Wow, its been quiet around here lately. The news of the day is that Jen has a shiny new MacBook Pro to replace her Mini, which died a quiet death during a system update a few weeks ago. Its carcass has been sitting on my shelf for the past few weeks while I got other stuff off my plate, and now that Ive got some time I pulled a spare SATA drive from my cache and slapped it in the case. It started right up and seems to be running fine, so I upgraded the OS on the disk to Snow Leopard, downloaded a copy of Plex, and got it started indexing the catalog on the server in our basement. The server app doesn’t work like a true app, in that it seems to run as a daemon (once running it does not appear in the Dock) and has no preference settings I can find. The Client app disables the menubar and responds to a remote or the arrow keys on a keyboard. It’s reasonably fast, did a quick job of cataloging music and movies, and plays the majority of our catalog without complaint. However, the UI lists movies pulled in from other source channels that we don’t own, which was mystifying at first. I also hunted high and low for an option to install a plugin for the Netflix channel but came up empty-handed. Netflix and Hulu would be our two most commonly used channels, and if I can’t get plugins for them the point is moot.

All of the windows on the west side of the house (with the exception of the attic) have been scraped, glazed, painted, and washed, which is a huge relief. Theyve been crying out for attention since the day we moved in, and in the last two years Ive stood by as the glazing has slowly dried out and fallen from the panes in chunks. I took advantage of the Good Friday weekend to wrap that project up as well as clean up the basement windows, the front door molding, the back porch roof, and a variety of other smaller tasks.

We’re having the babysitter back in tomorrow night so that Jen and I can go out and see the Hunger Games, which is exciting. It’s been years since the two of us have been to see a movie together, and we’re looking forward to this one.