Updating hardware and life

 I have had the same network hardware for about the last 8 years give or take (probably more give) and in that time period, I have had my entire home ecosystem connected and working a specific way. I have never been good at computer networking and configurations. And the computer knowledge that I do have is very rusty and obsolete to say the least. My life in California found me needing to be on top of computer information technology and I was surrounded by people who kept that side of me alive and well. Now almost 19yrs later, those tech skills like MSDOS, and Windows 95, 98, ME, 00, XP, 7, 8, are all but no longer useful. And my HTML skills are archaic by today's standards.

So, when you add in new configurations and hardware to a system held together with cobwebs and hope, it is like taking that one piece that causes the whole Janga tower to crash. For the last 3 days since I got my new modem router, I have had to systematically go through and try to figure out how I had things connected. Because the Tech that came and installed the new router modem, said that he "cloned" the Wi-Fi structure and assured me that everything would work, it in fact hadn't. After messing around with it for a full day and a half, I finally figured it all out and got things fully restored. 
The biggest issue that I am still working on and have about 86% figured out is my VLC media player. I have a 4TB Network Attached Storage drive from Western Digital called the WD My Home Cloud, which I paid a TREMENDOUS amount for about in 2014, that I have connected to the new modem router, so that I can stream my music, and movies on, as well as access all of my data and files on it. VLC media player is my go-to and has been since the early 2000's when I first learned about it. All of my friends loved and used Win Amp, and so I was the only "freak" that didn't use it. Mainly because it was to much of a learning curve, and I didn't want to have to install a bunch of other files and things to make it work, where VLC just came straight out of the box ready to play anything you wanted. 

Outside of my tech issues, I have been cleaning. As I am going through and cleaning, I am also finding new purpose for a lot of things that I have. And I am getting rid alot of things too. I recently rediscovered my old handheld gaming systems like my Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and Nintendo DS Lite which has an R4 King chip, that allows me to download and play any Nintendo DS ROM I want. Out of the 3 systems, my DS is my favorite and the one that I put the most time and money into. It is my eventual idea to fully setup my living room entertainment center with all of my gaming consoles and to be able to play them whenever I want without having to unplug one and plug in the other. I want to get an automatic HDMI switcher. And I also want to get some other older systems or get the ones that I have fixed. 

I have also been reading a lot on my Kindle. I have about 500+ books on my Kindle and my Amazon account. Currently I am reading Heated Rivalry, the book that launched a whole Gay Sports surge with the HBO show that is based on the book. If you are living under a rock and haven't heard about it or seen it. The show and the book, follow two young Hockey players named Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. They begin their interactions with one another before their rookie season. And it follows them over the course of six or seven years of secretly hooking up with one another to having full on feelings of love and concern for one another. Theres about 4 books in the series and I am very excited to read them all. 
As some of you know, I really don't like reading (which I understand is weird since I have published a book, write this blog and have an extensive occultic library, digital comic book collection, and a huge fan of Anne Rice.) But reading was never my strongest suite and I never read for the enjoyment of it. It is always because I am trying to learn something, or it is because it's for an assignment or something like that. So, when I do find books that I do want to read, it takes me forever to get through them. The last physical/audio book that I read was Wild by Cheryl Stray. I would read the physical book when I was home, and while I was walking I would listen to the audio book. I do listen to audio books more than I read. And just this second I asked my Alexa if there was an audio version of Heated Rivalry and come to find out that there is one, and its read by the author, so I guess I will be downloading that to my iPod 5th gen and listening to it too.

What books, tech, or other things make up your day to day life? What are some things you can't live without, and others that are just a necessary evil?