Started off the day rather late, meaning around 2 in the afternoon. Then my brother came over and brought a bunch of his stuff, plus a dining room table and chairs for me. He stayed around and watched some football games, and I started ripping out the drywall in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen to drill down through the base of the wall. Turns out the hole saw I have slips on the pilot bit (poor design IMHO) so I'm gonna have to get another one before doing any real work there. I sat around a lot for a while since the AV stuff was occupied so I couldn't do much down there. Later the family came over after picking up my sister who was coming back from Urbana and they looked around a bit since they hadn't been over in a while (and my dad had just put together a desk like mine). They left after a while, but my brother stuck around to finish the games. Shortly before the last game finished I started mounting shelves in the rack, and when it finished we started disconnecting and moving equipment. It's almost all in now although missing one component I need to fix and I obviously need to reroute some/run new cable due to the bundle of cables coming in the front by the floor and a rather blatant code violation careful viewers may notice. Everything is up and running though and hopefully I'll get everything permanently set in a few days.

Started off the day by removing the rack from it's current mountings, bringing the wood inside and installing it (after making some final cuts with the circular saw), and remounting the rack. It fits better than it looked like it was going to, and seems very sturdy. Now it's just a question of whether I need to do any patching to the drywall before the trim can go in, or if it'll cover it all. Keep in mind that this was all just a rough cut by hand with a sawzall, but it's looking pretty close for the most part. I looked into the hole for conduit, but I'm gonna try a slightly different approach and by the time I was this far the plans for the evening were already in place so it was time to clean up. Got the place cleaned reasonably well and then helped brooke get her photo uploading working right. Soon after Dave came over and we finished the cleanup project and watched TV for a bit. There was a sorta interesting show on live tv bloopers, but not much really good. Around 8 Joe, brooke, Betsy, and Trav came over for a bit of a new year party. Betsy even drove all the way back from the middle of nowhere (aka Nebraska) to join us. We played Monopoly (Disney edition so it was interesting to try and keep track of stuff) and it basically ended up being guys vs girls, and they ended up beating us. We ended up watching Brad Pitt get hit by a van (from Meet Joe Black) on repeat for a while, and finally switched that to Animatrix. Shortly before midnight we switched over and watched the ball drop to start off 2004, while commenting how in the 10 minutes we watched I'm pretty sure there were more commercials than content. Quickly after that we switched back and watched the rest of Animatrix and then called it a night. All this was unfortunately interrupted a few times by the receiver shutting itself off, I think for temperature reasons. I haven't had issues before, but I guess it's a good thing I'm gonna be putting it in a rack with some forced airflow around it - it tends to get pretty hot. I'm tired now though, and have marked all my spam from the printmaster read (I had 226 new emails after an hour or so away from the computer - sorta unusual for a holiday) so I'm done.

Started off the day with a run to go get the wood for around my rack cut. That went pretty smooth without any real problems. Then I went to get stain for it, and ended up getting some stuff that's both the stain and the polyurethane in one so there aren't multiple steps. The only problem is it's very sticky and I started thinking the water based stuff might have been better. After the first coat and attempted cleanup, I ended up going grocery shopping and picked up this stuff called goop which managed to somehow clean it off. It didn't get rid of the nice strong chlorine smell on my hands from the other fun chemicals I tried, but that should wear off soon. After the second coat that goop stuff even cleaned up the brush nicely, which I think is pretty amazing. We'll see if the brush is nicer the next time around with the trim whenever I do that (it got a little gummy between the first and second ones). Between coats there Joe, brooke, Trav, and Dave came over and we watched Taxi Driver. Yea, that movie's just weird, and I'm still not sure what the whole point of the story was, but oh well. Then we sat around and watched Leno and Conan and then everyone left. Hopefully despite being in the garage the stain will dry sufficiently overnight that I can break out the power tools and install it and reinstall the rack tomorrow.

Well today was interesting. I decided to call around for conduit and the big chains of course only carry .5" and .75". Jeff suggests Viking Electric so I call what is listed as their current location and ask about flexible ENT. They say they have it and so I head out on a road trip. Their address is University Ave and clicking the map links confirms it's just off it so I drive up their and can't find it. I did manage to find the new offices of a place I worked at once which I had never been to since they got an actual office, and stopped in at a bank to deposit some checks. End up calling and asking where they are and they're actually located in Blaine up off 35W and J. Not sure how that ended up not getting told to the phone company, but oh well... I get there and they have 2" flex steel but nothing nonmetallic. They can get it from Eau Claire for the next morning, but at this point I don't want to bother and figure metalic will be fine and get a 10ft length of it. Then I stopped by Home Depot and picked up a door jamb kit and a trim kit for around my rack. After some final measurements I'll hopefully get it all cut so it'll fit and then stain it tomorrow and get it installed later this week. On my way back from all this I grab the mail and it seems like a big stack. Get it inside to the light and see lots of mail for the former owner. I got the notice of forwarding and the post office acknowledges it too, but this is the 3rd time they've managed to not forward it since I've been here. Oh well, at least I know the procedure now. Bundle it up with a note and back in the mailbox it goes. Finished off the night by watching The Game. Interesting movie, although technically the DVD wasn't all that great. For starters it's a scope movie and it wasn't anamorphic. The story was semi-interesting though, but the last bit of the ending is done way too often in movies and could have been left off. His phone looked a lot like the Q phone so I wasn't all that surprised at the whole no reception a lot thing. Those things were top of the line with all the latest back in their day, but I had two of them and neither worked very well at all. Oh well, phones are better now, and they don't make you pay $300 for them after the year service agreement either.

