Author: Dave Farquhar

Building up a new Linux server

Dave Farquhar General , , , ,

I built a simple PC yesterday. The server that hosts this site is just too overloaded, and I was getting ready to order some parts when I spied a Celeron-366 board and CPU sitting in a case under my desk. I had trouble getting it working reliably, but I figured I’d give it one more shot. I’d used Hyundai memory in it previously; I slipped in a stick of Crucial, and it fired right up. Interesting.
I watched the temperature monitor in the BIOS and wasn’t too happy to see the Celeron-366 running at a nearly constant 60 degrees Centigrade. Modern CPUs typically run about 40-50, and each 10 degrees halves life expectancy. So I put a beefier CPU cooler on it, but the chip continued to run at around 60. So I looked up the Celeron at Intel’s site, and found the maximum temperature for Celerons is 85 degrees. So I was running a good 25 degrees below max, and it looked like I wouldn’t get below 60 degrees without active cooling, so I put the cheaper CPU cooler back on. Out of curiosity I overclocked the chip to 550 MHz for a while to see what would happen. The temperature rose to 65 degrees within seconds but stayed fairly constant. So it would appear that running at 550 would be safe, but I stepped back down to 366. I don’t want to overclock a system that I’m depending on for anything. For a few minutes I stepped it down to 330 MHz (using a 60 MHz bus) but it didn’t cool down any more after doing that, and running on a 60 MHz bus would give me a serious performance hit, so I stepped it back up to 366.

I scrounged around looking for parts and found enough to assemble a computer, but not a very good one. Being this close, I didn’t really want to do mail order and wait for parts to come in. So I checked CompUSA’s web site to see if they had anything competitive. Indeed they did–a 50X Delta-brand CD-ROM drive for $20 after rebate. Seeing as CompUSA always has some hard drive for $99-$109, I figured I’d make a trip over there. Sure, I could order a hard drive for $82 online, but a CD-ROM drive would cost me $40, so I’d make up the difference and have something that day.

When I got there I found another special–a 20-gig CompUSA by Maxtor hard drive for $99 with a $50 mail-in rebate. A lady was there examining the drive’s packaging. I picked one up. “4500 rpm, 128K buffer,” I read. “Where’s the speed?” she asked me. I pointed to a sticker on the side. “Wow. And I thought 5400 was slow enough.” She set the drive down and went looking at the drives on the shelf.

I was impressed. That was the first time I’ve ever met someone in person who was concerned about hard drive speed.

Now, about that speed… Yeah, it’s slow (I suspected the package actually contained a Quantum Fireball lct–Maxtor and Quantum have completed their merger) but it’s a cheap way to store a mountain of data and in an emergency it can boot an OS. At $2.50/gig, why not? So I grabbed one. I also grabbed the cheap 50X CD-ROM. I poked around the store a while, didn’t find anything else that caught my fancy, so I checked out. The cashier offered a replacement plan on the two parts. I declined–on stuff this cheap, I’ll just bank that money and take my chances.

The Fireball lct is indeed a poor performer. It would have been a middling performer in 1997, but this isn’t 1997 anymore. But I can live with it. It has one distinct advantage: It’s whisper-quiet. This PC makes very little noise. A fanless microATX box with a VIA C3 processor and a Fireball lct would be nearly silent and still fast enough to be useful. My other PCs sound like wind tunnel fans in comparison to this. And this drive will do for a testbed, if not as a production server–it’ll still be far faster than the P120 I’m using. I’d say there’s a 75 percent chance that system will end up hosting this site. The hard drive isn’t the bottleneck here–my DSL connection and CPU power are. The Celeron will solve the CPU problem, and hopefully with enough power to spare to run Mod_Gzip so that Apache can send compressed data to recent Web browsers, and thus solve the bandwidth issues too.

