Somehow in nearly 40 years of wresting with electrical, telephonic and electronic hardware, I had managed to avoid working with punchdown blocks. I’ve hand-soldered connectors, crimped connections, hand-wired telephones, soldered and de-soldered circuit boards, operated the electric plant of a nuclear-powered submarine, snaked cables through walls, voids and plenums, but somehow was always somewhere else when the punchdown tool was used. This weekend I had to fix an ethernet wall socket in the living room and found myself facing a punchdown connector. With the loan of a punchdown tool and a little internet research, the instructions are not that complex. The Structured Wiring site has a lot of handy tips on how to install home / home-office wiring.