My WiFi reception kinda svcks. Despite normally having around 3-4 bars it goes out at seemingly random intervals and takes equally random amounts of time to reconnect. The router is in the basemant and I am on the second floor, so there's and entire floor and a half between me and it, I had to buy a new WiFi antenna just to pick it up at all although not even that was enough. Currently I have an old, tangled slinky wrapped around the antenna. This actually helps.

My question is, does anybody have any tips on getting better WiFi reception, and, if so, what are some of the oddest things that you've tried?

I built a signal booster out of half a coke can splayed out like a satellite dish. This I placed on the router's aerial and it did increase the signal strength a fair bit. Though buying a new wifi receiver with a proper aerial was a much better improvement.

http://www.ccrane.com/antennas/wifi-antennas/ to the rescue. I used an earlier version of the USB antenna and it had over a quarter mile range.