DP | @ekhoophotography

Wanted to post this much earlier but didn't have the time to. When it was time to replace all the old wiring in my new home, it made sense to lay enough cable drops to various rooms and areas in the house. I used Cat 5e cabling because I had a box of it lying around. Cat 6 would be better but no point throwing a thousand feet of good cable away. A few hiccups happened for the wiring contractor conveniently forgot to add a drop near the kitchen and dining so those areas will need to be wireless now and means they can't get Satellite TV either via Cat 5. All cables were home-run (star topology) into my "home office" room. I didn't want a standard Rack occupying the space so I turned Ikea-hacker. An Ikea PS cabinet was modified with my dremel tool to mount a 24-port patch panel and patch block to distribute phone lines. Since I had a DSL link, I patched all phones behind the DSL splitter which makes things cleaner.


Data-links were patched to a Linksys (Cisco Small Business) SRW2008 managed gigabit switch which in turn is fed off my dual-WAN Linksys RV042 VPN router. Also connected is a DLink DIR-655 wireless router and a Netgear 10/100 8-port POE switch to power my IP cameras distributed around the house. It all fit somewhat nicely into the Ikea PS cabinet with space for two Belkin power strips fed off an APC UPS with extended run battery. That'll give an approximate three hour runtime for my cameras, broadband and network during a power outage.

Improvements? I'll need to add a few more cable drops for IP cameras sometime this year and since my NAS will be coming soon, I'll probably need another patch panel. I've three data ports in each room, that makes 9 plus my "home office" has 4 ports so I've already used 13. My living room and common area has another four ports so that goes to 17. I've 3 POE ports outside the home (to be increased to 5) so that's 20. My phone line distribution ends up take another three so I'm effectively out of ports! The picture below is not the latest one as I've added a modified shelf to hold my router to make space for a 16-port 10/100/1000 switch below and will be color coding the patch cables for easier maintenance soon.



BTW for those interested in laying their own Cat 5 or 6 cables to connect to Telekom Malaysia's demarcation point such as a telephone pole, here's a quick guide depending if your cables are new or not. Newer cables are usually color coded. Mine are blue/white and white/blue and typically, you'll use the same matching blue/white & white/blue center pair in the Cat 5 cable. The good thing about Cat 5 is that you can carry more phone lines on the same cable using another pair (up to 4) so your one single Cat 5 cable can then be split internally (hence my patch block & patch panel) to multiple incoming phone lines and devices (fax, line 1, line 2, etc). Typically, white/blue (white cable with blue stripes) is the positive cable but do verify with a voltmeter to be sure. In older areas sometimes the color is red and green where green is positive. If you have all black cable, a ridge (feel for it) marks the side of the twin cable that's the positive wire.

p.s. Sorry for the photo quality -- all taken with my iPhone

Finally -- I think I've also gotten used to cold water! And the weather's bloody hot too boot with! Anyways, everything is pretty great except our usual Malaysian installer-worker attitude. I wonder what's wrong with them. Anyways, they're like your ceiling is so low, your water pump outlet is too far, call your own plumber. Damn. Just set the damn thing up. What's wrong with additional installation fees? Business too good? Never mind them though because I do have a super-duper plumber and he's up there making right what these guys didn't do in the first place.

When I got into the office this morning, and was making my coffee brew, a colleague asked me "How was your weekend?". A very ordinary question, to which I think many ask that out of habit and not because of genuine interest. Anyway, my response was "What weekend?"

Friday started with a frantic trip to Ikea to ensure that we get all our stuff for the house. Of course, I was also migrating WebAperture the next day so I had to start the file replication (there's gigabytes of data) on Friday as it take a couple of hours to finish plus I had to do verification. Anyways, off to Ikea for dinner and a frantic rush through the store to get things such as my new work area desks, bookcases, and storage racks. Looking at the size of the bookcases and the desks plus the fragility of the glass doors, we decided to split the load and come back on Saturday.

To cut the story short, by the time Saturday rolled in, we've had the second trip and lunch and the assembly started. Well, it didn't end until Sunday evening. Of course we took time out to have a simple dinner, go to Church on Sunday morning and did some groceries too.

Truck load #1

Truck load #2

My fave tools, and enough to assemble everything from Ikea.

Look, no need to refer to the instructions!

Well, the year is coming to an end and I cannot wait to get out of my box and move into a real home...

Well, haven't really had time to catch up of sleep. Ten-years ago, I would have easily recovered from a month of 16-hour work days in 48 hours. Now it's much tougher. I guess there's a lot more responsibility on my shoulders now, from the burden at work (they don't pay you to do nothing) and of course, my responsibility to my lovely wife but also not neglecting church ministries and family and friends too. Right now, our humble lil' home is a construction zone and managing that as an extra responsibility doesn't help. I really can't wait to move out of our box in the sky to my new old home and have a pair of tail-wagging furry friends greet me when I pull into the driveway.

Edit: sorry, draft status prevented this from showing...

Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.
~ Psalm 36:5

To welcome the year of the rat!
The Rat (Chinese:鼠) was welcomed in ancient times as a protector and bringer of material prosperity. It is the first of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. Rat is associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order, yet also associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities. The Year of the Rat is associated with the earthly branch symbol 子.

In Chinese, the word 鼠 may refer to either the rat or the mouse. Therefore, in this context, Year of the Mouse and Year of the Rat are interchangeable terms.

Wake up early, drive down to Midvalley, pick up some stuff from ACE hardware, then back to Casa Damansara II (Jeff's place), make holes in the wall to mount IKEA curtain rails, then off to Section 14 to visit Eddie at Jaya DIY center and then he shows up some new fangled overdrived luxeon LED flashlight that costs a whopping RM289! Lunch at McDonalds, back to Casa and more drilling and the bloody wall must be made of adamantium for the drill not to penetrate!