by WebKeyDesign | Nov 9, 2023 | In Stock, Reviews
A long time ago, I told my wife that I wanted one of those cool looking Dewalt power drills. She ended up buying me just that and for several years, that Dewalt drill stayed in my home office unopened! Truth be told, I had no desire to do any manual labor or install shelves. Eventually I got bored with my other hobbies and started hanging out at home improvement stores. I decided to actually open the Dewalt case and my journey into the world of power tools really began. This is what I found in regards to what I like about power tools. Your journey may be different and you may form an opinion that varies from what I have written below. Again, it is all about learning and of course safety. Take your time and be careful always.
Investing In A Brand
The most common power tool that everyone can use is your basic power drill. Making holes is a lot easier when you have a power drill and a basic drill is useful for every home improvement project. Drills come in a wide variety of models and kits. Before committing to any one drill, think about what you will need in the future. Pick a brand that is in your price range and there are many brands from the big pro brands like Milwaukee, to the home improvement store brands that Menards and Lowes have, to Dewalt who has so many models that they cover the spectrum for both do-it-yourself people to construction pros.
The reason that I advise to pick a brand, is because, the manufacturers really make their money off the batteries they sell. You will find a ton of great deals on a drill combo kit, but they say you want to buy a saw from a different manufacturer, well you will have to invest in batteries for that too. It is best to pick a brand and try to save, by not having to invest in different batteries.
Next, you will want to consider Volts and battery capacity. Most brands have a less powerful, more compact line of power tools that fall into the 12volt range. The regular lines are in the 18-20volt range or higher. If you see yourself buying more power tools, I would recommend going with the higher volt range line. You never know if you will buy an impact wrench or saw just cause you need to. Battery capacity or size is how long the battery will last. The bigger the size of the battery the more it will last. A great add-on that comes in handy are work lights. When the power is out in your house, bigger capacity batteries and a handy light are a lifesaver.
The Right Tool
Having the right tool for the task at hand makes all the difference. For example, I read a few books on making your own work bench and I thought, that is a great idea. I can make my own work bench from wood at Menards and it will be exactly the same as what is in the book. Then you get deeper into the project, and you find out that to make your own work bench, you need a router, you need a table saw, you need a sander, etc. Yes, you can make your own work bench, but you need to have all these tools! Here is a list of what tools to possibly include in your combo kit or later when you need them:
Hammer Drill
You will need a hammer drill or what I call the big drill if you are going to drill into concrete or build a deck. For those types of jobs, you do need the bigger drill.
Impact Driver
If you are buying a kit, then it will come with an impact driver. I find myself using a driver more often than I thought I would. It makes assembling furniture so easy. Depending on the brand and model, the lower priced drivers will not have multiple speeds or auto-mode. I noticed that for some models, there is a switch to change the speed mode and for others, it will have an auto-mode feature. The more speeds the more versatile the driver is.
Circular Saw
A good circular saw will save you time and makes projects so much easier. I have both a smaller size saw and the standard 7 and quarter size one. The smaller size one is easier to use for most jobs and a bit lighter. However, Makita has full size circular saws that are incredibly light, if weight is the main concern.
Reciprocating Saw
My goto tool for yard work and tearing down a shed is the reciprocating saw. Smaller ones are great for trimming bushes and light tree work, while your bigger ones are great at cutting down bigger tree limbs and tearing down walls. I find them safer than chain saws and easier to work with as well. You don’t need to adjust chains, just replace the blade and you are good to go.
Impact Wrench
If you are a Sunday mechanic, you will appreciate a cordless impact wrench. Only recently have power tools been able to do the work of some air powered tools. The impact wrench helps me untighten my oil plug, where before I use to struggle getting it off all the time.
Work Light
This is a nice to have. You already have batteries, so a work light is a no brainer. They are great for working in your garage without great lighting or anywhere where you need a spotlight.
