Summer's Over

I know, that's obvious.......but what that means around here in an educator's household with young children is that the routines change majorly (to say the least)! Of course, we are gone every week day from 7am to somewhere between 5 and 6pm. When you throw in Scouts on Monday night, Gymnastics on Thursday nights, and Football games on Friday nights, it's obvious that any given week are pretty booked up till Saturday and Sunday. I generally grade papers or lesson plan on Sunday afternoon, so that leaves me with the first half of Saturday as "me time".

After successfully convincing the kids that they really wanted to watch cartoons from Momma & Daddy's bed, I now have the living room to myself to reap the benefits from the hard work of this summer. Meaning that I have the HTPC running Windows Media Center, pulling files from the WHS in the office, displaying on the big TV and playing through the main A/V system. I can't even express how satisfying this is to be able to access my growing cache of lossless music this way! I just realized that when I'm on the music part of the software that just hitting the letter key will take you to that part of the alphabet in the album list! Such a great way to peruse my media library. I had no idea that the "Os" were so great! Oleta Adams, followed by Orbital followed by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark! All this while drinking my coffee and blogging! I do believe that convergence is within reach if not completely attained.

I do have a few little things on the frugal purchasing front though. The first is the addition of a couple of "backbone" devices that most people will never see. I picked up an 8-Port Gigabit Switch which will replace the 10/100 version on my desk. The other is a 4-Port Gigabit router which will pretty much allow my network to upgrade to Gigabit. I still need to pick up "N" WiFi cards to move the Z61ms to the faster wireless standard.

I also picked up a set of computer speakers. I know, I know; it sounds pretty pedestrian, but let me explain. Of course you guys know that I HATE spending lots of money, but although I demand nice peripherals, I'm almost psychotic in not spending money in that area! So, I've been struggling along with an old pair of IBM/Infinity computer speakers on my desktop workstation for some time. Lately though, I've been planning out a monitor shelve for my desk, obviously to lift the monitors, but also to give myself some extra space underneath. So I'm planning on moving the speakers to that location. Unfortunately, the rather big and tall (yet uninspiring) speakers won't fit, so........ of course this gave me an excuse to hunt down a replacement pair. The the parameters (other than cheap) were that they be small, sound good, which are contradictory requirements, and therefore left me with the option of satellite/subwoofer style. To make a long story short. I found a pair of Logitech Z-340s on eBay that I paid $16 after shipping. They were dirty and one speaker has a little hole in the grill, but they sound VERY good and cost $16!!!