Anyway, I went ahead and put the 50X CD and Fireball lct in an old AT case, along with the Celeron-366 motherboard and 128 MB of RAM, a Cirrus Logic-based AGP card only a server could love, and a D-Link PCI 10/100 NIC to give myself a very basic meat-and-potatoes system. I noted the CD-ROM drive doesn’t fit as snugly as a Toshiba or an NEC and it definitely looks cheaper (but I’ve seen cheaper-looking drives still), and for 20 bucks I won’t complain. Mandrake 7.2 installed in about 15 minutes, but I found I was too aggressive–Mandrake’s hard disk optimizations and this motherboard’s chipset don’t get along. So I reinstalled with less aggressive settings. I made the mistake of doing a kitchen-sink install so it doesn’t run as well as it should. Basically at this point I need to tear it down and install, I dunno, BIND, Apache, Samba, and the kernel. That’s enough for what I want this machine to be able to do. I should probably look into building a kickstart script to do the job so I don’t have to answer any questions.

But that’s a project for another day.

More Like This: Hardware Linux

Memorial Day: Thank a vet

Dave Farquhar General ,

It’s Memorial Day. Memorial Day for many means barbecues, maybe a trip to the lake. We’re far enough removed from war that it’s mostly become another excuse for a three-day weekend. Yes, we fought a war 10 years ago, but it was so quick it didn’t really seem like war, and it was undeclared. And our previous administration involved us in plenty of skirmishes, but that wasn’t exactly war either. And I know, to many of us Vietnam seems like it was just yesterday, just like the first Bush administration seems like it was just yesterday to me, but Vietnam was long enough ago that there’s an entire generation of adults who view it exclusively as an historical event–by the time I was born, we were out of there.
One of the elders at church told me this week that 1.2 million U.S. soldiers have died in combat over the course of our history. That’s a lot of lives to gain and protect our freedom. And yes, as screwed up as our country is, we’re still a lot better off than much of the world. The dangers we face today are the dangers of our own making. There is no foreign dragon looming over our heads waiting to devour us.

So if you know any veterans, thank them the next time you see them. If you don’t, at least take a minute to thank God for their sacrifice.

Two good Weblogging sites

Dave Farquhar General

I realized this week that there are people I just don’t understand, probably because I don’t know anyone like them. And I lamented that I had this great tool, the Internet, and that a lot of people were using it to record their deepest thoughts, and there’s no better way to understand people than by reading the thoughts of people, but I didn’t know a good way to find a Weblog that matched a certain criteria I was looking for.
Then this morning I ran across Why I Log, an effort to reunite the Weblogging community by collecting a bunch of short essays saying why they do it. Getting back to basics and re-answering the “Why on earth am I doing this?” question is always a good way to regroup. Plus, you immediately know something about a link before you click on it–the reason why, and the logger’s first name. That’s much better than finding a stray link to someone else’s blog on a site you already read.

And from there I found The Ageless Project, which takes another approach–grouping Weblogs by the age of the author. If I don’t understand someone, I can go try to find a Weblog written by someone roughly their age and sex and maybe cast a little light into the darkness.

Neither of these tools is anywhere near complete–Ageless lists dozens of sites, not thousands like Weblogs.com. And Why I Log currently only has about a dozen entries. But that makes it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for.

More Like This: Weblogs

Dinner and network troubleshooting

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , ,

Dinner with Gatermann last night. It’s almost become a ritual: Slingers at the Courtesy Diner, then off to Ted Drewes’ for frozen custard. We didn’t waste any time at Courtesy because the jukebox was especially bad last night. Backstreet Boys or ‘NSync or 98 Degrees were playing when we got in, followed by another one of the boy bands (they all sound the same), followed by Brittney Spears, followed by that really stupid “It Wasn’t Me” song–I’ve forgotten the name of the so-called artist, which is just as well. That was followed up by “All Star” by Smashmouth. Now, when I’m in my car and Smashmouth comes on the radio, I change the station, because that song was really overplayed when it came out, and it never was all that good to begin with. It’s really sad when that band is the best thing you hear all night when you go somewhere. I said something to Gatermann about buying a place like that, then putting nothing but goth on the jukebox. Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Cult, The Cure, The Mission… What else do you need? We could call the place “Death’s Diner” or something. Since diner fare lowers your life expectancy anyway, why not, right?
But back to really overplayed songs… “All Star” was followed with “Cowboy” by Kid Rock. “Well I’ll pack up my bags and then I’ll head out west,” rapped the trash-mouth white boy from the trailer park. I looked at Gatermann. “Whaddya say we head out west and get outta here?” He agreed.

