Debunking conversion therapy

Yesterday I went over to Liz's Nana's place to network her computer to Liz's aunt M's computer so they could share broadband. They each live one half of a duplex so it was a simple case of running a crossover cable under M's floor, across the garage and then under Nana's floor to the study.

The first thing we had to do was work out where the two studies were from under the house. We were looking for the phone connection into Nana's study; Liz, M, Liz's dad (Geoff) and I all stood under Nana's house, scratching our heads, trying to work out why the bathroom pipes were in the wrong place and why the phone connection wasn't where it should have been. Several minutes and one eureka moment later, we found it in the corner where we originally thought the bathroom was. Geoff drilled through the floor and poked the cable through while Liz pulled it through the floor. At this point we realised the cable hadn't been tested so we looped it back up to the house from under the floor, through the front door and back to the study. The cable worked so we carried on. The cable was poked through a gap in the floor to the garage and after much production involving coat hangers and precarious balancing on footstools (on Liz's part) we got the cable under Nana's house. The cable made its way through Nana's floor with ease and we hooked it all together.

The long cable that ran the length of the houses was a blue CAT-5 straight-through cable. This means that it cannot be used to connect two computers without a router. To get past this obstacle, Geoff bought a cross-over connector that would turn two straight cables into a cross-over. The blue cable connected into the little cross-over connector, which in turn connected into a yellow straight cable. Proof that two wrongs do indeed make a right.

The computers connected, it was a simple matter of configuring them so they would talk to each other. They didn't. Even after much cajoling, they would not make friends with each other. We took a coffee break to regroup and come up with a solution. After a process of elimination it was decided that the connector must be to blame since we knew that the cables both worked.

Clutching at straws, I thought it might be an idea to plug move the connector down to M's computer. No go. Ready to give up, I plugged the blue cable right into Nana's computer, more to make it tidy than for any actual technological reasons. Liz and I left Nana's study and went down to M's study to tidy up the mess we had made in our unsuccessful attempts at networking. I glanced at the screen and noticed the little red X that used to hover over the icon was gone. I excitedly send an email to Nana and we ran upstairs. Nana's computer had no little red X either. The computers were talking! Mission accomplished.

It turns out the blue cable was in fact a cross-over cable to begin with. By using the cross-over connector with the cross-over cable we ended up making a straight cable.

The moral of the story: you shouldn't try to make things straight. It won't help anybody.