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saga of ethernet cable
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:44 [#02619620]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



context: spotty wifi in my attic studio is putting me in
it, and i need to run an ethernet cable from the underground
basement to the 3rd-story attic.



June 28, 2022 11:29PM

there is a real zen to running cable. I loathe it and love
it in equal parts

I'm renting, but my technical expertise is trusted to the
point where I don't even need to ask to... my plan will be
to use the existing telephone wire going up to the attic to
pull up the ethernet cable. wrinkle, though: it's stapled
into the wall the whole way up and there's a lot in the
way!

So, my junction between the phone cable and the ethernet
cable is going to have to be in engineered work of art,
stable with a streamlined leading edge; some sort of
lubricant like WD-40, then my thing with informational
synchronization and just close my eyes and keep tension on
the wire and feel the information coming back as I gradually
tease the staples out all the way up the chimney


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:45 [#02619621]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



June 28, 2022 11:59PM

Man. I need to do some yoga and breathing before I attempt
this -- so I am at peak focus -- but, more importantly, so I
don't get impatient and rough on it

The Wi-Fi up there has a knack of tanking at the worst times
and yeah I have some vacation now let's do it


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:46 [#02619622]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



June 29, 2022 12:35AM

crap. when I ran an ethernet cable up to my office few
months back, I was able to just yank the staples out by
feel, but that wire was 10 or 20 years newer than this one.

This wire, going to the attic, the staples are rusted brutal
old things and I was yanking on one down in the basement
with a pair of pliers and it just is not coming out and it's
like man I don't think I can just tension finesse it out
this time like that

so I think I have to snake it and that's tough to do without
someone on the other end but I think I'll take a stab


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:47 [#02619623]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



June 29, 2022 4:37AM

The do or die moment has been done and there's still a bunch
to do but the hard part is over there's a cable going up to
the attic

most of that I spent with a cable snake and my eyes closed,
I can feel like okay, there's a first portal I have to pass
through here and then I have to get by this AC duct they put
in since I last put in wires but I can't I can feel it just
repeatedly spooling up in a corner and I'm finally losing my
temper and all right that's it and this makes me very sad
because my other options are limited and I really wanted
this

but then I'm thinking I'm mad and I may as well go back to
my first approach and try yanking the cable because if I
snap it in half likely no one will ever even figure it out
and it won't come back on me

I give a yank up in the attic and and promptly snap the
telephone cable in half. I have been working out

but this is not promising. but then I go back and forth
between the basement and the attic and I realize there
aren't that actually many staples and it's got some play
like I could just pull it through already if not for the
staples

so yeah let's just go for broke; yank it

I crafted a very detailed object melding the ethernet cable
with the telephone cable using electrical tape and then
coated it in Pam cooking spray and WD-40


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:48 [#02619624]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



and goop from inside the wall as I am drenched in sweat and
in the words of Han Solo what an incredible smell you've
discovered

then as soon as I breathe or sigh of relief gravity begins
sucking the cable back down below and it was just a
momentary fake out because I grabbed it and plenty of time
and tied it off

I needed to get it through another wall in the basement but
that's nothing compared to this. then terminate it

but first a shower

this would have been easier with friends but if you can
believe it it's not exactly something people want to come
over to help with


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:49 [#02619625]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



June 29, 2022 4:25PM

in retrospect it was actually pretty ironic how I spoke
about it and then how it panned out

I said, "Man. I need to go do some yoga and breathing
exercises before I do this, not just because i need to be at
peak focus but so I don't lose my temper and get too rough
with things and impatient" with some variance in phrasing
towards the end

and I did exactly this and the irony is I concluded the
hasty approach was too risky at first, then i lasted almost
3 hours very patiently repeatedly failing with a cable snake
and actually getting quite deep into visualizing the
innards

then I feel myself wearing out and I am going to get rough
and impatient soon and in fact I almost already am yes sir

then heck I'll give my original plan a shot since now that I
think about it I would never be on the hook for this quite
probably if it goes wrong

and yes as it turns out I would have been better off just
being impatient and yanking it

though life is such that if I had just done that it would
have gone wrong because I hadn't done my homework right?