Drewes’ wasn’t especially crowded. There wasn’t much room in the parking lot, but once the weather warms up you normally can’t find a parking spot at all and have to park in the neighborhood.

We went back over to Gatermann’s, planning to play some Railroad Tycoon, since neither of us have played in months, if not over a year. Since he doesn’t have two Windows boxes anymore, I brought my IBM ThinkPad. I configured the network (I use a 192-net with DHCP; Tom uses a 10-net without DHCP),
then I plugged in using the cable from his Linux box, and I got lights on my Xircom PCMCIA NIC, but Tom noticed there weren’t any lights on the hub. I checked my network statistics. It had sent out a bunch of packets but never received any. I tried pinging out and just got timeouts. I re-seated the cable on both sides, then I re-seated the NIC’s dongle. Nothing changed. I wondered if I had a bad port or a bad cable. So I switched ports, to no avail. I powered the hub down and back up, thinking maybe it was confused. Nothing. We didn’t have any extra cables, so I plugged the cable I was using back into his Linux box. The lights on the card lit right up, as did the ports on the hub. I was able to ping too.

At one point I even stopped the card, ejected it, and plugged it back in. That didn’t help either. Tom’s network just didn’t seem to like my Xircom card, though it works great on my LAN.

Then I asked Tom if his hub was a straight 100-megabit hub or a dual-speed 10/100 hub. He said it was straight 100-megabit. That was the problem. My Xircom is a 10-megabit card. I started off with a 10-megabit LAN, then later upgraded to a dual-speed 10/100 hub so I wouldn’t have to replace all my cards. Later I added a four-port switch in the form of a Linksys cable/DSL router.

All of Tom’s cards are dual 10/100 (with the exception of a Kingston PCI NE2000 clone, but that card sits in his Linux router and runs to his DSL modem), so we could have solved the problem with a crossover cable. We’d lose Internet connectivity but that’s not necessary for two-player Railroad Tycoon. Tom has a crossover cable… in Kansas City. I have a crossover cable… at church. Neither was doing us any good.

So we didn’t play any Railroad Tycoon. We went through Tom’s files, found a few old pictures of me, and scanned one of them. The picture on my site right now is me in southern Illinois in May or June 1998. Some day I might even put up a current photo… Tom’s thinking I need to put on a pair of black jeans and a Joy Division t-shirt, then we can go find someplace with a shadowy, industrial feel to it and snap some pictures. He thinks it’d go well with the atmosphere I’ve got here. I tend to agree.

More Like This: Personal Networking

SiS rises from the ashes, and tries to bring AMD and DDR with it

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Well, I’m back from Bible study (I was teaching on one of those things that can change your life, so I put all kinds of pressure on myself, and I have no idea whether I delivered), but we won’t talk about that right now. No surprises on the Daynotes circuit today; the Weblogs circuit is mostly talking about Kaycee still. I think I’m done with that. I haven’t had time (or will) to go do the cable re-routing necessary to get my new Duron-700 working perfectly.
So, what to talk about…?

How about DDR chipsets?

VIA makes more DDR chipsets than anyone else, and they’ve surprised everyone during the past 18 months, producing chipsets that were much better than anyone expected while Intel produced chipset after chipset that was, for the most part, far worse than anyone’s come to expect of them. Current Intel chipsets work, but they’ve yet to deliver a truly worthy successor to the classic BX chipset. But so far, VIA’s DDR chipsets so far have been disappointing, which makes me wonder if inability to follow up is contagious.

AMD makes a pretty good DDR chipset–at least it gives better performance than PC133 SDRAM, unlike ALi’s DDR chipset and VIA’s DDR chipsets most of the time, and, to be fair, unlike Rambus chipsets–but finding a motherboard based on it can be difficult. AMD’s not very interested in producing the 760, and it shows.