And More
You can get more tools to add to your collection like sanders, routers, grinders,… but all those are just more specialized and you will probably get them anyway.
by WebKeyDesign | May 13, 2022 | In Stock, Out Of The Box, Reviews
One of the projects I took on during the lockdown months was to build a desk for my son’s room. It use to be that a desk meant some piece of furniture that featured drawers for all your paper files. Now multiple decades into the computer age, we no longer need all those drawers and file cabinets. Today a desk means a simple table and perhaps a riser for monitors. Most desks are just particle board, some metal, and perhaps a glass top in some cases. The problem with inexpensive desks is that they are flimsy and not made to last. On the internet you will find plenty of people who build their own desks. These do-it-yourself projects do not end up being cheap. Even a simple wood top can cost a few hundred dollars and that is before you consider if you will treat and finish the wood yourself. For my son, the cheapest option I found was a very affordable butcher block board from HomeDepot and some simple steel round legs. For some reason, I was able to get the butcher block top delivered to my house, however the table legs, I had to actually drive to the store and pick them up. Both items were not in stock in the store, so you had to order them on the website.
Bare Wood Needs Care
If you decide to get unfinished wood, you will need to treat it somehow. For a butcher block, you can use a conditioner or mineral oil. I ended up using oil-based pre-stain, stain, and finally a polyurethane finish. This was my first experience with a wood staining project and I learned that you need a lot of patience for doing this type of work. Wood needs lots of sanding and it becomes tedious work really quickly. It is also the little things that count in wood furniture. The edges of wood should be rounded and for someone who is not a carpenter, you would never have thought of that. Now when I go to a store and look at furniture, I can’t not notice if the edges are rounded or slightly beveled. The reason to treat wood is that wood dries out and sealing it, staining it, or using some other penetrating oil keeps it looking good. For a new shelf that I wanted to build quickly, I used teak oil on bare wood and was amazed at how smooth the wood came out days later. The smell took a week to go away, but other than that the process was very easy compared to multiple coats of stain.
Some Assembly
The one tool that I can’t live without is my Dewalt Drill. For the longest time I had it still in the box and now I can’t stop using it. I used it to for all sorts of projects in the last year. For my son’s desk, I used the drill to drive in 4 screws for each leg mount. Once all the mounts were setup, we moved the butcher block top to the bedroom and attached the legs. The end result was a nice sturdy desk that will last for a long time.
The Home Office Desk
I was planning on making a secondary desk for my home office, but I’ve had some trouble with sitting all day long. Instead I needed a quick solution, so I looked at the options on Monoprice and found a couple of different ones. I settled for this Workstream dual motor frame and a matching 5 foot Workstream Table Top. The 6 foot table top seemed appealing, but when I measure my current table, it was actually less than 5 feet wide and so it would be more work to make a 6 foot table top fit.
Due to inventory, I ordered the frame from Monoprice directly and ordered the table top from Amazon instead. Both arrived in a few days. The frame was heavy and unassembled.
I removed my old desk that I have had since college from my office and once I cleared the floor space, I was ready to assemble the new desk. The frame comes with the necessary hex key tool. You will need your own Phillips screwdriver, and I would recommend your trusty Dewalt Drill with a driver, a measuring tape (I used instead a carpenter’s square). The frame is easy to assemble, just take your time. You will need another pair of hands to help you slide the table top underneath the frame. The predrilled holes in the table top will not line up with the frame. I used one hole only to line up the frame and then measured using the square to line up the legs equally on each side. Using your screwdriver drive in the one screw to the predrilled hole for each leg. You might need some lighting or a flash light if you got the black table top like me. Keeping each leg properly lined up on each side, use your drill to drive the rest of the screws for each leg. It goes without saying, but do not over tighten the screws. To be careful, I only use the drill most of the way, and then use the screw driver to finish tightening.
The rest of the assembly is the wire management. You might consider getting some adhesive Cord Clips – size 3/8″. They are rather expensive, but will help with the cord management. I prefer them to cable ties, because you can easily unclip cables if needed.
