Productive?
Well, I finally got around to working on a few things that we've been putting off for a long while.
1) Dealing with the spices, which have been living in the hall near the laundry and basically being a trip hazard. Some of the more popular spices have been moved to the kitchen, while the rest of them have placed in some empty drawers in the downstairs bathroom. By no means is this project done, but it's a fair bit better than the previous solution.
2) Buoyed by my success at the above task, I set out to fix the hall light. It's been flickery since we moved in. I pulled everything apart, and was thinking about cutting the wires and starting anew, but was lacking in good tools. I called Mary down, and she discovered that the problem is mechanical, rather than electrical; the tongue that touches the bottom of the light bulb is simply old and weak and has been making bad/no contact. It's better now, but bending it back may not be a sufficient solution. At least we know where to start in the future if the problem doesn't fix itself.
0) Before I did this though, I decided to buy a few parts to make the new laptop awesome. I'm picking up 1GB DDR RAM and a 120GB HD for the laptop. This will make it significantly more functional and useful. I'm looking forward to getting everything setup. The only stumbling block with Knoppix is getting the wireless to work, but I'm pretty sure there are solutions available for it now. It'll maybe be a dual boot system; Or maybe dual boot conditional on getting important stuff like VPN working.
Mary and I have been talking about buying a NAS, but we're having trouble finding anything in a decent price range with good reviews. Ideally, we'd be able to run a printer and we'd be able to interact with it from windows. Everything else would be a bonus. Any suggestions? I'd be hoping for ~$50 for the enclosure. I know more expensive and otherwise good solutions exist, but we're hoping to keep the cost modest.
1) Dealing with the spices, which have been living in the hall near the laundry and basically being a trip hazard. Some of the more popular spices have been moved to the kitchen, while the rest of them have placed in some empty drawers in the downstairs bathroom. By no means is this project done, but it's a fair bit better than the previous solution.
2) Buoyed by my success at the above task, I set out to fix the hall light. It's been flickery since we moved in. I pulled everything apart, and was thinking about cutting the wires and starting anew, but was lacking in good tools. I called Mary down, and she discovered that the problem is mechanical, rather than electrical; the tongue that touches the bottom of the light bulb is simply old and weak and has been making bad/no contact. It's better now, but bending it back may not be a sufficient solution. At least we know where to start in the future if the problem doesn't fix itself.
0) Before I did this though, I decided to buy a few parts to make the new laptop awesome. I'm picking up 1GB DDR RAM and a 120GB HD for the laptop. This will make it significantly more functional and useful. I'm looking forward to getting everything setup. The only stumbling block with Knoppix is getting the wireless to work, but I'm pretty sure there are solutions available for it now. It'll maybe be a dual boot system; Or maybe dual boot conditional on getting important stuff like VPN working.
Mary and I have been talking about buying a NAS, but we're having trouble finding anything in a decent price range with good reviews. Ideally, we'd be able to run a printer and we'd be able to interact with it from windows. Everything else would be a bonus. Any suggestions? I'd be hoping for ~$50 for the enclosure. I know more expensive and otherwise good solutions exist, but we're hoping to keep the cost modest.