Weekend Wupdate

You ever have those weekends that end up being surprisingly productive?

With that piano sitting in my living room, space here is at a premium. Using Your Shape:FE carried a bit of risk with it. The left side was ok, with a space between the end of the couch and the recliner, but off to the right was the piano. It sat directly along the outer edge of the play space. Maybe even a little inside it. So kicking out to the right required shifting over to the left.

That problem has been solved.

There was a little built in desk that took up a good chunk of the living room space, considering the chair clearance and desk itself. I don't think it's ever been removed, since they first installed it. It uses those stupid oblong proprietary fasteners that can be removed with just the right size flat head screwdriver and some cramped muscles.

So with that out of the way, I shifted the piano over making a clear space off to the right. As small as that desk is, it's remarkable how much more open the living room seems with it gone. They replaced the carpet at some point in the long-ago past, but they were lazy and didn't move the desk. So there's a beautiful patch of green shag carpet peeking out from under the piano now.


You might be wondering what I've done for computer space. Well, I am probably overloading a circuit in this high-quality trailer of mine. I've wanted to test my 47" LCD for it's computer compatibility for a while now and have been pleasantly surprised. Even at full-screen, Netflix has decent quality and now I can watch Hulu, Youtube, and news sites. The TV is a Sharp and does a good job at boosting the signal from the PC.

Here's my new home office:

Right now I have an older 5.1 Sony receiver, BD player, Xbox 360, wireless router, subwoofer, PC, Kinect, and the LCD all plugged into the same surge protector. Nothing's popped yet, probably because I don't have everything turned on, but I will not be surprised if it does anyway.

See that new 'desk' I made? Back when I was a kid, my parents had one that we stashed under the couch. It was very handy. Great as a TV dinner tray or coloring desk. I made one out of a decent piece of finished plywood. For now it's just cut out and sanded down, but I'll have the girlies paint it someday.

I splurged on that wireless keyboard/mouse set. It works good, but I have a complaint for Logitech. I expected it to have a fairly short range. Somewhere between 5 & 10 feet. But the help contents say something about a potential range of 30 feet. My entire house is only 40 feet long. But it lied! The website says that max range is around 6 feet, which seemed more reasonable, and that's about how far it works, but still...they got my hopes up.

I don't mind. The chair can be far enough away and still allow reasonable distance from the TV. A little closer than they recommend, but only by a couple of feet.

Then on top of that was a broken valve on the fire sprinkler system at work, which hit around 6:30pm on Saturday, starting a series of events including 2 trips to work, 5 fire trucks, phone calls with 2 plumbers, a visit by the plumber on Sunday, and me doing some work on Sunday while I waited for him because it can't wait until Monday since it was supposed to freeze on Sunday night. At least it wasn't pouring water onto the shop floor like it did last time.

So did you do anything productive this weekend?