Tag: installation

happenings, mixed media, music musings, shiny stuff

ipod in the muthafucking car… finally

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After having several crappy FM tuners, and basically giving up the dream of being able to play my ipod in my car with decent sound, I have, ladies and gentlemen, WON the battle.

From the time I got my first ipod MANY years ago, I have always loved having my entire music library at my fingertips; in fact, I am rarely without one of my many ipods. The damn things are so handy. If I didn’t have to use iTunes to update them, they would be perfect; but that is a different post for a different day. In my old car, I had a tape player, so I used the cassette adapter with much success, but I was forced to bid it farewell when I upgraded to my fancy new Acura; leading to much dismay and disappointment when said FM tuners turned out to be complete and utter shit.

Cut to last week, when I finally decided to take the plunge, give up XM, and get the iSimple installed. I bought the kit, and set up an appointment, and started to say my bittersweet farewell to XM, all the while convincing myself that I wouldn’t miss it anyway. It was like turning my back on a child, so as to make them hate me, so they would leave for their own good. But here’s the kicker, I WAS MISINFORMED.

What is that you say? Someone working at Best Buy gave me blatant misinformation, which is no more useful than a off handed guess?! Say it isn’t so! Well, ladies and gents, it is true; the iSimple allows you to keep XM, and adds the ipod functionality; which is controlled through the radio, and displays the name of the track and artist information right there in your factory radio display!!! I honestly would have bought this thing YEARS ago if I would have known, but because of some dumb half-wit that worked in the audio section of Best Buy and touted themselves as an audio “expert”, I have written off this product for all of this time.

Shame. For real shame.

Now, I have the power to use my ipod in my car with crystal clear sound, sweetly coming from my speakers. Needless to say, I LOVE this feature, and even though iSimple’s interface is a bit wonky and hard to get used to, I am just pleased as punch that I have something that I have wanted for years back in my life.

Hear me Best Buy; I win this round. I WIN.

home improvement

with the flick of a switch…

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Our not so fantastic kitchen overhead light cut out a couple of weeks ago, and after buying some new bulbs for it, we discovered that the lamp had crapped out, and needed to be replaced. So, we headed to Lowes this weekend to just get a replacement, when we started to think about options… why not get something better? Why not get something more interesting? So here’s what we came up with:
new lighting, we have it.
It is one of those track kits that you can “easily” bend into “any shape”, and you just add the bulbs that you want. Well, I figured it would probably take about a half an hour to install, but it ended up taking close to 3 hours, and I cursed through most of it. The attachment point was out of whack, and I had to “adjust it” (meaning, screw long ass screws in it), and it took forever just to get the housing up in the ceiling. Then, I had to bend the “easy to bend” track into what I considered to be a bright idea; a swirl. Well, it looks “alright”, but there are parts where it isn’t perfect. Fuck it. It’s up there now. We also had a hell of a time with the dangling bulb in the middle; it just didn’t want to work, and we had to exchange it for another one (which also didn’t want to work, but I twisted its arm, and now it works).

Overall, I am still on the fence about it, mainly because it is so different from our other fixture, but partly because of the fact that the swirl isn’t perfectly bent. It was close to impossible to get it perfect, but I am a perfectionist, so there. What do you think? Do you like it??

It definitely makes the kitchen bright… in fact, it is so bright that I may install a dimmer switch this weekend.

all about me, home improvement

updates are interesting… aren’t they?

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It seems like everything and nothing happens these days in my life. There is waking up, driving to work, work, driving home from work, watching TV/passing time until bedtime, sleep, and then repeat. However, these past few weeks, we have been dealing with the house being in total upheaval over the floors in the office being replaced, and I have nearly broken my back to get things back in order.

First was installing the hardwood floors. This is something that is, in theory, easy to do. Easy to follow instructions, and relatively inexpensive if you do it yourself ($700 for a 12×10 room). Yet, the manual labor… whoa. It is on a level of it’s own. It isn’t enough that you have to hammer and things like that, but you have to be bent over unnaturally to do so. That just KILLS a back; and given my history with major back trauma, it has done me in.

To top all of that off, we decided, “hey, now is a good time to paint the office, since nothing is in there, right?”. So we painted two walls a chocolate brown, and the two other walls a baby blue-ish color. The result is an amazing looking room, if I do say so myself. I am in love with the results, but I hated the process.

As if that wasn’t enough, I also decided that it was the perfect time to build a new bookcase/shelving unit for our electronic components and video games. That was a chore too. But, like everything else, it is finished!! I am going to try and get some pictures up in the next little while, so check flickr for those. Aren’t home projects so much fun? Yeah… when they are DONE.