Nick the Geek and his toys. [Nick]

Hi folks. It's the old man here. Sarah gets to post much more than me, and she posts about things people are probably interested in. I want to post about something I'm proud of. You see, in this house, we are geeks. We love our computers, we love our internet access. Our lives are stored on computer files and web sites, from financial information to photographs, to documents we've created for various purposes.

When we first moved to Michigan, before we even got our stuff from the moving van, we had the cable guy out here hooking up the network connection. (Don't tell anyone, but if you remove the modem-only trap at the interface mounted outside your house, you can get free cable TV from it.) Anyway, we got the network connected and had the cable modem put in the only place we could think of at the time, in our living room. Next to the fireplace. On the floor. Then I connected the wireless router and bingo, the laptop (which belonged to the University of Illinois and was returned after I finished my degree) was connected. But we also have internet phone service from Vonage, so connected the telephone interface to the wireless router (which had four wired ports). There were only two outlets there, so I had to plug in a power strip as well. All in our living room next to the fireplace, on the floor. Very ugly. But it was only temporary I told myself.

Well, we had a desktop computer we keep in the living room, but there was no room for it in that corner, so we put it in the opposite corner, I installed a wireless desksop card in it, and bingo, it was wirelessly connected. The main desktop machine was in the basement, out of easy reach of the wirelss, and it wouldn't work with our existing wireless card. SO I had another wireless router... no big deal, bridge it with the first one, placing it in a location in the basement where it could receive a signal from the one upstairs. Then wire the main desktop to the wirelessly-bridged wireless router. So every computer in our house was wirelessly connected to the internet. Lest the tech-savvy among you cringe, I at least was using WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy (it isn't wired-equivalent at all) and MAC Address filtering to keep people off my network and more or less not snooping my packets, which sounds much naughtier than it is. And anyway, it was temporary, right?

Well, that was December of 2006. In March of 2008 I finally decided this temporary situation was ridiculous. It wasn't safe to have my information travling wirelessly all the time, and the bridged connections were flaky, sometimes not working at all. I decided to undertake the wiring of my house. First things first, of course, I spent weeks researching equipment, tools and methods. I bought a 54" long 1/2" drill bit for drilling holes through the flooring inside the wall cavity. I bought a box of Cat6 cable, patch cords, a punch-down tool, RJ45 blocks and a network tester. (Some of that is pictured.) I bought a new Linksys wired router. I bought a network-attached storage disk housing and 500GB drive. I watched videos on youtube, I read web sites. I drew up plans. I walked over the plans in my head, planning each step. I was finally ready.

I won't go in to all the gory details, but I will show you some of the results. First, I ran cabling from the location of my future network center to each location I wanted to have a network jack. That involved drilling holes in my floor joists and pulling cable along 25-foot span in some cases. That was a lot of up and down the stepstool, buffing up my legs. Then I had to cut holes in the walls about the size of my faceplates. I used metal clips that clipped onto the wallboard opening and provided a place for the faceplates to screw into. With the gaping hole in the wall, hopefully at a location between studs, I had to insert the long drill bit and drill a hole through the subfloor into the basement. Then I used the fish tape and fished it through the hole, went into the basement, connected the fish tape to the cat6 cable and pulled it up through the floor and wall. Then I had to strip the wiring and punch down the wires into the RJ45 block, attach it to the face plate and screw the face plate in. Look at that picture. Notice the quite straight and level installation of my network jack as compared to the professionally-installed electrical outlet which is cockeyed. Yeah I'm proud of that.

I installed two jacks in the 'dining' room, which is in quotes because we don't really use it for dining, but it is where the kids' computer and the wireless router live. I installed one jack in each of the three bedrooms. The ones in the boys rooms aren't used yet, but I'm probably going to teach dan how to build his own computer within the next year, so he'll probably have one in his room. Did I mention that I built our two desktop computers from parts? That is a cool thing everyone should try at least once. Anyway, I also installed two jacks in our kitchen (pictured above), one for the phone interface and one for a possible kitchen computer someday.

