Now that it's started...

[FoxtArt]

Another tip for the semi-nerdy: If you have true line of sight to a friends house, you can bridge you network to theirs over many miles. Think of your wifi network, but with a magic tunnel that connects 8 miles away to your brothers/friends/sisters/cousins house. File share, internet share, network gaming, whatever you have in mind, your solution is using the right kind of Ubiquiti radios. They come with an inline POE injector, so they are self powered from the network cable. You need some basic skill in administrative interfaces to set it up, and can't be afraid of your roof.

Nanobeam/Lightbeam: 1-15 miles with true line of sight, recommend 5Ghz, 2.4Ghz for some applications
Nanobridge: If you have to go through A tree (one) 900Mhz may be able to do it. 2-10 mile range.
Shorter range (1 mile or less) : Nanostation

Second tip: Buy used ones from Ebay for cheap.

You have to have actual line of sight though (e.g. if you roof mounted the radios, or on a short pole, they truly can see each other). There's also a little more too it then that, but their are free terrain tools that can estimate if it will work for your specific bridge or not. This is obviously the TLDR version of a real guide.