Ass Grooving

As was noted in my response to a comment earlier today, I finally have my new computer. This made me happy for about twenty minutes.
After about twenty minutes I had performed all of the immediately necessary steps to get the system up and running, such as getting it connected to my network, uninstalling some of the crap, and just personalizing it ever so slightly.
That all went along very smoothly.
Then I moved on to the hardware.
My first step was to try to add the GB of RAM from my old computer to the new system. So I opened up the old one, took the RAM out, and had it ready to go. Opening up the new system was a breeze. You just pull a handle and the panel pops right off.
Getting the RAM out of the old system had been a bit of a hassle, and getting it into the new system was as well, as there were some wires in the way. Eventually, after a lot of swearing, I got the two DIMMs securely in place, hooked up the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and powered up.
It wouldn't boot with the additional DIMMs in place.
It's possible I just didn't have them seated properly, but I didn't feel like messing with it, as it's also possible that the DDR2 RAM in the new system just won't work with the plain old DDR RAM from the old system. So I opted to leave that as a problem for another day, slipped the DIMMs out, and moved on to swapping out the DVD burner and replacing it with the LightScribe burner.
This proved to be the biggest hassle, as removing the two-piece front panel to allow the burner to slide out proved to be quite a headache. Eventually, after even more swearing, I had the new drive in. Before putting everything back together I booted it up and made sure that everything was working (I had also installed the USB card from the old computer).
Everything was fine and dandy. The system booted up, installed the driver for the burner, and I was good to go.
So I put the front panel back on, which took some effort, slapped the side panel back on, and put the system in its final destination on my desk. I found that the new system is quite a bit deeper than the old one, so it was bumping into the board at the back of its niche and sticking out from the front. Not too big of a deal, so I opted to worry about that later. I hooked up a few more things, planning to gradually add peripherals, and turned it on.
Or rather, I tried to turn it on. The front panel had not slid properly into place when I put it back on, so the little plastic piece that's attached to the button on the front panel wasn't touching the actual power switch inside. So basically when I pushed the power button nothing happened. Swearing some more, I took it apart once again, made sure the plastic piece was properly positioned to transfer effort applied to the button onto the switch, and once again hooked things up.
Success!
With the hardware set-up hassles, many of which were physically painful, as they were hard on my finger tips and aggravated my tendonitis, out of the way, I was happy again.
I then went about further personalizing things, or as I like to call it, wearing my own "ass groove" into it (It's a "Simpsons" reference; when carnies stole their house from them, Homer was concerned that the ass groove he had worn into his couch after years would be damaged.).
For a change, I'd actually had the foresight to use the "File and Settings Transfer Wizard" to gather up some of my settings from the old computer and saved them on my external drive. I attempted to transfer them over to the new computer, but I couldn't, as I'd used an old version of the wizard on the old system.
Ah well. Most of it was easy enough to replicate without the wizard.
I then decided to transfer my ATI All-In-Wonder card (which isn't compatible with XP Media Center Edition, so I couldn't use it in my new system) into the other Dell. I was annoyed to discover that the other Dell doesn't have an AGP slot, so I couldn't put the AIW into it.
So much for that. I then opted to throw one of the DIMMs into the Dell's single available slot and bump it up to 1 GB of RAM, but doing so led to POST errors. So that's 1 GB of RAM that I have sitting around unable to be used in either of my two active computers, along with an ATI All-In-Wonder card that is now useless. *Sigh*
At this point it was after noon, and I hadn't eaten anything. It occurred to me that I probably should, and that this was a good time to take a break from my efforts.
Despite the fact that the new Dell is running Media Center Edition (MCE), and one of the major functions of MCE is built-in software support for TV tuner cards, it didn't include a tuner. As mentioned, the AIW is not compatible (I wouldn't want to use it anyway, as the new Dell has a much better graphics card). So if I wanted to take advantage of this feature I'd need to buy a new, MCE-compatible tuner card.
I had intended to buy a new ATI card (The TV Wonder Elite), and was going to wait a while and buy it online.
Thinking on it, though, I decided to head over to Best Buy to see if they had the card in stock, and then get something to eat.
They didn’t have the TV Wonder Elite, but they did have a card from Hauppauge that was MCE-compatible, included an MCE remote, and was about $30 cheaper than the ATI card, so I decided to just buy that.
The fact that it included the MCE remote was the clincher, as I would have had to buy that separately if I’d gone with the ATI card.
Of course, I think the ATI card is a higher quality card, so somewhere along the line I might make the switch. We’ll see.
I was annoyed with myself after I left Best Buy and stopped to eat at McDonald’s, as I’d forgotten that the Monopoly game now includes “Best Buy Bucks,” and I got a $3 one. If I’d eaten first I could have knocked $3 off the cost of my purchase (I also bought the Director’s Cut DVD of “Elektra.” It wasn’t a great movie, but it was entertaining enough that I figured it was worth getting the DVD.).
Oh well.
Once I got home I threw the tuner card in and set it up with MCE.
The cool thing about the remote is that it includes an IR blaster that will allow you to use the MCE remote to control your digital cable (or satellite, as the case may be) receiver.
It basically plugs into the back of the USB IR receiver that you connect to your computer, runs on a long wire, and you put it in front of the IR port of your cable box.
It’s a little slow, but it works.
There is one problem with the new tuner card, though. The AIW card included a little plug that accepted multiple connection types (S-Video and Composite) from your audio/video source. It essentially served as an extension cord, allowing you to have your audio/video source (in my case, my cable box) a little further away. This card doesn’t have that, and I don’t have an S-Video or Composite cable(s) long enough to reach the computer.
So there’s some more stuff I’ll have to buy.
In any case, it’s looking like it’s nearly time for me to eat something again, and I have some more “ass grooving” to do…