What do you do when your signal sucks? Buy a 16dbi antenna and build a giant parabolic reflector.
What do you do when your adapter overheats? Strip it, slap on some heatsinks, and wire a couple fans to a 5v wall-wart.
All the crazy rope is so I could mount it and have full control over position and orientation. However, I didn't want to punch holes in the reflector and I didn't want to use pulleys either, so I messed around until I had a harness and then messed around some more until I had the rope going through a couple hooks where I can just pull on it to adjust orientation and them clamp it in place.
And the results? Based on measurements from the Ralink utility, I used to get about -88dBm strength and 40-50% link quality. Now I average -74 to -70 dBm strength and 70-80% link quality. Signal noise went up too, but only a few dBm.