Like father, like son... or daughter
I went over to the Li's today. I promised Tamami-san that I would help her out with her Skype. She's not a tech person so I said, no problem. I got there around 3:30ish (well, she came and picked me up on her way home from downtown) and after eating some noodles set abouts sorting her out. First order of business was figuring out why her headset didn't work. Turns out it was simple enough. A combination of the headset and the computer volume being turned down. No problem. Next was testing her Skype connection. I had brought over my laptop so I could play telephone with her. After some quick fiddling, poof, Bob's-your-uncle. I showed her how to set it up, make calls, receive calls, sent chat messages and look for contacts. All pretty basic but easy enough to show. I hate the PC set up of Skype. I think it's a bad layout. The Mac layout is so much easier to visually comprehend. I imagine once you get used to it it's no big deal but off the bat... Mac layout is waaaaaaaaaay easier to grasp. It was about this time that I noticed the signal strength of their wireless was really low. Weird. I got full bars when I set it up. I wandered downstairs to have a look. Everything seemed fine but I rebooted it just in case. I was gonna be really pissed if there was something wrong with this rig. I went back upstairs and same thing. Low signal strength. I picked up my laptop and started walking towards the basement stairs but I got 15 steps from the table and my signal strength went up to half.
You've gotta be kidding me.
By the time I got to the topof the basement steps another 5 steps away I had full bars. Wow... I double checked with Tamami-san's laptop and same thing. So the reason we had full bars last week was because she was sitting on the couch by the stairs. Hmmm... something was interfering with the signal. As I went downstairs (Oscar the bulldog in tow) I looked over the wireless set up and wondered if it would make sense to move it upstairs. Mimi's room is downstairs so moving it upstairs might cause her some grief but... hmmmm. Worth a shot anyways. I disconnected everything and hauled it upstairs. I asked if there was another cable outlet upstairs but was told there was only one in the house. Huh? I just disconnected the modem from one downstairs so where was the tv connected to? She showed me the cable wire coming directly out of the wall. Ah. One cable outlet and one wire coming out of the wall. Gotcha. I went back downstairs to try and figure out how to set this up to increase the signal strength. Tamami-san showed me where the cable from the tv came through the wall and down to a splitter box on the other side of the basement. Ta-daaaaa! This splitter box was directly below the kitchen where she likes to work so this should dramatically increase the signal strength. Except... where was this second cable going to? I followed a rather long cable that had been fed through the wooden trusses and then duct taped along the ceiling across the other side of the basement down the wall and under the door into Mimi's bedroom. the cable then continued back up the wall across the ceiling and back down to connect to a tv at the foot of Mimi's bed. This had to be THE most ghetto cabling setup I had ever seen. I mean, the duct tape wasn't even flat in some parts. It looked like it had fallen a bunch of times and the remaining ball was just stuck back up on the wall or ceiling. Even the way it cut across the ceiling wasn't very pretty. Ah, teenage ingenuity. It ain't pretty but it's functional. Tamami-san told me there used to be another cable that ran through the ceiling and into Mimi's room somehow but the Shaw cable guy cut the line when he installed the modem so Mimi rigged up this set up so that she could get cable in her room. Interesting.
I spent the next 20 minutes or so inspecting the walls and ceiling in Mimi's room trying to figure out if there was a way to feed a cable line in through the wall. I couldn't find the other end of the original cable line and after doing some head scratching I noticed the 2-way intercom. on her wall. Seen that before. I walked back to the cable outlet where the modem used to be and lo-and behold there was the other end of the intercom next to the cable outlet. Some hope. If I could figure out where the line was getting into Mimi's room and if there was enough room, I could feed the cable through the same way and into her room. Then I could connect Mimi's cable to the outlet where the router used to be hooked up and hook up the router to the second side of the splitter. Sweet! Now, to try and figure out the wiring. It took several minutes but I finally was able to follow the tangle of electrical wiring to a small hole in the wall at the back of some shelving. This hole led into Mimi's blanket closet. It was gonna be tight but I thought I could probably feed the cable through the hole.
