I’m starting to downsize again. I’m gonna move my family server over to new hardware, which has higher data capacity which means I go from 8 hard drives to 3. It’ll also be on more powerful, but more energy efficient hardware which is always a plus. It takes less time and power to do the same tasks my current server is doing which’ll be the main impact from this endeavor.

In another attempt to downsize, I have a gig coming up this Friday and was looking for a couple high-quality receivers. I have one already, but it’s not necessarily high-quality for audio with the speakers I wanna throw at it. I was talking to my dad and somehow came up with an idea for how I can setup my computer speakers as ZONE2 on the receiver I bought early this year. It’s a do-all solution which also has a function that allows you to turn off the receiver and play audio to another location or zone while also retaining the ability to control the volume, effects, and source independently of the main system. Pretty freakin’ awesome huh?

Now my computer speakers are setup as ZONE2 and my theater system still works and can play a movie off of my computer at the same time as I’m playing a game or something. It’s pretty darn cool how diverse this is. I’ve been able to put another use to the 25 year old receiver I was using and also get rid of the equalizer. Downsizing is fun! Even if my setup doesn’t look as cool as it used to, at least I’m using less power and getting better quality audio.

On a side note, my monitor’s external power supply started melting in my hands. I had a spare on hand and am waiting for a replacement. The thing was so hot I got kinda burned. The power cable was so warm that even a few minutes after the unit had been powered off and unplugged the thing was still warm.

– Kevin out

I finally took some new pictures of my workspace as it is today. Been almost a year now since the last time I did this. Not that much changed visually, but I did close the side of my computer, refoam the subwoofers, rewire a bunch of stuff, and clean up a bit. I got a few new electronic devices and nothing much else. Two of the pictures, 1727 and 1728, are there to show the difference of flash on and off.

Here are my first posted pictures of my audio/video equipment. I’ve been moving stuff around for so long and hiding things under my desk that no one really ever saw it until this year. I’ve got more hardware I’ve put into storage, but what’s there does everything I need right now. Most of these pictures should look familiar aside from the fact that the big tall wooden cabinets on the sides of the TV are gone now.

I just found out today I had my left and right speaker inputs switched. I probably didn’t noticed because I switched them on my speakers and in the line out from my computer so that essentially created a double negative, and I never noticed… maybe. I’m sure I’ve noticed before but had issues figuring out why and forgot to deal with it.

Well today I noticed one of my speakers wasn’t working and found the problem, a loose connection. Before finding out the source of the problem, I messed around w/ the left and right channels on my receiver as well as messing around w/ headphones to check as well. Since one channel wasn’t working, switching to receiver to the right channel only should’ve made it only output from the left channel, but the right channel was playing.

Luckily, this was all an easy fix. Since the issue was the analog output from my computer, switched that in my output box. This explains why the optical output to my other receiver didn’t experience this issue. Then I had to go to my receiver and switch which wire was going to which channel and now it works properly. Awesome.

– Kevin out

For those of you that have seen the keyboard on my Dell Inspiron Mini 9, you’d notice how poorly placed some keys are. For example, the quote key has moved to the left of the left arrow key. Now when I type in “I’m going to the store” including the quotes, I get new lines all over the place. Just to note, the F11 and F12 keys are mapped to Z and X respectively; a BIOS update fixed that little issue of missing keys.
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They call it a netbook and tout it as a device which lets you surf the web and type up papers and do simple things on-the-go. No, these are something completely different, and I’ll tell you why all of those words are lies. The thing should be called an appbook or aphonewithaverylargescreenbook because that’s seriously where I’m at right now with this thing.
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As it occasionally happens, since so much is running on Colissio, when some problem occurs, it hits me pretty hard. I’ll be without a main rig for a few days well, I have a backup rig, and now two laptops to keep me company. Thing is, my backup rig has turned into an “I don’t ever use you anymore” machine because I have my laptop to be friends with.

