Slowly but surely, we’re assembling our house into a home. takaza worked half-days on Monday and Tuesday and put a little more work into unpacking; the guest bedroom is close to being usable, except for the lack of any window coverings, of course. That helps because it gives us a place to put stuff – the stuff we’re not sure why we’re carrying around, but it’s gotta go somewhere.
Yesterday Ameritech SBC AT&T hooked us up, so now we have not only local phone service, but zippy-fast DSL as well! Unfortunately, after checking around it appears that the phone plates in the walls around the house are just that – plates, no wiring behind them. Wha?! This means we have one and only one active phone outlet, and that is in the kitchen. It looks like we’ll be investing in a cordless phone jack so our TiVo can call out – the only reason we have a phone line, really, since we don’t plan to give out the number. That what our cell phones are for 🙂 And speaking of the TiVo, it now works as well since the DirecTV installer came out and hooked that all up (never mind the stupidity involved in getting that done, something that required some new wiring, multiple trips, and lots of whinging on the installer’s part). It all works now, which is all I care about.
Last night after work, Dan suggested we go ahead and hit Ikea, since there’s a bunch of stuff that we needed. And so off we went to the Great Swedish Consumerism Temple, and we spent a heck of a lot more than I expected. On the bright side, we now have a light for the guest room nightstand, a replacement accent light to go over the kitchen sink (the replace “the pimple” contractor-grade light that’s there), a low cabinet for our TV and A/V equipment, a new dresser (we left our old one that was falling apart in the alley and it somehow went away), a few other knickknacks. We looked at some of the blinds and curtains there, but couldn’t find anything like what we were looking for, or that we couldn’t get cheaper elsewhere. Oh, and the Ikea Cafeteria? Maybe it’s good for breakfast, but for dinner? Bleah. Not recommended.
For tonight, we have our work cut out for us, as Dan is going to assemble the entertainment cabinet, I’m going to work on de-boxing more of the kitchen, and then we’re going to both work on assembling the dresser. We’ll continue our marathon of laundry, attempting to wash every blanket we own, and somewhere in there I’ll need to cook dinner. On the bright side, I’ll have more time to do all of this, since my commute has gone from 90+ minutes each day down to 10 minutes. The free extra time is a bit of a shock, and I’m still adjusting to it (“I’ve been home for an hour, we should be cooking dinner! Oh, wait, it’s only 5:30…”)
And one more bit of good news: I wrote to the kind folks at Intelligentsia Coffee, and they supplied me with a list of places in Lake County that I can buy my coffee beans. Life is good.
I would kill for a ten minute commute. *sigh*
Believe me, I feel downright guilty about it! Dan’s commute is now 45 minutes by train or about an hour by car, but he assures me that it’s not too bad (and really, it’s about what it was for him when we lived in the city). We’re hoping the train can be a steady deal for him, since that’s so much less stressful than driving.
The train would be nice too. Andrea was trying very hard to find something that she could commute to by train. Unfortunately, that didn’t end up working out.
Whynot just get a cheapo Linksys wireless A/B usb adapter and plug it into the tivo.. add Wireless router and viola! no need for the phone jack.
While this is a good thing for normal Tivo’s out there, DirectTV isn’t playing ball with Tivo anymore and never implemented the USB slots on these units.
Ah wow..that sucks!
Alas, would that it were so simple! Unfortunately, our unit is a legacy from when TiVo and DirecTV were partners. One of the quirks of the DirecTiVo hardware is that while the USB port is present in the hardware it is not active (or supported throught he software), thus the DirecTiVos aren’t network-aware and must dial home for program data via telephone. With the advent of dual-tuner Series 2 TiVos, we were sorely tempted to migrate back to cable…until I priced out what Comcast would cost compared to what we have now. Our monthly DirecTV bill is $54.98 (including $5/month DVR support); Comcast would be almost double that for a similar programming lineup, plus TiVo has jacked up their monthly rates for service. For all of that, we can deal with a little inconvenience.
Now I need to figure out how the hell we’re going to get the Slingbox working with no network wiring available…
Huh…just had a thought re: the Slingbox. We’re going to have an Airport Express back there anyway to hook into the stereo. I wonder if we could hook the Slingbox into that for network connectivity…
Have you ever looked at Orb? Its basically a program for your PC that given you have access to a TV tuner card can do all the same things Slingbox can do….although probably at not as good a quality. But it ccan stream to any web enabled device… it was handy the other day I was watching Clerks 2 streaming off the rip i made on my PC on my cell phone when i was sitting at the VW dealer.
http://www.orb.com
Depending on how the walls are laid out, a new phone jack might not be too hard to run either. I’ve put cables in places people never though possible.
wow, i don’t know how many phone jacks in my place actually work, but my cordless phone base is the only one plugged in, and the extra phones are just plugged into the a standard 110v outlet. i <3 my cordless phones!!
for a temp solution, you could buy a spliter, extra couplings [phone wire kind] and lots of extra phone cord.
I don’t know exactly how those wireless phone extenders work… do they have to be on the same electrical circuit where you connect the line end? Most household installations I know run a separate circuit for the kitchen and range.