So what’s the DDR chipset to get for AMD CPUs?

Right now, it’s the AMD 760. But very soon, it looks like it’ll be the SiS 735.

Yes, I know, it sounds like I’ve been smoking crack. SiS has a well-deserved reputation for making underachieving chipsets. Just ask Steve DeLassus what he thinks of his SiS 530 integrated video. He’ll throw an Okidata 180 printer at you (ouch) and then tell you it’s almost as bad as the service you get from GPS Computer Services, that’s what.

And the SiS 735 probably isn’t ready for release just yet, as the problems discussed in this review seem to indicate–though whether the problem is with the chipset, the prototype board, or the BIOS, who knows. But the benchmarks indicate the SiS 735 is about 5 percent faster than the AMD 760-based FIC AD11 while costing much less.

Yes, the AD11 isn’t the best-performing 760 board out there, but then again, prototypes aren’t known for stellar performance either. So this sounds promising. Based on these results, it would seem that an Asus or an Abit could produce a very nice-performing board with the SiS735. And as for SiS’s ability to produce a good chipset? Well, these are strange times. Two years ago, AMD bet the company on the Athlon. They had a new, expensive fab they couldn’t afford, dwindling market share and reputation, and a history of botching product releases. If they did everything right and Intel did everything wrong, they had a chance of surviving. Well, AMD executed while Intel fumbled and fumbled. And VIA executed. Intel got caught off guard, and while they’re still king of the hill, they’re embarrassed.

And there was a time, about five or six years ago, when SiS chipsets were actually very sought after. SiS was the first company to produce a chipset that truly brought out the best in Cyrix CPUs, and people who were concerned with raw applications performance sought them out, because the SiS/Cyrix combination outperformed anything Intel was making at the time.

Can SiS rise again? Maybe. It looks like we’re about to find out.

Integrity and fiction on the Web

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

I had thoughts that I thought best not shared, but then I read Frank McPherson’s excellent take on the hoax, so maybe I have something more to share after all. I’d really rather let the topic die, but since it appears there are still things for us to learn, let’s learn. Take consolation in that we can learn without me ever saying that name that begins with “K.” OK?
Here’s Frank:

For most of the last three or four months Dave Winer has been promoting the idea of amateur journalism. His point being that today’s mainstream media cannot be trusted, and does nothing but lie. Dave feels he can’t trust writers of BigPubs because they could be bought out by some person or company. He questions their integrity.

I’m trained as a professional journalist. I’ve seen the corruption from the inside. But I also know the source of the corruption, and that individuals inside can rise above it. I have classmates and former colleagues all over the place. CNet’s Troy Wolverton was in my New Media class. MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan taught my Editing class. The Associated Press’ David A. Lieb was my first editor in college. The AP’s Justin Hyde entrusted a newspaper column to me at the tender age of 19. My mentor as a columnist was Andrew Blasko, now a writer/pr contact/editor (strange combination) at The Heritage Foundation. USA Today’s Elizabeth McKinley was in my Editorial Writing class.

Those are just the people whose bylines I’ve seen recently, or who I remember for one reason or another.

I trust these people. I don’t always agree with them. I trust their ability to get the facts straight, partly because some of them were among the people who helped me learn to get the facts straight, and all of them learned to get the facts straight from the same people I did. Plus I spent a lot of time with them. I know they have integrity because I saw it. Not only do I trust them to get the story straight, but I wouldn’t think twice about tossing my car keys to any of them.

I also believe in amateur journalism. As far as I’m concerned, Mike Royko was the greatest journalist of all time. You know how Royko learned journalism? He went to the Chicago Public Library, grabbed every book on journalism and newswriting he could find, and spent a weekend reading them. He learned the principles and ethics of journalism, combined that with a God-given knack for writing that he may or may not have realized he had, and became a legend.

The key word Frank McPherson brought up is integrity. The individuals I mentioned have integrity. The National Enquirer lacks integrity. NBC’s Dateline lacks integrity. Debbie Swenson lacks integrity. Corporations are inherently no more and no less capable of integrity than individuals.

