old mac new life.

So an idea from a post on the totally über-Apple-centric tech blog Unplggd inspired granting an extended life to Julian's now old eMac that Santa gave him when he was six and that he used diligently and dare I say quite expertly - maxing out it's capabilities with Photoshop and GarageBand and thereby earning himself a much peppier and newer iMac. I've bothered myself setting it up (doing a clean install of 10.4.11 to get rid of all Julian's old stuff etc.) and getting an Airport card (didn't do my homework first to discover it is only 401b - not g - so fairly useless but I was only out fifteen bucks) followed by USB bluetooth and 401b/g wi-fi adaptors. And putting to good use the first pair of Apple bluetooth mouse and keyboard since I splurged and upgraded to the newer versions for the Mini setup in the living room -

I've bothered myself with all of that but I'm not convinced how long that 700MHz eMac will sit there (since it's a CRT the screen garbles when the microwave kicks in and it's kind of slow and clunky) - but if we get used to having a handy Mac in the kitchen to stream our iTunes, look up recipes, have our to-do and lists for the store and the constant NOAA forecast and widget games like Sudoku and the NASA image of the day I may have to hook us up with a newer 17" G5 iMac or built-in Mac Mini ... we'll see.

---

And just FYI the online article from Ready Made magazine talks about what it takes to make that Mac Mini built-in.

reality check.

I dunno. Maybe it was the fact North Tacoma got more snow than us and it still lingered in the streets and the lawns and rooftops. The sidewalks unshoveled a guy carrying his groceries on his way home trying not to slip. A view north to Puget Sound. To the west the Olympics. To the east Rainier and the Cascades. House after house after gorgeous Craftsman house. Look at that one over there with the steps leading up from the sidewalk and then more steps up to the front porch!

I used to live there afterall, and it still pulls me back with a definite force - in North Tacoma amongst the alleys and the streets lined with maples Union and North 30th I feel at home. I'd walk to UPS to find an empty practice room long before the Bechstein just to play a bit. Take Julian to the parks. Walks alone down from North 46th to the water along Ruston Way. Saturday afternoons and some weeknights spent toiling at the Mountaineers building learning the ropes of climbing (yeah, haha) and meeting a guy named Matthew with whom I've climbed more or less exclusively since those days ten years ago. The little toy store off Proctor and 26th. Yard sales every summer driving mad-crazy around streets I still remember better than I do around my own house now.

So anyway driving through this afternoon jealous of the snow and the alleys and the streets lined with maple trees and icy sidewalks I was reminded how I ultimately want to live there in a small bungalow with alley access and this Bechstein once Julian has graduated high school and gone off on his own and I no longer have any ties here. So the point I guess at least the point for writing this up here is that I think I need the reality check while I plan out what I am going to all do to this place. Spend a few grand to remodel a disgusting and dated (and well now gutted) bathroom ... okay. Gut the entire back of the house to put in my dream kitchen ... reality check. Maybe not. Maybe just get around to upgrading the appliances and put in a real stone floor maybe some new cabinet door fronts to match more the paneling above the fireplace. Tear down all the remaining lath and plaster in the living room and Julian's bedroom for sheetrock ... no way. The walls are fine the way they are. Install paneling all around the living room ... maybe. Probably not. Hang casing and a crown molding around all the ceilngs ... definitely. I already bought all the solid fir doors so that's OK and I really like the nice antique door knobs like I already got for the bathroom but I'll miss them when I move into another house in North Tacoma no doubt not perfect like I planned on making this place so will take more work.

A neverending process.

But it's good to be reminded. I never planned on living here forever off this pretty busy street. I've always wanted to eventually settle in North Tacoma. So just need to keep that in mind before plunking down thousands of dollars or investing hundreds of hours. I still want to do most of what I had and have in mind but there will no doubt be some things that get scrapped or downgraded from such ambitious plans now with this always in the back of my head.

And I wish it had snowed more here and it was still sticking to sidewalks and rooftops.

fireplace part two.

Okay, so apparently like just about every project I've ever done somewhere along the way I got a groove and figured out what I was doing cos it only took about an hour today to finish up building the other half of the paneling - go figure -

Now I just have to caulk and spackle the staples, prime a couple more things (uhh, those two vertical slats that aren't primed are because I'm retarded and I routed the side that was primed - oops) and then paint it and it'll be done. Oh, and paint the bricks which shouldn't be bad. Then rip out the ceramic tiles that make up the hearth now and put in some slate ones.