I’ve been all laptop, all day and will be for a few of them. My backup rig I should rename to backup gaming rig, of which I now have four, ha ha ha.
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I finally got Skype calling finally working throughout the entire house while still keeping the ability to make normal phone calls. It’s been four days of hard work, but my final plan is so darn configurable. While it’s not completely done, here’s my plan for when it is.
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Going to download the latest Weekly Address, I came across something rather peculiar. Yes, an e-mail-the-President system. Of course I wanted to try it out as it so closely resembled my own Contact Page.

I’ll write back if/when I get a response, but I wanted to contribute to this country as a born and raised American citizen so I am doing my part to empower myself using the resources I have been allotted. Since I just watched the 2006 movie “Who Killed the Electric Car“, part of a trio of movies I purchased last week for this undying need to educate myself, I asked a very valiant question about automobiles and the automotive companies. I wanted to make sure that the Obama administration would not fall pray to the car companies. They hold no real power here, the government does. As far as I know, President Obama does not own oil wells and thus, would not fear the advent of electric cars in the market.
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Because of Robo’s review and the talk I had with him about it, I would up getting my own GFXChilla. I put it on the upper graphics card which had only the ASUS Radeon HD4850 TOP card w/ the Glacier cooler on it. I removed that cooling unit and put it on the passively-cooled ATi Radeon HD3870 I had in Soyver.
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Lately, I’ve been really on the hardware side of things and have been reading old ATi whitepapers on their technology. I’m wondering if there’s a need for most of it in today’s world and how it would be possible to find out if any of these old technologies have new names or are native to DirectX. I know the old 3Dc was opened to the public which was something ATi wanted to do from the offset and that Stream is gonna be implemented this month, but what about tech like TruForm?
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Part 1

This is the evolution of my PC setup since I’d moved into this house in August 2002 not counting when I lived in the dorms.

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I forgot to write it here, but I now have eight gigs of RAM. Whereas it was only a year ago I had only one gig. I can’t believe how long I survived. I should’ve upgraded to Vista 64 sooner and now that I have, it’ll be a pain going back to XP every time I have to set it up for someone.

I’m even considering moving Soyver and Lollipop over as well either when the OS becomes bogged down or when I get that other 2GB of memory since I’m gonna figure out if I’m gonna just upgrade Soyver to 4GB and keep Lollipop at 2GB or have it be 3GB and 3GB for each. I’m all for equality, but it’s rare I ever use Lollipop, even then, I dunno if that’ll compromise my memory bandwidth if I have two 1GB sticks and a 512MB pair in each. Stupid Intel and their memory controller not being integrated on the CPU like AMD.

Now I can’t listen using anything else that I own those speakers. I think I need to buy another pair for the theater system. This is bogus… I was showing Nick the speakers last night and just… I couldn’t bear to hear the old ones anymore. So that’s a total load of crap.

And now Nick and Mark have each heard them. Mark truly heard them for their goodness. Nick wasn’t around too long to really hear a difference, but Mark and I could. It doesn’t just depend on the speakers, but the song too.

I can’t wait till dad helps me put the foam back on the subs. That’ll totally fix up everything! I mean, there’s bass, that’s there, but it’s not the kinda bass I want. I need that really deep bass that I could that big ol’ sub can put out. I really wanna get that 12″ Dalton sub too . That think could break windows in a small enough room! And it’s accurate to boot.

Well after doing a comparison of headsets, I have another predicament. The convenience of using the headphones that came w/ it shows that my old ones, while far more uncomfortable, are a heck of a lot better sounding with good bass. The other ones are really clear in the treble and don’t cancel out external noise as much which is great if I’m in my car and talking to someone on one headphone, but I dunno. It just doesn’t make for as good of sound, but great for talking to someone in a quick conversation.
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Ok, I’m sold. I don’t care if I’m at work, I need to write this up. I am using my Diamond today after playing around w/ it all weekend. I didn’t bring the headphones because I didn’t think I’d need them. Stupid idea. But that brings me to writing this post.
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