my wish list

last updated: 5 December 2009

Shopping for Christmas? Avoid the shame and embarrassment of getting me a gift I already have or didn't want! You can be sure to please if it comes off this list! Note that most everything here I will purchase myself eventually, unless my tastes change.

Media

The books, CDs, and DVDs I want can all be found on my Amazon.com wishlists. I also like prime numbers, so a poster with a huge prime on it ($95) would be cool to hang in my classroom.

Also, since I have a Wii, I can always use Wii points or some games.

Housewares

receiver and 5.1 speakers

Musical Equipment

I have a little home recording studio and I play live fairly often. Also, I'm the worship leader at my church, so I've also got a list of music-related things that Lakeline could use.

Home

a Fender acoustic guitar folding stand ($17)
a second pedal-style guitar tuner ($45 to $100) - Fender and Boss both make good ones
a couple of Mogami Silver 25' microphone (XLR) cables ($20 each)

Church

a couple of electric guitar folding stands ($25 each)
several Mogami Silver 25' microphone (XLR) cables ($20 each)
another Shure SM-58 microphone or two ($100 each)
Alesis ADAT HD24 24-track hard disk recorder ($1500)

Car

repair driver's side window that seems to let in just enough air to make noise, even when rolled all the way up
repair SRS light that's currently always on
fix heater / AC switch

Clothes

I wear medium or large shirts, large or extra large T-shirts, size 10 shoes, pant waist 32 and pant length 30 or 32 (usually 30). For shirts for work, I like dark greens, browns, grays, and the occasional dark red or blue (though I already have quite a lot of blue). Usually I go for solid colors, though checkered/plaid or the odd horizontal stripe or so would be fine. I don't look very good in vertical stripes, though.

slacks, khaki or otherwise. Currenly my favorite pair of slacks is from Eddie Bauer, sized 32x30.
some button-up short-sleeve shirts. Eddie Bauer small fit me well.

Computer

A computer isn't so much a thing as a hole into which you must occasionally pour money. My machine hasn't been upgraded in a while, so the hole is hungry.

I run Linux, so if you buy me peripherals or hardware, it's a good idea to make sure that they're compatible before spending too much money.

My machine is one I built myself back in 1997, and over the years I've upgraded parts piecemeal. Here's what is currently in there:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+: A great chip I'm quite pleased with. My motherboard will run faster chips, though, up to the Phenom FX.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H: Supports SATA and everything else I need.
RAM: 4 GB of DDR2-106 SDRAM, a.k.a. PC2-8500: dual-channel goodness
Hard drives: 160 GB, 500 GB, and 640 GB: The smallest hard drive holds the OS, installed programs, and my home directory. Assuming it doesn't fail, it's adequately sized. The 500GB drive is for backups, ripped DVDs and other large files like ISOs of Linux distributions. The largest drive holds lossless digital copies of part of my large music collection. The two bigger drives are SATA, so eventually I'd like to replace that last parallel-ATA drive. Overall I now have a more than one terabyte of drive space in total. Eep.
Optical drive: Samsung SH-S223Q 22x DVD±R DVD burner: I'm happy with this drive, and have no immediate need to burn Blu-ray disks or anything.
Video adapter: onboard ATI Radeon HD3200 (AMG 780G): I don't even actually have a video card in my computer, for the first time in ages, because the onboard video is much faster than the Radeon 9000 I was using. My motherboard has a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, and theoretically I could add a Radeon 3400 series card and get some "ATI Hybrid CrossFireX" action, but I think that's only an option under Windows Vista.
Display: Samsung SyncMaster 220WM: This is a sweet widescreen LCD monitor running at 1680x1050, and I really like it. One day I've love to add one or two additional monitors on the side(s), but this is pretty low on my list of things that needs improving. Refresh rate isn't that important to me, but all things being equal I'd rather have one that outputs true 8-bit color ("16.7 million colors") rather than one that cheats the color to 6-bit ("16.2 million colors") to get faster refresh rates.
Sound: onboard Realtek ALC889A and M-AUDIO MobilePre USB: For the first time in a long time, I've got a good setup for recording again. Excellent.
Operating system: Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope): I'm very happy with Linux. I have no desire to run Windows. I should be upgrading to Karmic Koala (9.10) pretty soon.

grahammitchell.com