endperform.org

I’ve neglected the blog a bit lately, but with good reason. We’re still working on settling into the house, and on top of that, my mom and sister came down from Pennsylvania for a visit. We ended up visiting the World of Coke in downtown Atlanta, but of course I didn’t bring the camera. My daughter enjoyed most of the time, except for meeting the wall face-first and busting her little lip open. She also warmed up to her grandma and aunt, something I was a little concerned about due to the last time they were here for a visit.

I’ve been playing handyman / builder / assembler the past two weeks as well. Last night I put together my daughter’s new bed, then the week prior I put together the entertainment center. I know, real geeky stuff. I need to seal up a couple of holes (particularly the holes drilled for the network cabling) to keep some pests out, then of course comes the big project of seeding the yard and trying to get grass going.

At some point soon, I want to dig my electronics stuff out and start messing around with it again. I have an Arduino Prototype shield I need to assemble, along with some cool little projects to try out. Eventually I want to get an ethernet shield and do something concerning network and environment, perhaps a simple temperature monitor, or I also thought about getting into building a personal weather station. My mind has all sorts of cool ideas, I just need to sort them out and figure out which ones I want to actually pursue as I learn about this stuff.

I took the day off of work today for a few reasons, one of which being so I could help get a few loose ends tied up. One loose end in particular was getting the rest of the office set up, or at the very least wired. The problem here was that the cable modem is out in the living room where the cable comes in, and I can’t see spending 75.00 for an outlet in the computer room. The options were to string a cable along a wall or the floor, or drill a couple of holes and string the cable along. I spoke with the landlord at length last night about things and mentioned about the network cable. Without me asking, he mentioned that I could drill a couple of holes and utilize the crawlspace under the house.

Well, today was the day, so I drug out my trusty cordless drill and put two holes in the floor. I had 100ft of Cat5 that I previously didn’t have a use for, so that ended up being used for the run. I fed it down, then it was time to crawl under the house. I’m a big guy, but there was enough space for me to crawl commando-style to the cable, toss it down towards the office, and run it back up through the hole. I tell ya, there’s something about being under a house that’s… interesting. The cable is now strung, with plenty left under the house. I pulled enough up on either side so I could shift things if need be. This weekend, I’ll finalize the run by sealing the holes with a bit of silicon caulk to keep the bugs (not many under there, but still) as well as seal any air leaks so I keep heating/cooling more efficient.

On top of all of this, I’m planning on getting some pegboard in an effort to clean up the mess and tangle of cords in the office, and out in the living room. The living room, of course, will probably end up waiting until we figure out if we’re getting another entertainment center or just cleaning up / painting the pieces we have now. I do plan on taking some pictures of the goings-on, so stay on the lookout for that

The move is complete, and we’re happily in a single-family home. The move itself took around 6 hours and it would appear nothing was damaged. However, Beth’s leather jacket and wedding dress got left behind, and of course when I went back for it, it was gone. The old complex claims that they wouldn’t throw something like that out, but it’s not at the new place and it’s not in the old place. *sighs* We now have DirecTV in the house, and it’s quite good. Comcast could not match their pricing, so unfortunately as far as cable TV goes, they’ve lost me as a customer. I also got rid of Tivo since the service package I have from DTV includes DVR service.

The fun part of trying to wire the home network back up is one of a few things I have to look forward to, aside from the usual unpacking stuff. I need to figure out if running network cable is going to work out, or if I’m going to have to get a couple of wireless NIC cards for the desktops. Unfortunately the only working cable line is in the living room, as the one bedroom had the coax utilized for DTV, one is in the baby’s room, and of course the one room we needed it in doesn’t have it. I called Comcast about adding an outlet, and they want 75.00 to do so. No thanks, I’ll pass.

Still plenty of boxes and some quirks to work out of the new place, but it’s an older house so things are to be expected. On the bright side, it’s starting to feel more like home. I should have some pictures from moving day up by the weekend