Moral-Flexibility.Net

Ok this is the basic mock-up for the home video distribution system. By way of an explanation here’s what it does.

The CATV feed comes in through a high/low pass filter (the silver cylinder - that blocks the frequency range assigned to channels 71-77) and is then fed through the combiner (the brass two in/one out thing). On the other side of the combiner is the “modulated” composite signal from the Multiplexer, the modulated signal is set to show on the frequency range assigned to channel 75 (which has been made clear by the high/low pass filter mentioned above).

Realistically instead of a generic combiner splitter I should have a combiner/distributor which has two in (CATV feed + Modulated CCTV system feed) and eight out (eight feeds for televisions within the house, amplified to prevent signal issues). The one I had does not appear to work in any useful fashion, and I’m in the process of obtaining a replacement.

The entire arrangement would then be moved into a fancier housing, and some blinking and flashing LEDs added (simply because they’re so cheap on ebay, and I love Airplane! - and yes that was an Airplane II reference, just let it drop, ok?).

Darren Brown talks people out of their wallets. I can’t imagine this working on me, but then I’m pretty sure the guys who handed over their wallets both thought the same thing as well.

Despite the relative warmth I spent a good portion of today running wires, drilling holes, cursing, muttering, drilling more holes, cursing and muttering some more and finally filling holes simply to provide a break from the muttering.

Yes, this was the beginning of the long awaited CCTV system overhaul and final installation. The first step was finishing the hole in our exterior wall to run cable through (this is the first of three such holes). Sadly my 12″ masonry bit proved to be just a bit short (no kidding…) and some improvisation was called for, in the end para cord was fished through the wall and awaits the effort of pulling wire through a hole that is not noticeably larger in diameter than the wire.

Deciding not to irritate myself any further I started running wire to the permanent location for the DVR, UPSs and so forth (telco, CAT5, RG6, RG59 and power wire along with a GFI outlet - I’ll need to install another breaker for this, but at least the wire is there). Then having done the legwork for that I revisited the CCTV/CATV distribution system (there are pictures of this, but my installation of Paint Shop Pro got corrupted so you’ll have to wait until tommorow to see it) for the house and discovered through trial and error that the combiner/distributor module I’d acquired was NFG, and instead improvised using splitters as combiners.

I discovered that the material I had read online about satellite and CATV happily residing on the same coax doesn’t apply here. Although the two may reside on different frequency ranges any attempt to introduce them both onto the same line results in neither working (actually on reflection this may not be true, as this series of tests was conducted before I discovered the combiner/distributor was NFG).

The upshot is that the CCTV feed happily resides at channel 75, and if I can get another distribution module then I can make sure that every TV in the house can see the cameras. I’ll need another video amplifier, as the one I had originally pushing the multiplexed signal through the house was less than adequate to the task, and the video quality is rapidly diminishing.

So, ending the day I need;

• A new combiner/distributor module for our CATV.
• A new video signal amplifier for the Multiplexor Feed.
• New breaker for my main panel

I’m working some long shifts this week and get a long weekend for my trouble, so hopefully I’ll make some real progress on this soon.

I should also build a new Linux DVR box with a larger HD and better DVR cards (higher FPS rates) as long as I’m relocating the system, but I’ll have to do some shopping around on prices. The existing system is adequate, just not perfect.

Did that make sense to anyone but me? Did anyone actually read down to this part?

-GRIN-

(I’ll post pictures, promise!)

So now Lisa and I smugly watch shows like Till debt do us part and Maxed Out (same idea…in fact they’ve had the same couples featured on at least one occasion), but we keep exploring ways to reduce our spending and make our money work a little bit harder, there is always room for improvement.

Immediately after the purchase of our home our savings were nil, no RRSP contributions, no emergency fund and no RESP for Jilly. Far from optimal, but we started small.

We set up Jillys RESP almost immediately (unfortunately I think we went the wrong direction with that, we should have gone self directed, instead we went with a “managed” fund) to let compound interest and the government “top-ups” work for us.

