my wish list
last updated: 11 August 2010
Shopping for Christmas? Avoid the shame and
embarrassment of getting me a gift I already have or didn't want! You can
be sure to please if it comes off this list! Note that most everything
here I will purchase myself eventually, unless my tastes change.
Media
The books,
CDs, and
DVDs I want can all
be found on my Amazon.com wishlists. I also like prime numbers, so a poster
with a huge prime on it
($95) would be cool to hang in my classroom.
Also, since I have a Wii, I can always use Wii points or some
games.
Housewares
- receiver and 5.1 speakers
Musical Equipment
I have a little home recording studio and I play live fairly often.
Also, I'm the worship leader at my church, so I've also got a list of
music-related things that Lakeline could use.
Home
- a Fender acoustic guitar folding stand ($18)
- an octave pedal ($30 to $100)
- a second pedal-style guitar tuner ($45 to $100)
- Fender and Boss both make good ones
- a couple of
Monoprice
25' XLR (microphone) cables ($15 each)
Church
- a couple of electric guitar folding stands ($16 each)
- Alesis ADAT HD24 24-track hard disk recorder ($1500)
Car
- repair driver's side window that seems to let in just enough air to
make noise, even when rolled all the way up
- repair SRS light that's currently always on
Clothes
I wear medium or large shirts, large or extra large T-shirts, size 10
shoes, pant waist 32 and pant length 30 or 32 (usually 30). For shirts for
work, I like dark greens, browns, grays, and the occasional dark red or
blue (though I already have quite a lot of blue). Usually I go for solid
colors, though checkered/plaid or the odd horizontal stripe or so would be
fine. I don't look very good in vertical stripes, though.
- slacks, khaki or otherwise. Currenly my favorite pair of slacks
is from Eddie Bauer, sized 32x30.
- some button-up short-sleeve shirts. Eddie Bauer small fit me well.
Computer
A computer isn't so much a thing as a hole into which you must
occasionally pour money. My machine hasn't been upgraded in a while, so
the hole is hungry.
I run Linux, so if you buy me peripherals or hardware, it's a good
idea to make sure that they're
compatible
before spending too much money.
My machine is one I built myself back in 1998, and over the years
I've upgraded parts piecemeal. Here's what is currently in there:
- Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
- A great chip I'm quite pleased with. My motherboard will
run faster chips, though, up to the Phenom FX.
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
- Supports SATA and everything else I need.
- RAM: 4 GB of DDR2-1066 SDRAM, a.k.a. PC2-8500
- dual-channel goodness
- Hard drives: 500 GB, 640 GB, and 2 TB
- The smallest hard drive holds the OS, installed programs,
and my home directory. Assuming it doesn't fail, it's
adequately sized. The 640 GB drive holds lossless digital
copies (FLACs) of part of my large music collection.
The largest drive is for backups, mostly, but also has
large files like all our wedding photos, videos and
some ripped DVDs I got from Netflix but never got around
to watching. All three drives are finally SATA, which
is cool. Overall I now have more than three terabytes
of drive space in total. Eep.
- Optical drive: Samsung SH-S223Q 22x DVD±R DVD burner
- I'm happy with this drive, and have no immediate need to burn
Blu-ray disks or anything.
- Video adapter: EVGA GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR2
- It's kind-of sad that nVidia has so much better
linux drivers than ATI, but I do like this video card.
- Display: Samsung SyncMaster 220WM
- This is a sweet widescreen LCD monitor running at
1680x1050, and I really like it. I wish it were 1080p
instead of just 1050 pixels tall, but otherwise I'm
really happy. At some point I've probably add one or two
additional monitors on the side(s), which is so
helpful for productivity. Refresh rate isn't that
important to me, but all things being equal I'd rather
have one that outputs true 8-bit color ("16.7 million
colors") rather than one that cheats the color to 6-bit
("16.2 million colors") to get faster refresh rates.
- Sound: onboard Realtek ALC889A and M-AUDIO MobilePre USB
- For the first time in a long time, I've got a good setup
for recording again. Excellent.
- Power supply: Antec earthwatts EA380
- This is a 380W power supply that is "80 PLUS" certified,
which helps with my electric bill. If I get any more
hard drives or a much faster video card, I might actually
have to upgrade this.
- Operating system: Ubuntu Linux 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)
- I'm very happy with Linux. I have no desire to run Windows.
