A productive Memorial Day weekend
May. 29th, 2018 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterHad a pretty productive Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday, I wandered down to a neighborhood garage sale and found a Keurig for $20, plus a K-cup organizer for $5. I'd been wanting one of those for a while, but couldn't afford a new one. So I snagged it.
Continuing my general spirit of home improvement, I headed down to the Irvington Flea Market to scout around for bookshelves. While I was there, someone caught my attention with an old LG surround sound Blu-ray player for $40. Given that I'd been wanting one of those for a while for the 50" TV my brother passed on from an upgrading neighbor, and the price was right, I grabbed it. I just had to rent a BlueIndy car to go withdraw the cash and carry the system home.
(I later figured out that the probable reason the price was so good was that it was eight years old, with no recent firmware, meaning that it probably wouldn't play recent Blu-rays thanks to Hollywood's habit of breaking the DRM compatibility every so often--and half the built-in streaming video apps such as Netflix and YouTube wouldn't work any longer because they were no longer compatible with the services' servers. But honestly, at that price, I could afford to buy a cheap current Blu-ray player to add onto it if I really want to watch recent movies. I do most of my movie watching via streaming these days, it's got HDMI, and Roku sticks are cheap. In fact, I've ordered a refurbished one on Amazon that should arrive tomorrow.)
Then, while I had the car, I trundled on down to the nearby Salvation Army store to see what they had in the way of shelves. As it happened, they had a couple of bookshelves (missing one shelf) for $25 each, but the guy at the shop said if I bought one I could have the other for half-off, so I grabbed them too. It took me two trips in the BlueIndy car to trundle them home, but given that BlueIndy is currentlly running a drive-one-hour-get-one-hour-free special, it was most economical to get it done right then.
Sunday was spent doing some general house cleaning and organizing, picking up trash, carrying a bunch of stuff to the recycle bins, and so on. That evening, my brother Alex came over to mount the surround speakers and secure the bookshelves to the wall for me. After that was done, I tried it out by watching Mama Mia on Netflix; I'd been meaning to see that for a while, given that the sequel is out in July. Neat movie, and some great performances by most of the actors (even if Pierce Brosnan really isn't that great of a singer).
I spent Monday moving a lot of books into the new shelf space, and unpacking a couple more boxes of books now that I had room to store them all. Continued to enjoy the new surround system, listened to the Eagles Hell Freezes Over surround-sound DVD, and subsequently watched The Right Stuff with a friend via Rabb.it.
One kind of annoying thing that happened over the weekend is that one of the spring rods that holds my Pebble's watch band in place broke, or at least came out and disappeared. I stopped in at a jeweler today in the hope they could replace it, but apparently the Pebble used an odd size that they'd have to special-order. I'll check with other places if and as I can, but if that's the case, it might take a while to get them in.
Anyway, now that the long weekend's over, I came in to work expecting a busy day due to the extra calls generated over a 3-day weekend--only to discover that right before I was due to clock in, the Internet went down completely, and it's been down for the last two hours. Apparently there was a halon dump in the server room, and they've been trying to get everything back up and turned on. Still no word from the supervisors if and when we'll be sent home, though if we are sent home, we'll still get paid in full for the day. I guess they want to keep us on the string as long as they can, if they're going to be paying us anyway. So I got out my tablet and keyboard and took a seat at a table to type this all in, since I've got the time.
Continuing my general spirit of home improvement, I headed down to the Irvington Flea Market to scout around for bookshelves. While I was there, someone caught my attention with an old LG surround sound Blu-ray player for $40. Given that I'd been wanting one of those for a while for the 50" TV my brother passed on from an upgrading neighbor, and the price was right, I grabbed it. I just had to rent a BlueIndy car to go withdraw the cash and carry the system home.
(I later figured out that the probable reason the price was so good was that it was eight years old, with no recent firmware, meaning that it probably wouldn't play recent Blu-rays thanks to Hollywood's habit of breaking the DRM compatibility every so often--and half the built-in streaming video apps such as Netflix and YouTube wouldn't work any longer because they were no longer compatible with the services' servers. But honestly, at that price, I could afford to buy a cheap current Blu-ray player to add onto it if I really want to watch recent movies. I do most of my movie watching via streaming these days, it's got HDMI, and Roku sticks are cheap. In fact, I've ordered a refurbished one on Amazon that should arrive tomorrow.)
Then, while I had the car, I trundled on down to the nearby Salvation Army store to see what they had in the way of shelves. As it happened, they had a couple of bookshelves (missing one shelf) for $25 each, but the guy at the shop said if I bought one I could have the other for half-off, so I grabbed them too. It took me two trips in the BlueIndy car to trundle them home, but given that BlueIndy is currentlly running a drive-one-hour-get-one-hour-free special, it was most economical to get it done right then.
Sunday was spent doing some general house cleaning and organizing, picking up trash, carrying a bunch of stuff to the recycle bins, and so on. That evening, my brother Alex came over to mount the surround speakers and secure the bookshelves to the wall for me. After that was done, I tried it out by watching Mama Mia on Netflix; I'd been meaning to see that for a while, given that the sequel is out in July. Neat movie, and some great performances by most of the actors (even if Pierce Brosnan really isn't that great of a singer).
I spent Monday moving a lot of books into the new shelf space, and unpacking a couple more boxes of books now that I had room to store them all. Continued to enjoy the new surround system, listened to the Eagles Hell Freezes Over surround-sound DVD, and subsequently watched The Right Stuff with a friend via Rabb.it.
One kind of annoying thing that happened over the weekend is that one of the spring rods that holds my Pebble's watch band in place broke, or at least came out and disappeared. I stopped in at a jeweler today in the hope they could replace it, but apparently the Pebble used an odd size that they'd have to special-order. I'll check with other places if and as I can, but if that's the case, it might take a while to get them in.
Anyway, now that the long weekend's over, I came in to work expecting a busy day due to the extra calls generated over a 3-day weekend--only to discover that right before I was due to clock in, the Internet went down completely, and it's been down for the last two hours. Apparently there was a halon dump in the server room, and they've been trying to get everything back up and turned on. Still no word from the supervisors if and when we'll be sent home, though if we are sent home, we'll still get paid in full for the day. I guess they want to keep us on the string as long as they can, if they're going to be paying us anyway. So I got out my tablet and keyboard and took a seat at a table to type this all in, since I've got the time.
