In the middle of all the wrongs

When we moved into this house a couple months ago, I put my desk and computer in the living room. The modem and router were stationed there because that's where the cable line comes in and all the Xfinity magic happens. So I set up camp and figured I'd move my station to the fourth bedroom in a week or so once we got the network cables sorted out.

Well, October passed and November came and went, and I was still in the living room. I'm still in the living room, right now, actually. But that's about to change.

For the past few days, I've been thinking about how I could move my desk and computer into the fourth bedroom and still keep my wired internet connection. As lovely as a wireless network can be, I've become spoiled on my wired connection. I have a desktop station, so the portability advantage of wireless isn't appealing. The fourth bedroom is the furthest room from the living room, if you walk it inside. There's a shorter path to it outside, though, and I wanted to capitalize on it. While I have a 50-ft ethernet cable, I'd still rather have some slack on both ends when I'm connected.

Today I decided to see what I could do to make that connection happen. I started looking around the fourth bedroom walls and floors for outlets or other outdoor access ports. I found one outlet in the room that had a mirrored outlet on the outside of the house. I thought I'd see if I could somehow run the ethernet cable in that space without obstructing the electrical outlet.

I don't know much about electrical outlets, but from what I learned today, they're pretty simple. There's a faceplate, which comes off easily. The actual outlets themselves are connected by metal and are housed in a metal casing. Those pieces all come loose when the screws are removed, but they can't just be pulled out of the wall because there are electrical cords running out the back of them. I know that totally makes sense, but I expected way more give from the casings and was sorely disappointed. I'd gotten into the meat of both outlets with a bit of hope, but had to replace everything and start over.

As I was reassembling the parts on the outdoor outlet, I noticed a cable that was running along the ground right up against the house. I brushed some leaves to the side and saw that there were two cables parallel, sort of stuck to each other. Nails pierced through the center and held the cables on the ground. I'm not sure what the cable used to do because it didn't seem to go anywhere. One end was cut and laying in the brush nearby. I pulled that end up and tried to see where the other end led.

I pulled and followed the cord around the corner of the house. After just a few inches it went into the house! At this point, there was a good bit of searching and measuring, which would all be pretty boring to describe. I guess the most fun part was that a shrub was in the way and I had to do some pruning and sawing to get it out, which was a nice stress reliever.

At the end of my searching, I'd discovered a hole in the fourth bedroom wall behind the baseboard that led to the hole outside. After that happy verification, I yanked the cables out and started planning how I'd run the cable along the house.

I haven't set up the ethernet cable yet because I'm working on another hole where the cable will go back into the living room from the outside. But that's not the point here.

I didn't have a realistic idea about how to accomplish this task until I got up and started working on it. I wasn't even headed down the right path, but that wrong path let me see one of the paths that would let me solve the problem. Sitting and contemplating is useful for planning, but getting out there and trying things was so much more helpful. Sometimes the right thing is in the middle of all the wrongs, and I have to fail before I can be successful.