An Update 2014

It's amazing to me how time flies. A lot of things have happened since my last post in 2012.

I have been living in the cargo trailer since July 8th 2010 and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I am now and have been for the past 3.5 years, the proud owner of my own home [on wheels] that is paid for and is mine. I do not pay any mortgage payments and the upkeep is practically zero. The best part is that If I choose to move from where I live now, my home goes with me. No more packing stuff in boxes, getting a lift gate box truck, taking a day or three loading all of the stuff into the box truck and then into the new place, only to pay some new landlord $550 to $850 a month to have my spot somewhere in southern California.. NO!

Today I live inexpensively in my cargo trailer and have money to spare working part-time if I so choose. Freedom from stuff is the new motto and I have been having one hell of a good time ridding myself of the stuff piece by piece. I have found that my happiness is directly contingent upon how much freedom I have to do what I want to do. I am no longer a slave to a job I hate with hours I hate and people who I'd rather not spend time with. Although I really do LOVE teaching fiber optics and hope to go back to work soon!

At present, I am still in college. I will graduate sometime later this year with two associates degrees in Graphic Arts. I joke with my friends about being in my 4th year of a 2 year degree because I have found so much fun in going to community college that sometimes I wish I could do this forever. I love learning new things and I really enjoy interacting with people of all ages.

I took ceramics as an elective a few semesters ago and learned how to make vases and things on the pottery wheel. I spent the first 3 of 16 weeks ruining things that I tried to make on the wheel but in my 4th week I was able to finally get something to stay upright and it eventually became a vase after its time in the kiln. I went on to create around 30 items from cups to plates and vases to bowls over the following 12 weeks. Ceramics was a lot of fun and I met some really engaging people too.

The cargo trailer project is close to over as far as the inexpensive projects go. The only things left are the off grid solar system and inverter, the on demand hot water system, the emergency exit and an air conditioning system that I may not bother with doing.

What I love about my no-windows cargo trailer is that I have a whole sound studio and three monitor computer setup with two additional laptops and surround sound completely built to my specifications by me as efficiently as possible all inside what looks like a large utility trailer on the side of my friends home. Is that cool or what?

What else? hmm

That new hose for the heater was never used because my friend Pete said that he thought that my propane system should be on a safer piped system. Pete said that If I bought the hardware, he would install the system. I specified the spots where I wanted shutoff valves and gas nipples [if that's what they are called?] and showed the layout to Pete. I towed the cargo trailer over to Pete's friend Bart's house and Pete went ahead and installed the whole system in two days including the platform that I bought that houses the automatic changeover valve for my two propane tanks on the extended trailer tongue. The whole installation came out really well and I now have a valve near where my floor heater goes, one for attaching a BBQ near the door, one for my existing super large single gas burner and one for the upcoming on-demand hot water system [that is yet to be installed].

And that's it for now, on this beautiful May 5th at 2:53am. Off I go to study for a math test I'm taking tonight, wish me luck! :)

The New Propane Hose

Yayyy.. The new propane hose showed up for my Mr. Heater MH18b propane heater!

There it is in all of it's glory! Now I don't have to refill the one pound containers. yayyy!

The Messy Audio Wiring

 Now that most of the studio equipment is installed I could focus on getting the underside wiring looking neat and clean.

Here are some pictures of that process.

The underside wiring was unsightly and hanging on the floor. I wanted to get the bulk of the wiring off the floor and up under the console where it would be more difficult to damage from wear.

 

Look at the mess! I need to get that mess looking clean and neat!

You never know when you're going to need a few feet of extra eight pair audio snake cable, so instead of cutting it to an exact measurement, I left a few feet neatly under the console just in case!

Wall Mounting the Monitors

When I purchased the new monitor I mentioned that I wanted to mount all of the monitors using wall mount fixtures when I had the money to buy them.  I have decided that the time has come to do just that.

I purchased one central wall mount fixture for the 27 inch wide screen monitor and two extended arm style wall mounts for the two 19 inch 4:3 monitors.

There are some pictures of the installation of the monitors to the wall mount fixtures.

The lower left picture shows the monitors on some makeshift stands that I fabricated quickly to use to determine a good mounting height for the monitors.

You can see that I am removing the stand for the 27" monitor to get it out of the way.

I have attached the monitor hanging brackets and begun leveling the back plate on the front facing wall.

I have now mounted the center monitor. The two side monitors will be fitted to match the top edge of the center monitor.

You can see that I have laid out the arm style mount and removed the stand from one of the 19" monitors.

Leveling is always important when installing any piece of equipment.

I have now mounted the left monitor and have transcribed the measurements to the right monitor to make that installation much easier.

I want to keep the monitor cabling looking neat and professional. This is a part of what I used to do for a living as a union sound electrician in the motion picture industry.

Here are two shots of the console area with the monitors all wired up and ready for use.

The New PC

Well the time has come where the laptop that I have been using is not really cutting it regarding the making of electronic dance music and editing high quality videos.  I bought the laptop from my friend Jerry for around $200 right after my previous living situation took a turn for the worse.  I'm the kind of person that requires Internet access 24/7 and I knew at that time that I could get by with a laptop until my situation changed for the better.

The new computer that I built starts out with a Lianli  aluminum PC case and is armed with a hexacore AMD Phenom x6 3.3 GHz processor (6 cores) and 16 Gigs of Corsair DDR3 RAM memory. The power supply is a 550 watt Kingwin Laser Platinum LZP-550. The PC also has an Asus 12x Blu-ray writer which is also a DVD and CD writer / player. I'm using an Asus M4A88TD-EVO USB3 Motherboard and a Scythe SCMG-2100RT aftermarket processor cooler. The internal hard drive is a Hitachi 2 Terabyte 7200 RPM SATA drive divided into two separate 1 gigabyte partitions. It runs Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64 bit version.

The grand total for the all of the computer parts was $1,155.27 which is phenomenal when compared to the approximate $7200.00 I spent 5 years ago on my last Studio PC. Since I'm currently a full time college student, I used that status to purchase a student discounted version of MS Windows 7 64 bit Upgrade and MS Office Professional for around $150. I added my M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card from my prior Studio PC to create one extremely amazing A/V Workstation.

Here are some pictures of the new computer and the area that I created to securely mount and wire my new Studio Work Station PC.

You can see the stack of new parts in the left picture and the new case in the right picture.

 I tried to lay out the parts so that you can see them all clearly.

Inside the syringe is thermal paste for connecting the processor to the fan assembly.

Here is the area under the console where I am installing the PC shelf.

I secured the metal shelf brackets to the wood with additional zip ties for added stability.

You can see the new computer under the console on the shelf.

Here are a few pictures of the inside and back panel of the New PC.

The top picture shows the added M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card and the bottom picture shows a closer look at some of the connectors on the back of the computer.