It’s been nearly three months since I moved in with Jennifer. Honestly, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing here; or, as Jennifer has put it more than once, it’s been the most “non-event” event in her life. We’re pretty much crediting it to the fact that not only did we do a lot of preparation work in advance of my move in, I had been living here pretty much half the time in the months leading up to it. I made every excuse I could think of to spend nights down here… even if Jennifer herself wasn’t the primary reason, it helped that the drive to and from work from her house put together was shorter than the drive between my parents’ house and my office, one way. The one disadvantage of me being down here, so far, is that a good number of my friends live up in Spring. However, we make time whenever we can to go up and visit them.
About the biggest hurdle that I saw regarding the move in was the electronics. Of course, I had a number of electronics, and we had to decide what to do with them. The PC, game consoles, and TV ended up going into my office. The PC was a given, but with the consoles I can play games without bothering Jennifer if she’s watching TV. My home theater and DVD player ended up going into the living room. Jennifer didn’t have a home theater system already, so it made sense to put mine in place. As for the DVD player… her existing one wasn’t an upconverting DVD player, so we put mine in place there and moved hers to the bedroom.
However, our biggest foe so far has been wiring. The first of the two big examples has been in terms of networking. Her office is on the opposite side of the house from my office, and the cable modem and wireless router are located there. We REALLY did not want to run ethernet through the walls, and buying wireless adapters for my Xbox 360 and PC would have been expensive. (Not to mention it wouldn’t have helped my wired-only IP phone for work…) So, after doing some research, I ended up buying a ZyXEL WAP3205 wireless bridge. It basically bridges my ethernet network in my office onto the home wireless network. So far, it’s worked flawlessly. I’ve even been able to play online via Xbox Live with no issues. We’re also considering getting a second one to bridge our Wii onto the wireless network. (No, it won’t join our wireless network. We have no idea why, so the easiest solution is an ethernet adapter and wireless bridge.)
On the other hand, we’re not sure of a decent solution for our other wiring issue. We haven’t actually hooked up the home theater system yet, simply because of the speaker problems. Now, hooking up the front speakers and the subwoofer won’t be a problem (once I retrieve the left/right speakers from my parents’ house). HOWEVER, we really don’t have a good way to hook up the back speakers without running wire through the walls (again). Neither of us like going through the attic, so that’s kind of out. Running it under carpet is out, too, because the living room (like most of the house) has hardwood floors. We’ve tried looking at wireless solutions for rear speakers but have had no luck. So, here’s my question… does anyone have any ideas they’re willing to bounce off us? :-)
Otherwise, life has turned out to be pretty good here. I’m enjoying living with Jennifer, and things are looking pretty good for the immediate future. Here’s hoping things stay that way. :-)