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:50 [#02619626]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



June 30, 2022, 4:55AM

found myself bemusedly thinking of that myth from the norse
sagas, after having mental afterimages of sorts burned into
me from using a cable snake for three hours

and that myth has always nagged at me. like: is it a
metaphor for the invention of language?

but no, actually, i think i have it. so first off, i had to
shift into the shape of a snake (gradually build a critical
mass of data that would let me essentially see inside a wall
i could not physically see into). then, the mead of poetry,
right? and what are you trying to do with poetry but finesse
words like that, to cleverly creep your way around all sorts
of barriers that stop most everyone else and somehow
miraculously get an ethernet cable from an underground
basement to an attic the third floor above ground

and also i don't think i mentioned that it wasn't just
like... oh just down through the floor. that was trying to
cable snake three stories down

and I also guess me asking myself why I thought of that then
is me probing a cable snake down around in my brain
somewhere


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-02 17:51 [#02619627]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



TLDR: i have modern ethernet up in the attic now. it was an
ordeal. i learned things. i got philosophical. i tied it
into the norse sagas


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2022-07-03 18:03 [#02619667]
Points: 7815 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



LAZY_TITLE


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2022-07-03 19:19 [#02619669]
Points: 31006 Status: Lurker | Followup to ijonspeches: #02619667



its gotta be the stop making sense version for me


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2022-07-06 08:21 [#02619715]
Points: 7815 Status: Regular | Followup to Hyperflake: #02619669 | Show recordbag



oh yes!


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2022-07-07 09:17 [#02619721]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to ijonspeches: #02619667



oh, hey. i think about this. the consequences of
electrocuting myself in the attic at 3am if i am so
drastically unlucky as to have the cable snake fetch its way
into an electrical junction box. i live alone, and the night
i was doing this, my landlords are thousands of miles away,
i am on vacation from work for next week or so... and,
yeah... let's wear gloves. look, i wore gloves, ok? here:

LAZY_TITLE

later i decided to sanity-check myself, and found that yes
-- i was absolutely right to wear gloves while
becoming a metal cable snake. i would have vastly preferred
bare fingers for better bandwidth, but... yeah. then i
find... they make fiberglass cable snakes, and... would that
be as feely as metal though? resisting the urge to impulse
buy one

in any case, burning down the house, yes. in addition to not
electrocuting myself in a situation where i would not be
found for days, i also deeply care about not dying in a
fire. as such, i'll run ethernet cable, but i'll never touch
mains wiring, even though i theoretically know how.

i looked into night classes for an electrician's whatever --
but no, you have to put in more hours than a commercial jet
pilot. trade shit has that locked up real tight. i think my
night-school dream will just be law school because then
electricians will never fuck w/me


 

offline ijonspeches from 109P/Swift-Tuttle on 2022-07-07 16:39 [#02619727]
Points: 7815 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02619721 | Show recordbag



im really glad about the glove decision!
its like, can i be bothered to spend 5 mins looking for my
gloves to extend my lifespan by 40 years. i believe i have
decided falsely around 15% of the time, getting away with it
so far. makes you think...


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2023-01-26 05:23 [#02624622]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



in retrospect, this was one of those things like... oh,
bicyclists have like "you know the hill might beat you but
you keep along anyways" and rock climbers have "you have to
keep climbing because it's dangerous to go downwards" and...
i dunno, i can look back at myself here, and nod, and say:
yes, i was in a practically psychedelic place from sitting
in the dark for two hours meditating on a cable snake, and
it was not insanity, it's almost like... a cornerstone of
will. getting that cable through was genuinely emotional.
but i didn't give up. and i got the job done. and now i can
look back on it and have more confidence in my ability to
come through even even when things go full gilgamesh. a man
needs a few of these under his belt


 


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