July 21, 2002

Dominica is addicted to high end stereo now. Loopy and I spent hours last night hooking up the new system in the living room. It is a huge improvement over the old one. Bigger sound, better everything. There is a ton more speaker and power now. There just wasn’t enough there to drive that room before.

I had to run to Rochester today to deliver the speaker that Josh bought off of me. While I was on the road, Loopy ran out and got some more speaker wire to hook up the rear speakers because we didn’t have enough before. He and the gang also move the big 32″ Sony Trinitron upstairs and moved the TV stand into the middle of the room so the room is set up much better now than it was before, in addition to all the new equipment.

July 20, 2002

The electric starting acting eratically yesterday so after writing the update and working on the site, I wasn’t able to upload any of it. So everything is there now. Dominica and I partied down with Josh, Phil, Kate and Joanna last night up at Josh’s place in Rochester.

I took Dominica to Soundworks in Fairport today and she got her first two hour lesson in audiophilia from Jim, my stereo consultant. She was very excited. While we were there, I picked up a pair of B+W 303 speakers and a matching center channel. I can’t wait to hook them up.

July 19, 2002

TGIF, again. Josh decided to buy my speakers off of me in trade for some of his amps that match mine. Shortly, we will both have complete digital surround systems. We have been waiting a long time for this. Finally. Maybe soon Loopy will be buying the projector that he has been talking about. That would be really awesome. I haven’t had a front projection TV since Josh and I lived in Irondequoit in 1997. It was so much fun. And we had a big stereo then too, full analogue surround.

I was shopping at Ten Thousand Villages down on the Commons the other day and I managed to pick up a small stuffed Llama. This new Llama is going to be our Sheep Guarding Llama mascot! But, first we need a name. So we are going to have a “Name the Llama” contest to name our new mascot. So, everyone email in your submissions.

Our new neighbors moved in yesterday. They are straight in from Germany. He is a professor at Cornell’s Vet School. So this must be a prime location for him, just up the road from the school. They only just moved in last night and we happened to be heading out to go to a movie when we saw them pulling in. So we had a chance to say “Hi” but that was about all.

Loopy, Dominica and I went out ot see “Reign of Fire” last night. It left a little to be desired. Nothing very special. It was ok. Plot was terrible. Christian Bale was good. I won’t buy it on disc when it comes out. We were very excited, though, that the trailer for “The Two Towers” is finally out. LotR2 comes to theatres on December 18!

In addition to writing all kinds of nonsense here in the Daily Update, I have even gotten around to adding some more content to the Funnies. There are three new pages there at least. There might be more since I last mentioned it. How long has it been since that last happened? I will slowly be updating the Funny Stuff to match the rest of the site. It will probably take a while so bare with me.

July 18, 2002

Mike and Gwen are taking off this morning. Dominica and I will see them again in two days when we get back out to Ohio. Dominica’s physical therapist says that she travels more than anyone that he has ever met. That is pretty amazing considering how much less she travels than I do!

I am in the process of packing up all of the stereo equipment that I have and attempting to get it ready to sell to SoundWorks. I haven’t talked to them yet this week so I hope to be able to get a hold of them yet today. I made the mistake of mailing in a speeding ticket without filling it in (yes, yes, I know) so I most likely will have to drive out to Angelica this afternoon to take care of that. It isn’t a big deal but what a pain. How dumb am I. (Side note: I have since called the court and managed to talk to the judge and he took care of everything over the phone so I do not need to drive to Angelica now.)

I went out and picked up my new bicycle yesterday. It is really cool. Maybe I will even have a chance to ride it around a little bit today. It has been a long time since I have been on a bike. A long time since the days of Eric and I riding every day for 20-30 miles minimum. We sure aren’t in that kind of shape anymore.

This morning’s challenge involves finding the parts to the stereo that are missing. The boxes, we think, are hidden under the stairs. I am missing the remote to the SSi-720 Surround Sound Processor though and it has been so many years since we used it last that I couldn’t even venture a guess as to where it might be hiding at this point.