That done, I built the shelf unit downstairs. It hangs from the ceiling joists by 2x4s. I attached some cheap shelving (yeah, it is cockeyed but I can fix that 'someday'). The vertical black bit is where all the network wiring comes in, and is connected to the punch-down block. The yellow cables are the patch cords which connect to the jacks on the Wired router (on the right, under the cable modem). I'm proud of that wiring. On the left, the 110 block labeled "CAT 5" is all the actual telephone wiring in the house. That was all left hanging when we moved in, so I bought the 110 block and mounted it, and then punched down all the wiring. I stll have a little more to do, but since we don't have old-timey phone service :) it won't happen for a while. You can seel all the RG-6 cable (the black TV cables) on the right-ish side, coming down behind the plywood unit. Those aren't connected to anything yet either, but I will be buying a distribution block and wiring those up someday soon as well, for the sake of completeness.

So now, both of our desktop computers are wired, and the network connections are far more reliable. The wireless router now sits atop the computer desk for the kid's computer. I still need to kick it in the butt occasionally by restarting it. Plus now I still have a second one in reserve in case one kicks the bucket. Oh, I also upgraded to WPA2 (WIFI protected access).
Now the wireless router is only used for wirelesss networking, with the new laptop I bought with grant money*. It's nice because now I can actually use the computer network I built without feeling like I'm kicking my wife or kids off the computer. I removed Windows Vista Home Premium edition and have installed Ubuntu Linux 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex". I have it skinned so it looks like a Mac. If you've read this far then you are either a geek or my Mom. Well probably not my Mom-she probably won't read this far. So you're probably a geek, which means I can tell you that this thing is SO COOL. It has 3GB of ram and a dual-core processor. It has more memory and disk space than my office computer does. I just can't get Ubuntu to print to my shared windows printer yet, but that's basically the last hurdle.

Well I'm done showing off. I hope you're all still awake. Sarah will resume posting stuff y'all care about shortly.

* Let me make perfectly clear that this laptop belongs to Central Michigan University and that the money spent on it was not my own.

November Park Marathon

The boys have 2 days off for parent teacher conferences and a 3rd for what I would call the beginning of deer hunt. Speaking of deer hunt, we have been hearing guns go off near us for a couple of weeks, while inside the house, so I can hardly wait until its official this weekend to see how that sound increases. It’s a little unnerving.

Today we tried an activity that I had hoped for better weather. However, the drizzle, breeze and gray skies made the adventure all the more fun. I somehow got this idea to do a “park marathon” to hit as many parks as we could. I was thinking of spending a couple of hours but it turned out to be FOUR! What was I thinking? Because it was wet I had the boys dress in their snow pants and boots. We would pull up to a park and they would run to the playground and play for 10 – 15 min. Dan felt very military with the walkie talkies to communicate with me if I were a little distance from them. I lost count of how many different slides they went down. Some were quite spectacular as they would hit the bottom of the slide only to look like they were heading into a pool as the water splashed out for quite a distance. They were wet, sandy and muddy but having a great time. After all they were pretending to be military guys and were on various operations or maneuvers. Such a boy thing! By the way LL Bean snow pants are fantastic for keeping water out!! We even logged every “operation”. For those who like detail here was our entire log for Operation Park Maneuvers. Full pictures can be found on our online family photo album.

12:00 Operation Information Pickup (got the mail)
12:05 Operation McDonalds – Dan bought cheap lunches for us
12:15 Operation REFUEL – gas was $2.03
12:30 Operation McDonald Park
12:50 Operation Sunnyside Park (police escort out of park)
1:10 Operation Mission Park (for picture only)
1:15 Operation Pickens Field
1:35 Operation Island Park 8 slide obstacle course
1:50 Operation Island Park “woodpark” (cut short by some beady eyes staring out from under a platform)
1:55 Operation picture taking (mom got side tracked looking for some Kodak moments with the remaining fall leaves)
2:05 Operation Nelson Park (for picture only)
2:10 Operation Mill Pond Park
2:25 Operation Chipp-a-waters Park (and grateful that the restroom was not locked for the season)
3:00 Operation Potter Park Playground
3:20 Operation Jameson Park
3:35 Operation Horizon Park (actually sunny and blue sky by this point)
4:00 Operation Industrial Park (just to be funny)

The Real Winner is. . .