Oh, and I found a photo of the original beadboard molding pre-me tearing it off -

I have to say I like mine better. And even back then I had gotten a bunch of slate tiles to see how they'd work (they're in the photo lying on top of the ceramic ones) so apparently I'm still going with that. I wonder if I still have those or did I return them ... ?

fireplace part one.

Let me just start off by admitting I said to myself at like one o'clock or something a couple Saturdays ago 'oh, I'll just knock this fireplace paneling out this afternoon.'

Uhh.

Yeah. No.

Two weeks later I am on day three. And ten hours later on this third day ... I finally finish, but only half-finished.

So it's somewhat embarrassing, but this is how the fireplace has looked since I ripped off the beadboard paneling about a month or two after moving in here four years ago -

So clearly I underestimated, well, how hard this project would be. I've already sworn way too much and I'm only half done. This is way harder than I ever imagined.

First thing to do was to build a frame on which to attach the paneling. Ugh. This is what was tough. Probably the hardest part - trying to attach 1x4 framing boards to an unsquare, lopsided old lath and plaster-covered fireplace. Ugh again. But after two days of nailing (and, yeah, swearing) I finally finished it -

Let me just say this whole thing has been all about drywall shims. Lots and lots of drywall shims. To make everything square, that is. Or at least try. Behind the framing. And again behind the final panels and slats to make sure everything was tight and square.

The other thing I of course had to do was prime all the wood. And do a lot of routing. A lot of routing -

I set the 5/8" bit to the depth (or, rather, height) of the thin plywood I picked up at Lowe's for something like $10 for a 4x8 sheet. The pieces of plywood would then slide into the router grooves when I started putting it together.

And lots of mitering. On the table saw and the chop saw. I wanted mitered corners, afterall. What I still love and appreciate about that Dewalt saw is how precise it is - the key being a tip I read a while back about miters: make sure to flip the saw 90º when mitering a corner instead of just flipping the wood around. That way if the saw's 45º is actually, say, 43.9º - if you just flip the wood the two cuts won't add up to 90º. But if you flip the whole saw, the other cut would be 46.1º and the two will fit perfectly together. So making sure to do that, the first corner looked beautiful -

and I was off to a good start. No carpenter am I, though.

I had to miter the long corner vertical slats on the table saw, but they came out looking pretty good, too (yes, surprisingly). Then - with lots (and lots) of meticulous cutting (i.e. back and forth to the saw I carried out to the front porch to shave off a sliver of an end to get each slat to squeeze into place and ensure a nice, square, tight fit) I started putting the first side together -

To get the vertical slat to contour to the wall, I used a stack of shims that molded to fit the slant of the wall and traced the outline on the wood, then free-cut it with a circ saw. The thin plywood then just slid in the router grooves -

Note the different depths of wood - that was key for me - using 1x stuff for the horizontal top and bottom pieces, then 1/2x stuff for the vertical slats and then the plywood paneling for a total of three different depths that add contrast when the light hits them. And so a cross-section looked like this -

And then ... the first side was finished -

It was sort of like doing a puzzle - the way I was building it meant each piece had to go in a certain way. Or rather, a certain order. Vertical slat. Then slide in the plywood. Then horizontal slot and slide in another piece of plywood. I made a mistake of putting in a second vertical slat before sliding in the plywood so had to take it off. Which wasn't easy - I was using my stapler and let me just say - those staples hold really, really (no - really) well.

Obligatory in-action shot of course -

And then ... and then two panels were done on the front -

Of course that beam isn't centered, either (hey, it's an old house). So I opted to make it look centered - uhh, I mean making each panel width unequal in order to place the middle vertical slat in the middle of the beam, which isn't in the middle of the fireplace (get it?). But that's where I had to stop. After ten hours. And probably another twelve at least between all the routing and priming and trying to install a square frame for nailing. Sheesh. An afternoon haha.

I'm not making any bets on how long it will be to finish it. At least a couple more days. Have to finish the other half of the paneling and then caulk the edges and paint it all. Then paint the fireplace bricks. Then install a slate hearth. We'll see. But despite it being really tough, it's (slowly, very slowly) turning out.

it's all a question of balance.

Or so David Helfgott's piano professor told him when describing his playing of Rachmaninov's piano concerto in D minor.

In this case, though ... uhh, white balance. As in - for matching paint swatches.