Loopy finally got up and got into work on time this morning just to sit there and wait all day to talk to someone. Now they don’t actually need him to be at work so he will be working form home for the rest of the week.

I went to take a shower this morning and found my towel to be crawling with spiders. That was disconcerting. Dominica was so grossed out that she almost wasn’t able to come over to the house for lunch.

July 17, 2002

Today I am attempting to spend every last dollar on a Rotel RTC-965 Preamp/Surround Sound Processor. It is very similar to the unit that I currently have from Rotel but it has built in a few of the modules that my current unit requires as add ons. If I manage to get it (I am bidding on eBay) then my good condition Rotel Preamp that I paid $800 for just a few years ago will be available for around $200. But let me know quickly because I will be taking it into SoundWorks in Rochester before the weekend, maybe as early as tomorrow.

Gwen and Mike are still here today. Yesterday they went out to Treman State Park and did some hiking and then came home and cooked dinner for Dominica and I. It was really good.

I have hardly seen the guys around the house at all. Nate shaved his head so that he could be cool like me three days ago and that was the last that I saw him. His bathroom wall is against my closet where I am writing this so I hear him shower occasionally but that is all. Actually I managed to just catch him going down the stairs for a second. Bob hasn’t been around at all. These grad classes are really keeping them all busy. Bob has been seeing a new girl too!

Loopy got the word a few days ago that Cornell ran out of money before the original end of contract date so he is done there in just a couple of weeks. So he has been “trying” to go into work a little longer than usual and work full days but he has been going into work a little bit later everyday in reality. I guess it is a good thing that he has only been working 32 hour weeks all of this time, though, because they would have just run out of money six weeks ago otherwise. I can’t believe that people in the financial department at Cornell (where Loopy works) aren’t able to budget for six months of labor. Loopy even worked 20% less than normal to make it easier on them and they still screwed it up. How incompetent can you really be? They have Loopy programming the BUDGETING system for them. So we have established that they have heard of budgets. Apparently they just don’t use any.

The weather was beautiful yesterday but Eric said that it is supposed to be getting really hot and humid here today. IthacaPortal Weather from Cornell says that it will be in the lower 90’s today. Mike and Gwen were talking about getting going and doing some fishing this morning. It might be a little hot for that though.

I spent some time making sure that IthacaPortal was up to date today. It is really depressing that so many businesses in town are giving up on their web sites. I thought that we would be moving into an economy where everyone would have at least a basic web site that had information about their business on it but everytime I go to check on IthacaPortal another couple of businesses have let their sites go down and very few pop up to replace them.

Well, the price went a little higher than I hoped that it would but I won the auction for the new processor. AC-3 and DTS, here I come. My old Rotel is definitely up for sale now but I will be taking it into SoundWorks either tomorrow or Friday so let me know ASAP. I am very excited. I haven’t purchased new stereo equipment for a long time so it is nice to have something “new” again. Hopefully SW will give me a good deal on trading in my Paradigms (I’m gonna miss ’em) because I want to have a full theatre system by the time I am done. Nate already has a pair of B+W 302’s and I hope to come out with a pair of 303’s to match, a center channel and a subwoofer. We have never set up a digital surround system so this is pretty exciting. We haven’t ever had a permanent surround system at all, in fact. So this will be pretty cool. I am thinking about selling my outboard Dolby Pro-Logic Processor as well. I don’t have a use for it anymore but it was a great unit. I really loved using it when I was able to. It is the best analogue surround processing that I have ever heard and it has a really cool little display in the front that shows where it is sending the sound out to. I might take that into SW along with everything else. It is time to stop collecting stuff that I am never going to use!

We moved my DVD collection up to my room, boy is it nice having everything so accessible. I am already finding that I use them more often now. This morning I am alphabetizing them again as they got all jumbled in the move up here. There are 210 of them now! That is so many movies.

My office in DC was hit with major power surges this morning. That always starts the day off right! All of my computers are fine (which you know because you are reading this web page) but we may have lost some other computer in the office. We don’t have confirmation yet as to how bad the situation is. Our web cam that services that location is on but appears to be damaged. There’s always something in the morning isn’t there?