There's a way to do it right, there's a way to do it wrong, and then there's a way to do it fast enough to get it prepared for the Fios guy coming the next morning.

Again, it all came down to the fact that the previous owners never let me in to take a look at the wiring, so I was going on about 2 minutes of inspection. If I'd had even a week to prepare I probably would have gone all out and gotten the patch block and everything. Instead, I had no choice but to wait until yesterday to check it out, with Verizon coming two days later.

I was just thankful that I had just enough Cat5e connectors for all the cables. I should have cut them back a tiny bit, but didn't want to lose the slack. Instead I unwound that insane wraparound on the cables you guys noticed (what was with that?), and just snipped the wires and put the caps on them. I'm actually pretty good at it

Then all I was able to do was plug all the lines into an 8-port switch, and bring a cable tester around the house to see if all the lines were wired correctly.

Really, all this was moot because we'll have wireless in the house. The problem was I need to put the main wireless router in the office three stories up, and I didn't know which line went where.

Anyway, it's all good now (fingers crossed).