At this point, you will need your friend or spouse to help you lift the desk upright and move it to its final resting place. The rest of the setup is putting back all your equipment. The immediate need will be for having longer power cables. I ended up making a narrow shelf to hold my UPS to the right of the desk. A quick trip to Staples for a two outlet extension cord to plug my monitors into, so that raising the desk would not be a problem for my monitors.
Standing or Sitting
The control panel allows for three memorized settings. After two weeks, I’ve setup a standing height and a sitting height. Most mornings, I start with a standing desk and have my same routine of a couple of morning meetings on Teams and responding to multiple emails. In the afternoon, I’ll switch to a sitting desk position and be more in engaged in doing some work in Excel. Generally if I have a meeting where I have to present or that I am hosting, I will choose a sitting position, otherwise I stand for most meetings.
Final Thoughts
Overall the Monoprice solution works well. The implementation could be better. The wire management is still a pain when it comes to computers. It would be nice if either the table top came with pre-drilled holes for cables or some other cord management system, such as an attachment underneath to hold wires. You can buy third party solutions at Staples and even Monoprice offers some of their own too. My other leftover issue is that due to the monitors getting bigger, I have to figure something out for my studio monitor speakers which are bookshelf size. I may need to add a shelf to the wall to hold those. For now I will place them underneath with a small riser for them to be off the ground.
The big improvement that is evident is that my home office is clean for the first time in years. My old desk was mostly a cluttered mess of computer parts and paper work.
by WebKeyDesign | Oct 28, 2021 | Audio, In Stock
In college one of my many part-time jobs was working at BestBuy in the Audio department. At that time, that meant selling home audio systems, car audio, and for some reason we also handled the cell phone sales. Believe it or not, one of the top phones we would sell was a bag phone that looked like an actual home phone! Back in the G1 days, cell phones had very limited range and so the bag phone was a good choice for people who wanted a phone for their car or tractor. Anyway, the big takeaway from that job was my addiction to high-end audio. There is just something cool about having massive speakers and a high-end receiver (that only appeals to the male gender). Over time, I would go through several home theater receivers, from Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, Onkyo, to my personal favorite: Denon. Each had its strengths: the Pioneer was powerful and loud but ended up breaking, the Sony was just okay, the Yamaha was impressive but did not work well with my speakers, Onkyo had a bad HDMI board. Denon always sounded the best to me and my first Denon receiver is in my man cave. It is hooked up to a Raspberry Pi for music streaming.
The latest Denon is setup to drive a 7.2 home theater setup. Most people today do not setup home theater systems anymore. BestBuy does not even have a speaker listening room anymore. Customers usually only want a flat screen TV and maybe a sound bar. Since no one really buys blu-ray movies anymore, high quality audio is something most people don’t even experience. Streaming audio from NetFlix and Disney can’t compare to the lossless audio on a blu-ray 4K disc. For my 7.2 channel setup, the main speakers were the Eosone RSF-1000 towers that I had purchased while working at BestBuy. After multiple decades, one of the towers started to tick. The built-in amp for the subwoofer had blown and so it was time to replace the towers. These giant tower speakers had been responsible for reproducing the incredible sound stages of some of my favorite films: the opening scenes of Matrix Reloaded, the Gandalf vs Balrog battle in The Lord of The Rings, and pretty much every Star Wars movie action scene. Unplugging them and moving them down to the basement for storage was both physically and emotionally tasking.
Klipsch
The center channel speaker is the most utilized speaker in any setup. From all my speakers, my Klipsch center speaker is my newest speaker, so I figured why not match it with some new tower speakers. After some quick looking online, I found some very affordable Klipsch R-28F towers. Since the Eosone towers had built-in subs, I had to also find a subwoofer solution. I eventually ended up getting a pair of Klipsch R-12SW Subwoofers. In all these new additions were all pretty affordable and at first I was impressed with he new sonic clarity and booming bass of my Klipsch setup, but over time, I kept thinking it could still be improved upon. Klipsch speakers have an excellent bass sound to them and this makes them sound immediately loud to me. From years of headphones, my hearing has dropped off in the treble range and so I have trouble hearing the voices in movies at times. This moved me to find a more neutral sounding speaker setup. I should stress that the Klipsch R-28F towers in combination with the two R-12SW subwoofers was a huge improvement. The Eosone built-in subwoofers have always sounded a bit muffled and not as clear. This is why I had to return the Yamaha receiver, as it made the smaller subwoofers on the Eosones sound worse.
