Working from home has it's advantages.  You sit in your own chair, using your own desk, wearing your PJ's.  But it has it's disadvantages too.  You sit hour upon hour in your chair.  There's no one getting you out of your cube to get coffee or whatever.  So you sit there.  And sit there.  Hour after hour.  With all of the recent hoopla about how sitting for long periods of time is bad for people, even fit and active people?  Well, I had to do something.  I'm not fit.  I'm not active.  Introducing my new chair!

Gaim 75cm balance ball.  Yeah, I have no idea what my hair is doing.

It's a Gaim 75cm balance ball.  I had been contemplating using a balance ball as a chair well before the recent press about how sitting is bad for you.  For a couple of days, I would watch TV on our 55cm balance ball.  it was just too small though.  This size, seems to work really well for me.  After watching TV on a balance ball for a couple of hours, I could tell just how sorry my core muscles were.  Hopefully sitting on a balance ball during work, will give me some added benefits.  We'll see how long I last.  Sitting with good posture and not leaning with my arms on my desk is going to be a challenge.

And if you're wondering about the hair, yeah I'm still working on it.  I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with it.  I just know I want to grow it out.  That's a rootbeer on my desk too.  Gulden Drak has a white bottle, so yeah that isn't beer.  :)

Our TiVo HD is possibly the most used black box under our TV.  It just works, and works well.  Sadly, it is now out of warranty.  Considering we put a lifetime subscription on it, I want to do my darndest to protect the investment and keep our friend around for the long haul.  And you know what?  I'm going to crack the thing open, backup and store the original drive and upgrade it!  I did the same thing with Eliza's original TiVo Series 2.  Several years ago, I upgraded her TiVo from a 60GB harddrive to a 300GB drive.  This time, our TiVo HD will go under the knife and it's 160GB drive will be upgraded to 1TB.  I'm looking forward to being able to record 150 hours in HD!

From quick google research, it's best if I pick a particular drive.  In this case, a Western Digital WD10EVDS.  I'll also need WinMFS tools. 

Image taken from thedailyshow.com

But, I must be careful.  I want to make sure I don't lose my recording of Mike on Jon Stewart!   Fun times ahead.

Image taken from Wikipedia.

The other day, I loaded Half Life 2 onto our Home Theatre Computer (HTPC).  I bought this game the day it came out from Electronics Boutique in Lincolnwood Town Center.  I beat the game a few days later.  I haven't played it since November 2004.  On my humble HTPC, the game looks amazing at 1920x1080 resolution with all of the bells and whistles switched on.  The lesson learned, is that old games can look amazing on newish hardware.  This is a slippery slope though.  Now I'm thinking of upgrading the HTPC and using an AMD Athlon II X4 at it's heart, and an ATI 5770 as the muscle.

Spend hundreds of dollars to play a PC game released in 2004?  The madness in my mind says Yes!  My pocket book says, hey you've got property taxes to pay in March.  Growing up is hard.