I finally got the motivation up to run the network cable between the first and second floors. There was a little drilling involved, but all-in-all, I think I did minimal damage. It’s nice to have the non-wireless devices on the second floor back online, in particular my workhorse laser printer that is going on 12 years old and still works like a champ. Let’s just say they don’t make ’em like that anymore.
As of now, my fingers are sore because I haven’t put the ends on twisted pair cable in over a year or two. After the first connector of tonight, I got back into the groove and knocked out the remainder in short order.
So, now that I have the upstairs wired in again, what next? Well, I’m not really sure yet. I do know I need to get some kind of Linux server back online for various network maintenance jobs and the like, as well as possibly acting as a VPN gateway.
I’m also considering playing with OpenSolaris. I hear the filesystem is pretty amazing.
Oh yeah…I also still have a nagging “itch” to scratch from that asset tracking database project I was working on at my last job. I always wanted to be able to tell how often an asset had been moved and then see if I could correlate it with breakage rates. I figure if you move a computer around three times a week, treating it like a bale of hay when it’s handled, eventually things like hard disks are going to give out. So, having a database server to test on again will be nice…maybe I’ll even get crazy and play with database clustering.
Regardless of what I do with the network upstairs, the important thing is now I can start moving the computer equipment back into place. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to see the floor up there in the office soon. Maybe I’ll have a functional office and ham radio station again before the hockey season starts up. Time will tell.