Paradigm
The problem with internet shopping is that there are things that you must try out before buying them. Sometimes it is trivial, such as the color of the new iPhone is not visible in any online pictures. You have to see it for yourself and then hold it in your hand to see if it fits. How does the functionality work for you. In the case of speakers, they will sound different to you than they will to me. There is also your environment. How and where you place a speaker matters. This means that if you are making any kind of investment in audio equipment, you really need a test drive. After reviewing some audio sites, I focused on Paradigm speakers. Paradigm is a Canadian based company, located in Toronto. You won’t find their speakers in many online sites; they mostly sell through local dealers and a couple of online sites.
Paradigm Demo
Lucky for me, there was a local dealer that was an hour away and which would allow me an opportunity to listen for myself. My friend and I went on a Friday afternoon for a listening session. When we arrived, I found that they did not have any of the Premier line speakers. They did have their lower end line of speakers. The Premier line is their middle tier of speakers. For the demo, the dealer played some titles on an AppleTV. We watched the opening scene of Thor Ragnarok and a couple of concert titles. A demo through an AppleTV is disappointing because it is not the highest quality audio signal. Instead, it would have been better to use a 4k blu-ray player. However, the AppleTV is what I use most often, and so while it won’t produce the best audio, it is convenient and will be closer to everyday use. I compared the Premier towers to a couple of other brands they had in the store. Of all the speakers we listened to, the Paradigms were exactly what the online reviews concluded: neutral sounding. You could hear sharp and distinct dialogue in the Thor movie and the sound effects were crisp and separate. The other brands resembled the Klipsch or worse, over-pronounced the S sounds in dialogue. Once you notice the over-pronounced S sounds in a movie, you can’t stop listening to them. It ruins the experience. My friend confirmed my observations and agreed that the Paradigms were the best sounding speakers. While we were demoing the lower end series of Paradigms, I figured the Premier line would be a slight improvement, but equally neutral. The decision was pretty easy, if you don’t mind opening your checkbook. I asked the dealer to match the online price of one of the two online sites that carry the Premier series. He agreed to match the price and my new Paradigms would arrive in about a week in the store.
Paradigm Setup
The immediate difference between newer tower speakers and the older Eosone towers is the weight. The Klipsch were much lighter and the Paradigms seem even lighter. The bottom of the speakers come with either spikes for carpet floors or flat knobs if you do not have bare floors. Unlike the Klipsch, the Paradigms would work with banana plug speaker wires. I bought new wires from Amazon that have the banana plug ends. A few minutes to hookup and then it was time to try out the new speakers with some music. Using some CDs instead of blu-ray movies to hear what the Paradigms could do, is the best way to calibrate your speakers and to burn them in. I tried a few different selections.
I started with the best song of all time to use for figuring out how loud to set your subwoofers: Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. The song features one of the best bass lines and gives you a consistent base line. Once you adjust your subwoofer levels to where you can hear the bass and listen to Jackson’s vocals at the same time, you know you have hit the sweet spot. You can do sound calibration with a physical meter or with your receiver’s setup mic, but I find that these calibrations are close they still don’t match your listening preferences.
The next selection was a collection of Rush: Red Sector A, Subdivisions, 2112, you can go deeper, but I default to these most often. Here I am looking for clarity of all the instruments, the drums, guitar, and bass. It may be that the subwoofers will need to be lowered a bit. Finally, I went back and tried some newer music. For this Dua Lipa’s Levitating is one of my favorite songs. Music made in the last few years is balanced for headphones and not tower speakers. This makes it sound different when you play it in your living room. At this point, Dua Lipa sounded good to me without any more adjustments.
