Windows 7....

To affirm my geekiness, yet again, I had a first for my self. For the last month I have been on a two month research block. So I have more time and a very flexible schedule. Bryn-Erinn and I have enjoyed the extra time and I have also been able to do a fair amount of work from home. As a few of you know I got involved in the beta for Windows Home Server about two years ago. I didn't contribute much, but it got my toe in the door for new an coming products from Microsoft. Now I'm not a Microsoft lover, and I among other have thought of going to the stability of OS X, but I hung onto XP and waited it out, with good result.

Recently when Windows 7 (W7) went to the final beta and then to the release candidate I installed the new operating software onto my computer. I fell in love with it.

Let me tell you if you have Vista (I never did) you will need to upgrade. I've been running W7

older computers, and the system requirements are less than that of Vista. It also has a great media center application, voice recognition, auto docking to the top and sides (trust me after you try it you'll love it too), new task bar, minimization with shaking a window, and a cool fish background (for the beta versions only the retail versions will have a windows logo, blah). I was running XP on our media center PC (it plays our movies, records TV, plays music, let us browse the web in our living room), and Bryn-Erinn was surprised how much more she like W7 than the XP version.

I found, by reading tech geek blogs a month or two ago, that they were having a release party in several cities, but you had to be an IT person. Well I though we have 5 computers at my house, a network, a server and I do all the trouble shooting, so I signed my self up as the Gourley household IT chief tech. I was accepted to the conference. One of my friends, Chris Young, also was accepted and his wife let him go this morning even thought she was being induced later today. In her words, "I'm cool like that".

Chris and I hooked up after I dropped Bryn-Erinn at the airport for her baby shower in Portland and I led a research meeting discussing a prostate cancer project that I'm currently working on. We sat in the front row of the conference, oddly enough held at a movie theater complex. As the conference was aimed at program developers, 60% of what was said went right over my head. However, the golden ticket was, at the end of the half conference, they gave us a copy of W7 Ultimate (MSRP 319.99) for free! That it right Chris and I both have copies now, and Chris also gets a new born baby tomorrow as well. How cool is that?

Okay I said up front that I am a geek, but very happy.

Frugal...

Before I start my post for the topic above I should say that I'm doing much better in terms of my health. I recently went back to work. I was still pretty weak at that point, but for each day that I missed (over five, I was up to seven when I went back) I would have to find time to make up the shifts elsewhere, or my graduation from residency would be delayed. The first few days were a little rough, my hands would shake, and my mind felt a little dull. I'm now back to 90%, and continuing to make strides in my recovery each day. I'm grateful for all the concern and attention I received during this time. Now for this post...

I think it is well known that I am frugal. My dad says I'm cheap. Bryn-Erinn says I'm very thrifty. I would say that overall I agree with these statements and I take a certain degree of pride in them. I think this comes from trying to be financially responsible, and being a student for so much of my life. Until this year, I have never made more than a ten thousand dollars in a single year. In spite of this, I bought my car and paid it off early, paid cash for my entire undergraduate, went through medical school living on a very modest amount, and was still able to save and put some money in the bank for various items (e.g. Bryn-Erinn's wedding ring, a nice computer monitor, yada yada yada...). I rarely eat out, I love cooking from scratch, I try to buy things that aren't full price, I rent all our videos for free from the public library, and I'm more than happy to search online for a few weeks to find the cheapest price I'm willing to pay for a given item. This has left me without any credit card debt ever. Although, I do have some unavoidable student loans from medical school.

I wanted to provide this context so our readers would understand the significance of our most recent purchase. Now, I've mentioned that I have a very strong geek streak running through my veins. We have a home network, server, and a media center PC (these all built by me, at a very discounted rate). However, for the screen on our MCPC we had an old regular CRT TV. It worked great except that the resolution was very low (320 x 200, the lowest computer setting is about 640 x 400). This was problematic when trying to navigate screens and read menus. However, like a blind person learning to read braille, we learned where the positions of certain necessary functions were off the screen and knew to click those areas when needed. Deep down, this chaffed me to some degree, but the recorded TV and DVD that we mostly used the MCPC for, were acceptable in quality.

