Tangled Up in Cables

"So what did YOU do this weekend?..."

Thanks to a couple of home projects I'd been meaning to get around to, I spent most of mine getting to know my floors, the back of my furniture, and all the dust that's accumulated thereon.

Saturday involved getting my apartment ready for a new TV stand (the TV itself won't arrive for another week, but it's best to be prepared for these sorts of things). This meant reaching behind my old audio cabinet, unplugging speakers and pulling RCA cables and power cords. Then the components came out, getting deposited randomly all over the living room. I grabbed a tape measure, and moved furniture around until I'd cleared enough floor space.

With all the furniture and electronics out of the way, I quickly discovered just how must dust I've let build up over the years. So, out came the vacuum cleaner, followed by several good passes over the carpet as Ginger went to go hide under the bed.

(NB: Ginger is my cat. Just so we're clear...)

My friend Clark, his big shiny truck, and I made a quick run out to Sears to pick up the stand and haul it back. Npw, I had a clean, open floor; an upacked and unassembled TV stand; and electronics strewn all over creation. This, to me, is an untenable situation, so I went to work on assembling the stand, and cleaning and re-installing my components, and re-stringing all the cables and wires.

Today, the big project involved splitting the cable TV line in my spare room, and running a new line into my computer. According to the documentation, this is supposed to make it possible for me to watch TV on my computer, ot use it to record live TV to my hard drive. I lost about half an hour because I was trying to run a line IN to an OUTPUT jack, but it seems to be working now. The big test will come when I try to record an episode of "Heroes" on my computer later tonight.