Soooo I'm a little tired now.
My stepdad bought a gigantic HDTV the other day. As such, we had a bit of a television rotation in the house. The big heavy old-school thing was coming downstairs for us to play with . . .
Last night after dinner, I cleared out the old TV cabinet. The games (and we had picked up a LOT of PS2 games in the past many years!), the PS3, the PS2, the Wii, the satellite receiver, the VCR(!!!), the sound system . . . the front end speakers . . . so aside from the heavy-ish TV that my brother and I later moved aside, it was pretty clear and good to go.
The older brother came over to lend his body frame to the job a little later. He and I took the old TV cabinet and brought it upstairs with out too much hassle, so that was nice.
Unfortunately, all the niceness in the world wasn't going to make bringing that giant TV down any easier. And let it be known that when you have a large, wide television and a stairway that bends at the bottom, well . . . so yeah, the indoor stairs didn't work out for us, and the giant TV had to go back up the stairs.
Also let it be known that when you have a MASSIVE moving project like this and all hands involved are brothers plus the one mother kinda watching from the side, well . . . it gets messy. I'm a little sad to admit that they did more heavy lifting than I did, being that they're both around the 200 pound mark and significantly stronger than I am (which is fair, being that they outweigh me by sixty or seventy pounds). So yes. Brothers stressing out with painfully heavy things, getting hands slammed here and there, shouting at a mother to "get out of the way" when she peeks her head in from the bottom of the stairs . . . they get a little grumpy.
It sucks when they get grumpy. A lot.
Well, we eventually took it down by the outside stairs in the garage that leads into my stepdad's office. Aside from a lot of annoyed noises coming down the steps, it was more or less an okay job and once the TV was in place it still worked (though we have a slight ghosting effect in the picture now, so I guess we jarred one of the colour projectors so we'll need to get that looked at).
So we were all more or less done and just had to re-hook all the electronics back into it all. Older brother borrowed the computer a little, younger brother grabbed himself a glacier-fresh Kokanee from the fridge . . . and I got to electrical-type work and sorting out the new layout of our basement system.
I figured it was fair enough that I figure all this crap out since the other guys did most of the lifting (not to say that I didn't, just sayin').
So I was working at that for the past three or four hours until now (about 1am). Getting longer wires for the smaller rear speakers, figuring out what to fit into the cabinets built in/under the giant TV, sorting out where to put all those games and stuff . . . quite the adventure.
Well, VCR has no more space, so it got the boot and is shelved to the left (as is pretty much all the PS2 equipment). The actual TV had room for two things, so I put in the PS3 and the sound system (though I imagine I'll be pulling that out before I use it to be courteous to the cooling fan and all that). Satellite receiver sits on top of the TV. The Wii is just kinda crammed on the floor between the TV and the left speaker.
The cool thing about the speaker stands, though, is that they actually have storage compartments inside them, so I put games into one and controllers/peripherals into the other. It looks pretty decent.
After all that was done (and correctly hooked up), I gave the carpet a quick vacuum, re-centred the rug, and got all the couches and stuff into more or less their new positions.
The course of this hooking-up and organizing process covered the 2nd half of "The Dirty Dozen" and most of "Die Hard: With A Vengeance".
Buuuuut . . . I think in the long run it should be alright . . .
So . . . Rock Band party at my house? Guys?
