I’m unnaturally proud of what I did tonight. (Can you be unnaturally proud? Is there anything natural about pride in the first place? Are animals proud of themselves? Some cats are when they bring you like a dead mouse or a bird or something. Dogs are plenty shameful when they eat their own poop. That kind of shame is sort of a reverse pride, isn’t it? I don’t know for sure, but I was experiencing more pride than I should have tonight is all I’m saying.)
Many moons ago we visited my brother and his family in West Virginia. They had bought a big flat screen TV and attached an Mac mini to it. This was way before Google TV, so that was not even an option. We came home and bought a flat screen and a slim PC because my brother is older than me and I can’t do everything just like him now, can I? It has worked awesomely and I have been years ahead on the streaming video thing.
Not too long ago, a Wii came into our home because we only had enough processing power to run two Apollo missions and what we needed was to be able to run three simultaneously. This Wii has streaming Netflix, so I took the opportunity to hook it up to the big TV and hook a Goodwill monitor to the slim computer. All this works fine except It’s just way more fun to skype with people on the big screen and Downton Abbey streams on the web, not Netflix.
[Editor’s note: this is the point at which this post will get totes boring. If you’ve stuck with it this far, feel free to bail and tell J Dot that you read the whole thing and it was pretty good.] The TV hooks up to the computer with an HDMI cable. The monitor uses a traditional VGA cable. They have two separate attachments coming off the same video card. You see where this is headed, right? TWO DESKTOPS! I know!
See, the TV is great for streaming but not for, um, blogging. The monitor is excellent for long seshs on Facebook, but not the first choice for Lord Grantham. A shared desktop, something I have dreamed of for years, is the best of both worlds. And it is a reality. Right now. At my house.
Ok, I’ll go to bed now.
i have an old laptop (needs a battery but could stay on if plugged in) and some cables the guy at best buy sold us and a computer-ready teevee… but for all my technical expertise, i can’t get the pieces put together. hardware intimidates me.
The hardware is the best part! Figuring out how to make things work after they are hooked up drives me batty.