My First Class Home Network

What goes into a good first class home network?

Now a days we are working from home and we rely on our internet connection. The home is an extension of the world wide network and needs to be reliable if we are to maintain our work and play environments.  

The opportunity to improve my home network when Google Fiber started digging in my neighborhood.  I wanted to set up the home network right.  The complete system consist of the following: 

1) a Gigabit Google fiber modem and network box. [~$70/mth]

2) A 24 port gigabit switch, and several 8 port gigabit switches where needed in the office and downstairs entertainment center. [~$130 ]

3) A mesh network using Ubiquiti access points so everywhere inside and around the house outside has WIFI.  [~$250 ]

4) A battery backed up UPS powering the modem, network box, the big switch and a couple of the Ubiquiti access point POE power supplies. [~$50]  

When an local office supply store went out of business I purchased the 24 port Gbit Switch, and put it to use in the new network.  What do I have need of a 24 port switch you ask?

I purchased a 1000 ft of CAT6 Ethernet cable and some modular RJ45 plugs and outlets and proceeded to run cable to every room in the house. Well, at least all the big rooms.  The office and the three bedrooms upstairs were easier than the downstairs family room.  For upstairs I cut a hole for the outlet plate, ran a very long drill bit up inside the wall, drilled a hole in the top plates of the walls into the attic.  I would find the drill bit in the attic and pull a string back down the hold to the wall plate. To reach the down stairs I had to find a pathway from the attic upstairs to the downstairs. It just so happens that the both AC units are in the attic above the second floor and all of the ducting for the return air and supply ducts were passed through hidden spaces in the floor plan.   I fished three CAT6 cables downstairs through one of these spaces and into a closet in the downstairs bedroom.  

We just had a lighting strike nearby and the power went off for about 5 seconds.  We did not loose network connection.  And since my computers are all laptops they all stays up through the black out.  Now if the power outage had lasted more than the an hour then my battery back up system would have given up the ghost and I would have been without high speed internet.  Then it would be a good time to read or take a nap I think.

I will post later about my forays into home automation, more wood working ideas (my making sawdust) and other home projects.  

A bit of history about me and computers. 

 I started working with computers back in the late 70's, before the internet, before the personal computer (PC), before the Apple Macintosh.  At UT I worked on the big mainframe in Taylor Hall.  I worked for a professor, A.J. Welch in the Bio-Med department and would help him out by taking his program runs down and submit them for compilation and execution.  It would not be immediate turn around but eventually the print out would be tossed in the outfeed window and I would grab it and the box of punch cards and hike back up to the professors office.  The project his was working on was pretty cool.  He was trying to create a model of the back of the eye.  The Retinas response to different wavelengths of light. The light sources were all lasers. We had an Argon Laser, a neodymium yag laser, a ruby laser, and a couple of others I can't recall.  The model was the first effort to understand how to treat detached retina and other eye issues. 

In school I learned to design with a microprocessor.  I put the skills I learned to use at the work-study job.  I helped out in the Bio-med lab trying to automate the timing of experiments and the data collection from temperature sensors.  I used the Motorola 68000 with a parallel I/O chip, a multichannel Burr-brown analog to digital converter module and a serial interface chip to control the shutter timing of an Argon laser,  index the stepper motors controlling the x-y-z coordinates of a platform, take temperature measurements and then storing the data on a digital formatted cassette tape.  The data was used to perfect the eye model.  

My first computer was a generic dual 5 1/4" floppy disk Intel 8086. I quickly outgrew this and upgraded to a Intel 286 with a 10 Mbyte hard disk and a 3 1/2 inch 700 Kbyte floppy disk.  I used this machine a lot, used the programming skills learned in college to write some Basic Account Software for use to use for home accounting. It would take in all our income and expenses, categorize it and be able to create reports for doing taxes. I had a modem I could use to dial into an email provider and exchange email with whoever had it, I think I had a Yahoo mail account.  

For the longest time I had DSL through AT&T then switched to Time Warner Road Runner internet service.  My work, Motorola and later Freescale would even pay for it so I could work from home as needed, That lasted for about 10 years.  I initially had 10 Mbit service, then 70 Mbit, then 300 Mbit service. 

Fast forward to 2020 and I have the most reliable network at home, all for less than $500. 

Nice Song

"Believe"

I ran across this song today.  Touched me.
Have a listen.

Skidding Sidewase into Home Base Yelling WOO HOO

Remember this motto to live by:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attactive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

I got to my brother's house in Katy, somewhat expecting to be able to talk with him about his bucket list and celebrate his 60th birthday in a grand way. But no way. Not in the cards. He was too far around the bases almost to Homebase. He didn't need a bucket list. He had live life to the fullest, and his body is broken, thoroughly used up. His mind was nowhere to be found. He had already check-out mentally, pain meds stolen it away.

