It’s been a few days since the whole Blapril 2020 thing wound down (though I guess it went past when I called it done, but I still qualify for having “completed” the challenge to my knowledge) and I took a little bit of a break from blogging because I was running out of things to talk about and needed to recharge a bit. The marathon of blogging every day for a month takes its toll despite the fact that I have done it on multiple occasions. I know I can do it, but I prefer a more lax “write when you have something meaningful to write” approach. To each their own, I guess. Whatever the case, I have been playing games, doing adult stuff and have built up a set of drafts that I’d like to publish in the near future. Today, rather than talking about games or MTG, instead I have some IRL updates for you.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on the blog already, if not I definitely mentioned it on social media. I moved my family into a house back at the beginning of the year, and one of the positives was it had a nice sized back yard for my dog to occupy. The front yard had grass that was mostly dead, but with all of the rain we had over the course of the last couple of months, things got hairy pretty quick. Soon enough I had several foot tall weeds in the back yard, and the front yard was starting to look horrendous as well. When it first started getting out of control, I borrowed my friend’s lawnmower to get things handled, but unfortunately his machine was a bit old and in disrepair. We couldn’t get it to work no matter what we tried. Option #2 was to pick up a weed eater from a local hardware store and at least try and knock the bulk of it down. We did that, and though it wasn’t pretty at least the front was presentable again, though the back yard managed to eat up the remaining line I had. Eventually I knew it was time to bite the bullet and buy a proper lawn mower. So that’s what I did, though the story doesn’t end there. I went to the local Home Depot to get one and due to the COVID-19 madness, there was a line just to get into the store. As such I turned to Amazon, who came through with the Craftsman mower pictured here, and delivered it within a week. I still had to look at my shabby yard during that time, but once it finally showed and I put it together, I ran through the rest of the project and have mowed again since. It’s definitely nicer to maintain it and I’m glad I can do so now.

Another purchase that needed to be made but we had gone without, was for the front room. When I got my new computer desk setup in my office, I still had the old one ready to be used, so it became our makeshift TV stand. As much as it worked and wasn’t really an issue, I have always wanted a big TV (which I got earlier this year) on a proper entertainment center where I could hook up my multitude of consoles in one spot so they could all be easily enjoyed. We ended up going for a little more expensive of a selection just to make sure it was higher quality. I wanted something that would be comparable to the computer desk I selected a few months prior. When it arrived and I started putting it together though, I realized that it was going to be a bit of an undertaking to get everything set up. Also, we these build it yourself pieces of furniture, they are usually pretty easy to put together, but this one required so much screwdriver work that I decided it was probably time to also invest in a power drill.

My local hardware store had a good selection of drills, but I finally narrowed it down to this DeWalt. I’ve used the brand in the past and they’ve always seemed a good value. The pack I picked came with a battery, charger and case, but I also had to spend a little extra on a set of bits for it. I guess I’m getting pretty old, when buying tools and furniture is actually exciting. Whatever the case, I had stopped mid-build on the entertainment center to pick this bad boy up, so I came back home and got back to work. The rest of the assembly was a breeze with the help of this drill along with my lovely lady. Soon enough it was put together and I set up my PS4 on it. As you can see above, it was pretty bare bones at this point.

Having purchased this entertainment center with the explicit intention of having all of my consoles on deck, I picked this one because it not only had hidden shelves inside the cabinets, but also the premade holes on the back of the unit for cable management. But after getting them all set up I realized two things. A: I would need an HDMI switch because my TV only has 2 inputs, and B: I would need a larger surge protector in order to plug everything in. I only had a 6-outlet protector at that moment, so I ended up purchasing a 12-outlet one along with a 5 input HDMI switch. The final piece of the puzzle arrived yesterday, as I already had the switch and consoles set up for the past couple of days. I hooked up the surge protector and plugged everything in, and I thought I’d share the test run with you here:

Here you’ll see the switch, my console setup, and me swapping through all of the inputs. We start with the PS4, switch over to the PS3 (which had just rebooted from a system software update), on to the NES Classic and SNES Classic (both of which were on screen saver mode, showing the intro movies to various games) and finally my At Games Genesis mini, then back to the PS4. It works great, is a sleek/solid design and quite compact to boot. The only thing I still want to add to the setup is a sound bar with subwoofer for the TV, which will be great for all consoles along with movie watching, etc. Overall I’m happy with the purchase, and the ability to finally have all of these great consoles out and usable. The mini systems and my PS3 have been collecting dust for some time, and there’s some great games installed on all of these platforms. Time to start a retro gaming series I suppose!