But corporations may have a slight edge in ability to maintain their integrity, because of accountability. Corporations, being made up of individuals, have a certain amount of accountability built in. Individuals can get accountability or they can reject it. I know if I say something that makes people wonder if I’ve been smoking crack, Dan Bowman or Dustin Cook or Pete Moore or a host of others will call me on it. They’ll chime in with their twenty bucks’ worth (that’s the price most people put on my words, and theirs should be worth what mine are), the truth will come out, and we’ll all be the better for it.

And that doesn’t just apply to my writing. When I teach a Bible study, there are usually two masters’ students among the audience. Those guys are slumming. While there are many preachers who have less formal training than I have, Matt and John know far more than I do. I have no idea what they can learn from me. But I appreciate them being there, because if I’m wrong, I know they’ll speak up, and they know I expect them to.

Integrity and accountability aren’t so much something you get so much as they are something you live. And yes, you should look for them, and if someone appears to lack them, then no, you shouldn’t trust them, not even for the sports scores. Don’t give them the eyeballs the advertisers look for.

Now, Frank brought up Bo Leuf, who brought up the question of fiction. Bo observed that when fiction writing first appears in a new medium, it looks like fact, and outrages people. And some people still can’t tell the difference years later. Having lived next door to people who truly believed the X Files were real, I know this firsthand.

Personally, I love the idea of a fictional weblog. We’ve been trying for years to figure out ways to exploit the unique capabilities of the Internet, and the weblog lets us do that.

The idea hit me as I read the end of this Oklahoman article. “I think [Swenson] wanted to tell a story. But she should have written a book or something.” Those were the words of Julie Fullbright, the local hero who unknowingly gave her face to the fictional character whose name I promised not to mention. That’s the kind of quotable quote a journalist lives for. I read those words just before I left work for the day, and I’ve been thinking about them all night.

I thought she was right then, and I think she’s still right now.

Now, having written a book, and having fallen victim to a publisher’s whims, I know what it’s like to try to write a book. I know what it’s like to try to get someone to publish it. And I know what it’s like to try to get someone to buy it. The difficulty increases with each step of that wretched process.

So, I’m sitting here with a novel about half-written, and no desire to have anything to do with a publisher until I’ve managed to acquire some clout. Now I don’t know for sure what having clout feels like, but I’m pretty sure I’ll know it when I feel it. But I can set up another weblog. I’m comfortable with that. I can give it the following subhead: “A work of fiction by David L. Farquhar.” The novel occurs in the past. That makes life easy. I just put it on its own server, with the clock set back. When today’s entry is dated 1992 or whenever, that makes it look a whole lot more like fiction.

Besides, Murel, my cubicle neighbor, has been telling me for months that I’d end up writing my novel in pieces here and one day I’d just have to tie it all together. I think he was on to something.

I won’t make any money, but that’s OK. I didn’t make any money off the one and a half books I wrote either. At least this time I won’t go in there with that expectation. If something happens that makes it profitable down the road, fine. End aside.

The character can be no more compelling than the author. That was the problem I ran into when I initially wrote the novel. I was trying to write about a 19-year-old, but I wasn’t finished being 19 myself yet. I’m not certain that at 26 I have enough perspective. But I have more than I did then.

And yes, sometimes life is better than fiction. But fiction intertwined with life kicks royal booty. The best thing about The Great Gatsby is that Jay Gatsby’s fears and insecurities were F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fears and insecurities. Jay Gatsby made his money by running drugstores that sold other stuff out the back room. F. Scott Fitzgerald made his money peddling words. But Jay Gatsby was all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s worst fears wrapped into a character. He was vulnerable and honest. Vulnerable and honest people are compelling. Heck, vulnerable and dishonest people can be compelling.

So do I launch another weblog? I’m severely tempted. This isn’t the time to do it. I need to get my server in order and start getting content migrated to this site from its predecessors and make sure everything’s working smoothly. That’ll take a while yet.

