Cat-5

Ahhh, the beauty of the internet. A luxury that Mike and I have been without in our own home since the beginning.

When we did the electrical, we had our electrician friend install a Cat-5 high speed internet outlet in every room. (Minus the bathroom - I didn't want to be tempted to surf the web in my bathtub. Not a good idea.) A friend of mine asked - Why don't you just go wireless? My response to that was, While the walls are off, I'm going to put in ALL I can.

And I'm glad I did. I recommend it to everyone. Overdo it. Lotsa outlets, phone/cable/internet in everyroom, recessed lighting, closet lighting, cabinet lighting - wire for it when the walls are down. You can get the fixtures slowly. Also - put in lotsa breakers - so when you blow one, half the house doesn't go out. Ok - there's my electrical design advice. A little bit of a tangent.

So we had cable and internet wired in back on 7/8, but we still didn't have the ends crimped onto the Cat-5 cables, so... obviously couldn't plug them into the router. Mike and I lacked instructions on how to crimp the cables into the plugs... that's the reason for the delay. We even bought the special Cat-5 crimping toolkit - but it didn't come with instructions on the order of the wires into the plug.

So, last night we got out the 'ol multi-meter and figured it out. Once we knew which order the wires went into the plugs, putting them on was a breeze. (The magical order for us was white with an orange chaser, orange, white with a green chaser, blue, white with a blue chaser, green, white with a brown chaser, and finally - brown. But your order may vary depending on your plugs and wiring... so don't try it at home without double checking.)

Of course, once that was done, we were all excited about visiting the magical internet at home for the first time! Unfortunately, it didn't work. Not because of the wiring. Because for whatever reason, I need some stupid password or something from the cable company. The software they gave me to install wouldn't work on my operating system either... stupid people. Who uses OS 9 anymore anyway? Geez.

I'll see if I can get it sorted out tonight. Maybe if I take the router out of the equation it'll let me on. We only have one computer at the moment anyway.