It was time to see how the AppleTV and blu-ray player performed with Paradigms driving the main 2 channels of the 7.2 setup. The obvious choice for a movie was Thor Ragnarok, since that is what the original demo in the store was. The opening scene and final battle scene were what I watched first. The 4K blu-ray was of course better than the AppleTV and was immediately impressive. The difference that the Paradigms added was the neutral clarity, higher treble sounds were evident. Listening position was a bit wider as well. You did not need to be in the center or right in front of the speaker. It was possible to sit just to the left or right of the each speaker. I think I am going to work on moving the Klipsch subwoofers a bit back, but other than that the physical location of the speakers was good. Now that I had the volumes right, it was time to sit back and do some binge watching. My friend had recommended The Expanse series on Amazon. I don’t watch Amazon shows very much, so I was not aware of this series. The sci-fi series was an excellent show to start with. The Paradigms made for a great listening experience and I ended up watching the entire series.
Final Notes
The next upgrade will be replacing the center channel speaker with Paradigm to match the towers. Unfortunately the width of the Paradigm center channel will not work with my current media stand. I’ll have to build a new media stand. Until then, I will stay with the current setup. A combination of Paradigm towers and Klipsch center channel and subwoofers.
Additional Information:
by WebKeyDesign | Aug 20, 2021 | In Stock
The COVID19 pandemic had multiple impacts on everyone personally and I have to admit that mentally it was difficult for me to not be able to leave the house and go to the mall or dine out. However, the time at home did allow me some time to clean-up the home office space and do some upgrades. This space has become the work space and I spend at least 50% of my time now in my home office.
Connectivity & Networking
The first significant upgrade was to our Internet. The DSL connection that we utilized for more than a decade was not capable of providing access to work VPN connections, online schooling sessions, and streaming. We had to utilize cell phones for work VPN connections and even then, the internet was spotty and unusable most days. Lucky there was a new ISP in town that was providing fiber connections and so a few weeks into the Summer, we upgraded to a new, faster internet. This allowed us to VPN for work and at the same time allow for Zoom school sessions. We have two network access points in our house. These were eventually upgraded as well. The current models are a NETGEAR Nighthawk AX5400 and a NETGEAR Nighthawk R7350 AC2400. Both of the wireless access points are wired. I try to keep most devices wired, so the access points see mostly mobile device traffic. My work laptop is wired, but the rest of the family mostly use wireless connections, but can connect directly to the access points for faster connections if they need to. The access points, along with a firewall, network switches all keep up very well with the new faster internet connection. Note that a previous NETGEAR Nighthawk (R7000) – AC1900 access point limited the upload speeds of my new 100Mbps connection.
It is simply amazing to be able to download an Apple update and watch HBO Max in 4K all at the same time.
Displays & Screens
The 24-inch monitor is the standard, the 27-inch monitor is the better upgrade, and the 32 or higher is not affordable: all of these are better than anything your work laptop has though. Monitors are weirdly frustrating and at the same time amazingly cheaper these days. However, my eyes have not gotten better, but worse as I mostly look at text all day long. Achieving crisp and readable text on a screen is a combination of science and art. If you utilize Windows 10 and MacOS X, you will see that Microsoft and Apple have different ideas on how to achieve this. MacOS X provides shadows and stresses the shape of the font letter as it scales, while Windows focuses on accurate pixels and scales worse in my opinion.
The frustration for me is that on a 27-inch monitor that has a display resolution of 2560×1440, is that I can’t really see fonts very well in Windows10. Changing the font scale to 125% makes fonts more readable but then throws off the size of Window elements. Windows10 just looks bad to me at this resolution and scale. I have thought about getting a 27-inch monitor with a typical FHD resolution of 1920×1080, but this seems like going backwards to me technology wise. The other option is to try a 27-inch 4K monitor or a larger display with the same display resolution of 2560×1440 with 100% font scaling. These options are more expensive and may introduce other problems such as dock connections, video card limitations of my work laptop.
