When I was in the ARMY, there was an IT related job that I wanted no part of. The OS has been merged into something else, but the overall job was running cable. Many a recruit signed up for that job thinking they were going to get free certification level educations and ended up hopping telephone poles.

Nope - not the kid.

Life, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. My school district only has 1 cable guy. We have dozens of techs, but we only have 1 dedicated cable runner. Infrastructure won’t allow we techs to slap a switch on a line to extend a CD. So that means my clients - students, teachers and administrators - are sneaking their own private equipment onto the network. There some places we need the network expanded, some other places we need drops added. My school is one of like 40, so you can imagine how long the wait will be for me to get my new drops.

I’m glad someone can, because I have no idea.

Luckily, my principal bought me the tools to do the job myself. Only issue? I have no idea on how to run cable. So today, I got my box of Cat5e, my lube, my crimper, my stripper and my toner and set about running a single line of cat5e from switch to a football coach’s office. I jacked these instructions from here.

1. Pull the cable off the reel to the desired length and cut.
2. Strip one end of the cable with the stripper or a knife and diags. If you are using the stripper, place the cable in the groove on the blade (left) side of the stripper and align the end of the cable with the right side of the stripper. Turn the stripper about one turn or so. If you turn it much more, you will probably nick the wires.
3. Inspect the wires for nicks. Cut off the end and start over if you see any.
4. Spread and arrange the pairs roughly in the order of the desired cable end.
5. Untwist the pairs and arrange the wires in the order of the desired cable end. Flatten the end between your thumb and forefinger. Trim the ends of the wires so they are even with one another. Flatten again. There should be little or no space between the wires
6. Hold the RJ-45 plug with the clip facing down or away from you. Push the wire firmly into the plug.

Looking through the bottom of the plug, the wire on the far left side will have a white background. The wires should alternate light and dark from left to right. The furthest right wire is brown. The wires should all end evenly at the front of the plug.

I also snatched this image, blew it up, and taped it to my wall. I only mangled about 5ft of cable. Yay!

So, I guess I should have these 5 offices wired in… say… 5 years.