DAN! A different kind of election took place at the boy’s elementary school this week. The 3^rd and 4^th graders were selecting their class representatives for Student Council. Dan tried for this last year while in 3^rd grade and didn’t make it. He was determined to not let that get him down. Last week he worked hard on his speech, which was a required one page essay. The speeches were given and two of the eight running were then selected through the ballot process. It is an exciting thing for him and we are pleased that he did not let discouragement take over and keep him from trying again this year. Way to go Dan. You are a GREAT kid and we are happy that you make up an important part of our family. You are a winner!

Another WIN was that the kids had the day off yesterday. We got up first thing and intended to be at the polling place when it opened. But as our mornings often go we got away 30 min late. Our line moved quickly but the process still took just over an hour. We were happy the boys could come with us. It was nice to show them the process, even when Nick messed up his ballot and had to get a new one. We celebrated Election Day and several other things with breakfast at Big Boy.

No Winners Today

That’s right, at least in the presidential race – NO WINNER. Why? Because it doesn’t matter who wins the race too many people will not be happy. Everything the new president does will be scrutinized like never before. Every negative event affecting Americans will be blamed on the president whether it’s their fault or our own. For me – I voted for the guy who I feel will handle the hot seat the best. I have never spent so much time reading and searching the issues. I feel good about all of my choices today. I hope you all do too. I also have to say that just because my choices might differ from yours doesn’t mean I want to argue or debate. It does no good. We all get to choose for ourselves and I respect differences of opinions until someone doesn’t respect mine. I don’t know how many people have honestly enjoyed this political season (aside from the great comic relief on SNL). I would love to see paranoia disappear and bitter and hateful commentary cease. That would require a miracle. I will be glad to just move beyond this phase, see the yard art disappear and then wait and see. I hope for positive change but let’s all be realistic. Changes for the better will not happen overnight.

Halloween Highlights

Although I’m not a huge fan of Halloween, I do think its fun for the kids and makes some great memories. Highlights this year include the following, in no particular order.

The outdoor elementary school parade, complete with police escort. Cameras flashing, costumes flaring and tons of smiles. My vote for best costume was an elaborate homemade peacock outfit. However, I was partial to the cute fireman and the Harry Potter that live at our house.

The school Secretary was a very cute Mini Mouse and the Principal dressed as Mickey Mouse. He was a good sport to don that costume. Yet, we think it would have even been better had he lead the parade dressed like that on his Harley!

TOO much candy – more than I have ever seen for any Halloween I have experienced.

Traditional pumpkin carving, and turning one pumpkin into a black spider and then adding the fireman hat.

Halloween festivities at the church including a chili and cornbread cook off. My cornbread pan entry number was 13 and not unlucky as it took 3^rd place. Even Jiffy Mix can produce good results! You just have to know what else to add to it!

A memory I will not soon forget. After trick or treating around the tables for the church activity children rushed to the largest open space of floor real estate they could find (which just happened to be the highest traffic area if you were coming and going), dumped their load out and traded their candy. I have honestly never seen anything quite like it. It reminded me of a twisted Halloween version of “Pit” . “I have two kit-kats, two, two, two” “here I will trade for two twix” “DEAL”!

The traditional trick or treating, which is HUGE around here. We wandered a neighborhood of some friends. Although we live nowhere near this neighborhood we saw lots of people we know including Dan’s good friend in his school class. My favorite and most anticipated stop was the home with the therapy dogs. Baxter, Murphy and Boomer (I think its Boomer) are the most beautiful and well behaved dogs I have ever met. I have missed seeing them occasionally as I did last school year. One of their owners worked where Sam had preschool. The dogs were so great letting so many hands pet them and love on them.

Spending a little bit of down time with friends, after trick or treating, having some yummy cupcakes, watching pumpkin launching and smashing on the science channel.