Day: March 7, 2009

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R&R

About halfway through just the first of my Saturday projects. Means I’ve left the easy one (pretty easy but tedious and messy plumbing project in the basement) for last. Right now, taking a break. Who’d-a thunk snaking RG6 cabling could generate so much sweat? Yeh, finally getting around to rationalizing the CATV/internet access cabling inside. Have been running off two “not the greatest solution” splitters for several years now. One is a pretty decent splitter “donated” by our cable guy–OK, but not ideal. The other a better one but in the wrong placement in the topology map.

Drilling holes, snaking cables, swapping out splitters: in the end, best splitter a 1-2 with one cable going straight to cable “modem” (via a very nice quad RG6 cable) and other going to a multi-Ghz 1-4 splitter for the TVs (including this computer). Have to build a short quad RG6 cable for that one, but have nice quad RG6s for the four TVs.

Later… (much later) I need to figure the “TV over RJ-45” for using this computer as a media server and the modded (almost finished–cobbler’s kids and all that) XBox as a media director to go to a lil 25″-er in our bedroom.

But after the 2-1/4-1 switch and rerouting of CATV cabling… plumbing gig! Yay! *heh*

Update: I can retire these tasks now. Nice. Means tomorrow evening (after Chuck–*heh*), I can start in on another project.

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No More Pork! No More Earmarks!

No, all of these have been eliminated from the omnibus bill by the simple expedient of the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind relabeling these excesses as “parochial projects“.

See? There’s no pork; there are no earmarks; they’re all now magically transmogrified into something more palatable: merely parochial projects.

Now, don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Thanks CBS (A.K.A., See B.S.)

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Radio Wales again…

See the link in my right sidebar.

Frank Hennessy’s mostly Celtic folk program on Radio Wales is addictive. Lyrics like,

“They say he is too old to toil/And yet he is too young to die…
It doesn’t matter where or when/He comes like rain, like wind he goes…”

…sung in distinctive close harmonies with acoustic instrumental accompaniment as a sample. Or maybe it’s a Celtic harpist playing solo or leading a small band. Or a Celtic-flavored group re-styling a song from another tradition.

Voices that can actually sing a tune. On pitch! Acoustic instruments. Who’d-a thunk it? Well, Wales. It’d be a real shame if Wales ever became the musical wasteland most of the USA is today.