I spend a lot of time around here calling out people for doing dumb shit. In the interests of full disclosure, I need to make this confession. As it turns out, I’m not always the most detail oriented person in the room. I was reminded of this last night when I went to the basement to install a few A/V components before the Comcast guy came by this weekend with my new cable box. As you might expect, there’s a back story here just waiting to be told.

I was very pleased with myself last weekend because I’d finally managed to rearranged everything in the basement and haul out a truckload of trash and sundry useless crap I’ve moved all over the country. After almost a year of trying to figure out exactly what to do with the 1/3 of the house that’s below grade, I’d managed to set up what would pass for a media room in most 1200 square foot rentals.

It seems I’ve neglected one small, but important detail about setting up a TV, DVR, blueray player, and Apple TV. As it turns out, they all require electricity. Sadly, the wall I’ve decided to build my home media center around is lacking in that one particular feature. Even though the coax is right there poking through the wall, the closest electrical outlet is about 12 feet away… and in another room. Clearly, I’d lost the trees for the forest.

I’m not about to cut into the wall and put in an outlet. This dump is a rental after all. Instead, I ordered the surge protector with the longest power cord I could find (Special thanks to Belkin for the 10 foot cord option). With that, and hopefully some slack in the individual component power cables, I might, just might, be able to rig something up without dragging the orange extension cord in from the shed.

This should be ghetto fabulous. Then again, this is Cecil County so there’s a fair chance no one will notice.