new couch arm tables

We moved around some stuff over the winter, and my arm table going over the couch and chair arms no longer fits anywhere. But it was so handy! So I had some time a little while ago to cut some scrap into tables over a single arm; here's hoping they are just as useful with the kids and dog jumping all over the place.

Simple glued miter joints instead of kreg screws for a butt.

The trick to finishing these was finding time to well, finish them. The last one saw a lot of wear so I wanted a couple of poly coats, but can't do them when we're running on the treadmill. And tiring out the dog seems to occupy just about every spare moment I have.

What I ended up doing was giving these a quick once over when I was getting the kids ready in the morning. Take their bags to the car, stop to sand the last coat or put a new one one. A week of that and these were ready to go.

So now the dog has something else to be told not to chew on. I love her but she's kind of driving me crazy right now.

Adding xbox storage

With the SSD swapped in, now I have both an old HDD from the laptop, plus an old 3.5 inch drive from who knows where just laying around. I picked up enclosures for both of them, so why not add one to the xbox for more storage.

For the 3.5, obviously

Plus the cheapest 2.5 case I could find.

Neither of these are the biggest drive; they're both only 500gb. What the 3.5 has on it though is a decade's worth of pictures going back to 2005, which includes adopting Payton, getting married, and going literally all over the country - there are pics on there from San Francisco, multiple trips to New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, Vegas, New Mexico, even some from Jamaica and Mexico. Basically all the places you can go when you don't have kids. Looking at them was like seeing a slideshow of the last 15 years of our lives. So happy this project made me get these re-connected.

All systems are go; you can feel it spinning in the case.

Initially I was a little paranoid about immediately turning around and reformatting the old laptop HDD. But things seem fine, and I hate having an open-ended project just sitting around, so let's connect it to the xbox and fire things up:  

Ah, look at all that new space!

This was worth doing; even with just a handful of starter games I was already starting to get worried about storage space on this thing. Picking up Return to Arkham this weekend didn't help. 

So where'd this xbox come from? The wife and kids thought it would be a fun christmas present for me last year. They were right, for sure, but after the holidays ended and classes started, my gaming time hit zero. Add a puppy into that mix and it's almost in the negative. Someday I will have time to game again. Someday...when my doctorate is done and I can once again sit back and enjoy downtime that is truly downtime. And when that day comes, even if it comes for the kids and not me, we'll have more room for more games now. Good times.