Moral-Flexibility.Net

It didn’t work at all the last time I tried.

This time I mostly followed some online directions for installing a bare-bones Ubuntu media server running MediaTomb and modified things only slightly to get a result that more closely matched my requirements.

It worked (the third time I tried actually).

I celebrated my success by watching Without a Clue streamed to my PS3 directly from the new media server I had just finished configuring (plus I had time to kill while copying everything over - who knew 100gig took a while to copy).

Instructions are saved for posterity below the cut (more for my reference than yours).

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The most recent upgrade of my surveillance system was a surplused DVR unit which has rendered my home-built DVR largely superfluous, I’ve been considering using it as the basis for a home media distribution system but have been having some issues figuring out how I’ll be organizing this.

I’ve decided that I will install Mediatomb on the computer (once we’ve covered a period of time running both DVR systems to make sure the new one is reliable) allowing for streaming video for UPnP devices on our home network, but for the televisions NOT equipped with UPnP I’ll be adding a cludge to allow us to access a library of movies and music from any TV in the house.

The plan is to make use of remote desktop features of Ubuntu, playing movies or music on the “server” will allow me to pipe the monitor (and audio) feed along another custom channel (like our surveillance system feed) and thus any TV in the house can whatever media is selected.

Truly MeTV. It won’t be as user friendly as I would like and will rely heavily on laptops/desktops to get the movie/music started, but once it’s rolling it should be easy enough to enjoy, no?

Someone have a better idea? I’m all ears.

A typical Monday, Lisa and I sorta dragging around the house while Jilly races around like her diet consists entirely of sugar. A few warnings from Mommy and Daddy to be careful go largely unheeded.

The adventure culminates in a loud crash from the second floor, followed by a particular sort of howl that indicates this owee may require more than a quick kiss to set right.

Initially we figured it for a sprain as there was no swelling or bruising, but a call from the school this morning suggested that the wrist had started to swell and Jilly was still favoring her right hand.

A quick departure from work followed by a trip to our GP, then to the General Hospital pretty much killed the day and resulted in a hot pink cast for poor Jilly.

She’s recovering well, as the photo indicates.

So, as usual I’ve done my homework and read everything I can find on the subject, I’m conversant with the array of mortgage products and I think I have the major players lending guidelines figured out.

I have some numbers in my head, but I want some sort of official confirmation.

I call the mortgage broker recommended by my Mom, turns out the mortgage broker is now working for one of the big five banks. No biggie, I’m not ready to apply for financing yet, so I warn her that this is a meeting to discuss hypotheticals and to confirm my numbers, we’re not interested in proceeding further than that at this time.

No problem. We’ll see.

The day arrives and we attend the bank branch for our meeting. We’re kept waiting 15 minutes (for no readily apparent reason) and as we settle ourselves into a spartan office we’re asked for our bank cards.

Me:“Oh, we’re not customers of Mega-Uber-Bank. We’re more like financial mercenaries, dealing with a variety of Financial Institutions.”
Mortgage Guy:“We do reward customer loyalty…”
Me:“I already receive completely free banking through my credit union, lets move on to the mortgage.”

Now. I had given advance warning that this was to be a hypothetical discussion as to mortgage size, bridge financing and all sorts of other little housy related stuff.

MG:“I’ll just need to get your authorization to check….”
Me: “No. I’m not prepared to generate more inquiries on our credit reports, I can tell you our credit scores and we can proceed on that basis.”
MG:“It’s not really a credit hit, we use Transunion which is hardly used for credit reports”
Me:“True. Just little companies like yours, American Express, MBNA and a few other wee financial outfits. No, no credit check. Sorry.”

The conversation proceeded from there, I told him our credit scores and gave him our current obligations, agreed that lying was singularly pointless and further agreed that this was a hypothetical number crunch as there was no file created.

In the end we had my numbers confirmed (although I had overestimated the available equity in our present home, failing to consider 80% LTV would be the max they would advance).

Ok, so now we have our ballpark, it’s time to prep our place for sale.

I have to preface this with the statement that Lisa and I are more than a little risk averse. We are conservative in every aspect of our financial lives.

When we bought our current house we crunched the numbers, and figured out our maximum “affordable” price. We figured this was the number we could afford if we were both reduced to minimum wage jobs AND would still leave us off the “house poor” category.

Sound pessimistic? Yeah, probably, but that’s the way we roll.

Now, recently we had agreed amongst ourselves to explore the housing market and see if we could find something a little larger that we could occupy for years and years and that would address some concerns we have with our current home. My participation was a little reluctant as I love our current home and am loathe to pay closing costs and realtor fees.

The ceiling on cost was expanded for this exercise, although all calculations were made based on our present mortgage expense (changing our present accelerated bi-weekly extra to principal mortgage payment for an identically priced single monthly non-accelerated non-extra to principal mortgage payment) which increased the ceiling on purchase price approximately 100K from our present home.

Seem logical?

At the end of the day our mortgage payments would remain the same, but we’d be paying for 10 years more than with our current house (which presently has 12 years in payments left at the current rate).

Ok, so the basics had been thought out, next I needed professional verification or “proof of concept” to set my mind at ease. This meant meeting with a mortgage salesman, er…professional.

I’m still here, just feeling a little swamped recently.

The highlights are that my brother is visiting, we’re in the process of hunting for a new house (a long story in itself), we just bought a new TV (wow, 1080p really does make a difference!) and my brother gave me a toughbook in the hopes that it might encourage my blogging efforts (so here we are).

There has been lots and lots of mucking around with technology, but as is customary we’re going to be headed for the range and hopefully I’ll be posting some gun pron instead of this sort of babble in the near future.

Thanks for your patience folks!

Today involved a lot of wires. Corrected one problem involving the telco system, relocated the entire television distribution system halfway across the basement and then relocated all the old wiring to the new location (thankfully I had left plenty of slack when I made the temporary arrangement) and then crimped, stripped and drilled like mad.

The final product is pretty slick. All the stuff tucked nicely out of the way and next to main electrical service, everything in the house wired to the nines so I don’t really see much need for expansion (although we have some room for it with one extension for both the telephone and television unused).

I’m proud of the finished result, but I am glad it’s done.

Wiring completed, old extensions removed and am running the new distribution board as the only extension off the main drop. I am still seeing some problems with my DSL connection, but I’ve got a few ideas as to how I might clear that up, and I think we can safely say that if these problems still exist then they are located on their side of the demarc.

The good news is that the new extensions and wiring function perfectly, so I get to spend a little while pulling the old wires out and removing the surface mounted outlets.

Another consequence is that the wiring in the basement is becoming considerably less complicated.

Cool, huh?

Ok, so every room in the house has new wiring for telephone service, a working network connection and at least one (sometimes two) cable connections. These are handled in an organized fashion through their respective trademarked S.T.A.B. “screwed to a board” (©Impact) distribution systems and there is some room for expansion.

I think we’re wired at this point.

I’ve gone a little over budget and I need to scale my activities back to projects where I already have the materials at hand. Next on the drawing board is the installation of the intercom system (acquired ages ago) and it’s accompanying video feed.

I’ll also be selling off my old hardware (primarily on ebay) so anyone looking for a reasonable deal on some analog CCD cameras, small monitors, PCI capture cards, multiplexer and switcher should drop me an email. I’ve got to clean out my basement and the funds will go to my alarm system project.

On a final note, do you think that all this cabling in the walls counts as insulation? It seems warmer in the house recently.

-GRIN-