2 Bit Hacker

As usual, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. For one reason or another I just don’t seem to feel I have enough going on that the world needs to know about. For some reason I feel like posting a general update at the moment, and so I shall.

My works is going along nicely. The new office space is rather nice, and it’s network is ticking along quite happily to itself. I’m enjoying the System Administrator position, although it does mean the occasional late night when a server decides to act up. Apparently I’ve been assigned to more of a projects roll than a maintenance roll, working on improving things and setting up new tools for internal use. In the near future I’ll be rolling out Cacti to replace our MRTG instances, and probably upgrading Nagios. All in all, rather good.

On the home front, we’re looking for a new one. The new landlords at the current location have decided to increase our rent while at the same time taking away our storage space in the basement (claiming it’s a fire hazard, while also saying they’re planning on pouring concrete down there, apparently.) So, Delia and I looked at a few townhouses, one of which we rather liked in Merrimack. Unfortunately, I don’t think my credit is going to be good enough at this time to swing a loan. The combination of lack of credit history and my inconsistent bills payments from last year (from the whole unemployment/PepBoys time period) don’t look so great to the banks.

So, it looks like we’ll be renting for a while longer. I’d like to get out of where we are though, and are currently leaning toward a complex in Bedford. While more expensive than the current location, it’s also quite a lot nicer, so I think it’ll be worth it. My plan is to rent for another year or two, keeping better documentation on my bill payments, so that when we go for the buying-a-place option again, I’ll have everything all put together to give to the loan people.

I’ve also been giving some thought to taking a stab at the HTPC project again. I’ve got all the hardware I need, it’s just a matter of throwing it together an making it work. With the recent upgrade to Delia’s PC, I even have my original motherboard and CPU back. I think I’m going to go with an external VGA< ->NTSC adapter this time around though, since I wasn’t very pleased with the TV-out support for my chipset under Linux, and I really want to use MythTV. Also not too sure about controlling the new cable box. My old box had a nice RS-232 port on the back which allowed for direct serial control. The new one does not, which means I’ll probably end up having to go with an IR blaster of some sort. We shall see.