Dull Men's Club

Toil away maintaining servers at work, and then toil away maintaining servers when you get back home. The bonus for doing it at home is you're not even getting paid.

UGHHHH Imagine having to make a JIRA board at home to keep track of your projects

Lol for real, I made the mistake of hosting stuff a couple other people also use, so I get the on call experience too

Tell me about it. I just purchased 2 Dell R740s I had been mulling over. Figure tariffs are going to jack their price so better pull the trigger now.

We're friends now, resistance is futile.

I have plans for a similar project so I'll dm you later

Too interesting, Straight to Jail!

ACE is ACE

I can give you a couple tips!

· Get some fish sticks if you don't have some. The stiff, fiberglass rods, not the processed seafood. You can get singles, or multiples that screw together. You use them by taping the cable to the end, and then pushing the fish stick from the back, to run cable through small spaces.

· Run a pullstring with your cables! Taped alongside your Ethernet cable you should also always include a pullstring, so that if you ever need to pull another cable that same way, you can just tape it on and pull. This can be actual pullstring, which is usually just a thin nylon cord, or another length of Ethernet cable.

· You can pull on it harder than you think, but not as hard as you hope. This is something that really you have to learn over time, but it helps to know beforehand. Ethernet cable is pretty strong. It's coiled in boxes because you're expected to pull it long distances, and sometimes it snags. When this happens, you don't immediately have to run and fix the snag. You can add some force, and give it a yank. But if it feels like it's really stuck, always make the walk. There's nothing worse than running an entire length of cable, only to find out it broke somewhere in the middle. On the upside though, it does become a free pullstring

Measure carefully and drill up through the floor or down through the attic to get into/out of the walls

You can get push poles or fishtape from a hardware store to help. I like the Klein braided fiberglass tape, it's done a great job for me.

There are also drill bits that are long and flexible, you can use those in a pinch if you have to drill through a top/bottom plate but can't get there easily. Pricey though. Edit to add, the bit shaft usually needs such a long radius of bend that they're not really practical IMO. Right angle attachments for an impact driver with a spade bit can do a lot tho

However you do it, plan ahead for the future. If that means adding a switch or pull string now to make future projects way easier, it's worth it

The other feller's advice is as good as you'll be able to get off-site.

My process is always (once I've adequately mapped the place out) to find the most feasible path I can take with the fewest holes possible. Walls have top plates and bottom plates, if you come into a wall between the studs that's great but you still gotta get up or down.

And that, my friend, is where the tricks of my trade begin ;)

pardon the phrasing but this helps me to this day!

"dick down, orange to brown"

for an rj45 ethernet cable:

with the pins facing up it is

orange white orange green white blue blue white green brown white brown>

for B which is usually what we see out in the field

edit:

can't figure out how to keep it in list format on the phone

Haha! This is on the first floor, so it's a level up. Between my living room and office is the shared bathroom and second bedroom, so whilst I'm no expert at all I do think it's better to run it externally rather than drill any holes

Lol, will you be doing it yourself or paying someone else to deal with the hassle of 6a

Words cannot express my hatred for these things but I'll try.

My trade is regulated, in the US, by the National Electrical Code, which is written by Underwriters Laboratories, and created in accordance with the National Fire Prevention Act. The Code is a massive tome of a book that I tabbed, BY HAND, before I ever wired a device. I spent literal years in classrooms and on the job, going fetch, digging literal ditches, etc, to get here. I'm a smart guy and the test I had to pass? It took me two attempts, I won't lie to you. But I got it. Safety regulations are written in blood. And why is it this hard?

Because electricity is an invisible death force that starts fires while your family sleeps. I know, I've had a house fire in the middle of the night, in a rental, with my young child at home. Nothing makes you respect it like that will. This was years before I got into the trade but I never forget it.

You think the hungover dingus Clayton Homes hired to make these atrocities up cares half as much as I do?

We moved into a double wide decades back, it had double gang boxes with single plugs on every wall, and At the time, a double gang plate with a single receptacle plate merged with a blank plate, was impossible to find, so the builder had left them all open. Like WTF.

Ahhh, I see. Thanks!