Day started off with a trip to Salem Baptist. Ended up talking to a former coworker for a bit about some major changes that are probably happening at work since he's looking at them as well but from a slightly different perspective. That was interesting. After that I ended up making a bit more of a mess. Ripped out the outside part of the closet wall, including an outlet that was on it and the conduit from the previous box to that outlet. Then I assembled the rack and realized that it is 1/4" too wide to fit the opening. Of course this isn't a matter of cutting the opening slightly wider, as the opening is defined not by drywall but by a stud and a steel pole. I'm really not wanting to have to replace more drywall than necessary here, so moving the stud becomes a bit harder, and moving the steel pole is pretty much out of the question. This is what sawzalls are made for though. The nails were pretty easy to cut, although given that I had to cut to within a quarter inch of some loose wire made it a bit harder. After that it slid back an inch or so nicely and attached right back in place. Rack is mounted now and fits very well. A note with the assembly is I'm mounting this semi-flush with the wall so I had to make a slight modification to the attachment positions since I can't have the base sticking 5" out into the room. It appears that they thought of this and both the top and bottom extend the same amount from the end of the rails, so a quick swap of the rear top and the front bottom works great. Unfortunately since I didn't have any of the nice trim I'm eventually gonna want around it it's probably gonna get taken back out and put back in tomorrow. Somewhere in the middle of this process I went to do a little shopping for 2" flexible ENT. I came up empty handed (the biggest Home Depot carries is 3/4"), so if you know of a local source let me know. I need 10, maybe 20 feet, so I really don't want to order 50m online. Unfortunately the place it's going I have about 3ft clearance above and maybe 10" below, so rigid is out of the question. Conduit would be nice, but if not oh well. I ended up getting myself a nice fishtape and a set with a bunch of drillbits and a ton of screwdriver bits that was on sale (There's like 10 #2 philips 1" bits, which seems excessive but is actually very nice if you've ever done a project involving inaccessible places and bits). Also picked up a replacement blade for the sawzall since I bent the current one I've been using (they don't tend to last long either, and it's not like I haven't used it a bit). Stopped by and visited the family a bit after shopping, and picked up a hole saw attachement for the drill as well as some screws for the aforementioned stud. After cleanup from all the mess decided to sit down and watch another movie. Picked 28 Days Later... which is a great movie I'm surprised I haven't heard more about. When at the beginning I saw the promo thing about from the same diretor as The Beach (which I thought really sucked) I wasn't too excited. At least they kept the animated dream scene and the other crazy semi-animation to a limited extent in this one (that one video game scene still haunts me). The one thing they movies have in common though is a great soundtrack selection (although why does that cost almost as much as the DVD?!?). This movie also has a great soundtrack from other perspectives as well. They do a good job with keeping the surrounds natural and not over-used like a lot of movies. It's also designed to take advantage of a system that'll handle a lot of dynamic range and bass. From totally silent to a guy running up behind you and jumping on you as you spin around and it sounds like it's actually happening. :) It's a shame they didn't have a DTS mix. As for the alternate endings I'm not so big a fan of the filmed ones. There's a storyboard one (yea, there are 4 endings) which is interesting and is very accurately labeled as a radical alternate, but has to have one of the funniest quotes about why they didn't go that way in the end. Hmm, today was tiring. I think tomorrow is gonna have to involve less stuff.

Well, Avalon is effectively done. I did a bit more fighting with the backup server, and now it is being backed up. Once that's done the rest can go on as normal. After that whole issue I went shopping and bought a 1000ft box of Cat5E and a 500ft spool of RG-6/U. Wasn't in the mood for making too big of a mess drilling and pulling cable, but did figure out where I'm gonna run the cable (it'll be easier than I thought it would be). Since I got a bunch more DVDs in the mail, I finished off the day by watching Se7en. That's a good movie.