Turns out Larry has cancer of the lungs, bones and liver. His liver is swolen to over 3 times it's normal size causing some extreme pain. His bone paid is evedent the most when he is sitting. He can't sit in one spot for very long. No wonder he had to check out. It was during this heighten time of pain he was able to get off meds for two days prior to executing his will. Had to of sound mind and body. What a brave man. While away from the heavy pain meds we were able to talk a bit about stuff. You know stuff. Remembering the way he teased me when we were kids, just what the big brother is supposed to do.

We had numerous games in the backyard on Booth Avenue that kept us busy and out of trouble. If you didn't get it right with your first attempt there was this concept of a "Do Over" where you could repeat your attempt to get it right. Larry did not have too many regrets. No need in his mind to ask for a Do Over. No need in his mind for a bucket list at this point. I think he had already got to do most of what he wanted to do in his life.

Now as Hospice has been engaged, he becomes more distant as pain meds increase to combat the increasing pain. Morphine is being used now. This at the cost of balance and muscle control. Yesterday the dogs were getting on his nerves and he tried to bend down and force one of the dog outside. He fell to his knees and exclaimed in pain as he got up slowly.

Then after that, things heated up with Larry's wife. She was mad and took it out on me. I am big man and can usually accept the anger, especially when it seems misdirected. Shes very angry at loosing Larry. Angry at Larry's family for hanging aound her house for the last two weeks and taking too much control over his care. She basically said she could do it all now, with Hospics's help. I'm thinking that maybe I should not continue to stay. After the confrontation I retreated to the bedroom and have been mulling things over for now the last 12 hours.

My decision is not based on what she wants but what Larry seems to want and need. As I was leaving this morning for breakfast Kathy told me that Sunday morning Larry had asked when I was coming back. I had taken a break last weekend and went home to take care of a few things. It was a good break, but things at Larry' degraded dramatically while I was absent, resulting in the outbust of anger.

I want to come sliding in to homebase after my life's journey, maybe not so well preseved, whooping and hollaring and excaiming what a great life. But if I have somewhat of a say in this, I don't think I want to slide in as early or as hard as Larry. My bucket list is still pretty long.

WOOT!

Peace to you all,

dodadPhilip

bucket list for my brother

It has been some time since I wrote anything here. Don't know if it's because I've not been inspired or just lost interest. But new situations arise that give me pause and question a lot of what I know.

My brother, Larry, called me this last Wednesday evening with some very bad news. Before I knew the news I made a stupid blunder. He has just moved from Trinidad and still had his Trinidad cell phone in use. He called me from it and ask me to call him back on it. I asked him straight away if this was that old international phone and he said yes. I replied that this call was costing me 3 to 4 dollars a minute and asked him to call me back. He said sure. Then after he called me back he told me the bad news I felt like a fool. After telling my sister Gingie this story, she used an good term. She said, "oh and you feel like such a tool!" A tool is right.

His news was that he had cancer and the prognosis was bad. He was told he only had a month to live. I didn't know what to say. I was not the first one of my 8 brothers and sisters to find out and I wasn't the last. He had lost track of who he had talked to. I come to find out he is on some good pain medicine along with anti-anxiety and anti-depression drugs. Sorta loopy and forgetful.

I have decided to push the pause button at work, take a month off and just go be with him, help him, however I can. My logical mind is going though all sorts of things I may need to help with, least of which is getting his affairs in order. I've called my favorite lawyer for help, Lindsey. So much more.

So off I go tomorrow on a different sort of adventure. Maybe is will be a bucket list of my making so he goes out with a smile. Like someone suggested, I will play through the old tapes, the good times with him, showing him how much his love has meant to me, his family and friends.

Peace,

Philip

come what may

To live in this household is to be free of what should be true. Because whatever you though should be true is inevitably proved to not be true. What you expect to happen doesn't.

I haven't experienced a quite, peaceful day in such a long time. I'm growing weary of the details. I don't know what to believe, that it will all work out, or that there still a lot of work to do. Cleaning the garage on Saturday was a 14 hour day. Wow I'm tired.

Laurie just signed in, and is about to try to catch up on her work. Data entry, billing, ... lots of time and stress for here. Especially trying to adjust for the change in schedule. She'll have her work cut out for her.

The wedding party we decided to move entirely to the house, bypassing the activity center. This will help tremendously with the amount of setup and cleanup required. It will also simplify the coordination. I hope that's all right with my sister who is getting married.

