Birthday-paloosa 2017 Turns Into Home Theater & Lan Party

My children were born 3 days apart; well actually, 3 days shy of 3 years, making it 2 years and 262 days. So, once a year, we have a birthday weekend. When it's over we collapse. We have the condolences of all our friends and co-workers, but it's really not horrible. It's chaos for a weekend, then it's done... till next year. This year, my daughter turned 11 and my son 14. And any of you with teenage/pre-teenage children will know that it's a weird age. My daughter still wanted a traditional sleep-over with 7 other squealing girls but my son was over the theme thing and just wanted to have a few of his like-minded (read nerdy, no surprise there huh) friends over and play games, eat pizza, and drink lots of carbonated beverages. This year though, both of these things will have long-term effects on me and my hobbies.

The daughter decided that this looked like a good idea...... so we built it....... Yes, a Drive-In theater..... in our driveway. Here's what happened.

Around the time we started talking about party ideas, I was working on a projector I had picked up for $15 years ago. No, that's not it. The simple fix was to replace the bulb, but that didn't work, so I was looking around to see if there was another one on Craigslist. What I found was that old projectors taken from schools and offices are cheap. Like ranging from $15 to $50 cheap! This started the wheels turning in my head. Being a teacher, I'm very familiar with them and their capabilities, so I bought one for $30; an NEC VT480. For $30, I got a machine with 70% left on it's 2000 thousand hour bulb life and 800 x 600 resolution (1024 x 768 data) which is plenty to project a move to a pretty decent size. Thus was born, the "home drive-in" idea.

The next step was to figure out what to do about a screen. My first impulse was to hang a big sheet or two on the garage door and call it good. However, as most of you are aware, in today's world, the first step is usually to go to YouTube and research. What I found was that it wasn't very difficult or expensive to build your own proper screen. Most look like the above, using construction lumber and "black-out" curtain material which ironically is white. I also found that there's a place out there that specializes in this stuff called Carl's Place: https://www.carlofet.com/ .....and this is where my daughter's desires and my own cross paths. While researching the proper size, I realized that I could build it to fit across the front my my media cabinetry and have a good sized screen that's a normal 16:9 wide-screen aspect ration. When it hit me, I ran out to the garage, grabbed the tape measure and ran up stairs to the "game room" and started measuring! Sure enough. I have roughly 98" across, 55" vertical giving me about 112" diagonal which is pretty darned close to the correct maximum screen size for our primary seating distance (read, mine and my wife's recliners) AND was about the size I had outside on the fence to hang it!!! 

 

Here's the result, attached to out backyard fence at the end of the driveway. You can see the projector sitting on a folding card table. Total cost? About $60; $30 for the projector picked up locally on Craigslist and the correctly sized screen material from Carl's bought off of Amazon Prime and delivered in 2 days. I used some 1" x 4" lumber that I had, so if you don't have any laying around, it'll be another $15-20. I used the "pocket screw" method of building which was amazingly easy. I did buy the Kreg R3 kit for $40 from Lowes, but I don't really count the cost since I've been looking for an excuse to buy one and will use it as part of my woodworking hobby for years to come. 

So, away from the screaming 5th grade girls and back to the home theater. When all is said and done, I now have a screen that's sized to fit exactly across the cabinetry of my home theater in the "game room". How is that going to work? Obviously, I can't cover my cabinetry that houses the A/V gear (not to mention the 55", 4K TV) on a regular basis, not to mention crushing my wife's Morning Glories on the trellis!

The solution was to put a "French-Cleat" on the back of the screen frame. This came out of the need to attach it to the fence, but not have a permanent mount on there. So I built a mount that attaches to the top of the fence with a cleat and I'll just add another cleat holder to the top of my HT cabinetry so I can take the screen on and off of there as needed. Not very sophisticated, but elegantly simplicity and most importantly: cheap. When not in use, I'll hang the screen on the back of the cabinetry to get it out of the way. 

Sure; eventually, I'll need to pick up an actual HD level projector like this JVC D-ILA unit, but that's down the road. For now, I have a really cheap solution to having an actual big-screen  in our system.

 

What does this have to do with my son's birthday? It seems pretty straight-forward, right? Well.... it did give me a chance to compare his rig to what his friends were using and also to think ahead a little. My son's machine is built in this Azza CSAZ-103 which, two years ago was fairly forward-thinking if not cutting edge. It's "console-sized", could be turned on it's side or placed horizontally, has the now pretty common flat-segmented interior to allow Mini-ITX to be small and slender. However, after the last upgrade to the nVidia GTX-750ti graphic card it's pretty much maxed out for what it's generation (Sandy/Ivy Bridge). When compared to what his friends had though, it's a nice machine and by far the most capable, but you guys know, I'm always thinking about the next thing. 

