Sorry for the downtime, folks. I’ve had some troubles with my hosting situation and I think I’ve got everything worked out now. I’d like to say “we now return you to your regularly scheduled program,” but I’ve sort of lost some entries (about a week’s worth, some of them I really wish I hadn’t lost since they were from my move) so instead I’d like to ask anyone out there who might have any entries past 4/9 cached, say in their RSS reader or something, to please send them in to me so I can re-post. I’ll still be trying to recover them (I do have backups, I just have to get the person who has them to email them), but in the meantime…

Well, I guess that does mean “we now return you to your regularly scheduled program.”

I’ll send out an email later today to the folks who wanted to be notified I’m back up. Of course, that’s not too many folks, but that’s okay. You know who you are.

I finally got my home theater all hooked up this weekend. Everything, that is, except for getting the speakers mounted. Right now they’re all hooked up (with the old speaker wire I already had) and sitting on top of the entertainment center so you can at least hear them.

I’ve talked to a few installers and all of them give me the impression that wiring an exterior wall, while technically possible, is troublesome at best. They have flexible drill bits that you can use to drill down into the wall; they have fiber fish kits to fish wires up through the holes, but in order to get the holes reasonably drilled they’re still going to have to open up my wall in a few places which means I’d end up with certain spots with wall texture that doesn’t quite match up (it’s really, really hard to match wall texture).

To that end, I’ve bought some speaker stands for the rear speakers, which alleviate the need for me to actually drill into the exterior wall. They’ll work just fine. We’ll end up having to put up some plants or end tables or something to make the room flow a little better, but we were going to have to do that anyway.

I went on a mission on Sunday to find a couple of cables (I needed two optical audio fiber cables 12 ft. long and a composite video/stereo audio cable 12 ft. long) to finish the hook-up job. Let me tell you - nothing is open on Easter. Ridiculous. What about all the people who don’t celebrate Easter? What are they supposed to do? (Yes, I celebrate Easter, but that’s not the point.) Thank goodness for The Good Guys and Fred Meyer. Between the two of those places, I found the cables I needed and got the system hooked up.

In other home-related news, I got my barbecue put back together (so we had some burgers) and I got my computer and cable modem running. Everything network in the house is wireless because there’s no cable outlet in the office and I didn’t want the cable company drilling through my vinyl siding. The wireless isn’t a bad thing, but if I ever need to configure my router or cable modem directly, I’ve gotta truck the computer up the stairs to hook it up directly to the devices. Small price to pay, I guess.

Dealt with my first pest problem yesterday. We had these ants in the driveway and the backyard that got a shot of Raid. So many ants it looked like moving dirt piles. When Raid says it kills on contact, they’re not lying. Those things stopped moving instantly. I should probably sweep that mess up when I get home. There are a ton of dead ant carcasses lying about. How untidy.

I have some pictures from the move, but I haven’t gotten them downloaded to a computer yet. I’ll see if I can find some time soon to do that. It’s been a busy couple of weeks lately and there’s still more to do. We’re only about half unpacked.

Saturday, for me, was pretty much a bust of sorts. I ended up getting a U-Haul truck and driving around town, picking up the last of our crap from the old apartment, turning in the keys, getting the stuff from our storage unit and closing that account, dropping stuff off for the garage sale my parents are having this weekend, picking stuff up, delivering stuff to my aunt’s house, and then returning home to unpack.

I acquired my parents’ lawn implements since they’ll be moving into a condo and won’t have yardwork. I also got a bunch of crap from the storage unit moved into the house, though I’m not sure what I’m doing with it all so, uh… I guess I’ll store it. Somewhere. I’ll have to put in some flooring of some nature in the “attic” storage area; right now, if you throw anything in there it just sits in the fluffy fiberglass insulation. Needless to say, there’s nothing in there.

That basically ended up meaning “two steps forward, one step back” in the unpacking process, and that sucks.

I’m still trying to get my address changed with everywhere I have accounts, but I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I’ll keep at it.

While we were getting the last of the stuff from the apartment, Jenn parked in our old parking spot under the carport. As we were leaving, she cut it a little too sharp and smashed up her driver’s side fender. It sounded like someone smashing a beer can on their head or something. I was in the U-Haul truck and looked up just in time to watch it happen. Not so good. She’s going to go get that fixed this week, I believe. Love the Chris and John’s.

