Another post in the recent "flurry"...
I’m not sure what’s motivating me to post more after months of silence, maybe it’s just taking time for things to sort of settle with the big shift in lifestyle. As mentioned before, there have been more cooking and DIY activities as of late. Although these aren’t completely new, I’ve definitely had more time to engage in these activities. Many things have been put off for years when I was working because I used my free time for music practice primarily, and never felt motivated to get the gears turning on larger tasks.
With this latest round of projects, I’ve been approaching them incrementally. With rare exception, I have certain daily activities I will always engage in - walking the dogs, exercise, basic maintenance like showering and washing clothes, and usually practicing a few instruments. My more recent DIY projects have included whole house ethernet including moving the modem and router to upstairs locations as well as upgrades to my switching system. I’ve also made some minor changes/upgrades to the home theater with the addition of a speaker wall plate and ensuring all the devices have wired ethernet courtesy of the new router location. In the process, there’s been a fair amount of running cables through the attic and down through walls, resulting in a fair amount of damage to the drywall in the garage and drum room especially.
This has necessitated the purchase of some new tools and supplies so I can hopefully by the time I’m finished have a decent result that at least looks passable if not like new. I know that’s achievable, but my recent experience hasn’t elevated my skills to the level of a professional. All this rehashing to say that it’s satisfying to pick a goal for any given day and accomplish it without any great snags. Yesterday was a decent day in that regard. One of the casualties of my recent cable relocations in the home theater was the original HDMI cable for the projector that had been there since we moved in seven years ago. Too many twists and kinks corrupted the signal, so it was time to replace it. Our attic compares favorably to a suburban squeeze sauna Mirkwood forest, and the area over the home theater is bramble central. Thankfully the total distance of the cable run from equipment rack to projector is relatively short (less than ten feet in the actual room), but getting there and getting the cable through the particular openings in the wall/ceiling is akin to being hogtied while trying to play twister on a tightrope over a bed of liquid hot magma.
I did discover an easier way to get the cables through the projector mast (read - I had routed the original cable through a narrow opening that wasn’t the intended and much easier route) and so after wrestling with the cables a bit I managed to get them where they needed to go with an adequate amount of slack. I also ran some CAT 6 cable along with the new 4K HDMI for a few reasons. One, the projector has an ethernet jack that I originally thought was for connectivity and firmware updates, but now I’m thinking it’s more for control devices. The other advantage to having ethernet there is that if I eventually get an HDMI balun, it will allow me to send the video signal as well as IR and a few other control schemes via just the ethernet cable which is easier to run and more resistant to damage than the HDMI cable.
All that rambling to say that I managed to pull it off and the home theater is back to full functioning. I still have some house cleaning to do on the wall (missing a plate for a new hole) and I’ve got future upgrade plans that I’ll address in the years to come. I had thought of hiring an audio/video installer to handle an upgrade to ATMOS ceiling speakers, but after all this crawling around I think I might be able to handle it myself. But that’s a project for a way down the road and not until I return to some sort of employment.
I’m going to piecemeal the remaining tasks which are initially finishing the drywall repair and then I start focusing on clean up/organization of the video room and server closet.