Redneck Networking

In preparation for the Big Kitchen Remodel (another acronym coming right up) we moved the computer workstation/office from the front room next to the kitchen to the middle bedroom in the back of the house. It took about two hours to remove all the separate pieces of computer gizmos, the 18 miles of cables and dust everything off. Another hour to disassemble the desk it all sat on and move it to the new location. Then about another hour to put everything back on the desk and hook it up.

Because we had cable TV in this spot prior all I had to do was use that wire for the cable modem, right? Wrong. No signal. When we originally installed cable internet they insisted on running a separate line directly to the modem. Not knowing just how many splitters this cable ran through, but knowing it was at least two, I figured this might be the issue. Called the cable company’s support line and they ran a check from their end and could see the modem, but barely. When I explained what was going on they said they would need to run another line straight to this new location. Forty-five dollars. We’ve got the high speed monkey on our back, so I said, “We’re in.” He said, “We can get somebody out there the day after tomorrow.”

Made it only a couple hours before I had a junkie style brainstorm. Put the modem & router back in the original room and buy a wireless adapter for the desktop. Off to Staples we went. For $25 I bought this little tiny USB wireless adapter and we were back in business. For the first few days it was fine, a little slow and occasionally flaky. As the days wore on the connection seemed to get a little worse each day. Instead of keeping the adapter plugged into the PC, I elevated it using a 6 foot cable. Didn’t help much.

When the connection was so poor that I couldn’t even reliably stream RP I needed another solution. I asked our IT Guy, John Smith (his real name) if we had any long pieces of Cat5 cable around. I was going to crawl under the house and run a piece of wire from the router to the back bedroom. When John asked how long, I said, “About 100 feet.” He said no, but he did have some surplus long cables in the computer room. Turns out he had about a half dozen 50’ cables all tangled up in a box and I could have 2 for the cost of untangling them.

Donna really didn’t want me crawling around under the house stringing cable just for use for a couple months, so she said we can just run the cable behind and under things for the duration. After all, the house is going to be in a shambles in much greater magnitude during the BKR, so how could a bit of Redneck Networking hurt. (Note the camo duct tape to “hide” the cable.)

We took the $25 refund from Staples in cash and turned it into a meal of Dragon & Phoenix at the Red Bowl tonight.