Monthly Archives: September 2005

gettin’ naked

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So the hottest thing in the espresso community has been “bottomless”, “naked”, or “crotchless” portafilters. When Sherry packed my espresso machine she forgot to pack my portafilter and my special La Marzocco double basket, so the machines been sitting on my granite countertop and I can’t use them until she brings those with her next time she visits, which is early October.

So, easy solution, ordered a NAKED PF from Chris Coffee! It comes with an LM triple basket, very nice…

Now, what do you call a triple ristretto shot? Like a double one is called doppio ristretto… 😉

Toslink

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So optical > metal… My receiver has 3 Toslink inputs, so I got a Toslink and a Mini-to-Toslink cable from eBay. The Mini (optical) to Toslink is for my Airport Express, it’s pretty impressive that the thing actually has an optical output, it definitely justifies the $99 (I picked up 2 of them at the Barton Creek Apple Store the day after Thanksgiving, that was the only time I’d seen them on sale!!)

Anyway, the Monoprice guy sent me the wrong cable, he sent me a Mini-to-Mini optical cable instead of a Mini-to-Toslink one. I called him up, he immediately sent me a replacement, and asked me to just keep the other cable. Pretty good customer service, which explains his high marks at ResellerRatings.

Today I got my Toslink and RCA+S-Video cables in the mail. I went to hook up the Toslink cable, only to find out that the DVD player I got didn’t have an optical out, so off to Fry’s I went, and exchanged it with a different player. Got home, hooked it up, awesome sound! 🙂 The RCA+S-Video is for my TiVo, I can’t really tell if the video quality is better. I’m used to SAT TV, cable looks like crap to me no matter what.

I’m still waiting for 2 component video cables, and the mini to Toslink cable (I hope Mini-to-Toslink is the same as Toslink-to-Mini, which was what I bought, it should be, light goes both ways)…

crib

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seoulfully asked for some pics of my new place, so I just took some and posted them here, quality wasn’t that great, I used the EOS batch processing program to turn the RAWs into JPEGs. Obviously, I am missing a dining table, Ikea was out of stock. I also need to find a big rug for my “study”, which is supposed to be a dining room, but I don’t need a dining room…

busy weekend

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Haven’t had time to blog, life’s been crazy, last weekend was spent doing these:

  • picked up sherry from airport
  • moved from hotel to condo (this took a couple of days)
  • getting TiVo to perform initial setup without a phone line
  • drove up to SF to have dinner with Jen
  • rented a Penske truck, drove to Costco for a TV and Ikea for furniture for the entire condo
  • move all the stuff from the truck to the condo, this was not easy
  • assemble furniture
  • bought and setup A/V stuff, got the Onkyo HT-S780 system for $399 at Fry’s. Jason helped me move the huge box with his family van, he also helped with the cables and to organize them, thanks Jason!
  • figure out what A/V cables I need, ordered them from eBay
  • bought more shit from Amazon, I definitely make good use of my Amazon Prime membership
  • more furniture assembling
  • unpack boxes
  • unpack clothes, still unpacking some
  • drove sherry to airport, flight was overbooked, so drove her back with a $350 AA voucher… nice…
  • got a car wash at a hand wash place

I guess part of the problem of living in a brand new place is that some things don’t work. My dishwasher stops in the middle of a cycle, the problem was not the dishwasher itself, but I suspect it was the fusebox or whatever circuitry that thing has… apparently after I turn it on the power outlet cuts power… I swapped the garbage disposal and dishwasher plugs, and it worked… I emailed my landlord to get that fixed… I use my dishwasher and disposal almost every day so this is kindda annoying…

The door bell stopped working all the sudden, I’m not sure why, the switch used to lit up, now there is no light, and the chime doesn’t work… This doesn’t bother me much, as people can just knock on the f’king door… But the lit-switch looks kindda cool at night…

My building’s lights in the hallways are completely off, it’s f’king dark walking around here…

Work is crazy too… I’m definitely living life… LOL…

meebo

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I found meebo and I’ve been using it tonight, it’s pretty damn impressive!! Check it out!

Would be nice to have an SSL connection too, I’d imagine a lot of ppl would use it to bypass their work’s firewalls!