All because of the shot I (*ahem*) Photoshopped the wall colour in I decided I would paint just that corner of my living room. Afterall - I was going to be looking at it while I worked so I might as well not stare at a boring white wall waiting for me to actually remodel this living room for real.

So I trucked up to Lowe's to blow twenty bucks on a gallon of Olympic flat paint matched to the beautiful Benjamin Moore HC-85 fairview taupe (the colour I've had picked out for the living room for at least three years). Got home and started cutting in around the window by the Bechstein.

Hmm ... it was too red. That's weird - I'd never had a problem with Lowe's matching Olympic paints to my Benjamin Moore Historic Collection swatches. But the gal that mixed the paint hadn't exuded confidence - hers or mine. And I hate to be 'that guy' but in this case (like I did for the stain I had mixed for the cedar shakes) - I opted to take it back and ask for it to be remixed.

Uh-oh - same girl. Yikes.

Well, this time I watched her go through the screens and when she got to white balance I noticed she picked 'incandescent.' I also noticed there were other options - including 'daylight.' Now the first can was too red compared to the swatch - i.e. too warm. So I asked - why incandescent when all the lights over the swatch areas were daylight-balanced (well, supposed to be was more like it - some were closer than others and every booth had a slightly different temperature but this was Lowe's afterall)? She told me that's what they had told her to do. I sorta wondered if she even knew the difference but quick tossed that aside to settling the task at hand.

OK - could you please go with daylight? I don't really care if the paint matches some incandescent colour temperature - I want it to match in the, you know, daylight. So she did. And it matched the swatch perfectly. And now I know what to ask for the next time I have Lowe's mix up paint for me.

So anyway - with nothing better to do then on a Saturday I figured why not paint that corner?

And, uhh - as long as I was at it - in my typical fashion then why not just paint, well, the rest of the walls?

And Julian - so cute and naîve asked 'so why don't you tape around all the trim?' To which I modestly replied 'taping is for amateurs' (haha).

So then ... something like five or six hours later (with the help of Katie - who meticulously painted the five window stops and a couple of patches on the baseboards where there once were lame baseboard heaters I had ripped out long ago) my living room was painted (granted, these pics were taken the following day, i.e. today and I finished with barely an ounce of paint left to spare) -

Now - since I've gone and started - I have to finish ... the fireplace. I'll re-paint the brick next, then quick throw together some paneling above that I sketched out this afternoon (using a router - I need to remember more often that I have that handy power tool - like, for mortising the doors and to fix the trim in the guest bath) -

And once that's finished - it'd be nice to get the bedroom doors swapped out with the beautiful solid fir 5-panel shakers I have waiting in the wings. Oh - and the front door.

Just like everything - some vast project started cos of one little thing ... good times.

jack and jill.

OK. So today it is official. Well, sort of.

Official in that I officially cleared out this bathroom to prepare it for a complete facelift. I have been planning this for three years. Or something like that. I remember tearing down the wallpaper almost right after moving in cos, well, I have a problem with any and all wallpaper. Then I ripped out the ugly tile floor. And part of the crap tub surround that whoever had built.

Unfortunately I do not have a photo of the hideous mirrors gracing the wall. Or the just-as-hideous wallpaper (although you can see a small scrap of it in the pic below - it's special). But I have this shot taken after I finished ripping out the floor -

So after finishing up the structured wiring - uhh, for now - I officially cleared the rest of the crap out of here today. And this then - this is the official 'before' shot -

I'll shoot this same angle as the remodel progresses to show the change.

And now it is ready for final demolition which will include completely gutting the remaining stuff, tearing out the three ugly glass windows next to the tub and the gross window above that. I will use the siding I ripped off from above the porch this past summer before I hung cedar shakes to fill the gap where the three ugly glass things are and order a new custom wood-clad awning privacy window about the same size as the one that's there above them now.

Last weekend we toted it up to Seattle after work like we do most Fridays for a night on the town - uhh, starting with Rejuvenation then onto Tiles 4 Less (well, not really, since I priced subway tile at Lowe's for roughly a fourth of the price per square foot than Tiles 4 Less was advertising ... ) where I officially bought the first stuff for the remodel -

Door knobs for the 5-panel solid fir shaker slabs I picked up so cheap years ago in anticipation and that I will be painting a beautiful, brilliant white. They are oil-rubbed bronze on each bedroom side and polished chrome like the rest of what all the hardware and fixtures will be on the bath side. Also some granite tile for the jetted tub deck I will be custom building. Now I just need to figure out how I'll work out the edge to meet the paneling I am going to build.