Bryn-Erinn and I have budgeted a very modest amount of $15 each per month for any personal discretionary spending we like. I try to put most of this away for later. Over the last couple of years I have also received some gifts of cash for various reasons like: birthdays, graduation, awards, etc... These too have been put in the bank for later.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was on the couch in my septic mind, I got the idea that we should upgrade our TV. I quickly batted this thought down, as it was not a necessary expense. To add to this, we now have hospital bills, and we are expecting a new baby this year. In spite of these rational thoughts, upgrading the TV kept coming to mind.

Aside from the badness that has hit, there have been some bright spots as well. I don't think many know this, but Bryn-Erinn recently added a new studio, Kenwood Pilates, to her work hours. She already has two new clients, and the Kenwood studio pays more generously than her other studio. As we reviewed our expenses, finances and hospital bills, it turned out that we have enough coming in to cover everything. It also came up that I had a fairly modest sum saved up in my personal expense account (to be honest I like it that way, so we can have some liquid assets in case of a family disaster or financial blunder (this has happened once)). At any rate, I found that I could buy a TV and still have a good sum left over in the bank for the Gourley emergency fund, as the government is not likely to pass a bail out plan for our family.

True to form, I researched HDTV's. Yesterday, I dragged Bryn-Erinn to several stores (Best Buy, Costco, Target, the Micro Center) to look at different models and sizes of TV's. We found a great deal at Target, of all places, on a Samsung 32" 720p LCD TV. This size gives us more screen than our old TV, but doesn't take up too much more space, and isn't so big that it takes over the room as many TV's seem to do now days. I spent the afternoon making the switch, rewireing things and reprograming our universal remote. After we had it set up and turned it on, we scanned the channels. The first show that came up and which we subsuqently watched was an old episode of the original Star Trek. We felt that was fitting. The picture quailty is amazing even on broadcast TV. And I wrote this entire post on the MCPC, something that I never would have attempted before.

One to replace all others...

It goes without saying that I'm a tech geek. This a very well-known fact to those who know me. It is a title that I wear proudly. Currently our computer to human ratio is 5:2 (2x laptops, 1x media center PC, 1x desk top, 1x server). I also have our house wired (really wireless) so that anyone with the passkey may access our photos, music and videos. Above that, I can access our home from anywhere that I have an internet connection.
Just before Bryn-Erinn and I were married, I made an $80 purchase of a used Pronto TSU-3000 universal remote on Ebay. I spent many hours programing the menus, and "teaching" the remote the signals for our home entertainment system. The remote had some problems (i.e. we had to change the rechargeable batteries every 36-48 hrs), but overall it worked just as it should. That is, until we moved. It likely was dropped too many times for the old girl to handle. So we pulled out the old remotes (7 in all, featured in the picture along with the broken Pronto remote) to work the VCR/DVD, stereo, internet radio, TV, etc... Overall this wasn't a bad thing, but it did make a mess (as pictured). We have been dealing with this backup until I had a great idea for a solution.
When I started the program at the University of Minnesota, they gave us a Palm TX to use for our daily clinical activities. The down side for me was that I already had a pocket pc which I had a few hundred dollars of reference (non-transferable) materials already installed. Further, I had it all set up to use just as I liked it. I also have a hard time with the palm OS. So the Palm sat on the shelf not being used. I was even going to sell it. Over the break I was reading a book on setting up wireless homes. In it I found mention of a software program for the palm that turns it into a universal remote. I did some research into the different brands of software and decided on NoviiRemote Deluxe version 3.73 for $25.99 (holiday sale). This is a great piece of software that lets you teach your palm to send out IR signals to your equipment. So instead of buying another remote sometime in the future when we had the money (not any time soon) I was able to return us to the bliss of one remote on the ottoman. It took a good part of the day to program, so there is some sweat equity involved as well. The remote has only been in use for one day, but I installed a bunch of free games on the Palm so it could also dub as entertainment by itself. The only downside is that you have to point more directly than the Pronto, but this is only a minor inconvenience.

For all you other tech geeks out there, here is how you can have your own universal remote to control anything that takes an IR signal, for less than $75 bucks: palm tungsten on Ebay $45, software $25.99, time 4-6 hours.