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?