My son just started kindergarten and he’s already been tasked with selling at least 10 items from a catalog he brought home.  The deadline – September 10th.  If you would ever consider donating  to this site for any reason, please take a look at my son’s personalized catalog and purchase something.  It’s the typical kind of stuff, cookies, candy, knick-knacks, etc.  Purchases of $65+ get free shipping.  I’m sure there’s something you wouldn’t mind throwing a couple of bucks at.  I’m going to be leaving this page stuck at the top for the next few weeks – mention it to friends or family!

If you’d like to ‘donate’, please visit Joseph’s personal catalog HERE.  Thanks!

Just put both Dell E173FPf monitors in my car, so I’m hoping to get at least one of them disassembled this evening.  I only picked up two 220uF 35V (monitor uses 25V, but 35V will work) capacitors at Fry’s since that was all they had, but maybe I’ll get lucky and each monitor will only need one – if that’s what is wrong with them in the first place.

If I get some spare time tonight, I may just have a success story to write tomorrow.  Be sure to check back often!

As you know, I repaired a Dell Optiplex 745 that I salvaged from work.  Well, next up I am going to try and do the same for a Dell E173FPf LCD that has gone bad at work.  There’s actually a couple of these, so I may snatch them both up.  They apparently have had capacitor issues also, so the hardest part will be disassembling.

They’re old, but they’re still worth something somewhere around the house if they can be fixed.

I’ve decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on the remaining part of my bedroom project and get the in-wall front and center speakers from MonoPrice.  I did a little eye-balling on the stud placement and I believe the center channel speaker will line up without any notching.  I might have to Dremel away some of the speaker to get it to fit, but I’ve read that is an option without compromising anything in how secure it is once in the wall.

My only obstacle now is finding out if the 52″ Samsung will overlap the speakers once I am able to put it in.  I’m going to have to measure it and see how it will fall into place with the speakers I plan on buying.  I want to go with the 8″ fronts, but they have a 10″ footprint width.  If that Samsung overlaps, I may have to go on the other side of the stud and that’s going to look a little strange with the 37″ I have now.  I will go with the same 6.5″ speakers I used as my rear left and right surrounds if I absolutely have to, but I think they will be too small for front channels.  This is the center channel speaker and since the stud space is slightly off-center, I should have at least 4 mount locks to hold it in place if I have to cut out two corner ones to make it fit without notching.  That will work fine.

Once I get home this evening, I’ll break the tape measure out and I’ll know for sure what I’m getting.  The only thing left is to get a sample of the wall paint we used…the speakers I hung marked them up pretty bad.  Plus I think I’ll have a few mounting screw holes to patch up.

Update:

I measured it out and I am going with the 8″ FRL speakers.  I also realize I am going to have to notch a stud for the center channel, but I’m pretty sure I can do it easily without causing any problems if it’s load-bearing.  I went ahead and order it all Friday afternoon, so I’m hoping it will arrive before next weekend.  I doubt it since the last shipment took so long, but we’ll see.

Really slow week, this past one was.

Centurion – I was very pleasantly entertained by this one.  My wife actually enjoyed it too.

From Paris with Love – I had reservations about this one considering the character Travolta was playing, but he made the movie watchable.  Pretty good fun in this one.

Battlefield Earth – My wife loves science fiction movies.  I told her this was considered one of the worst films of all time and so she became curious.  She actually liked it.  I was simply reminded of why it is considered one of the worst films of all time.

That’s it.  Unfortunately, I don’t know if this will be a weekly event anymore.  My wife starts school today and our movie-watching availability will probably plummet to next to zero (except for some weekends).  I’ll do what I can to provide my crappy reviews though :)