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When I get home, I’ll take a couple of pictures to bring things visually up to speed.
Steve and I got rid of the Amazing Foam-Oozing Chair, as well as the big, black, non-working television over the last month or month and a half (In fact, the TV went to the wastebin a few days ago, much to the dismay of my right arm).
The living room is a little more open, but still needs a little layout change to free up some of the floor space.
We also need things to make the walls look less naked, since Steve is still going on about that.
I’ve added an Amazon Wish List for things we want, and/or could actually use, for people who want to do something but don’t know what we want. Those items are mostly low priority.
I think that we may be changing the way we handle things here, since Steve had a really neat idea. I just need to figure out the best way to implement that.
I sort of want to put an ad here, as well, but I figure that most of my visitors are like me: Running AdBlock, and haven’t seen a bloody ad in months.
More as we get it sorted.
It’s been a long time since I’ve said something here, and I know I said I’d try to keep on top of this more often.
Unfortunately, life likes to rear its ugly head at us from time to time, and my life has been no exception to this rule.
Around the first week of March, I wasn’t feeling too well. Always dehydrated, constantly using the restroom, getting no sleep because I was getting up all times of night because of the constant thirst, and its end result.
I ended up in the hospital due to the effect this was taking on my body, and found out at that point that I was diabetic. So, I’ve been working on recovering and getting balanced since then. This explains the lack of updates on our little site over the past month and a half.
Now, if we could encourage Steve to post something here… 
It’s the end of another week, and another thing comes off our list.
Thanks to our friend Chris, we now have a used television, and a stack of metal hangers. He explained to us that we could use the hangers to make an antenna to hook up my converter box, so we could pick up some of these newfangled digital TV signals. He explained one method that seemed bulky, but plausible.
Just to drag out some of the decorator in me, I had to see if it could be done in a less tacky manner, and found out about a fractal antenna, which looks like it might be fun to build. I’ll build one this weekend, and if it works well, maybe I’ll consider building a few more. I just had to order a 75 to 300 Ohm Matching Transformer from somewhere that wasn’t Radio Shack (long story), so since I was stuck paying more for shipping than I thought was worth it initially, I ordered ten of these. Since the shipping only grew by a few cents from the first item purchased, I figured it’d be a good idea. Worst case scenario, I can sell the things on eBay, and people will need them if they build their own antennas.
Either way, a new goal should be coming out of one of us for March, so stay tuned!
It’s the end of a week, and as promised, I would do balances for anything that’s come in.
While there was no cash-based input, there was a parts-based input, of which we’re thankful for.
Gushi ordered a pair of TrendNet wireless cards for us, which were on our list for cleaning up the living room. While we were waiting on these to arrive, our issue with our current wireless devices (laptops) became worse. We’d lose wireless for minutes at a time during the day. I went to update our old router’s firmware, once we realized through troubleshooting it ourselves that it wasn’t just my notebook — it was every notebook, and the one desktop that now has wireless that dropped all at once. Unfortunately, the update caused the router to brick itself. I contacted Linksys about that router via chat, explaining that the router was basically a brick, and doing things that routers shouldn’t be doing, as well as detailing everything that I had done at that point to validate my statement.
I spent 80 minutes in chat with that agent, who was diligently reading from scripts wherever they could, making me repeat things I’ve already done, and then just pronounced the router dead. They told me to call in to customer service with a case number, and they’ll replace the unit. So, I call in, and get someone who is trying to insist that we troubleshoot some more. I explain to this customer service woman twice that I spent nearly an hour and a half troubleshooting the device, and the tech has pronounced it dead.
I get the feeling there that they don’t want to replace things that are broken, and want to harass the end user until they flip out and hang up, to save money. Problem with that, however, is that they lose customers this way. I know they did, because she kept trying to troubleshoot while I’m explaining that, holy crap, I just spent 80 minutes with a tech, and did EVERYTHING, and no, it’s not the bloody power outlet that causes it to show no power light — take a look at the picture included with the case, lady — the thing is a brick! So I gave her two choices: Replace my router, or I just tell everyone how lousy the support is for their organization. She kept trying to troubleshoot.
This is why I own a Belkin router now.
… and we still have the same issue. Now I realized that the issue was likely interference caused by phones operating at 2.4 GHz. I figured that my router, being in the old corner, was probably being signal-raped by our neighbors, who don’t know they’re doing it. Therefore, I moved the router and modem away from that corner, to a much more open space. I had a few drops when I set that up again, but seem to be drop free for now (knock on wood). If all goes well, Steve will be wireless on Monday.
Therefore! I need to update our list, and try to get the word of mouth out more about us.
Also, a new Goal list should be active for March, and the current one deactivated, so stay tuned.
(A sneak preview of what’ll be on the new list: EZPans .)
 Where things need change. I figured that I could use my camera phone for a few shots, though they are blurry and grainy, just to show what we have to work with in the living room.
On the left is Steve and the Amazing Chair that ooooooozes foam all day. His computer sits to the left of the chair. Have a close-up:
 Foooooam... On the right, there’s my chair from the dinner table, and my two rigs. One of the two isn’t working now and I need to reseat all the parts in it to see if it’s just that: lousy seating. (… No pun intended. ) See what’s really there:
 w3 a3r b0x3n Oh, and that large TV in the not-quite-middle has not worked since the second week we’ve been here. I just need to hire some strapping young lads to cart that thing out, to save my spine. It’s sitting on milk crates that Steve has procured. What that’s sittin’ on:
 Milk Crates. Does a body good. Finally, one last shot:
 I :poop: foam.
Hi.
I’m Justin, one of the two contributors to this site.
This site was born out of a bit of dialog between myself and Steve one night.
I had mentioned to him a bit of an interesting thing I had seen happen within a particular fandom, in how, under the right conditions, people can raise funds for darn near anything, and raise plenty of them.
He jokingly quipped, “Wow. So if we had a website, like ‘furnishourapartment.com’, we could earn money to put furniture in here, right?”
This was replied to with a “Don’t say that when I’m about to check the renewal dates for my personal blog — I might get tempted and buy that.”
Steve was serious about the idea, though, and here we are. Our plan is to set some goals for what we’re in need of for our apartment, and find a way to get to that goal. Of course, you can certainly help with that, which we’ll love you for.
Thanks for your reading,
Justin
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