Author: Dave Farquhar

Control your debt, stay in school, stay employed and out of prison

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , ,

Some people are worried that student loans are the next debt time bomb that can potentially wreck the economy, and that fear of student-loan debt will make people less inclined to seek the education they need.

Two statistics should discourage that.
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A Firefox ramdisk profile in Windows

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

I’ve been using Dataram’s excellent free ramdisk program for several months now and highly recommend it. On some machines, I install Firefox to the ramdisk and move the profile there. But the biggest benefit comes from putting the profile (not just the browser cache) in the ramdisk. Storing the profile in a high-speed, near-zero-latency ramdisk solves virtually every Firefox performance issue. Here’s how to set up a Firefox ramdisk profile in Windows. Read more

My household’s energy usage dropped 19% in 2011

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , ,

I got a letter from my utility company Saturday morning. Inside was a chart, comparing our household’s energy usage from 2010 and 2011. It dropped 19 percent.

Considering our total bill for 2011 was over $900, that’s hardly chump change. Read more

There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

I read this week that 61% of Adobe Reader installations in workplaces is out of date.

That’s very bad. Very, very bad. Because Adobe Reader is trivially easy to exploit, and there’s more sensitive information to steal on corporate PCs than there is on home PCs.

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There’s room for several to gloat over the Britannica

Dave Farquhar net.culture

The Encyclopædia Britannica is, after 244 years, calling it quits on its print edition, and I’m sure Wikipedia is gloating, because as I recall, that was one of its goals around a decade ago.

Wired argues that Encarta did more to kill Britannica than Wikipedia. I tend to agree.
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Are comments worth the trouble or not?

Dave Farquhar net.culture , ,

Gawker founder Nick Denton (home of Mac Hacker, er, Lifehacker; Gizmodo; io9; Jalopnik; and formerly Consumerist) says online comments aren’t worth the trouble.

I agree and disagree.
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Apply your monthly patches just as soon as you can

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , , , ,

There are only six patches in this month’s edition of Patch Tuesday, and only one of them is critical, but it’s a big one.

The critical patch fixes a flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol, something typically only present in the business-oriented flavors of Windows. But if you don’t know whether you’re affected, it behooves you to let Windows update whatever it wants to update. Read more

Quit sniveling about a tech skills gap and train your workers

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , ,

Infoworld tells employers to quit sniveling about their workers not having enough skills and train them.

Sounds good. It worked in the organization where I work.

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The stupid juice–it burns

Dave Farquhar Society , , ,

John Dominik has been on a tear lately. Yesterday he wrote twice; the latter piece, The Stupid Juice–it Burns, shows an attitude that’s far too rare these days and frankly is one of the best pieces I’ve read in a very long time, anywhere. He laments people’s tendency to act as if those who disagree with them are subhuman and have no right to exist.

If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do.
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How to make persistent headers in Excel

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

My boss and I are compiling a huge Excel spreadsheet that summarizes everything our organization has ever done. It’s as big of a pain as it sounds. What makes it worse is having to scroll all the way back to the beginning to view the headers. The solution: make persistent headers in Excel.

The trick to making a persistent header that shows all the time, even after scrolling, hides in the View tab in Excel 2007.
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