of the house.  This year I need to work around the deck in the back.  I have to find some shrubs to plant back there and then mulch again.  That has been a problem area, mostly becuase taylor loves to pull things up and dig there for some reason.

Needless to say it was good to get most of the basement stuff all finished up because most of my extra time will go to working on things outside and enjoying the nice weather finally.

Posted in General.


Worked on a few things in the basement

Still have a long list of things I want to finish in the basement. I was able to get a few checked off this weekend though.

I mounted the center speaker on the wall finally. We moved the bookshelf with the cd’s and movies downstairs. We also moved jenny’s bookshelf down. Have yet to move all of the books though. I hope to get that tonight. We have to move the cedar chest down also.

Last night I caulked around the toilet downstairs also. Hopefully that will be setup and finished tonight. I will plan on posting some new pictures of the progress later this week.

Posted in Basement.


The projector is working out great

I have not watched to much on it yet, but the shows I have watched have been awesome. I think we will really enjoy the projector. It is nice to be able to watch a show or a movie on the big screen or just watch a show on tv if we do not want the lights off. I am still tweaking the wiring and locations a bit but hopefully this week that room will be finished.

9179 9219

Posted in General.


Most of the cables in the basement have been terminated and labeled

This afternoon I was able to get all of the cat5 cables terminated and labeled. I am still trying to figure out how I want to hang the switch that all of the patch panels will plug in to. I may put a shelf up there that I can put my cable modem, router and switch on. I still have to label all of the coax cables and redo that wiring. It is all hooked up and working right now but I still have to redo it and make it cleaner and labeled.

We re-arranged the living room upstairs. It has much more room now that there is not stereo or tv up there. We still want to get the bookcase that holds the cd’s and dvd’s moved out of there. I still need to move jenny’s book shelf out of the room upstairs also. I hope to finish moving everything else this week and get the office setup downstairs.

The replaytv and television are all hooked up and working. I also hooked up the xbox to the projector. Man that is very nice on the big screen. I have it setup at 720p right now. I still have to mess around with the resolution and figure out what games will work at that resolution. xbmc works at that resolution and looks great.

Posted in Basement.


A few more things moved around and hooked up

Over the past 2 days I have done a little bit more on the basement. Last night I finished hooking up the last subwoofer and moved a few components around. Cleaned up the signal to the cable box so every channel looks good on the projector now.

Today I cleaned up the fridge and moved it into the main room. Loaded it with drinks. I moved the bowflex down to the main room also. Moved a few other things around to make room. Tonight or tomorow I will move the tv from the living room down to the main room in the basement.

I am trying to figure out what is going on with my home network. My wireless network seems to be having problems. I thought it was my cable modem but I believe it is my linksys router now. I may have to flash it back to factory defaults and firmware to try to figure out what is going on.

Soon I will be hanging pictures and a few other things in the office. I will probably bring the files and printer down to the office late tomorrow. I finished all the coax cables today. I will try to finish the network cables tonight and tomorrow.

Posted in Basement.


HDTV is amazing

Finally got around to hooking up the cable box tonight. All I can say is that is amazing. I think I will be able to handle this projector without a problem. A total of 12 channels are hd. This is great. Many of the nightly shows are in hd now. Now to figure out how to record in hd.

Posted in New toys.


Todo list for tonight

Tonight I hope I have time to clean up all of the cables and get everything tucked away nicely. I want to get both coax cables and both network cables that are in that corner of the basement terminiated in the utilityroom. I will have to move a few things around so I can get back to that corner of the utilityroom. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and I can get the new cable box up and running so I can view tv on the new projector. Can’t wait to check out the hd channels. I hear discovery HD has some great HD content. From what I can tell I should get all networks except CBS, they are holding out for more money I hear, and then the showtime and hbo channel and about 5 or so others. There is currently 12 hd channels it looks like.

Posted in Basement.


Put a few more things together in the basement

I moved all of the stereo equipment down to the basement tonight.  Have almost all of the speakers hooked up and working.  I have one sub to finish up and have to figure out how I will place the center channel.  I watched a dts demo disk for a bit and then called it a night.

Right after work I stopped by the charter shop and picked up a cable box.  Got pretty much every channel they have.  Have it all set.  Just have to get a cable signal to it.  I hope to get that tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see how that thing can project hd on my screen.  I found out now it has a dvi output.  I will have to hook it up to the projector and see if it is any better than component.  If it is better then component then I will have to look at getting an hdmi or dvi switcher in the next few months.

Posted in Electronics.