Phone and Internet Problems

I decided to make this a separate post, it's in the "What's Everyone Doing" post as well. Phones and internet is spotty so it may be hard to get through here for a bit. Order tracking on orders didn't go out yesterday but will try to get that done ASAP, and we're still checking everything to see the total result of what happened here.

We had a really nasty thunderstorm pop up here yesterday that did a lot of damage, especially a big lightning strike really close to the building. I haven't been out to see where it was yet but it was right after lunch there was a big lightning strike, one of those that made me duck in the shop when it hit and I'm the type that loves a good thunderstorm. I was laughing at myself the rest of the day lol.

Worst thing is the power was out all afternoon so I couldn't do much. I'm getting ready to check over the property and see what works and what doesn't. Most of the shop equip works but it looks like it may have come in through the cable. The cable company is coming to change out the router around 1:00 today that is doing some weird things and the internet and phone runs through it so those are spotty right now. My big Netgear wireless router that runs all the wireless on the property is burnt up as is the computer in the house I think. The ethernet cable that went to it has some melted connections and some heat smoke on it. I brought it to the shop this morning and will try to get it apart and see what's going on with it today. Looks like it came in the cable modem and transferred through the ethernet connections. I'll know more in a little while.

Geno wrote: I decided to make this a separate post, it's in the "What's Everyone Doing" post as well. Phones and internet is spotty so it may be hard to get through here for a bit. Order tracking on orders didn't go out yesterday but will try to get that done ASAP, and we're still checking everything to see the total result of what happened here.

We had a really nasty thunderstorm pop up here yesterday that did a lot of damage, especially a big lightning strike really close to the building. I haven't been out to see where it was yet but it was right after lunch there was a big lightning strike, one of those that made me duck in the shop when it hit and I'm the type that loves a good thunderstorm. I was laughing at myself the rest of the day lol.

Worst thing is the power was out all afternoon so I couldn't do much. I'm getting ready to check over the property and see what works and what doesn't. Most of the shop equip works but it looks like it may have come in through the cable. The cable company is coming to change out the router around 1:00 today that is doing some weird things and the internet and phone runs through it so those are spotty right now. My big Netgear wireless router that runs all the wireless on the property is burnt up as is the computer in the house I think. The ethernet cable that went to it has some melted connections and some heat smoke on it. I brought it to the shop this morning and will try to get it apart and see what's going on with it today. Looks like it came in the cable modem and transferred through the ethernet connections. I'll know more in a little while.

Yikes you sure don't need those problems.....lots of rain heading this way today.............. :wrain

We always seem to get these freak storms and tornadoes here, I've always thought and heard it was the lay of the land as this area is basically an old riverbed from way way back. Dad's place is the low spot, I'm on the high spot, he has 3 feet of nice top soil and I have very little with mostly clay sitting on top of solid rock that I hit at 22" when I built the building lol. Just a few miles in each direction they get a little wind and some very light rain when we get a mini hurricane, lightning strikes, and 4-5 inches of rain. I love sitting on the porch when I can and watching the storms, just not the damage that comes with some of them...

On a good note, Spectrum was out today, checked out and fixed everything in the cable signal area, and replaced all their equipment with the latest and greatest. I think most everything else important that I don't already have here is ordered and on the way. Phones are up, I have 1 stable server on the internet faster and more stable than ever (so far), and the 1 main server in the shop seems to be doing good.

The other server isn't worth fixing so it's getting replaced and I'm getting ready to take the main shop server down and take the memory and other salvageable things out of it and add to the shop main server to make it faster. I'm not sure what's going on with the hard drives in it because it won't boot up but I do have plenty of backups. The new server is going all Linux that I've been meaning to do for a long time, so there's still the matter of changing over everything to get completely away from Windows. If it works out as planned it will be easy to clone that drive to the Main server in the shop then Windows, antivirus, malware programs, etc, etc, etc, will be gone and one less headache to deal with while speeding everything up dramatically. Windows itself and all the garbage to protect it is why peeps need so much processing power and memory in the first place, and why it still has so many problems...

