Tobby Hagler

My packages arrived this afternoon. I was really excited about my system together, and with my wife out of the house at her book club, it was a great time to really geek out and order pizza.

I spent some time with Sadie and Tucker, and once they were sufficiently tired of me and fighting over a bone, I went to work.

(I’ll post photos later)

With very little actual hardware, installation was a snap. I got the motherboard in; with all the connections for things like the VFD panel, volume control knob, extra USB and firewire ports, and the drives hooked up. With a final once-over to make sure all my connections were solid, it was time for the moment of truth: I powered it on.
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I love to watch my stories.

But sometimes I can’t sit down and watch TV whenever they air, and sometimes I want to watch something over and over. My friends, along with my wife, are about ready to hold an intervention because it’s 2007, and I still don’t have a DVR. This means that come Monday morning, coworkers may or may not be allowed to discuss the previous night’s Battlestar Galactica, or the upcoming episode of Heroes.

Also, I’m a really stubborn geek; and while a Tivo or the Comcast DVR might be fine for anyone else, I have to do it myself. So after several months of planning and feet-dragging, I’ve begun the process of building my own HTPC from scratch.
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