Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, 1 a.m. — I need to keep practicing the correct year … I keep catching myself using 2013 when I should write 2014. Old habits die hard I suppose …
Today my son and I ran network cabling from this office to our library. Previously my son was using one of the $5 mini-wireless USB adapters for wifi … it worked ok, but it was fairly slow in comparison to a wired connection. He lived with it for quite a while and it didn’t become a problem until he did some major downloading.
When I setup that second PC for myself in the library a couple of months back, I too had one of those little USB wifi gizmos. However mine was just horrendously s-l-o-w. I tried any number of things to improve the thru-put (deleting and updating drivers, etc.), and nothing much helped. In frustration one day (after trying to connect with my college’s online education system unsuccessfully all morning), I ordered a length of Cat6 cable so I could run a wired connection to the library for my son and my PC. To experiment, I bought the cable and ran it on the floor (oh yeah, my wife loved coming home to find Cat 6 cables stretching down the hallway!) to the library and to my PC.
The result? Immediate improvement. I was online at the same speed my office PC was, which answered my question about the problem with my web use — was the connection or the computer? It was the connection.
So a black Cat 6 cable has been snaking through the house the last few weeks serving a switch to hardware our PCs to the network. The lash-up was only temporary; I promised my wife that during the holiday while my son was off, we would properly install the cable. That moment began after lunch today.
Our 94-year-old home is pain in which to run any cabling or electrical service. When my wife and I remodeled our kitchen, the electrician nearly pulled his hair out trying to add circuits to properly service the new kitchen. On this old plaster-and-lathe framing, nothing is easy or simple to do.
The solution I have used (me being the resourceful — and lazy — type) is to use the existing heating/cooling vents and ductwork for wiring purposes. No, I didn’t run the cables along all the ductwork (though that would be cool to do so). What we did was to run the cabling through the floor vent into the ductwork, and to the nearest hole we could make or create.
The ductwork is old and handbuilt (at least the ends are), so forcing open a corner was not a big deal. We started at the library, running the new cable into the vent and through a hole in the corner of the ductwork into the basement. We pulled the cable into the basement through this hole, then ran it across the width of the house in the basement, and back up into this room through one of the vents (the vent that serves as the “conduit” for my cable model and cable TV connections ) from the basement. It isn’t high tech but it works.
Why am I blabbing about this network cable job? The vent in this office we had to access was blocked by a bunch of ham radio stuff — mostly keys of various shapes, manufacturers and sizes. Most of the area underneath the four-foot desk that makes up one of my three shack tables was about 1/2 filled with keys. I had a mint McElroy P-600 in its original box with a group of Vibroplex keys in their carrying cases. I also found a goodie I had actually forgotten — a McElroy A-400 bug in mint condition still attached to the bottom of its wooden box.
The Vibroplex keys ranged from a mint 1945 Vibroplex Lightning Bug standard to several “working bugs” and a nicely used good condition Speed0plex (I think).
I don’t know that I have these keys photographed or documented on this site, but before I store them back under that table I plan to photograph them all again. We have some weather moving in late tomorrow, sounds like a good time to start photographing them, eh?
It’s late and I’m sleepy. The cabling job is done, and for that I’m thankful. My son really took the lead on this, and it was excellent to see him do something like this project with confidence. When we work together he often defers to whatever I say. Networking is “his” thing, and this time I let him lead the way.
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