Sometimes you can make small changes that make your entire setup feel that much better.
In this case, it isn’t even something that I touch every day, but it something that I do see.
The cable modem for the house is currently in our laundry/utility/bathroom in the basement. The reason it is there is so that I can have the shortest run possible of coaxial cable from the splitter to the modem.
I’ve had it sitting on the top of a built-in shelving unit since I evicted it from my office (due to connectivity issues with the longish cable run). However, it has always bugged me that it just sits up there … just sitting.
So today I mounted it on the wall and started routing the cables a little better (that too will be changing, so I didn’t spend much time with that). It took maybe ten total minutes and cost me four screws (since I also mounted a power strip near it as well), but I already feel better about the entire networking setup in the house because it looks … better. It looks like I actually care just a little bit about the entire setup.
Mainly, I need to just remember that even the small things can make a big difference in perception. If it works for cheap networking gear, where else in my life can it make a larger, more meaningful difference?
That’s a rhetorical questions, in case you were wondering.