Show Us Your Rig [8]

Yes the Blue do make a old IBM keyboard noise when typing. Exactly why I chose them. I like the sound and it allows me to have a rhythm when typing. I make less errors when I can hear the keys.

Das also makes keyboards with nothing wrote on the keys if one would care for that.
Lots of choices except no lights.

No I'm not crazy. Check this out. Try gaming on this puppy.

Das Keyboard 4C Ultimate - Compact Mechanical Keyboard

You could also save lots of dough and get like pbt blank caps that are sooo nice.

Oh my I don't see that happening LBB

Either way the o-rings won't be around till the 5th so I can see what good they will do
Anything is better than nothing :)

A while back, I posted this photo of the network shelf in the linen closet in my bathroom:



I've since made a few changes:



My home telephones were connected to my ISP but, being considered a landline, I was getting all kinds of calls from telemarketers, phony charities, free cruises, etc. and I was dreading the political calls that would start flooding in before too much longer. So, I decided to lose the landline and replace it with a Straight Talk Home Phone system, which is a kind of cell phone that uses the Verizon network and allows one to plug in regular landline phones.





(Continued in next post.)

How come they never look that neat when I go to a jobsite

That was done with love AND affection :)

Since my home has an aluminum roof and siding, reception in the linen closet was somewhat less than stellar so I needed to move the antenna outside. What I needed was a 10' RG58 cable with female TNC (same as BNC only threaded) bulkhead connectors but the closest I could find was a cable with a TNC female bulkhead connector at one end and an RP-TNC (Reverse Polarity TNC) female bulkhead connector on the other end. However, I was able to find a 12" pigtail that had a male RP-TNC connector on one end and a male TNC connector on the other end. Pulling the 10' cable through the wall was a bit of a chore (I'm getting tired of Murphy's stupid law).

Once I finally got the cable pulled through the wall, all I had to do was drill a hole in the trim at the top of the siding and fasten the TNC female bulkhead connector through it, then screw on the antenna and put some tape over the connector halves to hopefully keep water out (so far, it has survived one rain). This is the antenna mounted to the outside wall:



Since I also need to pull a couple Ethernet cables down the wall, under my home and back up the wall on the other side and I was running out of room for wall plates, I decided to use a Keystone wall plate. I could find Keystone connectors for CAT 6 cable but not for TNC so I had to redneck engineer a solution. I took a four hole Keystone wall plate, cemented a blank cover with a hole drilled for a RP-TNC female bulkhead connector would fit, then took a Dremel to the backside to remove all the excess plastic to make room for the connector nut on the backside of the plate. I also cemented a couple of pieces flat plastic to the backside to prevent the nut from turning when tightening the other nut.











(Continued next post.)

The cellular transceiver has a backup battery that supposedly will allow up to three hours talk time or up to 30 hours standby time in case of a power outage (I haven't tested it yet). However, the phones I plan on using with it the most are my old Panasonic cordless phones. Since the base station will die when the power dies and since I also wanted better surge protection, I decided to put a Cyberpower UPS unit in place of the now unused telephone modem. So I yanked the modem, hung the UPS on the wall, plugged the base station wallwart into the battery side of the UPS, and plugged the power strip into the surge arrestor only side of the UPS. It seemed like it would be a simple job at first, but the quarters are cramped and my back wasn't too happy with me (one of these days, I'm going to shoot Murphy) but I finally got it all in and the cables cleaned up a bit.

The red and blue CAT 6 cables going into the bottom of the new Keystone wall plate are connected to the router but I haven't pulled the cables for the other side of the wall plate yet. That will have to happen at a later date (that will really be a chore!). One will run to my computer and the other to my printer so I can turn the Wi-Fi off.

The new phone system is working great. The first thing I noticed was the lack of spam calls (although I did get one robocall the other day)! Silence is golden! I recently got a Verizon pay as you go flip phone to replace my antique Virgin Mobile Oystr (I need to give that relic to a museum). The Virgin Mobile number is clean; I've received only one wrong number and two telemarketing calls on it in the past ten years (both of the latter several years ago from the same outfit which incurred the wrath of an old Irishwoman) so I'm going to try to get that number ported over to the new home phone system in a few days. That should give me complete freedom from spam calls since I rarely give out my phone numbers.

One thing nice about the new phone system is, if I'm going to be out of town for an extended period of time, I can take it with me. One reason I have the extra phone cable is for a regular phone to serve as a backup in case the UPS runs out before the transceiver does and so I will have something small to take with me along with the transceiver. Also, long distance calls within the U.S. are free.

I got the transceiver (a refurb from Wally World) for only $30, including tax and two year service plan, and it came with a $15 card.

I tried to find another antenna so I wouldn't have to climb the wall to retrieve the antenna if I ever want to take the transceiver with me somewhere but couldn't find one to save my life. Huawei, the manufacturer, said I had to get it from Straight Talk and Straight Talk said I had to get it from Huawei (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble...) so I ordered another transceiver. Since I can use the $15 card that came with it next month (after which, I'll set up autopay), the antenna cost only $15 and I got a spare transceiver free.

I have one problem, though. The antenna is a hard plastic indoor antenna and I don't know how long it will last out in the weather; the sun here in AZ can get pretty ferocious. I've been racking my brain (all three cells of it) for some way to weatherproof it. I thought maybe paint but paint pigments are either metallic or carbon and would cut signal strength. I don't think clear paint is UV resistant. Dipt (liquid vinyl coating) will weather pretty quickly. This is what the antenna looks like up close:



Does anyone have any suggestions?

AddRAM said:

How come they never look that neat when I go to a jobsite

That was done with love AND affection :)

You should have seen the rats' nest the contractors that first installed my internet made. Those clowns were complete idiots. I completely revamped everything when I first got my TV tuners. I actually doubled my speed because the maroons didn't even terminate the unused connector on the data tap; fortunately, I had a terminating cap knocking about.

Thanks though I don't know about the love and affection part. I like the way it looks and works now but I was not particularly in love with it and I definitely wasn't using affectionate words while working on it.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

AddRAM said:

How come they never look that neat when I go to a jobsite

That was done with love AND affection :)

You should have seen the rats' nest the contractors that first installed my internet made. Those clowns were complete idiots. I completely revamped everything when I first got my TV tuners. I actually doubled my speed because the maroons didn't even terminate the unused connector on the data tap; fortunately, I had a terminating cap knocking about.

Thanks though I don't know about the love and affection part. I like the way it looks and works now but I was not particularly in love with it and I definitely wasn't using affectionate words while working on it.

It is still clean super clean though even if bathroom and network gear don't mix in my mind lol.

rvcjew said:

It is still clean super clean though even if bathroom and network gear don't mix in my mind lol.

Come now, a little shampoo and moisturizer keeps your data squeaky clean and moving quickly. :)