Today was super busy. Eric and I jumped out of bed way too early in the morning and headed out to drive around looking for the parts that we needed to get the work done that we have come down to do. There is a lot of stuff that we need and it isn’t easy to find. We started by driving up to Baltimore and picking up things like CAT5 ethernet cabling, ethernet construction tools and similar items. It took us a long time to track down the basic things that we needed. We started around 8am and we ended up going to the Double T Diner for lunch around 11am. After lunch, we headed back to the house to get some things from John and them we headed into the city. So it was close to 12:30 by the time we got to the hospital. At that point we reassessed the parts and tools that we were going to need and started mapping out our project for later.
What we are working on is connecting our Washington Hospital Center Operations and IT Office with our processing center here which requires a total of four cables to be run from our office, through the hospital walls and into the processing area. It isn’t very complicated but the actuallity of it can be a little daunting.
After looking carefully at the tools that we had and having Phil point out that we had way too little cable (according to measurements taken by hospital engineering), Eric and I decided to head out to Alexandria, Va to get some more cable and some tools that could not be located in the office. The drive out to Virginia (since rush hour was rapidly approaching) took a total of two hours. Luckily we were able to find almost everything that we needed at the CompUSA in Alexandria. We were able to run across the street to Sears and get the last tool necessary. We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (on the company card, of course) and then faced traffic again and drove back to the hospital. By this time it was late – probably around 7:30 or 8:00 pm. Now the real work begins. Eric and I spent the rest of the night running the cabling from one room to the other and making a huge mess in the process. It took 4-5 hours but we eventually got the cables run into the other room, equipment moved in the main office and cables run through its ceiling. By the end of the night, all of the cables for networking were in place and working properly and the office was a lot easier to move around in with all of the wires that had previously been strewn across the floor now running through the ceiling.
By the time that we managed to get back out to the house in Annapolis, we were both totally exhausted.