Oh, I still have this thing.  I need to use it more.

For that matter, I am like, way behind in reading blogs around the Internet.  Oh, dear.  And I don’t think that I am anywhere close to being able to actually take the time that’s necessary to catch up.  Moving into a house has taken up more time and money for the initial setup than I imagined it ever would.  Conceptually, it seems so simple: buy house, move stuff, done.  Of course, it never works that way.

I have my computer workstation setup, and usable, for the first time in almost (over?) a half a year.  Oh it’s nice to be back on zest.  Of course, I need to actually update all of the contents of its hard drive being that I haven’t used it in half a year, so I’m busy getting old stuff shoved onto BD-R discs in case I need to use the stuff at some future date and then I am going to wipe the system clean for the first time in probably two or three years and do a fully clean install of Ubuntu.  I am hoping that it will fix any of the lingering issues that I have with the sound system—I can’t believe that it’s 2010 and we still can’t do 5.1 channel surround correctly!  I have the 5 channels, but not the .1!  Well, I have the .1, but with next to no volume; it might as well not be transmitting any signal to the LFE channel for the subwoofer, because in order to hear the sub at all I have to make the other speakers painfully loud.

Perhaps the biggest thing I have missed about not being able to have a proper workstation setup is the chair.  No, the keyboard at a comfortable height, for which my wrists will (I hope!) be grateful.  Or maybe it’s the regular use of two monitors at the same time on the same system.  Hell, I don’t know what the biggest thing is.  Maybe it’s that I have a roomy system again.  Or maybe the fact that I can now get back into a groove where I can keep references on a screen while I am working with programming and so forth.  There’s nothing I hate more than having to refer to some silly reference and have to flip full-screen windows or virtual desktops to do it—that’s something that two monitors makes very easy, because then I can work in one and have reference information in another.  Too bad I don’t have room for three monitors, because I’d totally use all three of them.

I jokingly mentioned to a friend of mine on the phone today that I have four display ports on the back of my computer, and I have four monitors laying around, maybe I should try to use them all… but I know that (for the short time that I had 3 monitors, anyway) that it was a joy to use and improved my ability to work much like when I originally went from one monitor to two monitors.  I wonder, seriously: what’s the largest number of monitors that makes sense for productivity?

Well, anyway.  I have to wrap things up and get to bed.  It’s nice to type for a bit, though, even if I have not written frequently enough that it’s no longer likely that there’s anyone left to read it.