As I write this, I'm enjoying relative quiet. That is, although I can hear the kid screaming (she's hungry) and my mother-in-law playing the piano (she's actually not bad) over the video chat that the wife leaves on in the background frequently, all of the racket is upstairs. I just got set up on my work laptop in the basement.

Ever since I've had my own place, I've kept had an "office" for serious work. In this house it's no different, except that wireless is pretty weak due to being on the opposite side of the building from the access point, and more to the point it's so crammed with junk that there's no place to put work materials. Two things changed the situation: one, we moved the Area desk downstairs since we bought a sideboard-like surface to put the new iMac on, and two, I picked up a power-line networking setup.

I've eschewed power-line networking in the past, figuring that I'd instead wire up the house with Cat-6. The trouble is, the previous owner drywalled the basement ceiling, so I'd have to tear up the walls to run cables to the utility room and back office. Eventually I'll have to do that to put in a distribution center for various cabling, network, phone, and satellite, but it'll be a while. So I went with the layman's solution. The HomePlug AV standard does up to 200 Mbps, so it's reasonably fast, particularly compared to 802.11g's 54 Mbps. (Even if my office weren't on the opposite side of the house, the wireless on the crummy laptop isn't working since an IT guy in Fujisawa futzed with it.) The alternative is 802.11n clocking in at 600 Mbps maximum theoretical rate, yet I've had lousy luck with wireless. That would also mean a new hardware: an access point plus an adapter for my work laptop.

We put the desk in the guest bedroom, so I just plugged in there. Hopefully I'll be able to get some work done now that Giada isn't bugging me every five minutes. I also have more incentive to get my office in order. To do that, I need another filing cabinet, since I managed to fill up the two-drawer Hon that I bought a while back. I'm finally merging and sorting the fragments from my previous existences as a college student and an ex-pat, which will be a relief.

I just hope the power-line thing doesn't ruin my geek cred. Then again, being a Mac user probably did that already.