But I know the formula. I have the plot, and the plot’s captivated everyone I’ve tossed it out to. I have some characters, and they’re far more compelling than the characters in the 1994-95 draft because I’ve spent the past seven years getting to know them. A few pieces still have to come together. But I think I really want to try this experiment.

More Like This: “/cgi-bin/search.cgi?terms=weblogs&case=insensitive&boolean=and”>Weblogs Fiction Personal

An untrustworthy vendor

Dave Farquhar Vendors

First things first. About a month ago I ordered an FIC AZ11 from GPS Computers. One of my readers recommended them because he found Duron motherboard/CPU combos for a Backstreet Boys song there. I agreed. The price was unbelievable.It took about three weeks, but I got my order.

Steve DeLassus found their service to be worse than the very worst Backstreet Boys song.

He ordered a motherboard a couple of days after I did. They charged his credit card on May 1. But Steve still hasn’t received the order. He never received the courtesy of a tracking number (neither did I) or even confirmation e-mail (neither did I). My order just showed up one day. After that, I was wary of doing business with them again, but I wanted to see how Steve’s experience went.

Steve had a couple of e-mail exchanges with Terry Holmes, GPS’ president. Holmes promised to expedite the order, so he should have received it on or around May 17. That didn’t happen. Since then, Steve’s repeated efforts to contact them via e-mail and telephone have failed.

Their initials are pretty appropriate. Their service reminds me of a gigantic pile of s–uh, never mind.

I’m not gonna call them crooks, so I’ll just let this suffice: Steve gets ripped off so you don’t have to.

And I notice Mwave.com has the same board for $72. That’s still a good price. They’re charging a bit more for the CPUs, but when you actually ship all of your orders and not just half of them, your margins are a bit lower, so I guess they have to charge more.

Fun with gasoline… Wait, that sounds bad. How to save gasoline.

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

Gas prices are driving me up the wall. I’m glad I opted for a Dodge Neon and not a Dodge Avenger last year when I bought a car, since the Neon gets better gas mileage, but right now the VW Jetta is tempting me and is 45 MPG sounds really sweet (my Neon gets 25-30 driving locally and about 35 on trips). My lease is up in two years, so I’ll get it right then. Until then, I’ve gotta do what I can. Yes, small cars are more dangerous than big cars, but if most people drove smaller cars and didn’t drive like they have a death wish, that wouldn’t be such a big deal now, would it?

So I went hunting for gas-saving tips. I found a bunch. Nineteen, I think.

First things first: Bookmark gaspricewatch.com. Punch in a zip code, and it’ll give you the lowest fuel prices within a radius you define. More importantly, it lets you watch trends. More on that in a second. Also bookmark www.stretcher.com. They’ve got some gas saving tips (not as many as I’m about to give you) along with every other thing imaginable.

1. Buy the same brand and type of gas whenever possible. Your car’s computer adjusts to the fuel you use. Using a different brand of gas every tankful doesn’t give the computer a chance to adjust, so buying at a different station to save a penny a gallon can end up costing you money.

2. Inflate your tires properly, and check them once a month. You can assume you’re going to lose 1 PSI per month. There’s a sticker on your door that gives the manufacturer’s recommendations. Go with the higher number if one’s given. A tire’s maximum PSI is listed on the rim of the tire itself. Don’t inflate to the maximum, because you gain 1 PSI for every 10 degrees’ temperature increase, but if there’s a discrepancy between the tire maker and the car maker, meeting them halfway will improve gas mileage. And make sure your wheels are properly aligned.

3. If your car’s going to idle for a minute or longer, such as at a drive-thru, shut off the engine. It takes less fuel to start the engine up again than it does to idle for just 10 seconds. Better yet, park and go inside.

4. Use the thinnest-viscosity oil your car manufacturer recommends, usually 5W-30. A low-viscosity synthetic can improve your gas mileage by 3 percent.

