Yumminess and Tech Babble

I really meant to do this Sunday afternoon but I was up at my parents’ place most of the day and they turned off the Internet access since they don’t live there anymore. They also turned off the satellite dish, so it really sucks to be me when I have laundry that has to be dried. Not to worry too much though, I’m buying a dryer with part of my bonus. Not the really nice one I want, just a basic one. So the bonus goes to 1) fix the car, 2) a dryer, 3) a Wii. That should leave me anywhere from eight hundred to a thousand dollars left that I’m going to let sit in my checking account for at least a month before I do something stupid with it. I want a new television, but the one I want is $998, and to get the full use of it I’d need a new HD TiVo box ($600) and to tie it all together a new receiver for my entertainment center ($1800) plus the assorted HDMI cables and a few other bits and pieces and you can see it’s just too much for this year. Next year’s bonus (if we get one, but we’ve got a good sales/profit plan so it’s likely) is all going to the entertainment center. I’ll need the upgrades by then.

Speaking of which, since my dad is in the pro-audio industry, he was able to find me some product information on optical audio switchers, so I can run my “legacy” stuff through an A/V switcher combined with the optcal audio switcher and only have one input tied up on the new receiver, which is good because Sony has completely removed the S-video inputs from their latest receiver, so I’m going to have to go with the component video for the PS/2, Wii, and DVD player. The VCR is unaffected since it only had composite video out anyway, and I’ll be replacing the TiVo Series 2 box with their newest HD box so I’ll have HDMI connectivity there. After I add the PS/3 that will leave me with two whole HD inputs left over, not to mention the audio only stuff like an XM receiver, my turntable, possibly a CD player and a tape deck. Cool!

Things with Nala are going very well. I think if I’d mentioned it sooner she’d have come up for the weekend. I have gone ahead and let her know she can come up next weekend and I’m good with it. Maybe we can try out the Jacuzzi tub up at my parents’ log home…

Or not, not gonna push, but I’m not saying “no” to much of anything at this point.

Critter is having problems with the home network, but as far as I can tell it isn’t a problem with the stuff I set up, it’s a problem on the provider side.

She talked to me some today about her engagement. She says they are planning the wedding for September. She also said some other things that sounded like she was asking for an opinion but I told her anything I said was “fruit of the poisonous tree”, so to speak. I’m not trying to screw things up but for the love of all that is good, right, and holy in the world don’t give me a chance to, I may do it without realizing it. The way something is phrased or the inflection of the voice, all subconscious things, could completely change the meaning of something. Don’t put me in that position. I’ll probably record that stuff in a private entry, or maybe just my copy that I keep on my hard drive. No sense in possibly breaching a confidence since there are people she works with that have read this in the past. Just because they haven’t stirred things up lately doesn’t mean they can’t.

Going to bed now. Nala and I talked until my ear piece died an then we talked until her phone died so I’ve been up a little later than I intended, but it was worth it.

Had some really good dreams last night and I expect a repeat performance tonight. Woohoo!