A Connected Wife Is A Happy Wife

 

Its so common today that I'd bet most of you didn't notice that everyone in this image has a phone or tablet in their hands. All we see if a bunch of friends gathered together and having a good time. Of course, having worked in IT for some time, the infrastructure of how this happens is implicit to me. That in the background unseen and probably not conscious to most people is a connection to the internet. 

The fact is, that as much as we use and depend on "broadband" access to "the cloud", it something like this working in the background of every home that allows it to happen. Most homeowners don't give it a second thought and probably haven't looked at it since the Internet provider came and connected everything up years ago. In 2004, when we built our house in the Dallas suburb of Forney, these panels were standard, however, in 2003 when the first owners of our current house in Terrell had it built, apparently it wasn't! Yup, crazy! One year difference and despite having had speaker wire run all over the house, they didn't put in Ethernet!

What's the big deal you say? If you didn't already know this, let me enlighten you a bit. In the world of data, it's the wired networking (or infrastructure) that does the heavy lifting keeping us connected to Youtube, Amazon Music, Instagram...... streaming everything. What about wireless? That's what delivers the end product, but without the wired apparatus delivering the data, wireless is pretty weak. Ask anyone who lives in a 2 story house trying to use a Wi-Fi access point! Better yet, ask anyone who lives a bit in the country and struggling through using one of those wireless services for the entirety of their content delivery. It's better than nothing, but it ain't good....

So, what do you do with no Ethernet infrastructure in a 2-story house? PLC of course! What the heck is "PLC"? It's powerline connection. Or, What the..... as my brother-in-law would say. It's where you borrow the electric wiring in your house and pass data back and forth over it. If that sounds highly dubious to you, it did to me too. But it works, after a fashion. How fast is it? Ignore what the specs say. It's roughly the speed of 802.11b Wi-Fi. That's 11 megabits per second friends! You remember that old Wi-Fi router from 3 or 4 generations ago that's in a box in the attic? It came out in 1999! Wi-Fi history for consumers went something like this: "B" 11mbp, "G" 54mbp, "N" 300mbp, and "AC" 433mbp. That's theoretic speed of course. Real world is roughly half that, and you also have to have the same standard on the receiving end in order to get that speed. So, in short form, it's not very fast, but it's faster than trying to get Wi-Fi throughout a 2-story house with 1 access point. 

So, that's been the state of affairs in our house for the last 4 years....... Then Covid-19 happened...

When we BOTH started working in the house regularly, then we had a problem! I was fine working in the office on a desktop machine plugged up directly to the router, but she was in a different part of the house entirely that was dependent on Wi-Fi being delivered by an access point connected to the PLC system...... on a different floor! Yikes! And these days, virtually all applications are connected to through the Internet somehow. So you see, it's not a good situation and certainly not up to regulary Zoom meeting at all.

So, yeah.... the solution has been to run a looooong Ethernet cable from the office across the hall through the dining room into the study...... since April!!!

Therefore I talked to lots of people to examine possible solutions. The answer pretty much was to bust holes in the walls of the office and my son's room upstairs and run the cabling into the attic and then down the wall to where the upstairs access point/switch lives. Ahhhhh, NO! Actually, I even considered it..... briefly.

Then this occurred to me. The office has 2 outside walls at the rear of the house. Why can't I run cabling out and up the side of the house into the attic, across the attic to the appropriate wall and drop it down? The distance isn't really and issue for Ethernet, I just needed to put it in conduit to protect the cabling. A few weeks ago, my father-in-law came by and helped us get the wire up to the attic. Saturday, my son and I pulled it across the attic and dropped it through the wall and pulled it out. And yesterday, I pulled it into the office and terminated it! Let me tell ya; AC Wi-Fi speed is pretty good!

I would say that my wife is happy, but she was actually fine with the Ethernet across the floor. I was the one that was bothered by it. Of course, she'd rather it be gone, but really she's just happy that I finished the project.

Lessons Learned From Vacation

We got back from our yearly (seems like anyway) trip to San Antonio. We went to places that we've been before, stayed at a hotel that we've stayed at before, ate at places we've eaten at before. Did we learn anything from this trip? Sure we did:

• We packed exactly what we needed to, no more, no less. Very efficient in terms of luggage. If you don't carry one of those pop-up mesh laundry hampers; you should. We've done it 3 times now, and it's been a revelation each and every time at keeping a hotel room tidy, especially when two children are along!

 

• I carried a power strip having learned from annoying experience that hotel rooms don't have enough outlets and that many are behind furniture. Also worked out great.

 

• The Best Western "Alamo Suites", which isn't all that close to the "Alamo" by the way is a perfect fit for us. It's close enough to the downtown/Riverwalk area without being down there with the noise, crowds and costs. I could get my wife down to the convention center each morning for her conference in 10 minutes. It has an indoor pool which was great for the kids and the rooms are large (with a full-sized fridge and microwave), plus breakfast is included. We got it at around $80 a-night. It's not luxurious in any way, shape, or form, but it was clean and did the job for what we needed.... besides, it's just down the street from out favorite place to eat....

 

• The Piedras Negras de Noche is our favorite Mexican food restraunt, bar none... and it's not close! We just don't go to San Antonio without going there. It's hard to find, hard to get to, and everybody looks at you when you come in because we're not hispanic, but we've loved it for about 8 or 9 years now. The first time we went, our son was still sleeping in a Pack-n-Play and he's 10 now. I'm a little surprised that Guy Fieri hasn't done one of his "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" on it yet. 

 

• The DeWeese's Tip Top Cafe, is one that Guy has done a show on and it was great again the second time there.... even if I didn't get the any pie this time. The kids even love it.

 

• It was definitely worth it to carry two cameras. The Nikon D300 with the 18-200mm "Superzoom" was just about perfect for the San Antonio Zoo, and it got some really nice shots. However, it was the Panasonic GF-1 that was the revelation! I surprised myself by taking it to Sea World and it was great for that; light, and quick reacting, plus this time I remembered to take the LVF-1 finder, so that when there was too much sunlight I could switch to that. The 100 degree heat and trudging the distances involved in that park would have made the D300 a burdensome carry. It was also perfect for Ripley's Belive It, or Not, and the Witte Science Museum. I'm VERY happy with that camera!

 

Anything not go right, despite the planning and familiarity? Yup! Remember me getting the portable access point ready in case we got a bad wireless signal in our room? I forgot to pack an Ethernet cable! However, even that was a case of using one of my "go to" strategies and having it work even in a relatively unfamiliar city. After our trip to the Zoo, and a great lunch at the Tip Top Cafe, I found a Goodwill up the street, swung into there and 5 minutes later, I had picked up 3 Ethernet cables for 99 cents a-piece. Try that at Best Buy! Although I found that I did what little internet access I needed to at the desk,and only used the cable to go directly to the laptop, it was WAY faster than the WiFi access. 

So yeah, that's it! I couldn't be happier..... other than getting home, and unpacked, and the laundry done, and everything put up.... that is!