Our house is unusual for this area in that it has a crawl space under it. Some years back I wanted to move the computer and associated phone line(fax) to the other side of the house. The local cable folks obliged and the contractor ran the new cable all the way around the house and pool, creating nearly an extra 200' of cable length....and signal attenuation. I decided that straight across under the house was better, making the cable about 30' long. We have vents in the floor sealed off and no longer used for a/c and heat so when pulled out you have access to the crawl space. I borrowed a remote control truck from a neighbor's kid up the street, tied a light weight string to it which later was attached to the cable to pull it through and using a mirror and flashlight, sent it on its way. One problem....using a mirror I suddenly realized I'm sending it the wrong way; it's all backwards.
I pulled the truck back and started over, this time all went well and in less that 15 minutes I had my much reduced cable length and computer back in operation.
Fast forward to yesterday and the day before. Seems there was an interference problem generated somewhere in the original TV cable lines which had been installed over 30 yrs. ago, and was affecting a large section of the grid from which we operated. Two cable service maintenance guys stopped to do some testing and found some problems which they were able to correct, but finally decided to replace all the under-house cables. These two guys were a riot, had been working together for most of ten years, the smaller one was of normal size....~5'10", the other guy(named Hector) was a huge Puerto Rican that stood 6'6" and humor as dry as the Gobi desert. They couldn't finish the job because my wife had a dr. appt., but in our conversation re. the replacement of the longest run, I told them about my experience of using a remote control truck. So, yesterday morning they show up and what do they have.....a remote control ATV with big knobby tires, a light on the front with a camera. At first all went well until they hit some plastic(visqueen) left over from original construction and the wheels just spun on it. I told them to pull it back and add some weight which they questioned, but finally tried it and away it went. What did they use for weight? Unknown to the smaller dude, Hector grabbed his lunch box and taped it on top. The little dude was at the other end watching for the ATV to reach his exit point and when it did he couldn't believe what he saw....his lunch box, and lunch, taped to the ATV. Hector just dryly told him "I've seen what you eat so I know it had to weigh a lot." Needless to say, they finished the job midst various jokes and additional shenanigans. The result...no more pixilating of the TV screen and the computer doesn't freeze up as before. Plus, we had some good laughs in the process.
