Nearly 20 years ago, as I sat in a high school English class, the teacher told us all about the American Dream. And then she said there was one generation that wasn’t going to experience that dream, and she pointed at us.
As grim as things look right now, I can look around myself and see people proving Mrs. Susan Collins wrong, and that makes me happy.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2008/10/rip-the-american-dream/
My wife came upstairs last night. "The mouse froze," she said. I walked downstairs to the computer. Sure enough: Frozen mouse, no caps lock light, no vital signs to speak of. Ctrl-Alt-Del didn’t do anything either. I shut down, powered back up, and got the black screen of death.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2008/10/dead-computer-check-the-cpu-fan/
I got a few letters behind my name this afternoon. I passed the CompTIA Security+ exam with flying colors. And that means two things: I get to keep my job, and I was qualified to have the job in the first place, but now I have a certificate that says a third party agrees.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2008/09/thats-david-l-farquhar-security-now/
For the first time since about 1997, I’ve created a hobby web page. Since my ISP provides web space and I pay for it whether I use it or not, I thought this would be a good use for it. I have some photographs there, and some general information on toy trains, particularly tinplate trains.
The address is pages.sbcglobal.net/dave_farquhar/.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2008/01/my-new-toy-train-website/
My dad was a doctor. Dad told me on several occasions that if I ever came home and said I wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor too, he’d lock me in my room for seven years. One of the reasons for this was because he hated dealing with insurance companies. I vividly remember going out to the mailbox one day and finding a letter addressed to Dr. Farquhar, with a very angry note written on the front of the envelope: PLS LET THE DR READ THE LTR. I asked what this was about, and Dad said insurance was refusing to pay for a patient’s treatment. He said it happened a lot.
Now I’m 33, and my insurance was refusing to pay for treatment my wife needed. The best-case scenario without her medication would have involved numerous hospitalizations. The worst-case scenario? Coma or stroke if a lot of things went wrong. If everything went wrong, death wasn’t out of the question.
Here’s what I did about it.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2007/09/how-i-fought-the-insurance-company-and-lived-to-tell-about-it/
Mom made one of those rare but very valuable genealogical finds recently: A cache of information about a family line that’s more complete than what we had. It seems like the longer you do this, the less often it happens, but the more you appreciate it.
It got me thinking about why these kinds of finds are exciting. Indeed, to a non-genealogist, it probably seems weird.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2007/07/why-study-genealogy/
I just got back from Chicago. I used to go there a lot, but hadn’t been since high school. Consider this my travel diary. I don’t expect it to be interesting to most people, but maybe someone else will find it useful.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2007/06/my-2007-trip-to-chicago/
It never occurred to me to type print.google.com into a web browser and see what happens. I’ve known for months that Google was digitizing books but I had no idea the service was out where you could get to it.
Visit and search for something. You’ll be amazed.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2005/09/make-sure-you-use-this-link-before-it-gets-sued-off-the-web/
I love Disney like I love the Soviet Union. Mainly it’s because the company clawed its way to the top by taking advantage of obscure aspects of copyright law, and then the company bought enough Congressmen to close up the doors they used to get where they are today.
But I read something today about Disney that I found interesting.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2005/06/whatever-happened-to-risk-takers/
A number of people have asked me to post a photo of some trains, so here’s a photo of a train, with some scenery, mostly hand-made by Yours Truly.
You’ll have to click here to see it, as it’s larger than my blogging software allows.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2005/02/a-train-layout-photo/