At work they overhauled the cafeteria. It’s pretty cool; they’ve updated it to have a larger food selection, a more social-friendly atmosphere, and faster checkout. I like it and think the facilities guy, Dave, did a great job setting that up. I’m thinking of heading down there to eat in a minute. I was down there this morning to get a Frappuccino® but it turns out they won’t actually be blending them until this summer; until then, it’s still the bottled version which is not nearly as good.

I got this new Nokia 3560 phone. It’s pretty cool and I want to make some new ring tones for it - the polyphonic kind. Anyone know how to do that? I want to make my own, not pay for any downloads or anything.

The cable guy (the same guy who installed it, Scotty) showed up this morning around 9:15a and swapped out my cable box. He didn’t hear the crackle in the audio (Jenn did, though, as did I) but the swapping of the cable box fixed it.

Apparently Comcast distributes calls among the 60 or so installers in the area such that you aren’t supposed to get the same installer twice in a row (just in case you had a problem with the installer last time he/she was there). So it’s odd that I got Scotty again, but I’m glad I did because he’s a really cool guy. Like someone you could hang out and shoot pool with.

I asked him about how to wire speakers up into an exterior wall and he laughed. Apparently that’s nigh unto impossible, so I will probably be investing in some speaker stands in the reasonably near future so I can get that hooked up.

I unpacked a bunch of stuff this morning, but I think I’m getting stressed out. I’m not sure it’s over any particular thing, just generally stressed. I started feeling lightheaded and seeing spots, so I sat down for a bit. I’ve had that before and when I went to the doctor he said it was sort of like a stress-related anxiety attack. I think it’s probably the move and the unpacking and my job all rolled up into one big stress case.

At least the cable’s fixed.

I spend a lot of my spare time (what little there is) watching movies, playing video games, or watching TV. I love my home theater with a love akin to family, and when there are quality issues it eats away at my soul like a cancer, slowly devouring my ability to concentrate or enjoy myself until the issue is rectified. I am in a constant search for improvement, and will not rest until perfection is reached.

We got our digital cable installed at the new house on Tuesday. We didn’t get a chance to really watch any of it because, well, we were unpacking.

We watched a little TV last night, and things were okay, but I’ve moved the cable box into my entertainment center, and ever since then I’ve had a minor crackle in the audio of certain channels. It doesn’t happen on every channel, and it doesn’t happen in on-demand programming. I can’t really find a pattern for it, but I know it bugs me.

I tried everything. I unplugged and plugged in all the cables. I re-wired everything so the power, the coax, and the component video/audio cables weren’t close (just in case there was interference). Still the crackle.

I called Comcast this morning and they told me to lower the volume on the cable box and raise the volume on the TV - apparently the volume on the cable box being too high is a problem. I hung up with them and tried that, but the volume is locked at a set position on the cable box.

I called them back and they told me how to unlock the volume on the cable box. I messed around with that for a while, but no combination of TV and cable box volumes fixed the crackle.

I called them back again and they said we’d have to schedule an appointment but their system was down so I’d have to call back.

I called them back just now and I have an appointment for 8:00a - 10:00a tomorrow morning. I’ll be charged $18 if they decide it’s my equipment, but I’m sure it’s not, so I’m not worried. I anticipate possible causes are: My TV is on the fritz, which I really hope is not the case (I should test that tonight), but it couldn’t be because the crackle isn’t on every channel… right?; there’s a problem with one of the cables between the wall and the cable box; there’s a problem with one of the cables inside the wall of the house (which I really hope is not the case, because I don’t want them drilling my vinyl siding); there’s a problem with the cable box itself and moving the box jogged it somehow and now it’s hosed; there’s a problem with the cable outside (they did have to pull it like four blocks to get to our house; maybe they need a signal repeater or something).

So. Cable time. Again.

I just got an email from Jenn regarding our phone. Bah.

We were supposed to get Qwest to set up our phone on Monday - same number, just new location. End of Monday, no phone. Called them on Tuesday and they had the wrong address so we corrected that and they said they’d have it by end of the day. End of Tuesday, no phone. Called them Wednesday evening (had to go back to work, right?) and found that we’re outside the Qwest service area and we need to call Verizon.

Sigh.

Jenn just called Verizon and we should have service by the end of today, but we have a new phone number. Argh. Guess we’ll have to have the old one forwarded. How lame is that?

I wish stuff with this new place would go smoothly, but I guess the house purchase itself was smooth so I must have used up all of my karma on that.