Well, today I slept in a lot which was nice. Put together some of my Christmas presents which included lamps and tables. Started putting away the other stuff too - still not sure where some stuff is going. When going out to retrieve the day's collection of netflix movies I discovered that my rack and shelves arrived. A bit surprised since apparently they never knocked or rang the bell - they were just stacked up outside the garage door. Actually I have no idea when they came since the web page hasn't been updated yet. Anyways, I was rather surprised when I opened up the boxes to see Middle Atlantic stuff since I had searched for the cheapest possible and got a good deal (and I thought it was decent when I thought it was generic stuff). Not complaining there though - I mean how many racks come with not only the wrench to assemble themselves, but also a longer wrench that's straight and designed to go in a power drill - plus screws and other extras. Of course I wasn't expecting it to arrive so quickly so didn't have anything ready. So I went into the closet in which it's eventually destined to reside, and ripped off the interior layer of drywall on the wall which will have the rack as well as the ceiling. Tomorrow I'll consider mounting it in there if I get the other stuff I need. Of course this little acceleration also means I get to go shopping for bulk cable tomorrow to wire the place and put in a big order for patch panels, jacks, other cabling, etc. Should be interesting when that arrives. The evening consisted of Panic Room. Not a great movie, but I didn't think it was all that bad either. I'd say it has an interesting story, and is reasonably well done. While I don't think the soundtrack was all some people hyped it up to be, I don't think it deserved the bad reviews it seemed to get either. Oh well. That Avalon thing - it seems that one of the tape drives decided to shut down, and even after reactivating it hasn't figured out how to mount a tape. At least the thing was far enough it's a couple "simple" copies to complete so it can wait from that perspective. Looks like the backup people will have to fix it before we can back stuff up though... :( Hopefully tomorrow will be the end of the Avalon saga.

Well, right now I'm in the car riding back from visiting the relatives. Long night... As for this week so far, Monday went pretty well. Basically trying to get Avalon to a stable point and decide what if anything else to do with it. Lunch was KFC which I hadn't had in a while but it was good. Tuesday was more of the same, although somewhat just waiting. I did copy over all the system management scripts and get them going so we can switch them on relatively easily once the restore was done. At this point pretty much everything was stable and it became just a matter of time waiting for the restores/copies to finish. For lunch everyone headed over to Taco Bell, which was enjoyable. Almost shut the lab down over lunch time, but then Joe showed up just in time. Wednesday was Christmas with one side of the family. It was sorta early (compared to previous years) starting at 1, but worked anyways. That took most of the day and everyone left for like an hour for their church services. In usual style after getting my grandma's digital camera all hooked up to the computer I spent most of the evening listening to music. After that my family went to the 10:30 service at church which involved candles and was pretty cool. Got home around midnight and everyone finished wrapping and stuff and eventually we opened presents around 1. Sometime around 2 I packed up all my stuff in the car and headed home. Clicked a few more things on Avalon to keep it going, ran the ethernet cable across the floor and dropped the karma into the dock and started transfering more music to it, and then off to bed. Sorta got to sleep in, but even getting up at 10 is no fun when you are up until 3:30. Headed back over to the parents' place to go to Christmas with the other side of the family. Ended up leaving like an hour late, but oh well. Only got there like 20 minutes late, so not a huge deal. Another day of way too much food around, but not near enough caffeine. I downed a few cups of coffee, but they didn't help much because of the heat. I'm used to temps in the mid-60s, so 80 in the house was a bit much. In that temperature my metabolism slows way down and I get really tired so I sat in the basement (which was just about 80) and listened to music and half slept. Oh well. The car temperature feels much better... I'm tired now though, so I think I'll put this away.

Merry Christmas!

Yea, I know... I haven't gotten enough sleep and am actually still trying to catch up. I have a couple car rides tomorrow though so maybe I'll post something then.

Today was another day of sitting around watching Avalon. And starting new restores where others failed. Mike and I decided that it's probably time to talk to Veritas again. Hopefully between a combination of copying and restores Avalon will be back up and running tomorrow morning though. I started off the morning by heading to the parents house since the family was lighting the advent candle during one of the services. After waiting for them for double the time I spent driving over there, we left and arrived basically on time. A lot longer than my normal 2 minute ride/drive to church. The whole candle thing went pretty well, and I didn't have to say much. After church we stopped by Arby's to grab lunch and then I got to go home and do the whole Avalon thing. Pretty much just surfed avsforum most of the day, although did end up rearranging my room a bit. The bed sits high enough for the receiver to sit underneath it and still have breathing room, which is nice. The dock for the Karma can then sit on the headboard and connect to power, audio, and eventually ethernet for syncing. Watched Requiem for Murder which was an OK film, pretty decent as far as Canadian ones go. Sorta weird in that the movie started off with what looked like a pretty bad revealing of characters, but then it ends up being someone else. They never address some aspects though including anything after the other guy gets arrested though, so sorta leaves you hanging. So quite a while back I posted a link to a simple page mainly to link a picture together with the name Paul Boyum as far as a certain search engine is concerned. Anyways, google managed to pick it up and Paul discovered it today and wasn't to pleased. So I had to make a little modification and another link and we'll see if it goes up in the results. Betsy did a really good job on it so it'd be a shame not to show it off, right? :) In other news, Solstice Backup is quickly losing points on the reliability and speed issue. If it has any points left to lose...