At this time, the current setup consists of two Dell Ultrasharp U2719DX 27-Inch IPS Monitors connected via one display port cable to an OWC 14-Port Thunderbolt 3 Dock (OWCTB3DK14PSG). This is an excellent setup, as you connect the first monitor to the dock and then there is a display port out on the first monitor that you then connect to the second monitor. There is a setting you have to change on the display itself to make this work for an expanded display; by default the two monitors will come up in mirror mode. Similar to HDMI connections, DisplayPort connections to a Thunderbolt Dock are not perfect. Occasionally one of the monitors will come up in a lower resolution and the only solution that I can find is to disconnect the laptop from the dock and reconnect it. It is annoying when it occurs, but other than that it works well. Thunderbolt has its own strangeness. The display connections just work, but the rest of the dock can be disabled depending on your laptop settings in the BIOS/firmware. Security settings for Thunderbolt can disable your dock ports by default, except for display connections. Different docks will also have different display ports, so pay close attention to what ports are available for displays and I won’t even get into the whole cable discussion of what USB-C, Thunderbolt cable to get.
Input Devices
After taking an inventory, I found that pretty much everything I have for input devices is about one company: Logitech. Although I do not think Logitech has the best quality in hardware and software, they do seem to make affordable devices and I tend to gravitate to Logitech no matter what other brands I find on Amazon.
For pointing and clicking, my favorite mouse is the Logitech M720 Wireless Triathlon Mouse. What this mouse has over the competition is the bluetooth connectivity. Forget using the transceiver and instead utilize the bluetooth feature on your laptop that is probably not even being used. I have switched the rest of my computers to this mouse. It just works and feels solid compared to anything cheaper.
The most used device of all is your keyboard. It is the device that you first touch to begin your workday and it is the most neglected of all. From dust, to cookie crumbs, most of us don’t even clean the keyboard and it shows. Think about your hands and how badly they can suffer from a cheap keyboard or that terrible laptop keyboard, and you will soon discover that investing in a new keyboard is the best thing you can do for your work space. After trying a few cheaper gaming keyboards, on a whim I ended up treating myself with a Logitech G915 Wireless Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Tactile). This keyboard is wireless and it will last about 2-3 days without a charge, but for the most part I keep it wired to the OWC Dock. The upsides with the G915 is that it has lighted keys, so I can work in dimmed light. It is super responsive to my typing and overall construction is heavier than the cheaper keyboards out there. If you do not care for the wireless feature or the full size layout there are cheaper models to choose from in the Logitech G line. I have to state that the G915 is the best keyboard I have ever used and I would have a hard time switching to something cheaper. The minor issue I do have with it is that some of the keys are only partially lighted: the “?/” key for example only have the slash lighted.
Further Considerations
Lighting is still on my list of things to change. I have typical LED tube lighting and it feels harsh on most days. I am picky about lamps and so I have not really found the perfect lighting solution for the office.
The Desk has not changed since 1996. I am still using what I had in college. I’ve considered doing a butcher block desk similar to one I put together for my son, but after looking at the time and effort I put into that project, along with the prices for wood lately, I have decided to forestall this for a bit longer. Plus I have a garage that needs a lot of work of late, so that will probably need a work table.
In closing, I hope this gave you some ideas about what to look at for your home work space.
by WebKeyDesign | Jun 2, 2014 | In Stock
I am always looking for a better flash drive and my current favorite is the Mushkin Atom. The Atom is not the smallest physical size drive, but it is faster than most of the competition. I use my flash drive with PortableApps, which allows me to have most of my apps on a flash drive. This is a great way to keep all your apps when switching between two Windows computers. The only downside I have found is that Google Chrome does not work as well. It is a bit slower for some reason. Firefox is my preferred browser and the PortableApps version works very well. As to the Mushkin Atom performance, I ran a quick test with USBDeview for Windows and read results were a third faster than my previous Sandisk drive.
This test was run on the Mushkin Atom 32GB USB3 flash drive with USBDeview 64. Your results may vary depending on your computer and USB port.
