Friday 24th November 2017

Today is the day before my next tournament.
This is becoming such a regular occurrence that I guess I should be used to it by now but I am a bundle of nerves.  I feel unprepared, my pool seems impossible to beat, and I’m sure everything will go terribly wrong tomorrow.
I’ve tried to keep my mind off things though by being busy with Black Friday.
All the travel and competitions (including things like Physio) has made for an expensive couple of months and so I should by all rights be having a couple of lean months.  I keep hoping that the book will soon sell and put me in a financial position where these types of stresses become a thing of the past.  But you’ll always spend based on your income so I guess it’ll never go away even if I have a huge deal.
I’ve been wanting a TV for the house since I moved in here but held off getting one for a couple of reasons.  First I wanted a BIG TV.  I didn’t see the point in settling for something reasonable if I was only going to regret it down the line.
Secondly, given I was watching TV on my computer I saw no need to rush.
But now I’m having friends round to watch TV and hang out, and being generally more sociable, I’ve felt now’s the time.
I run a media server with Plex to store all my movies and TV.  It works pretty well but even when I break it I can always access the files via file share.  So my primary requirement is to be able to hook a TV up with my Plex server.  When I first looked a few years back, there were only a couple of brands that can do this.  Now, they pretty much all can, which has made the search that more difficult.
I’ve been looking for the last couple of weeks, looking at makes and trying to decide what to go for.  Of course, it usually boils down to the fact that the more money you spend the better you’ll get.  But you’ll never get more conflicting advice than when it comes to TVs.  So I’ve got myself to a stage where I’m absolutely confused.
I’d hoped that I would get to Black Friday find a fantastic deal and then have all those questions answered for me, but alas no.  Whilst there are some good deals on 43” and some 49” TVs, I would have liked a 55” or 60”.
So I ended up not buying a Black Friday deal but going for a make that outperforms its price and is reasonably good for what I want.
And that’s fine until you realise you need something to put it on.  I popped into the local charity stores but they all wanted to phone me back at another time.  Doesn’t anyone impulse buy any more.  Anyways, I found a good deal on a stand (even the guy at the store said it was a lot of stand for the money) and so I brought it home.
I spent the afternoon constructing furniture and then setting the TV up.  The Plex server was a little messed up and wouldn’t connect so I then spent another couple of hours fixing some issues with the media server and upgrading all the software and…
…it all works.  The TV will see my Plex server and play series and movies.  I can also watch Youtube and Netflix in 4k so I’m happy, if a little poor.
I was supposed to have Craig come round tonight but he’s stuck babysitting so I guess it’ll be Sunday before we try it out properly… but at least that does mean I can try and get an early night ahead of competition tomorrow.
I don’t know if the distraction today has been a good thing or whether I’m going to pay for it tomorrow through lack of focus.  I guess we’ll see.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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