I set about collecting the cable from Mimi's room, "disassembling" her ghetto duct tape set up, discovering about another 10 feet of cable squished into a space in a wall panel and hauling it over to the other outlet. I fed the cable through the ceiling trusses and over towards the hole in the wall. I was standing on a rickity folding chair with one foot, bracing myself on a bedframe that was leaning against the wall with m other foot and trying to pull myself up on to this top shelf which was about 3 feet deep and 3 feet from the ceiling without touching these exposed copper wires that seemed to be connected to my only source of light up there. I think after I failed to ease myself up the first time because of the awkward position I was in, I resigned myself to the fact I was going to half to do some sort of jumping motion which would inevitably bring me reeeeeeeeeeeally close to if not in contact with these exposed wires. I think I must have stared at these frickin things for a good five minutes not wanting to "test" the possibility of a live current running through them with my fingers seeing as I had one foot on top of a metal bedframe that was sitting on the floor. I finally decided to see what i could do about gingerly trying to move them out of the way. Thankfully the wires were a bit on the stiff side and I was able to bend them so they pointed in a much safer direction. Namely, away from me. Five minutes later I got the cable to the hole in the wall only to discover the hole was just a wee bit too small. Fabulous. I inquired about some tools. There were some but they were a bit of a mish mosh. The saw was too big and there was no drill so i wound up having to use an old Xacto utility knife. Now, for those of you who have never tried to cut through wood paneling and a bit of drywall in near virtual darkness while leaning at a precarious 45˚ angle with your arms fully outstretched whilst trying no to cut the wire of a two way intercom in the process, let me tell you, it wasn't exactly easy. In fact, I believe it took me the better part of 20 minutes just to make the hole only slightly bigger but large enough for the cable line to get through. i ended up running the cable through that hole, down the inside of the closet where i created another small hole at the bottom of the wall so the cable could come out and run along the floor to Mimi's tv. During this whole process I found out the shelving in this particular closet was built by my father including some bracing elements built out of old hockey sticks. Tamami-san laughed and said I was like my dad. I think what she meant was that I was handy like my dad. Yeah, I'll take it as a compliment... sorta. My dad, after all, had at one point built me a toilet paper stand out of the bottom half of an old lamp (the Ikea ones that every person in their 20's with their own pad has), a stick and some CD's. You could just imagine the look on my face when dad offered it up to me. Dad, if you're reading this, I love you but it wasn't really aesthetically great and Rose being an interior designer almost turned white when she saw it. Maybe Mimi could use it in her bathroom though. She seems to be down with function over aesthetics.
K, so this story is getting a little long in the tooth. Anyways, I got Mimi's cable hooked up, The router got placed in a better spot, Tamami-san can work in the kitchen now with a strong wireless signal and as an added bonus, the desk where the modem used to be got cleaned up and is a functional space again. Oh, and I was able to swap out two fluorescent bulbs so the laundry area is brighter now too. Damn, I am turning into my dad. I'm becoming Mr. fix-it.
Li-san brought home dinner from Lime and Van Ya. Deeeeeee-licious. Seafood does taste so much better closer to the water. At some point during dinner, Tamami-san made some crack about how no one does anything around the house except her or something to that effect to which Li-san and Mimi high-fived each other. Like father, like daughter. Mind you, we've seen that in Mimi since she was 5...
Good times, good times.
Tamami-san gave me a lift home after dinner and she packed me left overs. what i didn't realize was that she tucked in an envelope with $150. Grrrrr... That's not cool. I'm gonna have to give her grief about that. I'm sure that's her way of getting me back for paying for the wireless router last week. Still, not cool. Grrr...
Reason to smile today: Hangin out at the Li's . Even if I was kinda working it's nice to be able to hang out with them. It's been ages and they're good peoples. Bonus - GSP beat Hardy in a unanimous, dominating decision at UFC 111.
Something I learned today: I'm more like my dad than I think.
I went over to the Li's today. I promised Tamami-san that I would help her out with her Skype. She's not a tech person so I said, no problem. I got there around 3:30ish (well, she came and picked me up on her way home from downtown) and after eating some noodles set abouts sorting her out. First order of business was figuring out why her headset didn't work. Turns out it was simple enough. A combination of the headset and the computer volume being turned down. No problem. Next was testing her Skype connection. I had brought over my laptop so I could play telephone with her. After some quick fiddling, poof, Bob's-your-uncle. I showed her how to set it up, make calls, receive calls, sent chat messages and look for contacts. All pretty basic but easy enough to show. I hate the PC set up of Skype. I think it's a bad layout. The Mac layout is so much easier to visually comprehend. I imagine once you get used to it it's no big deal but off the bat... Mac layout is waaaaaaaaaay easier to grasp. It was about this time that I noticed the signal strength of their wireless was really low. Weird. I got full bars when I set it up. I wandered downstairs to have a look. Everything seemed fine but I rebooted it just in case. I was gonna be really pissed if there was something wrong with this rig. I went back upstairs and same thing. Low signal strength. I picked up my laptop and started walking towards the basement stairs but I got 15 steps from the table and my signal strength went up to half.
