A DVD Player

Today I finally went down to Fry's with my sister. She had wanted to get more RAM for her desktop (Windows XP on 128 MB is the definition of pain and suffering). I had wanted to purchase a new DVD player. The one I had was this Cyberhome thing I paid $40 for about five years ago. Incredibly, it worked fine until a few months ago, when the remote stopped working and then the front panel buttons would work for about a minute after power was applied, so I had to power cycle the thing every time I wanted to use it.

Well, what I got is a DVD player. And a Bluray player. And a Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. I purchased a Panasonic SC-BT100 home theater system, fulfilling a dream I have had for quite a while. It's pretty nice. I also picked up a Spaceballs DVD to try out the surround sound.

One somewhat irritating thing, however, is that when I first powered it up, my wireless network connection dropped out. I checked the manual, and it turns out that the wireless connection for the rear speakers uses the 2.4Ghz band. Great, it's not like I already have a cordless phone competing with my Wi-Fi, not to mention all of my neighbors' wireless networks. It's too bad my laptop doesn't support 802.11a - my access point does, and I'm told that it's a much less crowded band. At any rate, I was able to get my Wi-Fi back by cranking the power setting on the access point back up to the maximum. When I first set it up my building was still pretty empty, and I was able to turn it down to the minimum and still get signal in my bedroom. Since then I had been forced to turn it back up to a medium setting.

Now I just need my couch. I ordered one from Factory Furniture Direct, but they said it will be a couple weeks.