The boys have been getting cabin fever lately. It’s been in the 40s and almost all the snow has melted, so we decided to make a day trip to Puckaway. The five of us (Hannah needs to get out of the house, too) piled in the truck and made it to Aunt Judy’s by 11:15 for a late breakfast. The boys drew some pictures for Judy to hang up, then made short work of a pair of adult-sized omelets. Shortly after we sat down, Danny and his wife came in, too. They both remarked on how much Jacob’s grin reminds them of Richie.

We made it to Puckaway around noon. Hannah started her strafing runs and the boys headed straight to the pole barn to get out some of their trucks. I unloaded the day’s project: major Puckanet upgrades.

I’ve become a huge fan of Unifi network gear. There’s a great centralized management interface with lots of options and their wireless access points have excellent range and seamless device handoff. We already had a Unifi gateway up here, but today I brought up an 8 port switch (with four PoE ports) and two wireless access points to replace the odd mix of off-brand switches, old routers, and Engenius access points we’d been using. I also brought up a PoE adapter for the PuckaPi. The less power cords I have to plug in, the better.

The lumberforce is strong with him.

Now that the pools of ice all over the yard have mostly thawed, Lyssa and the boys were able to haul a bunch of branches and limbs to the burn pit. These were the ones Peter and I dropped back in January. Some were pretty huge, so Lyssa got out the bow saw and supervised Jake. He did a great job carving up the limbs. Josh kept busy gathering smaller twigs in the back of his dump truck.

I kept busy in the keep running ethernet and hanging the new AP in the living room. I powered down the PuckaPi and gutted the closet of no-longer-needed cables and equipment. I have a second AP destined for the pole barn once I bury ethernet between the buildings, but for now I installed it in the enclosure outside of the keep’s bedroom.

The sawdust quarry.

While I was configuring the new equipment and doing some cable management, Lyssa and Hannah walked the marsh trails and the boys played with their trucks in the huge mound of sawdust left over from Jeremiah’s sawmill. It’s too wet to take the ATV out, but everyone seemed to enjoy the day anyway.

Jake and Josh were getting chilly, so everyone came in the keep to warm up as I took care of one last project. The bedroom TV has been a fun new addition, but at 32″, it really is too big for that room. Last week, my dad gifted me with a 19″ LG LCD with a wall-mount. It was part of an old info kiosk from one of his tire vendors and he no longer needed it in his showroom. This TV is a perfect fit for the keep bedroom. I swapped them out and carried the 32″ TV to the pole barn where it’ll eventually hang proudly.

Projects complete, I closed up the truck and buildings. We left around 3:15, all three of our backseat travellers sufficiently tired out.