So - the official list - since this is such an official post -

- new Kohler Archer jetted tub, pedestal sink and toilet (same as other bath - minus the jetted tub since for that one I only installed a shower stall)

- new Kohler Memoirs Stately sink faucet, tub deckmount faucet and shower faucet (same as other bath)

- 1" hexagonal tile floor with heating element (on thermostat) - haven't tracked down the tile yet but NTS - check this place out in Kent

- Rejuvenation Arts & Crafts collection lighting - including two wall sconces and a wall fixture for above the medicine cabinet (all on dimmers of course)

- subway tile on all walls

- tiled shower surround

- new wood-clad awning window in shower stall

- lighting in shower (also on a dimmer)

- walls painted Benjamin Moore Historic Collection HC-105 Rockport Grey (like this)

- framing walls to fit the jetted tub with custom paneling

- trim around shower stall, window and doors all matching (casing/fillet/crown pediment) - to fit the rest of the house

- crown molding like this that will eventually be in every room

- all new Baldwin Stonegate series fixtures (towel bars, glass shelves etc. uhh - again - like I used in the other bath - what can I say, I like things to be consistent ... )

- miscellaneous hardware probably from Rejuvenation, new ceiling fan, nice towels and rugs from Restoration Hardware or something like that, etc. etc.

I think that's most of it. I think. I've got a list somewhere. And sketches. Lots of sketches for electrical, plumbing, the trim etc.

Time to get to work.

First up - after demo-ing the rest of the stuff and tearing out the remaining lath and plaster (uhh, including the ceiling - yea!) ... rough-in the plumbing (going to use PEX again like I did in the other bath of course - that stuff rocks) and electrical before buying the tub and the window (with my tax refund - excellent) and then starting the framing.

--- and note - we watched 'Chaos Theory' last night which was pretty cool and I absolutely loved some of the features of their house - the paneling, doors, paint colours ...

nothing to do with remodeling #1.

I know this has nothing to do with remodeling but neither does coffee and I have blogged about that or mentioned it here or whatever cos I like coffee.

I also like pizza. And I have been perfecting my pizza recipe since I moved away from MO out to Phoenix to go to school (where I just used Pillsbury pizza crust - yikes - but still homemade). So when Kari sent me a Ziplock bag of crust mix for my breadmaker for Christmas I made it cos, well, it meant I didn't have to mix up the ingredients myself. That and Kari is the breadmaker queen so I figured it might be good.

Turned out to be the most amazing crust. Ever. Crispy on the outside. Soft and chewy on the inside. So I asked for the recipe (turns out it's Jeff's wife's, so props La) -

3/4 c. water

1 T sugar

2 1/4 c. flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. yeast

Put all the ingredients in the breadmaker in that order. While mine (I bought it refurbed online for half the price) starts to mix, I open the top and hand mix the ingredients to help the little paddle thing along and to keep it from ending up being only partially mixed at the end. Crank the oven to 425º. I roll out the dough (makes enough for a large pizza) thin in the middle but pile it up along the edges for a delicious crust. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious I'll sprinkle on some cornmeal around the crust. Bake it by itself for ten minutes (or until the thin bottom starts to brown), then pile on the toppings. Bake a second time for thirteen minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.

And wallah!

Julian and I joke about opening a pizza restaurant in our house. I don't know if it's that good, but we love it. He's 'Pepperoni Boy' cos he's a perfectionist when it comes to putting them on. It's our little Thursday tradition. Good times.

structured wiring part two.

It's raining now I can hear outside the window. Sitting on the couch next to it. Wasn't raining a couple hours ago when I ran out to the garage. Thankfully didn't really rain all weekend. It was nice. A light light sprinkle maybe wandering around downtown Seattle Friday night but we didn't have rain shells and it was fine.

So today I set out to finish the first stage of this structured wiring business. It was supposed to be a relatively simple ordeal - last night I had spent an hour or so down in the basement closet on a ladder crimping Cat 5e connectors to the ends of all the cables I had run -

To run the cables into the house I had used a piece of scrap PVC plumbing, drilled through the drywall from in the crawlspace and caulked around the PVC to hold it in there.

But then the first thing I discovered this afternoon when I set out to start was that all the patch cables I already own were wired the Type B way while I had arbitrarily decided to wire all of my stuff (ports and crimped connectors both) Type A. Good times. Should have checked beforehand. Duh.

