Moving Day (kinda)

Kristin and I decided that we're going to stay in our little house for another year. We're gonna build up a little more equity, finish Kristin's student loan, pay off some of the bills from my surgery, and try again next year. So, obviously, we needed to do a serious re-organization in order to make room for Baby Howk.

To that end, I enlisted my Dad's assistance today. He drove up here this morning, and we spent the day moving furniture from room to room. The "master plan" is to make the computer room into a playroom, so we can give Kathryn some place to keep her toys. The kids will both sleep in Kathryn's room (we'll see if it works). We'll have to be flexible on that one: maybe allowing Kathryn to sleep in a sleeping bag or on the couch once in a while (which she enjoys anyway).

In order to make room in the computer room, we moved the bookshelves into the front room, and the computers into the master bedroom. Moving the computers was our biggest challenge. Neither my Dad nor I are "skilled" electricians. We can set up a computer in no time, but when it comes to running wires and crimping connectors, we're lost. We needed to move the cable modem from the computer room all the way to the other side of the house, through the crawl space.

So we examined the wires, and considered our options. We finally decided to use the existing cable modem coax wire (if it would stretch far enough). But that would require us to cut off the existing connector, strip the wire, and crimp a new connector onto it. After a trip to Radio Shack, and after spending some joint-numbing minutes in the crawl space, we began our "delicate" work of adding the new connector.

Once we fixed it up, we obviously wanted to see if it would work. All of the computer parts were still in the computer room. So I grabbed a power cord out of the jumble of cords, and rushed to see if our wiring job held good. We plugged it in, and after a few breathless moments, both the "Power" light and the "Cable" light came on. Success!

Now, if you have ever had to pick one power cord out of a tangled mess of cords, you might be able to anticipate what happened next. In my rush to test the coax, I paid insufficient attention to both the precise voltage of my power cord (12 V), and the precise power tolerance of my modem (10 V). Thus, ironically, while congratulating ourselves on successfully moving the cable modem, my father and I heard a dreadful "pop". Immediately, we saw (and smelled) smoke issuing from inside the cable modem!

Surprisingly, once I found the correct power cord, the modem still works. But just to be on the safe side, we're having Comcast bring us another one on Thursday. In the meantime, we just won't leave it plugged in overnight: we'd hate to have an electrical fire on our hands!

But all in all, Dad and I had a very successful day. And it was great fun to be able to spend the whole day with him -- he always cracks me up!