Technicalities

I don't try to avoid technology by living up here in the woods.  It's actually been a challenge to bring this place up to snuff with what I expect from a modern home.  The house itself offers a lot of opportunities to put tech to work.

To get the low-hanging fruit out of the way, obviously I'm documenting my efforts on Flickr (and here now, too.)

One point that became obvious pretty fast was that I needed a way to track the various projects and sub-projects so that I could see what needed to be done in what order.  Yep, bugzilla.  I can tie each task together as needed by making blocker bugs for dependencies.  This has worked out pretty well, and I've been tracking other household maintenance tasks there as well.

Designing things is made a lot easier by using Google Sketch Up.  I've put together several small projects in Sketch Up first, created my materials list, and built it from exported images of my models.  This is how I built my laundry stand, aquarium stand, and generator shed, and I've created a model of the entire house in it now so I can play with changing interior walls and things without resorting to a crowbar.

With regard to amenities, wifi is what it is (and I still don't like it) so I set a requirement for the remodel to wire each room with ethernet jacks.  I picked up 500' of Cat-6 cable, some connectors and a pair of crimpers, and I'm going to town on that.  I've just wired up the living room with dual ethernet, TV cable, and telephone, and I'll add ethernet to the other rooms as I retool them.