We started putting money away in an emergency fund, initially supposed to cover just one mortgage payment should there be a payroll error (then two mortgage payments, then a months worth of expenses). My previously mentioned “skimming” was divided into five accounts;

1) Emergency Fund (set to top out at about $3,000)
2) RRSP Account ($50 a paycheque to the retirement fund, not going to be able to retire soon, but it should be a bit of help come tax time…and ANY retirement savings are better than NONE).
3) Capital Expenses Fund (Not the emergency fund, but stuff we want to buy/fix and whatnot. No specific plans for it right now)
4) Jilly Fund - This is likely going to end up as seed money for a self-directed RESP.
5) Fun Fund (Not much point saving like a maniac if I can’t enjoy it. It was this fund that paid for my PS3, and it’ll be this fund that buys my next boomstick).

Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that you NOT start to save like this, as each account is only getting a little added to it each payday it takes a long time to notice any appreciable increases. This may harm the would-be savers resolve.

Where did the money come from? I quit smoking. I quit drinking 2 or 3 store bought coffees a day. I stopped eating a store-bought lunch each day, we stopped eating take-out food twice a week, we stopped ordering in food… the list goes on, but the gist is a few bucks saved here and there adds up just as quickly as money foolishly spent here and there does.

Quit frankly, if I was prepared to spend almost $10 a day on smoking, I’d feel much better about saving $10 a day for my daughters education. Another $5 a day that I didn’t spend on coffee can go towards my retirement… you get the idea.

Ask anyone that knew me before I became a father and they’ll tell you the same stories, I worked two or three jobs and consistently ran out of money a few days before payday. My credit cards were perpetually maxed (that’s how I thought they worked, like a loan I hadn’t yet begun to pay off). I had no savings, and only a little bit stashed in RRSPs which I would dip into for significant purchases despite the tax implications.

Not a clever lad we’re describing here, is it?

I was in my mid-twenties and my father would still get the odd phone call asking him to throw a hundred bucks into my bank account to cover me until payday (it is a testament to my fathers patience that he resisted the urge to lecture each and every time, and still delivered in spite of the inconvenience).

I would ALWAYS spend what was not spoken for in my chequing account. ALWAYS. I did eventually learn to allow for bills that were coming out, but I rarely left myself any cushion against unforseen expenses. This pattern continued well after I moved back across the country, the only difference was that with the pay cut I took I simply didn’t have any disposable income to waste.

When Lisa became pregnant I realized that the system I had become accustomed to was simply not working, and that there was more in this equation than me, and that things needed to change fairly quickly.

I changed two things. Whenever I told myself “I want” something, I would pause for a second and ask “Do I need” it. Nothing major there, just a few moments to shake off the impulse to buy something, a moment to consider the expense in a greater context. The second was that I started embezzling money from myself.

You heard me, I started skimming from my paycheques. I’d have a few pre-authorized withdrawls set up for payday, and they’d skim away $25, $50 and sometimes $100 before I had a chance to spend it mentally. Pretty soon there wasn’t much left in my chequing account except what was needed for the bills.

Found the point again… skip onward to the next post as I try to pick up the thread again.

I’m slow to recommend parenthood to people, it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything but it’s a kick in the shorts, no mistake. Very little in your life remains about “you”, there’s now this smaller priority that is your focus.

The same is becoming true of home ownership. Minor “housekeeping” issues abound, this last weekend was spent gardening and tending the lawn (I am embroiled in a battle with a small patch of crabgrass in my backyard), watering the lawn seeds, finishing the edging, reorganizing the shed (Small space + many tools = creative organization and lots of hangy hooks).

No major projects sadly, just a dozen minor details. I am hoping to overhaul the CCTV system next weekend, adding at least one more camera and finally getting cracking on reconciling and revamping the wiring (real RG6 instead of siamese RG59 for the more tempermental cameras) and hopefully I can post some highlights from that work.

We’re still here, just embroiled in day to day details.