I've just acquired a new skill. Probably something that most /.ers do in their sleep, but for me it's all new.

I went to DSE and bought myself a crimping tool, a box of RJ45 crimp plugs, a roll of Cat 5e cable and an RJ45 wall-mountable socket.

I got home and taught myself how to crimp.

I took a look at a premade patch cable and saw White, Orange, White, Blue, White, Green, White, Brown.
A assumed this meant I had to wire Wh/Or, Orange, Wh/Bl, Blue, Wh/Gr, Green, Wh/Br, Brown.
Anyone who has made his or her own patch leads knows that the Wh/Bl and the Wh/Gr are supposed to be swapped. I didn't, so it didn't work.

The other mistake I made was untwisting too far in order to thread the crimp plugs. I later discovered (when my local LUG mailing list advised me) that the spec says don't untwist more than 12mm.

Anyway, after clipping off my mistakes and re-doing it, I finally got it to work.
The wall socket is in the kitchen/dining area near the dining table (a beautiful mahogany table given to us by the in-laws). Now my wife can sit at the table with her laptop and print (via cups!) and surf (via IPCop!).

Previously she had to sit on the sofa at the coffee table to print or surf, since the network switch is in the living room. This meant hunching over the keyboard in an uncomfortable manner. So I can claim I did it all for her. Actually I did it because I wanted to prove to myself that I can.

My next project is to install RJ45 wall sockets in the two bedrooms that we're building downstairs so when we get boarders we can offer Internet connectivity in their own rooms.

Julia has drawn the line at installing the network into our bedroom. She believes it's an intrusion. I kinda see her point, though it would be nice to install one of these in the bedroom :-)

Are you claiming that DNA itself didn't appear through evolution?

Yes. At least I'm seriously questioning whether it did.
This is oft debated and this post will probably re-ignite the old Evolutionist vs Creationist flamefest. Oh well. This is /.
DNA would appear to contain some kind of language describing genes and stuff. The physical medium, dioxyribonucleic acid (sp?) needs the language, but the language needs the physical medium.
Which came first?

It still puzzles me. I am not a biology expert.
Attributing it to intelligent design raises thornier issues though - such as who is the designer and who designed the designer.

As I posted in Slides Of Microsoft Anti-GPL Advocacy the following comment I now want to expand on the idea:

Myth - If you use and modify GPL code inhouse, you have to give away all your code.

Truth - If you use and modify GPL code inhouse, you are free to keep it inhouse.
GPL only comes into effect if you want to distribute your GPL based code outside your organisation.

The Real Viral Licence - IMNSHO, the real viral licence is where, in order to look at Foo-Corp's code, you first have to agree never to write any competing code, or contribute to any competing code. This is the so-called "shared-source" licence.
In other words, if you look at Foo-Corp's code, even just look, you are forever contaminated and can't ever write, even from scratch, any code that competes with the Foo-Corp product whose code you saw.

I'm really interested in thoughts from my fellow /.ers.

And a link to my home page