Everything wireless and the house is offline for awhile, finally a little peace and quiet in there... Most everything I need to finish this project should be here on Thursday, the new long range wireless router gets here on Friday, and will try to have it all in place asap. It will take a little more time to do it all at once but it will be really nice when all done and better, faster, and more stable than ever. Like I said above, this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and some things have been here for months in preparation for this little project, I just like to do things more on my timeline instead of scrambling...

I'll keep everyone updated but for now everything else is on hold for a bit. It just doesn't make sense to do this halfway and have to get back into it again later when I'm this deep into it already. I'm gonna just take 1 day at a time and take a virtual chill pill lol. :chill

If it's one thing I'm really good at is making a mess lol.

The 2nd pic is the old router I took apart this morning and power definitely came in through the Spectrum router and it funneled it into the ethernet cables. It burnt up one of the processors on the right side near the yellow plug (input) toward the top of the pic. You can see the 3 burn marks for the input and 2 of the outputs on that channel.

I hadn't been back in that no mans land corner in many years and what a mess... Lots of old connections, wired phone blocks, old monitor connectors, power adapters, lots of disconnected stuff and all kinds of stuff not used anymore from back in the day. I had to move the counter out 4 more inches for the new setup and it wouldn't budge, had to get out the porta-power to even move it. I didn't realize it had some much stuff in it, it needs some things cleaned out of it too. This is what happens when you work to much and don't take time to keep up with things better...

Anyway, all the old wiring is cleaned up, the counter is moved, everything is cleaned up underneath at least, some new wires are run underneath for the new setup, and the drawer units are put back. This is the 3rd day of 14 hour days and I'm wore out so it's off to bed I go.

Yesterday was 15+ hours and I was not in the best of moods after the last 3 14+ hour days, especially after dad shows up with a catastrophe of his own that I have to take time to find and order parts for lol. More about that later but his parts that took awhile to find are on the way... At least today is looking like only a little over 14 hours by the time this post is done.

One thing for sure, some peeps are good at making something pretty big fit into a very small box, with lots of nuts and bolts of course.

The 3 carts came in at lunch time today and it's back to the corner. 3 of these allowed me to make 3 separate roll out stations, adjust each one as needed, and put shelves in a lot of different places. The one at the back has a surge protector strip plugged into the wall and runs everything in the front counter and on the cart. It's stuff that really doesn't get messed with much. The middle one has another surge protector plugged into the wall and runs everything on the last 2 carts. The computer harness is a little long so last one can be rolled out to access the computer and whatever else ends up on it. The original 3" wire shelf back there made it really hard to wire up, get to things easily, or make it this easy to access things. I can even roll them out and clean under them now. The plan is working out pretty good so far.

It is all back and better than it was. The electronics corner is done, everything works, counter is cleared and clean, everything is put where it belongs, I even cleared out a lot of old stuff in the counter storage spaces and cleaned inside all of them. I don't think much makes me happier than having things clean and organized. I can even leave my Grandmas old GE fan out year round now that she bought new in the late 40's, best and quietest fan I have ever owned.

Only 1 mess left in the last pic and I'm getting ready to tackle it now and make a few changes there.

Now if I can just catch up on some sleep after being out here 88 hours last week I'll be good, for now lol...

I didn't get as much finished as I wanted to with calls and peeps coming in but at least more stuff is organized and the bench is a lot better than it was. One example is the hood latches that I had a few hundred set aside for the online store sales only that were just sitting on that counter in a bag for the past 6+ months. I used to put them together and bag them as they were sold. I did some bagging of things like that and put them up today and moved the rest to the parts dept in the back with all the other parts. I still have a few things left sitting in too many places that I need to fix I think...

I also halted on any changes to that area because I talked to the Fastenal DM today and all the Fastenal Store stuff is going to start coming in next week, maybe some this week. I'll put an update in that post about what's up with that.