Sunday, May 23, 2004

Hm, productive-ish weekend.

I finally got the conduit in place and started pulling CAT-5 cables so that the house will be properly wired for networking (instead of running ethernet underneath doorjams and the like). I also put up the rack in the basement; this is going to serve as my media hub. Drilling into cinder block is not fun, even with the proper tools.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm happy with the way the basement looks; the cables are too droopy. I think I'm going to need to get some cable trays (which are not cheap... ).

Also got a bird feeder and rigged up a system that will -- hopefully -- keep the squirrels at bay. I have been feeding them corn, though, much to Tamara's shagrin.

Discovered that my attic ventilation fan had completely died; it was about 110° up there, which explains why the upstairs rooms were so much warmer. I stuck a spare (industrial strength!) fan up there for now, which seems to have helped immensely.

I'm about to give up on using Linux as a desktop. X Windows is too sluggish and unreliable. The same programs (Firefox, Thunderbird) are much zippier on Windows and don't crash my desktop. I'll need to get an X emulator in place to let me run Cadence, etc., though. (And, yeah, I've tried cygwin's X server... didn't like it.)

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