I haven’t spent much time on the new office since Wed when my uncle came over and electrified the new jacks.

I have been working on the family web site and upgrading allot of stuff on it. I got the new photo gallery installed and running as well as getting the calendar module installed and all the Birthdays listed. I am going to try and get the family tree module working and populated this week as well. I want to at least get the information in and printed out by the picnic so I can have people fill it in and help out.

Still working on the XP/Win2K server project at work.

Saw the folks this weekend for Rosa’s wedding. That went well much more low key then the first one. Saw some friends from out of town and realized how much I miss the old 70 Cleavland Lane crowd. Tried to get Martin to move back to the area his wife would do it in a heart beat.

More if I have time later.

While I was waiting for my wife and daughter to get out of the exam room I figured out the time line on the new office. This doesn’t include the trim getting done. That can be done after we are moved in.

• Get the spackling done by 6/26
• Get the electric done by 6/26
• Get the painting done by7/6
• Get the flooring in by 7/12

That should be a good schedule to keep. The hardest part to meet is the spackling but if I work on it every night this week it should done.

Well the wife and daughter are out. She has throat infection, Sinus infection and a double ear infection…..go Avery.

Took Friday off to hang rock in the office at home. It was a hot humid day. I didn’t blast my back out so that was good. I use 3/8 rock so it was pretty light. Sat I spent the afternoon at Engels doing computer and Internet stuff with him. Then spent most of Sunday doing seams and corners. I got the first coat done. Tonight I was going to do the second coat but the kid has a ear infection(the first one this year which is pretty good considering other years) So I will probably just hang out with her and play some games with her. At least she already got the perfect attendance award for the year.

Engel wrote and interesting rant about Macs go give it a read it makes senses and is pretty much the way I feel except the Linux part..

I feel the the Linux community was like that but is starting to move into the we can make it better for the average guy to get Linux box up and functional so he can have the free OS experience.

Gotta run maybe more later.

I finally got around to getting the stats for the new machines for my wife and I. I feel that all the machines on the house should have a base configuration. This way it’s easier to diagnose problems and to test equipment without having to load new drivers on the machine.

This is going to be my everyday/gaming machine.

• Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-Deluxe
• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ / 1.83 GHz
• Memory: 512MB 266MHz DDR PC2100 DIMM CL2.5
• Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
• Hard Drive: Maxtor – Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Hard drive – 80 GB – standard – 3.5″ – ATA-133 – 7200 rpm
• DVD Drive: Samsung SD 816B (SD-816BRPS) Internal DVD Drive
• Case: ENERMAX SERVER CASE, W/300 WATT PS

I figure I can build 2 of these machines for under $600 each. This is with out a monitor. I still don’t know if I want a CRT or an LCD. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas or opinions on the CRT vs. LCD monitors?

I am very envious at the moment. Engel came over for dinner on Sat and told me he had gotten his ATI All-In Wonder card for his homemade PVR. I was like cool. I had helped him do a little research on it but really didn’t look at it as something I wanted….until last night. I went over for our weekly D&D game night.

I got there early to look at a telco jack for him and to hang out before the game started. He mentioned to me that he got the card working except that when he played a DVD through it, it stuttered and jumped. It turned out he hadn’t set the secondary IDE controller to use DMA.

After we fixed that problem he turned on the TV tuner part….man that is what I want. Being an avid Dr. Who fan I use to tape the shows so I could have my own copies. But I got bored with it and stopped but this card is the answer. It downloads the schedules from ATI and you can set it up to record. Now I have to get one of these cards so I can start digitally record stuff and watch them at my leisure.

But of course before I can do that i have to finish the office so I can set up my main machines and the cat5 network up and running. I have my uncle on tap for Wed night to go get dry wall and I am thinking of taking Friday off to hang it and get it done and ready for painting in the next few days and then the floor.