Telling it like it is

Suh-weet! 14 of the 16 network cables are done and the hub/switch is in. We're now wired in every room of the house. I also hooked up all the phones last night with new Cat5e cable, so we have clean, crackle-free phones in the house too. Well - phone. We could put one in every room but the cordless one in the kitchen works just fine. Drilled out the box for the last two networks and phone in our bedroom today and ran one of them over to the hub. The other two will get done tomorrow. Once the video cables are in the family room, the low-voltage wiring project is complete. Nice.

I spent some time last night getting to grips with how I'm going to mount the phone and network distribution centre. Having marked some holes to mount the screws for the network switch, I set to it with a small drill bit to punch through the metal in the cabinet. As the drill flexed and hopped off the metal, heading towards my finger, I reckoned it was going to hurt, and as I inevitably drilled into the knuckle on my left forefinger it did. The pain made me yank the drill away (obviously) stand up and step back. As I stood up, I mashed my head on the top of the door frame to the cabinet which added to the pain, and as I stepped back, I distinctly remember thinking "did I move that piece of wood with the nail in it?". Of course I hadn't - that would have been too efficient, and as I stepped on to it, the nail sunk nicely into the middle of my left foot. So one drilled knuckle, a punctured foot and sore head later later, I mounted the network switch only to find we did

As I sit here this morning listening to one of my colleagues preach (loudly) to the choir again, something occurred to me. Our company is a paradox. Half the company trains commercial airline pilots, training designed to accustom the pilots to any situation they might encounter, training to help them save lives when it comes down it. Yet the other half of our company trains the military, training designed to make them more efficient, more ruthless, more accurate killers - training that helps them take lives. Weird.

That's a bit better. We've got a second quote from another plumber to do the same work as yesterday's quote. The nice thing is that with yesterday's, I have an exact checklist to give to the other people coming to quote. Let's recap. Yesterday : $8,500 for the house, $6,500 for the service line from the water meter Making $15,000 Today : $2,400 for the house and $2,300 for the service line. Making $4,700. Less than one third what the other company wanted. So now we've got both ends of the scale, I'll get one more lot to come around and see where their quote lands.

We had the first plumber come over last night to quote on replumbing the house. Bear in mind we only have two bathrooms and a kitchen, and the entire basement ceiling is already down so all the pipes are exposed. They quoted us $8,500 to do it. Now I'm not stupid. I want pex pipe which is easy to fit. It cannot possibly take two guys more than two days to do it. Assuming the most expensive option which is $1000 in parts and materials, and that they charge $100 an hour, that should be $4,200. The parts and materials in reality are probably closer to $500, and the labour is probably not much more than $2,500. So I reckon it should be $3,000 for two guys working 8 hours a day for two days. $8,500? You're fucking joking.

Thanks to one concerned ebayer, I discovered today that some fucktard is selling copies of my website on CD. Hey - megamanuals and/or lowhondaprelude - I hope you have a lot of money because you're damn well going to need it ....

Only 4 network connections left to go, but I might add another 2 in the kitchen. Whilst I was investigating / pulling cables yesterday, I inadevertently disconnected our phone service. Wire snips in the wrong place will do that. So it accelerated the issue of how to map 4-wire phone cable to 6-wire cat 5 cable. Fortunately the internet is a wonderful thing and I found a site showing the various colour mappings, and we now have phone service again :-)