There is of course, this..... the ever present spectre of the need to upgrade, but that's really not what got my attention. Plus, all upgrades in this house will have to wait in line behind the upgrade of my workstation from Z77/i7/Ivy Bridge to X99/i7 Hexacore/Haswell E has finished some time this summer. 

No; the rabbit hole I went down as a result of his party was this.... As you guys know, gaming in a "mobile" sense is still a difficult proposition.... at least if you want to do it inexpensively. One of the little hassles we had to deal with while prepping for his party was that 2 (not including him) of his friends do their gaming on desktops. We were lucky in that I have random monitors sitting around, so they could just bring their "tower", keyboard and mouse. Two others had laptops which they constantly complained about which highlighted the fact that our decision to build his in small-form desktop as being correct. Anyway; helping his friends get their computers set up and going got me thinking. His machine is actually small enough to put in an equipment/tool case and still have room to hold a monitor if I did a little modification.....

Can you say: Future Lan Party, HERE WE COME!?!

ThinkPads and Vinegar

Sometimes, all manner of otherwise unrelated items cross each others' paths, stars align just right and fortune smiles on us mere mortals (or Frugal Propellerheads). 

Some of you might remember that a few weeks ago, I posted about my "other" hobby, that of woodworking. As you might imagine, I approach all my hobbies the same way..... with a plan to upgrade over time and to be ready to use opportunities as they present themselves. A few years ago, I got to the point in my woodworking where my wife bought me a little table saw for Christmas. It was one of those $100 Christmas specials that you see stacked in the aisles of Walmarts all over the nation as we approach the holiday season. It was a little Black and Decker and over the course of the next couple of years, it did it's share of work. But as you can imagine, they aren't really a serious tool. The fence never would align correctly, and it was severely underpowered. They're really a $40 circular saw mounted upside-down on an aluminum table with a plastic base. I'm not even going to bother to depict it here. So, after a few items constructed, I was ready to graduate to a more substantial machine. Where-upon, I fell for the Ryobi BT3000 that you see above. Let's just say that it's a gadgeteer's table saw. If you want to look it up, you'll see that it can be set up to do lots of things, ranging from being a router table to having an on-board sliding miter table. My issue with it was that, I never used any of those features and it turned out to not hold settings very well! 

So, here we go..... I had sold the Black and Decker for around $60, then added money earned for computer work etc. to buy the Ryobi for about $250. I did add a kit to it which cost me about $80, so I had $330 invested in it. A few weeks ago, I sold it for $300 and started looking for table saws on Craigslist. 

I learned that among others brands and models, various versions of the venerable Craftsman 113.xxxx table saw could be had for anywhere from $75 to $200 depending on age, general condition and of course; seller's situation. Let me go ahead and explain my plan here. These are the next level up in table saws. The main feature that separates them from ones like mine is the cast iron top. These lend stability and tend to be very hard wearing, so they last forever. There's virtually no difference between a 60's version from an 80's version. Of course, there are other table saws out there of this style, but these are legendary. 

...... then there were these. The Delta 36-725, "10" Contractor's Saw" selling at your local Lowe's for $599. I kept finding reasons to go by there and then swing by hardware and stare at it.... trying hard to dream up scenarios where I could come up with the $300 difference between what I had and what I needed to buy it. It was like something out of the movie "Christmas Story"! And just when I had resigned myself to refurbishing an old Craftsman, it came up in conversation with my buddy the science teacher, that he had one of these and it was just a magical as I had envisioned...... drat.....double drat!!! And throw in a dang-nabbit for good measure! To make it worse; various needs arose around that time and I spent about $140 of what I had for a number of unexpected eventualities (which I expected to get back). Let's all say DRAT again! Oh, it actually gets worse, so bear with me on this....!

In the meantime; I found a CL ad for a Rigid TS3650 for $325 in Dallas. A similar saw to the aforementioned Delta, but had an inferior fence, plus it was older. I managed to talk the guy down to $300, however, he had very tight time restrictions and I was going to be out of town that Saturday for an academic competition. So I arranged to get it from him between 2:30 and 3:30 that Sunday, not knowing that my son's swim meet wasn't just Saturday....... it was going to be that Sunday as well from 1:30 to 3:30. Yup.... no saw. The guy wouldn't budge on a meet time. It was just as well, since I was going to have to ask my wife for a loan from our actual bank account anyway to make up the difference.