I leave you with - My 46"TV is broke and I can't seem to fix it. But hey, my garage is clean and I can put a car into it. yeh!

Philip

Making Sawdust

Today was a easy going day. Laurie woke me up asking if I might bring some tarps over to the church garage sale to lay some of the clothes on. I got up, threw some jeans and a flannel shirt on and was on my way. I spread the tarps on the grass and helped out a bit at the garage sale, enjoy a couple of breakfast tacos, found some golf shoes for $2.00 and was on my way to do some errands. To the bank, a quick stop into Academy to get some racquetballs and then on to Home Depot for a couple of hours.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been compiling a fairly lengthy list of small stuff I need to get at the hardware store. I use my treo's task list and list all of the stuff we need. Ended up being there the better part of two hours. It felt good to work out the little problems, find solutions for some future projects and just have some man fun.

With no time pressure I could have stayed longer but I was getting hungry by this time and still needed to go buy groceries for the week.

I get home hoping to find a package from Austin Homebrew with three kits in it, but nothing on the front step. Darn! I guess I'll just start installing, repairing the things I could with the stuff I just bought at Home Depot.

The first thing was to see what the cabinet doors look like under the white paint. I had two of the doors in the garage, taken off when I installed the stove several years back. I used some paint remover, and a little elbow grease to clean it up "real nice like" Unfortunately the doors are press wood and not a higher quality wood we could remove the paint and stain. So this means if we want to upgrade the kitchen cabinets we will need to re-paint them or replace the doors, or the whole entire set of cabinets. Something will need to be done before the graduation party in May. The cabinets are looking sorta dingy.

I had purchased some weather-proof electrical fixtures to replace the mess in the corner of the patio. I had an extension cord coming down supplying power to the patio amp and tuner. It was definitely not to code. But before I could install that I thought I'd better build something to house the amp and tuner. They've been on a short plastic table covered with a tupperware box for the longest time. So now to the sawdust part.

I clean off the crud from on top of the table saw. The leftovers from making Donovan and Mira's blocks were there. That brought back a bunch of fun memories. I look around the garage for material to build the cabinet with and find what I need and commence making sawdust. I'm still sawing when Laurie come home from a seminar she's been attending. When I start to try to assemble the cabinet I find that the wood glue I had was almost solid. The top was open and it had hardened. Ok, so now we need to go back to the hardware store. I need some more glue and the hardware for the cabinet.

Laurie was up for going with me. I think she really wanted to go by Ross or Michaels. She didn't complain too much we I was trying to figure out the hinges issue.

It's a good thing I didn't have good glue cause I remembered I needed to drill holes for shelf brackets and prepare the cabinet for hanging on the wall. It would have been awkward trying to do the drilling after the unit was assembled.

When we got home it was time for dinner. I cooked bacon wrapped filet mignon in a mushroom sauce and French cut green beens , and a mixture of corn peas and brown rice. We cleaned off the dining room table and ate in candle light with the piano player serenading us. We took our time eating and talking. Great dinner.

After dinner I drilled the holes and then assembled and clamped the cabinet. It should be set in the morning.

We get to visit with Brian, Laura and play with Mira tomorrow, but time for bed now.

Planning for the Future

With the near term set now, I want to try to find the positive in the events.

Lower Stress now: I'm tired, so first thing I'm going to try to do is rest more. That might be difficult without making L feel alone in her evening workings.

No more howling destructive dog around. Jeeves is so young and inexperienced compared to Joey. I was working in the back yard Saturday, Jeeves was sitting in the corner of the yard toward the 4 way stop just howling at every different car noise. I would laugh, reassure him he was doing a great job running off those big bad cars, trucks and buses. Either he felt he did enough or just got tired, but finally he had enough and went and laid down to bit on a chew toy. Meanwhile Joey, looked up each time from her sunny spot whenever I spoke with Jeeves and I imagined was smiling. Maybe it was a learning moment for the dog. Now I can devote some more time to rewiring the lighting he's torn up. Maybe the grass will come back and the garden will get prepared without pesky poop's everywhere.

We can clear out some of the old furniture. With the church garage sale coming up, I will consider donating a significant amount of furniture that is currently crammed into the house.

Maybe we can make one of the upstairs rooms into a music/recording studio. A place we can go to practice, play, relax and have fun.

All those extra dirty dishes that magically appeared in the kitchen sink throughout the day will be gone.

I won't have to wonder where that kitchen utensil went this time. They moved all the time. It was sorta a game we played. Where in the world is waldo, for the kitchen.

I don't need to leave the AC/Heat on during the day. I'll be able to reduce my exaggerated water and electricity bill.

Well I need to get back to it. More later.