5. Replace your air and gas filters periodically–usually once a year.

6. Drive slower. Every one mile per hour over 55 MPH decreases your gas mileage by 1-2 percent.

7. Avoid sudden acceleration and braking, and use your cruise control whenever possible. Aggressive driving–tailgating, weaving, speeding–decreases drive times by about four percent on average, but can increase fuel consumption by 39 percent.

8. Clean out your car. Excessive weight harms gas mileage. Each 100 pounds in your car decreases gas mileage by about one-half mile per gallon.

9. Replace your spark plugs on time, and replace them with high-performance spark plugs, such as Bosch Platinums, and gap them properly. Platinum plugs don’t wear out as quickly, and while the jury is out whether platinum plugs inherently give better gas mileage, a set of old platinums will have an edge over a set of old cheap plugs. Two bad plugs can decrease your gas mileage by 20 percent.

10. Use your air conditioner on the highway, since open windows increase drag. Turn off the air conditioner and roll down your windows in stop-and-go traffic. And in the winter, using the defroster decreases your gas mileage, although using the heater won’t.

11. It only takes 10 seconds in warm weather and 30 seconds in cold weather for most engines to warm up. Warming up longer than that burns fuel without giving much other benefit.

12. Use overdrive if your car has it.

13. Avoid gimmicks that claim to increase gas mileage. Simple maintenance makes a bigger difference than anything else you can do.

14. This should go without saying, but don’t drive out of your way looking for the lowest gas price. Remember the size of your tank–that’s how much a fill-up at a penny a gallon less will save you. Driving across town in stop-and-go traffic to save a penny a gallon won’t help you. Check gas prices when you’re running an errand anyway, and if there’s a good price on your brand near where you’re going anyway, fill up then.

15. Dirt and gravel roads can decrease gas mileage by 30 percent.

16. Drive at steady speeds in the city. Stoplights are usually timed very close to the speed limit, so you can catch most of the green lights by driving legally.

17. Use snow tires in the winter; the increased traction improves gas mileage. But in the off months, the deeper tread hurts gas mileage.

18. When you buy tires, radials can improve gas mileage by about 3 percent.

19. Don’t use 4-wheel-drive unless necessary.

And that’s all I’ve got.

An evening with my one true love

Dave Farquhar General ,

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America
has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a
blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all
that once was good, and that could be again.”
–James Earl Jones, in “Field of Dreams”

After the last couple of days, with a Monday that had too much happening for my little brain to handle, and a Tuesday fighting with a laptop that was convinced I’d just invented wireless long-distance DSL (not to mention trying to deal with the sudden flood of pictures from my past), I needed to get away. I needed to spend some time with the love of my life.
I can’t help it. I’m a romantic fool. When I want to escape, I try, somehow, some way, to a broadcast of my beloved Kansas City Royals. At the very least, I turn on ESPN’s gamecast on the Web and follow the game, and usually they break my heart yet again.

I was going to say it’s my own damn fault, but maybe it’s not. I can’t help what I am. I’m Scottish. Clan Farquharson. Our motto: “Fide et Fortitudine.” That’s Gaelic for “Fidelity with fortitude.” Today we might say, “Loyalty with guts.” That’s why I’m a Royals fan in St. Louis. Or at least that sounds good.

In my younger days, I’d go out and play myself. I never was all that good, but I poured every last drop of my heart and soul into playing the game, and I’ve got enough of both that I didn’t spend too much time on the bench. My coaches always knew I’d give 200 percent if I had it, or, more likely, I’d die trying.

And I miss my younger days, the days when I was naive enough to think that baseball was life, the days when my biggest concern was whether I’d be playing left field or second base the next game. Well, the days when I could play honest-to-goodness baseball are long gone. But when I got wind of a softball team being organized at work, I signed up.

Our first practice was yesterday. I’ve played in exactly two softball games since 1996. By 1996, by skills had deterriorated to the point that I was strictly a second-string catcher. I could still hit, but I was a contact hitter with limited speed, and in the field I had limited range and my glove skills were shot. And my greatest skill as a catcher, by far, was talking up the pitcher and getting on the opposing team’s nerves.