Then, magic happened.... 

..... or more specifically, ThinkPad magic. After having my son's old ThinkPad X220 on Craigslist for several weeks without much interest, a buyer appeared out of nowhere and wanted to buy it rather quickly...... for the $165 asking price. Which as it turns out came to $325 total of cash in hand. But wait: there's more magic. A week or so before that, I had found one of these Delta Table saws list for $500 literally "in my backyard", or in Poetry, Texas which is a few miles up the road. Then, about the middle of the week before Thanksgiving, the guy dropped the price to the magical $325. So, I texted and found that he did indeed have that saw still and yes, he was selling at $325, AND yes he would be happy to meet me at my house with the saw since I was leaving town that day to go to Eastern Oklahoma! Oh yeah; and all this was happening while the other guy who wanted the ThinkPad was driving down from about an hour away to buy it.... Whew! 

What about the "Vinegar" part? The saw came looking about like this. It had gotten rained on which you can imagine wasn't great for cast iron. Plus, it was missing some bolts for the fence rails. After a trip to Ace Hardware for bolts and Google/Youtube for info, I bought some 3m Green pads and went to work on it with, first some WD40, then the vinegar. Apparently, vinegar reacts with rust and gets turned into this kind of slurry that can then be scrubbed loose and wiped away. After that an application of old fashion Johnson paste wax to combat the moist air of East Texas, and it looks pretty much like the ad picture above! Sure, it's scratched up a bit, but most importantly, it cost me the $325 that I had and that's a good thing.

House (and other) Stuff

If you've been wondering on the sporadic nature of my posts lately, here's the reason.... in the flesh/brick.....wood. Whatever! What it comes down to is that the house is still a big deal in my life. When you move into a much bigger house, it isn't just a bed of roses..... there are a number of thorns in there as well. Without concentrating on the negative; let me give you an idea what-all has been eating up a lot of my time.

Yep.... that's grass.... as in we didn't have much of it in the back due to the trees that we wanted (and got). So we borrowed a tiller and.... tilled up the yard back there, along with several sprinkler heads. We planted some shade tolerant fescue, replaced sprinkler heads (4, 3 of which were my fault). Plus there was the little aside of digging up 15 (!!!) hedges. My father-in-law had already cut the limbs off, but I got to dig out the rest with a pick-axe..... Hi Ho!!!

I also got to put in some new (aka working) solar path lights. We also did about 5 hours of yard weeding while trying to get rid of the old appliances, lawn mowers and other random non-working items that the previous owners left us during the neighborhood garage sale..... and NO, we did NOT sell the garage. Did I mention that we spent "Labor Day" ripping out the downstairs carpet? It was a lovely time.

On Saturday afternoon, I drove up to IKEA in Frisco and bought some of the "Lack" floating shelves for my son's room, then spent the evening and some of the next day painting and installing a closet system while he was out of town on a camping trip with the Scouts.

Sunday afternoon was mostly taken up with planning a backyard shed for the lawn equipment and picking up a set of unfinished cabinets that will occupy the back wall of the upstairs game/media room. The shed will allow me to get the lawn equipment out of the garage to I can finish up in there since we tend to be the odd folks that expect to park our cars inside. The cabinets (and the book cases that go on top of them) will allow us to finish getting everything else out of the boxes which currently reside in the dining room. Of course, getting the shed done will allow me to set up my tools in the garage to I can finish the "unfinished" cabinets. I don't know why, but my wife seems to take a dim view of my using my power tools to sand wood in the house. There are a few other things in the works as well, including.....

We have one of these Hot Tube/Gazebos out in the back yard which came with the house. We're not hot tube people. We don't know if it works. We don't want to fix it. It won't fit through the gate. I'm in the process of getting a friend to take it off our hands without ripping down our fence!

There is a pile of bathroom lighting fixtures next to the pile of sink fixtures that await installation. Call us obsessive, but we'd prefer to not have the Addams Family style pieces that came with the house. I think, both Home Depot AND Lowes (maybe IKEA too) will have us on their Christmas Card list this year.

Oh, by the way..... yesterday..... Columbus Day was the "Fair Day" for our school district, besides it being the hottest day of the month..... we did our once every 5th year trip to the State Fair of Texas. It was miserable. So miserable, the kids wanted to go home by 2pm! So yeah, we've had our hands full.