Oh well, so that meant I had to rewire all the ports. Then cut off all the connectors I fastened last night and redo. Not the worst thing I guess. So this is what the one in Julian's bedroom looked like (labeling and all) after rewiring and with that decora quickport plate -

The two blanks will likely be RG6 cable in/out.

But once all that was done, I tested - made some more patch cables with my crimping tool, double-checked the ports and the connectors, etc. etc. etc. Had to run two surge protectors cos of the stupid transformer plugs for the two switches, router/switch and modem (cos I also needed to plug in the backup drive and Mac servers) and then I started plugging everything in -

I had drilled a 2" hole in the shelf to stuff all the cables through and then back up - as opposed to cutting them off to length (I had guessed how much I needed when doing the cabling for each run - better to have too much than get all the way across the house and realize I didn't have enough). That way I have extra cable if I ever need it (and with, well, all my shirts back on that side of the closet that wiring mess is pretty well hidden anyway) -

In order to accommodate two Mac servers and a monitor (which is probably something like a hundred pounds), I had to get creative ... the height between the shelf and the ceiling was perfect in that it was just enough room to fit a G4 tower, but that meant I couldn't reinforce it with some 2x4s underneath (cos that would raise it an inch and a half and then the G4s wouldn't fit). So I drilled and found some studs (I could see the crap drywall tape and nails giving away where they were) to secure some shelf brackets underneath and help support the weight of all the computer gear -

Then it was just a matter of heaving them up there and connecting the firewire backup drive to the main server (Titanium) and both it and the backup/auxiliary server Radon (my former Logic workhorse) to the switch -

(where I spent cramped up most of the day ... )

The monitor is up there for now, but likely won't stay. I can control both the Macs via a VNC client on my laptop so they don't need a keyboard/mouse or monitor. So now everything is humming down there instead of, well, in my bathroom. It sounds much more natural to hear the sound of hard drives spinning away in a closet.

And, uhh, someday I'll have my actual bedroom closet back and - well - won't have to use this one anymore. I'm just happy not to have to step on/over the cable that ran from the bathroom out to the living room corner that I had gotten used to doing for the last year or two. Good times.

-----

So the really frustrating part of the day came when I went to connect the Mac Mini and it - uhh, didn't work. It said the ethernet cable wasn't connected. But. It. Was.

So I tested the same port/cable configuration on Julian's iMac. Worked fine. And the LG ethernet TV. Ditto. So WTF.

As in - WTF!!!???

Ooh boy.

Oh, and the new G5 ... same thing. No ethernet cable even though it was connected. And with the whole Type A/Type B fiasco it took me longer than it should have to realize maybe it was an OS deal instead of maybe me mis-wiring one of the ports or connectors. But finally I Googled around and discovered pretty quick people on the Apple forums complaining about the same problem - an unconnected ethernet cabled despite it being plugged in.

And after perusing some of the responses it looked like the resolution was to manually dumb down the port from gigabit (1000BaseT) to 100BaseT. But why? I have gigabit switches ... and all my Macs were set up on gigabit before. The only thing that I changed now is instead of the wires running directly from each switch to each Mac - now they run from the switch to a port, and then a patch cable from the port to each machine.

I have no idea ... I'm going to be Googling some more to find out why cos it sorta irks me. I want gigabit. But oh well. Reminded myself even though the day was sorta crappy cos of that, a crappy day for me would be a stellar one for far too many people ... always try to keep some perspective.

And I know I've said I hate plumbing but - I think I hate networking even more. Or at least as much. And when I said how I hated plumbing I mentioned how I never use that word. Except for plumbing. And now for networking.

And by no means is this finished - I plan on installing an actual panel for this stuff, and like I said I still have more Cat 5 and RG6 and possibly speaker wires to run ... but the stuff is out of the bathroom now so I can get to gutting the rest of it. That'll be fun! No, really.

structured wiring part one.

So I have been meaning to get around to starting this little networking project for some time now. Last spring I think it was I bought a 500' spool of RG6 and a thousand foot box o' Cat 5E cable (and subsequently found probably another 300' or so at a garage sale the following week which I picked up for something like five bucks). And the crimpers and everything etc. etc. But then it sat and collected dust cos, well, there were bigger fish to fry.

