We installed ethernet in the house recently. For those of you unfamiliar with network cabling, here’s some background: In the old days networks had to be built using ‘wires’ to carry data from one point to another. I know, it sound strange, but I swear it’s true. While today you might be able to just open your iBook and be on the internet, some of us actually have to plug a ‘network cable’ into the back of an old Wallstreet in order to connect it to other computers or download RSS feeds…
So luckily I got an electrician friend of ours to help. Beside having the right equipment, he also had a spool of Cat5 cable. That helped quite a bit. Another friend supplied a jack crimping tool, and after spending somewhere under $15 for jacks and connectors, and way too much time trying to make our own network cables, we’re wired. (Or weird, depending on who you ask.)
Yes, now we can send email from the basement to the bedroom, we can run an aggregator and alert others to our presence while on the couch. It’s all quite amazing, and fairly affordable as well. (Not to mention the 100Mbit speed of it all…)
The next step is to move the office back into the basement. I don’t even want to calculate how many times we’ve moved the office, but I’m guessing it’s well into the double digits…