Turns out it was made in 2000 and can not read burned DVD’s. Thats somwhat annoying, but it explains what I thought was a problem with a (much newer) DVD burner.
A 9 year old piece of computer equipment is pretty darn old. That means I bought it while I was still in high school…  I can get a new one for $15. I’m pretty sure I paid at least $70 for this when I got it…
Anyhow, it can’t read burned DVD’s. I’ll have to replace it at some point here.

I’m going to guess that the next oldest piece of computer hardware is my router – and that one is showing signs of age. It clonks out on big file transferes and ends up killing off your network connection. I’m going to have to get that replaced somewhat soon….

After:

Entire project took us about 2 weeks to complete – and it looks fantastic on our deck now!

It’s a 14 by 16 foot pergola that makes out backyard look 10 times nicer already.

Now we’ll have to get started on the other yard related projects.

So far I’ve;

• Added a wall (along the foundation)
• Built a great 8 foot workbench off the wall
• Installed 4 new lights (CFL’s of course) in the ceiling
• Modified existing shelving for use as a PC/server location
• Installed a new circuit for the workshop itself.
• Cleaned (alot) of old crud up and tossed a few bags worth of trash out

And thats just the basement area alone. I’ll get photos up someday hopefully!

Around the rest of the house I’ve been working on smaller projects and tasks-

• Installed new lights on the outside of the house
• re-sealed most of the existing windows for air leaks
• Installed a handful of new light fixtures in the house (they finally all match! [well, I have a few left])
• Fixed a nice former homeowner ‘fix’ in the attic that lead to water leaking into the house this winter… (will need to permanently fix when it gets warmer on the roof).
• Put in some energy saving items around the house (power strips, CFL’s, LED lights (yes, I have some LED light bulbs, $5 a piece at Sams Club. I’ll never have to change them again, only useful as accent lighting though, about as bright as a 20w incandescent light)
• Rewired the entire garage. The existing electrical was just plain bad.
• Installed a new electrical outlet on the front of the house – no more running an extension cord 150ft from the back to the front now!
• Replaced 3 windows with brand new ones. Installed estimated that the old ones were at least 40+ years old.

Starting to get a list of projects to do this summer too.

• Add shelving to the garage (needed badly!)
• Figure out a way to lift the bikes up into the rafters so they are out of the way of the cars
• More new windows (still have some 40+ years old ones left!)

Anyhow, always a list of stuff I’d like to do, Angie has a completly different list of hewr own for me!

Not to mention the concept of Christmas lights. I’m assuming that the idea started as a safer alternative to candles… and at some point some retail/marketting genus thought, “hey, these things can go outside!”. And the rest of the story is history.
On the note of Christmas lights.. ours are up. I won’t light them until after Thanksgiving though. I did solve one issue I had with the lights last year however – Today I installed an electrical outlet on the front of the house. Drilling though our brick house to make a hole is somewhat of a scary concept, especially because it took 2 trips to the store to get a masonry drill bit long enough. Turns out I need a 13 inch bit to bunch through from the outside to the inside.. Anyhow – no more extension cords going from the back of the house to the front!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The deck looks amazing now.

Only problem is the sunlight. The deck gets nearly direct sunlight from dawn to dusk all summer long, as a result we don’t really use it too much.

So next up – adding a pergola so it looks even better and with the added shade from a canvas ‘roof’ of some sort we’ll be able to use it even more often!