Visitors to my apartment may be astounded to learn that there are no longer any CDs, DVDs, or video games piled on the floor. Gloria has long been saying that we needed to get them into shelves, and I finally got around to taking her advice. I ordered three "Atlantic Oskar Multimedia Storage System" units from racksandstands.com, and we've installed the first two.
As the name (OSKAR) may suggest, they seem sort of like they want to be IKEAn. A few people to whom I've shown pictures have said, "Ok it's from IKEA." They're not quite up to that level of quality, though. The unit was a little wobbly before we nailed on the backboard. The backboard is a series of thin slats taped together, and the slats' grain doesn't match up in the front, so if you look at the seams, it's pretty weird. Of course, once the shelves are full of stuff, it's not a big deal. We've got our two units against the wall and full of stuff, and they look pretty good.
We had originally figured on needed all three, and maybe another unit later, but everything fit on two. This is nice. I think we have enough room to add maybe forty more CDs and forty or fifty more DVDs. This will probably take a good while, but if not... we have a third unit in backup! All told, it was a good thing. It's nice to finally have everything in its right place.
Yesterday, Gloria sent my iPod to Apple for replacement and Heide's laptop back to Everett. I used Backup.app to back up all the things she'd thought she'd lost, and I need to send her an email about how to do that on her own.
Backup.app is a nice little app, and should come with the OS. It's pretty lame that they've made it part of .Mac; if you consult Schwern's journal, you'll see that Apple loves to replace hard drives when they do service. If that's the case, they should make backing up easy and they shouldn't charge you a yearly $100 for the right. (Maybe .Mac will be nice for me someday when I have two Macs. Until then, not so much.)
Speaking of two Macs, it seems like everyone is salivating over the Mac Mini, including a number of LUG members, fellow geeks, and even cow orkers. I've been asked whether I've ordered one yet, and I don't think I will. I really like the look of it, and I'd like to have one, but there's no good reason for wanting it. I do all my work on my PowerBook, Gloria uses her iBook, and the other PC in the house is just sort of there. It's almost more useful as a Win32 box because it means we have Win32 when needed. Also, I imagine that syncing between the two machines would be annoying. Still... the Mac Mini is nice-looking.
I'd rather get a 20" Apple Cinema Display. Of course, that would mean more time spent sitting at my desk in the office and not with Gloria, on the sofa, across from the TV. Mixed blessing, that.
