my wish list
last updated: 19 July 2008
Want to surprise me with something? 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
- a widescreen TV so we can watch DVDs better
- 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 ($17)
- a pedal-style guitar tuner ($45 to $100)
- Fender and Boss both make good ones
- a couple of Mogami Silver 25' microphone (XLR) cables ($20 each)
- a decent condenser microphone like the R0DE NT1-A ($230) or Studio Projects B1 ($120)
- a good USB "sound card" like the M-AUDIO MobilePre USB ($125)
- wah pedal
- good quality distortion pedal
Church
- a couple of electric guitar folding stands ($25 each)
- several Mogami Silver 25' microphone (XLR) cables ($20 each)
- another Shure SM-58 microphone or two ($100 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 1997, 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 DDR2-106 SDRAM, a.k.a. PC2-8500
- dual-channel goodness
- Hard drives: 160 GB, 250 GB, and 640 GB
- The smallest hard drive holds the OS, installed programs, and my
home directory. Assuming it doesn't fail, it's adequately
sized. The 250GB drive is for backups and large files
like ISOs of Linux distributions. The largest drive
holds lossless digital copies of part of my large music
collection. Only the biggest drive is SATA, so eventually
I'd like to get rid of all my parallel-ATA drives. Overall
I now have a total of slightly more than one terabyte of
drive space. Eep.
- Other drives: Plextor PlexWriter 12x CD writer and Pioneer 305S
slot-loading DVD drive
- Both drives are SCSI, running from my venerable Adaptec AHA-2940U
SCSI controller. I can't burn Blu-ray disks or even DVDs!
Now that SATA drives are an option, I really need
to get a new burner.
- Video adapter: onboard ATI Radeon HD3200 (AMG 780G)
- I don't even actually have a video card in my computer,
for the first time in ages, because the onboard video
is much faster than the Radeon 9000 I was using.
My motherboard has a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, and
theoretically I could add a Radeon 3400 series card and
get some "ATI Hybrid CrossFireX" action, but I think
that's only an option under Windows Vista.
- Display: Samsung SyncMaster 220WM
- This is a sweet widescreen LCD monitor running at
1680x1050, and I really like it. One day I've love to
add one or two additional non-widescreen monitors on the
side(s), but this is pretty low on my list of things that
needs improving. 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
- I can play sounds! However, I do a little home recording studio
work, and it would be very nice to have a dedicated sound
card just for digital recording. In particular, I currently
like the M-AUDIO MobilePre USB preamp and audio interface,
which can be found for $125. I also hear good things
about the RME Hammerfall series, but those are pricey!
- Operating system: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (Hardy Heron)
- I'm very happy with Linux. I have no desire to run Windows Vista.