You've gotta be kidding me.
I spent the next 20 minutes or so inspecting the walls and ceiling in Mimi's room trying to figure out if there was a way to feed a cable line in through the wall. I couldn't find the other end of the original cable line and after doing some head scratching I noticed the 2-way intercom. on her wall. Seen that before. I walked back to the cable outlet where the modem used to be and lo-and behold there was the other end of the intercom next to the cable outlet. Some hope. If I could figure out where the line was getting into Mimi's room and if there was enough room, I could feed the cable through the same way and into her room. Then I could connect Mimi's cable to the outlet where the router used to be hooked up and hook up the router to the second side of the splitter. Sweet! Now, to try and figure out the wiring. It took several minutes but I finally was able to follow the tangle of electrical wiring to a small hole in the wall at the back of some shelving. This hole led into Mimi's blanket closet. It was gonna be tight but I thought I could probably feed the cable through the hole.
I set about collecting the cable from Mimi's room, "disassembling" her ghetto duct tape set up, discovering about another 10 feet of cable squished into a space in a wall panel and hauling it over to the other outlet. I fed the cable through the ceiling trusses and over towards the hole in the wall. I was standing on a rickity folding chair with one foot, bracing myself on a bedframe that was leaning against the wall with m other foot and trying to pull myself up on to this top shelf which was about 3 feet deep and 3 feet from the ceiling without touching these exposed copper wires that seemed to be connected to my only source of light up there. I think after I failed to ease myself up the first time because of the awkward position I was in, I resigned myself to the fact I was going to half to do some sort of jumping motion which would inevitably bring me reeeeeeeeeeeally close to if not in contact with these exposed wires. I think I must have stared at these frickin things for a good five minutes not wanting to "test" the possibility of a live current running through them with my fingers seeing as I had one foot on top of a metal bedframe that was sitting on the floor. I finally decided to see what i could do about gingerly trying to move them out of the way. Thankfully the wires were a bit on the stiff side and I was able to bend them so they pointed in a much safer direction. Namely, away from me. Five minutes later I got the cable to the hole in the wall only to discover the hole was just a wee bit too small. Fabulous. I inquired about some tools. There were some but they were a bit of a mish mosh. The saw was too big and there was no drill so i wound up having to use an old Xacto utility knife. Now, for those of you who have never tried to cut through wood paneling and a bit of drywall in near virtual darkness while leaning at a precarious 45˚ angle with your arms fully outstretched whilst trying no to cut the wire of a two way intercom in the process, let me tell you, it wasn't exactly easy. In fact, I believe it took me the better part of 20 minutes just to make the hole only slightly bigger but large enough for the cable line to get through. i ended up running the cable through that hole, down the inside of the closet where i created another small hole at the bottom of the wall so the cable could come out and run along the floor to Mimi's tv. During this whole process I found out the shelving in this particular closet was built by my father including some bracing elements built out of old hockey sticks. Tamami-san laughed and said I was like my dad. I think what she meant was that I was handy like my dad. Yeah, I'll take it as a compliment... sorta. My dad, after all, had at one point built me a toilet paper stand out of the bottom half of an old lamp (the Ikea ones that every person in their 20's with their own pad has), a stick and some CD's. You could just imagine the look on my face when dad offered it up to me. Dad, if you're reading this, I love you but it wasn't really aesthetically great and Rose being an interior designer almost turned white when she saw it. Maybe Mimi could use it in her bathroom though. She seems to be down with function over aesthetics.
K, so this story is getting a little long in the tooth. Anyways, I got Mimi's cable hooked up, The router got placed in a better spot, Tamami-san can work in the kitchen now with a strong wireless signal and as an added bonus, the desk where the modem used to be got cleaned up and is a functional space again. Oh, and I was able to swap out two fluorescent bulbs so the laundry area is brighter now too. Damn, I am turning into my dad. I'm becoming Mr. fix-it.
Good times, good times.
Tamami-san gave me a lift home after dinner and she packed me left overs. what i didn't realize was that she tucked in an envelope with $150. Grrrrr... That's not cool. I'm gonna have to give her grief about that. I'm sure that's her way of getting me back for paying for the wireless router last week. Still, not cool. Grrr...
Reason to smile today: Hangin out at the Li's . Even if I was kinda working it's nice to be able to hang out with them. It's been ages and they're good peoples. Bonus - GSP beat Hardy in a unanimous, dominating decision at UFC 111.
Something I learned today: I'm more like my dad than I think.
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