Author: Dave Farquhar

Ways to speed up an aging laptop

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Software, Windows , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday Lifehacker did a feature on laptop tweaks and upgrades, that basically came down to reinstalling the OS, adding memory, and upgrading to an SSD. All of those are good things to do of course, but there’s more you can do. I posted a response there; I’ll elaborate a bit here, where I have more room to do so.

There are tons of links here to previous content I’ve written; optimizing aging machines is a recurring theme for me. I’ve been writing on that topic for 11 years now.

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What the 2011 CES may mean

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

This week was CES, where companies make a big splash and try to show what’s going to happen in the consumer electronics space in the coming year.

In the coverage of CES, I saw three things that seem interesting, but only one of those three was a surprise.
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Fred Phelps and the Sermon on the Mount

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , ,

Fred “God Hates Everyone But Fred Phelps/Thank God for Dead Soldiers” Phelps and a couple of his family member-followers paid St. Charles a visit today. And I thought of him when I read the Sermon on the Mount. Specifically, Matthew 5:11-12.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Suddenly I think I know what motivates them.

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Defrag scareware

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , , , , , , , ,

This isn’t exactly news, as word has been going around for a couple of weeks, but if you haven’t heard about it elsewhere, there are some fake defragmenters going around.

I heard mention of it today, and it reminded me that I saw one last week when I was working on my mother in law’s computer. This was especially obnoxious, considering that at the time, I was running Firefox and I was visiting a mainstream site.

So there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind.
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Blasko: Daring to dream in D.C.

Dave Farquhar Politics , ,

Andrew Blasko and I were columnists for the same student newspaper at the University of Missouri. He was a couple of years ahead of me, so I can’t exactly call him a classmate, seeing as he was taking 300-level classes when I was taking 100-level classes. But as the senior ranking columnist when I was the new guy, he was a mentor and an influence.

He had an editorial today in the Washington Times. And while there are perhaps two sentences I don’t completely agree with (and he probably wouldn’t want every reader to agree with every single word), it’s very good. I hope some people in Washington read it and take note.

I’ll be back later with something completely different. But since I just found out about this, I wanted to say hey, read this! I know that guy! (And I do think I’ve used up my yearly quota for exclamation points.)

Unlocking the Malicious Software Removal Tool

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

When Microsoft’s monthly security patches come down, if you’ve ever clicked on the button to see what it’s installing, you may have noticed the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

If you’re wondering, it’s a rudimentary antimalware tool that removes selected vermin from your system. It doesn’t remove all known malware. And I don’t know exactly how Microsoft decides what to remove and when. But given the number of people who don’t run any kind of antimalware software, it probably seemed like a good idea when they rolled it out in 2005. And in the first 15 months they pushed the tool out with the monthly patches, it removed 16 million instances of malicious software. Not bad.

The tool has some power that you can unlock that normally isn’t exercised when you do your monthly updates.

Note: In a corporate environment, you may not get the Malicious Software Tool automatically if you’re managing Windows updates yourself. Microsoft has instructions for deploying it to your enterprise.

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Why total freedom of expression is a reader’s worst nightmare

Dave Farquhar Writing , , , , , , ,

A longtime reader asked me about news writing, and writing in general, after complaining about the sorry state of writing these days. I think a lot of things are in a sorry state, and the writing is a reflection of that. But maybe if we can fix the writing a little, it’ll help everything else, right?

Kurt Vonnegut once said writers should pity the readers, who have to identify thousands of little marks on paper and make sense of them immediately, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after studying it for 12 long years.

He says to simplify and clarify.

As writers, we’d rather live by Zeuxis’ mantra that criticism is easier than craftsmanship. But one way to avoid criticism is to make sure the readers understand what we’re writing in the first place.
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Christmas Eve, a train that wouldn’t run, and a happy ending

Dave Farquhar Toy trains, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was Christmas Eve. I finished playing Santa, then I plopped down in front of the computer to unwind and signed into Facebook. Internet pal John Dominik posted a status update about buying a Bachmann N-scale train set and it not working, and how he knew he should have tried it out before Christmas Eve. I offered to help. He related the epic troubleshooting he went through–OK, perhaps it wasn’t epic, but his account of the things he tried was longer than the Book of Jude and several other books of the Bible–and, frankly, there wasn’t anything I would have thought of that he hadn’t already tried. He went beyond that and even tried things I wouldn’t have tried. Or recommend, for that matter, but that’s OK. He mentioned he’d had a set of HO trains when he was younger, and that gave me an idea. I asked if he still had that power pack, because, if he was willing to do a little creative and sloppy wiring, he’d be able to get that new Bachmann set working with it. He said he did.

The temporary fix worked, and Christmas Eve was salvaged. John said he hoped Bachmann would be cooperative about the bad power pack.

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Top posts of 2010: A retrospective

Dave Farquhar This weblog , , , , , , ,

I don’t normally do this, but then again, I’ve never had these kinds of statistics at my disposal either. So I’m going to take a minute to look back at the most popular posts of 2010, and pontificate a little about what I think each one might mean.

I really only have good statistics since October, so it’s a little unfair, but incomplete stats are better than none. I see some interesting patterns in what people ended up reading, some of it surprising, some less so.

We’ll take it from the top, rather than like a DJ.

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The St. Louis tornadoes of 2010

Dave Farquhar Personal, St. Louis , ,

I don’t normally post stuff like this, as weather posts are usually mundane. Today was a little different. We had tornadoes touch down in the St. Louis area today.

At about noon, we took cover in our basement. By 12:10, it was over. Sometime while the wind was raging and the sirens were going off, a crazy UPS driver dropped off some packages for delivery. The packages stayed put during the scare. Some areas to the north weren’t as lucky. Sunset Hills sustained 150 MPH winds.

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