Just a quick preview of more photos to come. We had a great weekend in the north country – North Dakota. We visited Kirsten’s grandparents, aunt and uncle, and some cousins over the holiday weekend. It was Abigail’s first big car trip and she was a champ, sleeping all but around forty five minutes of the almost ten hour car ride on the way up and all but around two hours on the way home.

Another big development this weekend? Abigail is starting to smile up at us as we interact with her! This photo was taken while we were outside shooting off a few fireworks in the backyard. She has her sun hat on for protection because the weather in North Dakota was gorgeous for us the entire weekend.

More pictures and fun to come from the weekend, so stay tuned!

Having a blackberry with a *decent* camera on it is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I find that I have a small device with me almost at all times that I can use to take photos and upload them from wherever I’m at. It’s a curse because sometimes I fall back on it and don’t want to carry my DSLR or my point and shoot camera with me.

I leave you for the long weekend with these two photos. The first is of Abigail’s first smile in response to interaction with someone! Lucky Uncle Andrew! The second is of Abby napping with me a week ago or so. Such a precious moment that I got to spend just cuddling with her, feeling her breathe, sigh in her sleep, and wiggle around!

I hope that everyone has a great fourth of July weekend!

So, after going on under these conditions for about a week, I decided finally that I should just run some Ethernet cable from the basement internet connection, through the floor, and up to the entertainment center area of our living room. To set the stage a little bit here, I had been planning a project like this for over a year, but I’d just not ever gotten around to it. No more procrastination, it was time to do something!

I had the perfect opportunity on Saturday, when Kirsten and Abigail went to a shower for our wonderful friends and I was stuck home alone with Mattie:

I removed the baseboard from the wall behind our entertainment center using a putty knife, flathead screw driver, paint scraper, and a 12oz claw  hammer. Then I was able to drill through the floor underneath the drywall but behind the baseboard with a long wood boring bit. I would say those two steps were the “scary” part. Once they were done, the rest was slowing going, but not hard. Simply running four CAT6 Ethernet cables from my bulk supply down through the hole in the floor, into the basement, along the floor joists and into the soon-to-be-network closet. Here are some pictures:

Here you can see the hole I’ve drilled through the floor down into the basement, along with one CAT6 cable running down through the void.

Here are the four cables after I was done running them all through the floor. Notice the conspicuous absence of a baseboard.

This shot is from the basement and is of the four cables tacked to the wooden flooring for some semblance of organization.

Here are all four cables at the entertainment center end (notice the baseboard back in place). They are all terminated in CAT6 punch down jacks. The four jacks will pop into a “keystone” wall plate that I have on order, but isn’t quite here yet.

And here is the shot of the tools I used to get the job done. Drill, wood boring bit, fish tape, several sets of pliers of various types, screw drivers, hammer, putty knife, RJ-45 crimping tool, punch down tool, flash light, and utility knife, to name a few (and not in any order, sorry).

If you’d like to see more pictures of the project, you can find them in our Flickr account. More pictures coming soon too after the wall plate is in, the network patch panel for down stairs, etc.

]]> http://www.webarnold.net/2010/06/22/diy-fathers-day-weekend-edition/feed/ 0