Well, I’m probably in worse shape now than I was then, but, betting that my peers have deterriorated more than I have over the past five years (a fairly safe bet, seeing as I’ve pretty much always laid off the beer), I’m attempting a comeback anyway.

Practice went well. In a three-inning practice game, I went two for two with a pair of singles. The first was a close play at first, or should have been, but the first baseman didn’t handle the throw. I ran to second, but the second baseman fumbled, and by the time the shortstop managed to get to the ball, I was rounding third. What the heck, I thought, and I kept on going. The shortstop fired to the plate, the catcher took the throw cleanly, turned, and just managed to nick my lower right leg with the tag a half-step from the plate. Some people thought I was safe, but he got me.

My second hit was a looping single to right. I rounded first, trying to draw a throw, but I couldn’t get the right fielder to bite. The next play was a grounder to short. The shortstop threw to second for the force–I never had much of a chance. The second baseman was a female. Mac user. In my younger days, I’d have flattened the second baseman, just for being the second baseman and in my way. I didn’t this time. It was an intrasquad game, after all. And I guess I’ve mellowed out with age.

In pre-game BP, I ws trying to be a doubles and triples hitter, but once we actually had players on the field, I remembered that in softball, you don’t really want to do that. Unless you’re an honest power hitter (I’m not, at least not at the beginning of the season, and my wrists are still extremely weak so I may never hit for much power again), you just want to put the ball in play and force the other team to make mistakes. I think the game’s more fun that way anyway. I love being scrappy and disruptive.

In the field, I made two putouts. I played an inning at second, an inning in right, and an inning in right center. Nothing happened at second. In right, I got a sharp fly ball with no one on. I don’t even remember the last time I played right field, but I made the grab. That throw to second was harder to make than I remembered it being. In right-center, I pulled in a lazy fly ball from someone I expected to have more power than that. There was a runner on first, but she pretty much stayed put. I probably wasn’t a threat to throw her out anyway, but I don’t think anyone else knew that. When you make the catches, people tend to assume you have a good arm too, until you prove otherwise.

I’m not the slowest player on the team by a longshot, which is good. I’ve never been all that good defensively, but I think I know why now. I was talking to a coach last year, and he pointed out that fielding is a totally different mentality. You’ve gotta relax out there, then when the ball comes your direction, run to it, watch it, and grab it with two hands. I always used to tense up in the field, and I’m betting that was the problem. After trying to leg out that infield homer (actually it would have been a single and a three-base error), I was too tired to tense up, and I actually made all the plays.

Yeah, I’ll be sore in the morning, and probably the next morning too. But that’s good. I need a reminder of how much fun I had last night, trying to score on my own infield single.

Confound it, I shoulda slid.

More Like This: Baseball Softball Personal

Speeding up the Computer

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

MAILBAG:
From: “Andre Vospette”
Subject: What can I do in my Windows folder to speed up my computer

Dear Dave: I’ve read your column ever since you published your book. I’m visiting my father-in-law in Wyoming, and his Presario 400 mhz is acting like a 486 –and not a fast one, either. I’ve done everything I feel confident doing, but the big step I want to take is rearranging the applet/applications in the Windows directory. I left my copy of your book at home, so I can’t remember which programs I can move to a c:windowsbackup folder. Can you help me out here? If I pull this off I’ll reach rockstar status in my in-laws’ eyes.

Sincerely,

Andre Vospette BJ 91, University of Missouri (photojournalism sequence)
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Hi Andre,

What you can move depends a bit. Certainly move *.txt, *.bak, *.old, *.grp, *.—, *.log, *.001, *.002, –that kind of stuff into a backups folder. I also move all the BMP and WAV files elsewhere. There are some programs you can move into C:WindowsCommand, like ping, telnet, tracert, welcome, ftp, route, arp… Don’t get too aggressive there; I’ve heard of rare occasions where moving all the files I listed can cause problems. Clearing that dead wood out should make a huge difference. Be sure to defrag later.

I hope that helps. And thanks for writing, it’s always good to hear from another Mizzou grad, especially a journalism grad.

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