Author: Dave Farquhar

The side-smoking Marx 666 locomotive

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

One of the best steam locomotives Marx ever made was its unfortunately-named 666. I have heard, but have no way of verifying, that Marx named it that because the locomotive “smoked like the devil.” And, compared to its contemporary offerings from Lionel and American Flyer, it definitely smoked better than anything Lionel had, and at least as well as anything American Flyer had, while costing a lot less than either.

Marx also produced the 1666, a similar-looking plastic locomotive, that smoked from the sides and the top. Other than that, it’s less desirable than the 666. It’s plastic so it has that disadvantage right away–diecast metal offers a bit more presence, and since metal weighs more, it has more traction, and thus, more pulling power.

The ultimate 2-4-2 Marx locomotive would be a side-smoking 666, and it’s right there in the Greenberg guide, on page 28, valued at a $20 premium over the standard top-smoking configuration. But there’s a problem, at least from a collector’s standpoint. It never came that way from the factory. Read more

Why I set work aside for a while before calling it done

Dave Farquhar Writing , , ,

A former supervisor called me the other day. He’s having quality control issues at his new gig, and quality control was one of the things I did when I was working for him. He wanted my insight. And he was very direct with one question he asked me.

“You would always set work aside and then come back to it,” he said. “Why?”

He knew my tactic worked, but wanted to know why it worked. Read more

Linksys routers are under attack, and here’s what you can do about it

Dave Farquhar security , ,

A couple of my college buddies posted a link to an Ars Technica article about Linksys routers getting hacked. Sorry I didn’t find it myself, I’m prepping for a job interview. Excuses, excuses, I know.

Researchers have been doing this kind of stuff for at least a year, but now we’re seeing the bad guys do it. It was just a matter of time, because bad guys are going to attack whatever is easiest to attack, and consumer routers are direct-connected to the Internet and their security isn’t really all that much better today than it was when Linksys released its first router in 2000.

What’s worse is that two of the affected models, the Linksys E1000 and E1200, are no longer supported by Linksys. The answer is DD-WRT. Visit the linked page, type in the name of your router, check the version (it’s on a sticker), then load DD-WRT like you would load Linksys firmware. If you’re not comfortable doing it, a computer-savvy friend or acquaintance can do it in half an hour for you. I’m running DD-WRT on two routers myself, and put it on my mother-in-law’s router, and find there’s no comparison between it and anything any of the manufacturers are shipping from the factory.

Is its security perfect? Probably not, but it doesn’t even have the feature this exploit is using. And turning off undesirable features is the beginning of good security.

Getting past your own biases

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,

I read Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive last week. I always figured it was an autobiography or memoir, not a business book. But it’s a business book.  A very good one.

I avoided it because I didn’t like Andy Grove. I’ve never been a fan of Intel’s business practices during the 1990s and 2000s, including using payola to keep competitors’ chips out of large computer systems, but after reading this book, I’m more disappointed than anything. Whichever company had Andy Grove wins, period. No need to cheat. Read more

How I fixed an Americana (GE) anti-tip bracket that didn’t work

Dave Farquhar Landlording

I’m fixing up a house that has an Americana (a GE budget brand) gas range in it. One of the last things I did before getting the St. Louis County inspection was to check to see if it had an anti-tip bracket installed. It did, so I didn’t worry about it. The house failed inspection based on two things, basically–a dead battery in the smoke detector downstairs (funny, I installed that about two months ago), and the anti-tip bracket.

The bracket that came with this range is a little different. Rather than grab the leg like most anti-tip brackets, this one grabs a hook on the back of the stove. The problem with mine was that the bracket couldn’t reach the hook on the back of the stove. The gas line comes through the floor about an inch from the wall, so the stove can’t sit close enough to the wall for the bracket to catch. Further investigation revealed that even if the bracket could have reached, it wouldn’t have done much since it was only screwed into drywall. The stove’s weight would have pulled it straight out.

But the remedy was simple and only involved a two-foot scrap of 2×4.

Read more

My Windows 8.1 experience

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , ,

I installed Windows 8.1 last week to see how bad it really is.

And?

Well, it’s more stable than Windows Me, but Windows Me was a lot nicer to use. It’s awful. Because I listen to podcasts, I know that there’s magic in hovering your mouse over the upper right hand screen. And somehow I was able to get to a desktop pretty quickly. The first thing I did was launch Internet Explorer and install Classic Shell, which, as promised, makes it a dead ringer for Windows 7 or XP or even 2000 if you want. Much better.

What else? Read more

How to slipstream updates into Windows 8.1

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , ,

I need a Windows box, so I figured I’d experiment with Windows 8.1. I know it’s terrible, but I want to see just how much less terrible I can make it.

The first thing I wanted to do was figure out how to slipstream updates into it. I recommend slipstreaming because you get a faster performing system, you get the system up and running a lot sooner, and you save a lot of unnecessary writes to your SSD. It’s very similar to slipstreaming Windows 7, but not quite identical.

Read more

Greenberg Marx errors: The Union Pacific 3824 caboose

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Greenberg Marx errors: The Union Pacific 3824 caboose

Let’s pick up again with another error in the Greenberg Marx Trains Pocket Price Guide: The UP 3824 6-inch caboose. The guide lists the 3824 as a brown and yellow caboose, available on both a black or brown frame, valued at $20 in good condition and $30 in excellent.

The description is correct, but the price is only half right.
Read more

The high-dollar cardboard box

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Toy trains , , , , , , ,

There was one other interesting quote in the Post-Dispatch’s Top 10 collectibles for value this week:

10. Boxes (yes, simple boxes!)

For a starter, wooden boxes of all types with and without locking mechanisms, souvenir boxes, tea boxes, cigar boxes, jewelry, knife boxes and the list goes on for value. If you can put something in it, somebody wants to give you money for it.

Don’t get too excited, but a box doesn’t have to be made of wood to be valuable. Even a cardboard box can have some value, depending on what came in it. But don’t get too excited. Read more

Time to update Flash again. This is a big one.

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

There’s an exploit in Flash, on all platforms, being actively exploited in the wild. Adobe rushed out an update. It allows remote code execution, so this one is as bad as it gets.

Installing EMET is a potential mitigation against Flash exploits, so if you’re running Windows, protecting Flash with EMET is an extremely good idea. Uninstalling Flash is an even better idea, but I don’t think HTML5 is quite ready to replace this scourge of computing security just yet.

I noticed that Secunia PSI automatically updated Flash on all of my machines, which was nice.

See, security doesn’t have to be painful.