In my quest for power the ultimate in geekdom, I bought myself a “home theatre” system. Nothing enormous. Just a nice $180 300 watt system from RCA (tax included). Now I can watch either DVD player, VCR, or listen to radio without resorting to swapping cables and stuff. I ended up with yet another remote control (I feel like Susan in Coupling), which was supposedly universal, but didn’t even have DVD player codes. So now there’s a remote for the TV, the Sampo (my multiregion DVD player), the Phillips (my combo DVD/VCR) and now the RCA. All of the batteries work in them, however (joke only for fans of Coupling).

Now, I really dislike the radio. They never play music that I like and then talk and talk and talk all the time. So I love Rhapsody. I can play streaming music of groups that I like, and they even have a “radio” feature that will stream 10 groups that you like plus similar music. So far I’ve made a BritPop station (The Clash, Oasis, Pulp, Blur, Franz Ferdinand, etc), a Swing station (based upon Cherry Poppin’ Daddies & Squirrel Nut Zippers – it plays Reel Big Fish a lot and I think I’ll like them), a Motown station (I was surprised that Rhapsody didn’t have one of those already!) and a station of my usual groups (PSB, Chumbawamba, Rusted Root, etc). I’ll set up others for other moods, I’m sure.

So, um, you’re probably wondering why I’ve started talking about all this while I’m writing about my new Home Theatre? Ah, you see, it all goes back to that FM transmitter thingy that I bought when the Evil Geek Women forced me to buy my wireless network. If I have that FM transmitter hooked to my computer and play Rhapsody, I can just get a signal into the living room where the Home Theatre system is set up. Even better, with my new wireless network, I can have the laptop in the living room and streaming music from Rhapsody and onto the tranmitter. Sweet! So now I can listen to the radio, but it’ll be music that I like. And no talking! Woohoo!

(In other Geek news, I’ll have to admit that Judi was right – I’ve been enjoying Diablo II. If only my Spring Break were longer – I’ve got fun things I want to do still!)