It's Never Simple

Shanice's old machine at the office blew up - hard drive problems. Since I was the one who "donated" the machine initially, I got it back. I figured I'd put it in my bedroom, throw Linux on it and have a second machine for websurfing, e-mail and such. But that introduced a problem - I had wireless upstairs and didn't want to risk trying to get a Linux desktop to connect to my wireless network. (Plus, connecting via Wi-Fi on my Windows desktop was seriously detrimental to my ping times in Star Wars: Battlefront.) So I decided to run a cable from the basement to my bedroom. I went to Best Buy and bought a new hard drive for the Linux machine, a KVM switch so that I'd only need one keyboard and one mouse, a 50' cat6 cable and some shorter cat6 cables to connect the machines, plus a Linksys 4-port router.

Wouldn't you know it? When I got home, the sales guy from Best Buy forgot to put the KVM switch in the bag, so I had to call them and tell them to put it aside for me so I could pick it up in the morning. And that's only the start of the trouble... On Saturday, I spent the morning helping Rob out with taking up the kitchen floor. We pried several hundred vinyl tiles off the subfloor, leaving the entire kitchen floor sticky like a glue trap. I helped Rob lay down the first few planks of the engineered hardwood floor we bought, but I left most of the work to him.

Saturday afternoon, I went to Ace Hardware and got a nice, long drill bit and a snake so that I could snake the wire. But my cordless drill had some problems turning the bit (not powerful enough), and the bit wasn't wide enough, so I went back to Ace and bought a Makita corded drill and a Speedbor bit, plus some foam to seal up the hole once I ran the wire.

Anyway, I got the holes drilled and ran the cat6 cable by Sunday. So I tried setting up the router. Turns out I had destroyed the cat6 cable running it through the wall (must've tugged too hard). The router couldn't get an IP address. So back to Best Buy I went. This time, I got a 50' cat5e cable. I went back home, re-ran the wire and re-sealed the holes with the foam.

But then there was another problem. The router was getting an IP address, but wasn't routing packets to either machine. So back to Best Buy I went. I got a Linksys 5-port switch instead. Wouldn't ya know it? Both machines got IP addresses right away. So I hooked up my KVM switch, which works great, BTW, and something that should have taken me a couple hours ended up taking me the entire weekend.

It's never simple, is it?