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Fall is here!
Nov. 17th, 2008 08:18 amSaturday we decided to take a walk around the block (actually, I walked, Hallie rode in the stroller, and Heather and Hermione rode their bikes) to check out a garage sale we'd seen. Apparently the man of the house had passed away a few months ago, and his widow's daughter was basically running an estate sale with a couple friends to clear some stuff out before the widow moved away. Just my luck, the guy was something of a PC tech so he had some spare parts and stuff laying around, some of which I'd been looking for. Score! As I was looking at that, the daughter said they also had a computer for sale, but they didn't know anything about it, would I like to see it? I almost said no, because I figured it would either be really old or they'd want more for it than I had in my pocket. But one of the friends had already gone to get it, so what the heck. Turned out to be a little eMachines box with a 2.6GHz Celeron, which was better than I expected. I still wasn't really interested, but to be polite I asked what they'd want for it, and the girl says "Five bucks?" Um, yes please! So for $15 total, I got that, a mouse and keyboard, a pair of computer speakers, a PCI video capture card, and a handful of empty dvd cases. Best $15 I've spent for a while! It was perfect timing too, because literally that very morning we'd moved our other computer desk out into the living room for Hermione. Now that she likes using the computer, there's too much competition between us to use the other 2. But the one I was hooking up for her really isn't very good, just an old Dell Pentium III. So I figured if nothing else, this one will be good for her. Of course, it's a crappy eMachines so it does have issues--namely, it needed a new power supply (which I happened to have handy) and all of the USB ports seem to be dead. Hmmm. If I plug in a USB optical mouse, it does light up, but the computer makes no sign of recognizing that it or anything else I try was plugged in. Re-flashing the BIOS might help, but eMachines does not make it easy to do that. It's worth a try, but I might just have to replace the motherboard instead. If I can get it working, I think this one would actually become the home theater PC, and I can keep it fairly barebones since all it really does is stream video across the network. Then Hermione can have the current PC that's in there, which is a bit nicer.
Saturday was a good day for the acquisition of stuff, actually. We also went to Thriftko and got some books, and I'd gotten $30 in reward certificates from Best Buy for buying my camera, so we went there and I put that towards the latest Guitar Hero game for the Wii. I know, why play a fake guitar when I can play a real one, but it's still fun, and I like that the new one has downloadable content for when I need new songs. The new one does have some pretty sweet music, though--"Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater, cool! "Hotel California"! Epic stuff! :) I only played the first few songs so far, but I dig it. Only bad thing seems to be that you have to play a whole gig at a time--you can't just play one song and quit like in GHIII. Unless I just haven't figured that out yet, which is possible.
Yesterday was supposed to be gorgeous and cool, so we headed out to the Magic Kingdom. And it was gorgeous, but VERY cool. I don't think Hallie knew what to think for a while, but we stayed in the sunshine as much as we could and it wasn't too bad. We also made it a point to do things we don't usually do or get to do, like the Haunted Mansion (which seemed to have a long line every time we've gone lately) and the Country Bear Jamboree (which just came out of rehab a few weeks ago). We also went to Tom Sawyer's Island, which we hadn't done for quite a while. Hermione loved that, of course! We ate our lunch out there and then I sat in one of the rocking chairs at Aunt Polly's in the sun and watched the Liberty Belle cruise by. That's the life. :) After that we saw the wait on Big Thunder Mountain was only 5 minutes, so I rode it, and a little later it was the same so we asked Hermione if she wanted to give it a try too. She did, and really seemed to like it. That was the first time I'd heard her laugh on a roller coaster--usually she acts scared while we're on it, and then says she liked it afterwards. So hopefully she'll enjoy riding that with me from now on! Both of the girls actually fell asleep during the Country Bears, so we headed for the exit after that. Very pleasant outing, though. Spent the rest of the afternoon messing around the house--fixed a toilet, worked on the new old PC, went grocery shopping, that sort of thing. Not a bad weekend, but over too quickly, as usual. I think I might take a day off this week, though, since the weather is supposed to be cool and clear all week--fall, finally! Very nice!
All righty, better get down to my Monday stuff. Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!
Saturday was a good day for the acquisition of stuff, actually. We also went to Thriftko and got some books, and I'd gotten $30 in reward certificates from Best Buy for buying my camera, so we went there and I put that towards the latest Guitar Hero game for the Wii. I know, why play a fake guitar when I can play a real one, but it's still fun, and I like that the new one has downloadable content for when I need new songs. The new one does have some pretty sweet music, though--"Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater, cool! "Hotel California"! Epic stuff! :) I only played the first few songs so far, but I dig it. Only bad thing seems to be that you have to play a whole gig at a time--you can't just play one song and quit like in GHIII. Unless I just haven't figured that out yet, which is possible.
Yesterday was supposed to be gorgeous and cool, so we headed out to the Magic Kingdom. And it was gorgeous, but VERY cool. I don't think Hallie knew what to think for a while, but we stayed in the sunshine as much as we could and it wasn't too bad. We also made it a point to do things we don't usually do or get to do, like the Haunted Mansion (which seemed to have a long line every time we've gone lately) and the Country Bear Jamboree (which just came out of rehab a few weeks ago). We also went to Tom Sawyer's Island, which we hadn't done for quite a while. Hermione loved that, of course! We ate our lunch out there and then I sat in one of the rocking chairs at Aunt Polly's in the sun and watched the Liberty Belle cruise by. That's the life. :) After that we saw the wait on Big Thunder Mountain was only 5 minutes, so I rode it, and a little later it was the same so we asked Hermione if she wanted to give it a try too. She did, and really seemed to like it. That was the first time I'd heard her laugh on a roller coaster--usually she acts scared while we're on it, and then says she liked it afterwards. So hopefully she'll enjoy riding that with me from now on! Both of the girls actually fell asleep during the Country Bears, so we headed for the exit after that. Very pleasant outing, though. Spent the rest of the afternoon messing around the house--fixed a toilet, worked on the new old PC, went grocery shopping, that sort of thing. Not a bad weekend, but over too quickly, as usual. I think I might take a day off this week, though, since the weather is supposed to be cool and clear all week--fall, finally! Very nice!
All righty, better get down to my Monday stuff. Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!