But with the remodel of our Jack and Jill bath looming, I need to get the - uhh, networking sh*t out of the, uhh - bathroom. So, our current networking solution -

G4 server with Apple LCD/keyboard/etc., OWC backup firewire drive, cable modem/router and switches. Oh, and our printer. Yeah, that's right - sitting in the bathtub (that's going to be gone, along with the windows and in its place a beautiful Kohler jetted tub with granite deck and paneling and ... ). And a scanner and other various things lying about in this room that I half-gutted like three years ago and then let it sit. It's slightly embarrassing. But it's going to hopefully be beautiful but that's for another post. Don't get me started.

Anywhoo, I needed to get the computer crap out of there. Which meant crawling under the house, likely a big reason why I had not been all that motivated - up until now with being forced to - to get the structured wiring underway. But after a long-ish day and most of it done, I can say it really wasn't all that bad. Thanks a ton to my little helper who saved me hours of headache cos I could sit under the house after drilling holes up through the sole plates of the walls feeding him cable after cable and he'd yank them up and label each one and then tape them to the wall -

Since my house sits pretty high it's quite spacious under there, and someone had the foresight to install a light fixture so I just sat in the dirt waiting for Julian to finish labeling each cable before feeding him another. I had to get creative with some, but nothing a handy fishtape could not solve. So after it started to get dark, I was pretty much wrapped having gotten cable from the living room and Julian's room (the two rooms needing to be cabled right away) and got the cable dropped (as in video cable for our internet connection) from my bedroom down through the basement ceiling (thanks fishtape!) over to the basement closet where I ran all the other networking cables today (where the electrical panel is) and where all that stuff now in the bathroom will live -

And then once all the cables were run from the various rooms (there's still another set of four Cat 5E runs to make in the front living room corner, a set of four from my bedroom, and some more cable and possible audio/video - speaker wire and such - runs to be made but that's for another day and now that I know it's not too terrible and I have access to everything I need it won't be bad), I got to work splicing the ports onto the ends of each cable (thanks Katie for immortalizing this moment haha) -

(and still planning on getting that Gator rack case for the audio/video equipment and moving it to a different location, then mounting the TV on the wall above where the white paneling will be ... )

I wrote out a schematic for all the runs and ports I am planning on (for now, the diagram will get more complicated as I add in the cable/audio/video stuff) and just went off that and the labels Julian and I had taped to each cable -

It was a simple matter. I ordered these Leviton decora quickport adaptors for electrical boxes where - instead of placing a single low-voltage wall box - I was adding the ports to where an outlet already existed. And I'm cutting out the old, single-gang box and replacing with a double-gang with the quickport adaptors. Easy peasy.

And yeah, I feel accomplished. Finally I can get a proper spot for our networking stuff - and I've got a big chunk of the groundwork laid for any further structured wiring I want to design (HDMI, an audio system in various rooms of the house, etc. etc.). I've overlooked voice for now, but the sweet thing about Cat 5E cable is it can do just about anything - from up to four voice lines to high-definition video - it's über-flexible and expansive. So once the cables are there, it's just a matter of figuring out what do with them. And they can be changed out on either end really easily.

OK - and yeah, like I said - this is just making way to completely gutting this bathroom that has been hideous and more or less unusable for years and start on the remodel of it which I have been planning for something like three years or so. Good times.

---

Food for thought:

- existing G4 tower server storing all music/movies and backed-up with existing setup (external drive and SuperDuper! backup software)

- existing Mini connected to main home audio/video system in living room

- old G4/G5 tower or mini or whatever as sub-system for bedrooms - running iTunes of course (same iTunes library file from the G4 server used by all Macs in the house) and connected to my old Pioneer receiver (with A/B speaker configurability) plugged into an outlet with a simple programmable timer (like the kind people get to turn their lights on/off while they're on holiday) so it turns on/off when I want it - turn volume up as far as I'd want on the receiver and the Mac and leave it - that way I could control all the transport functions of the music/video in iTunes/DVD player/QT or whatever and the volume on the Mac using VNC and my laptop - I would never have to touch the receiver or worry about having an IR feed from each room back to it

- in-wall speakers (with possible in-wall sub?) in my bedroom and either Julian's bedroom or the kitchen - connected to the old Pioneer A/B speaker outs

Anyways, just thinking aloud ...

wishful thinking.

Cos it actually did snow once this winter and I quite like this photo of my house and well this is a blog about my house so I am going to post it here.

Maybe it will snow again before winter turns to spring, although it already feels like spring. Ugh.