I have been using the Atom for about 3 months without any issues on a Windows 7 laptop.
by WebKeyDesign | Feb 2, 2009 | In Stock
Last year I broke down and bought a Dell PowerEdge T105 Server because it was relatively inexpensive and I needed a new Windows box at home. While it came out of the box with a modest Dual Core Opteron 1.8GHz cpu, I definitely wanted something faster in the future. Well the time came this week and I found the AMD Opteron 1224SE 3.2GHz on Newegg.com simply too good to pass up. At $115.99, the price is just right for an AMD based processor. This was an OEM processor, so it came as is, no heatsink or instructions included.
The PowerEdge T105 is pretty easy to upgrade. Since this was a processor upgrade, make sure your T105 Server has the latest BIOS update from Dell, if it needs it. Dell provides no documentation that I could find that the 1224SE is supported or not, so I had to gamble that it would work for me. You will want to look the Dell manual for uninstalling the Dell heatsink if you are haven’t removed the heatsink before. There are two screws you will need to remove and then plastic case surrounding the heatsink, comes loose when you lift it up and back. Once you have the heatsink off, you might want to clean it off and apply a small amount of Arctic Silver to the new cpu. In all the upgrade took less than 20 minutes.
So far the differences in speed are apparent when launching applications, however if you have not upgraded the memory, you probably should do that too. With the 8GB of RAM and Dual 3.2GHz Opteron the server feels a lot more responsive than the stock configuration from Dell. You can get the memory relatively cheap from Shop.Kingston.com and cheap AM2 processors from Newegg.com.
A long time ago, I told my wife that I wanted one of those cool looking Dewalt power drills. She ended up buying me just that and for several years, that Dewalt drill stayed in my home office unopened! Truth be told, I had no desire to do any manual labor or install shelves. Eventually I got bored with my other hobbies and started hanging out at home improvement stores. I decided to actually open the Dewalt case and my journey into the world of power tools really began. This is what I found in regards to what I like about power tools. Your journey may be different and you may form an opinion that varies from what I have written below. Again, it is all about learning and of course safety. Take your time and be careful always.
One of the projects I took on during the lockdown months was to build a desk for my son’s room. It use to be that a desk meant some piece of furniture that featured drawers for all your paper files. Now multiple decades into the computer age, we no longer need all those drawers and file cabinets. Today a desk means a simple table and perhaps a riser for monitors. Most desks are just particle board, some metal, and perhaps a glass top in some cases. The problem with inexpensive desks is that they are flimsy and not made to last. On the internet you will find plenty of people who build their own desks. These do-it-yourself projects do not end up being cheap. Even a simple wood top can cost a few hundred dollars and that is before you consider if you will treat and finish the wood yourself. For my son, the cheapest option I found was a very affordable butcher block board from HomeDepot and some simple steel round legs. For some reason, I was able to get the butcher block top delivered to my house, however the table legs, I had to actually drive to the store and pick them up. Both items were not in stock in the store, so you had to order them on the website.
In college one of my many part-time jobs was working at BestBuy in the Audio department. At that time, that meant selling home audio systems, car audio, and for some reason we also handled the cell phone sales. Believe it or not, one of the top phones we would sell was a bag phone that looked like an actual home phone! Back in the G1 days, cell phones had very limited range and so the bag phone was a good choice for people who wanted a phone for their car or tractor. Anyway, the big takeaway from that job was my addiction to high-end audio. There is just something cool about having massive speakers and a high-end receiver (that only appeals to the male gender). Over time, I would go through several home theater receivers, from Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, Onkyo, to my personal favorite: Denon. Each had its strengths: the Pioneer was powerful and loud but ended up breaking, the Sony was just okay, the Yamaha was impressive but did not work well with my speakers, Onkyo had a bad HDMI board. Denon always sounded the best to me and my first Denon receiver is in my man cave. It is hooked up to a Raspberry Pi for music streaming. 
The COVID19 pandemic had multiple impacts on everyone personally and I have to admit that mentally it was difficult for me to not be able to leave the house and go to the mall or dine out. However, the time at home did allow me some time to clean-up the home office space and do some upgrades. This space has become the work space and I spend at least 50% of my time now in my home office.