Author: Dave Farquhar

Milwaukee tools at Lowe’s

Dave Farquhar DIY
Milwaukee tools at Lowe’s

Milwaukee is a popular brand of power tools, often used by professionals and one of the biggest rivals of DeWalt. Meanwhile, Lowe’s is the second largest home improvement store chain in North America. It would be natural to expect Lowe’s to carry Milwaukee tools. But the relationship between Lowe’s and Milwaukee is complicated.

Lowe’s sells a brand of cart and dolly called Milwaukee that has no connection to Milwaukee power tools. Lowe’s hasn’t sold Milwaukee power tools since 2007, and Milwaukee’s parent company’s relationship with Home Depot makes it unlikely that situation will change any time soon.

Read more

Where to buy steel wool

Dave Farquhar DIY
Where to buy steel wool

Where to buy steel wool isn’t a difficult question. It’s clear from the Google search results that any hardware store, home improvement store, and even one of the large discount store chains carries steel wool. But finding it in those huge 100,000-square-foot stores is another matter. I’ve even heard people lament that nobody seems to sell plain steel wool anymore, that all they can find are SOS pads that have a cleaner embedded in them. In this blog post, I’ll reveal the secret of where to find steel wool in big box stores.

You can still find plain steel wool today, but the trick is to not look in the cleaning section. It’s usually in the part of the store that sells paint, wood stain, and/or sandpaper.

Read more

What is a dataframe in Python?

Dave Farquhar security
What is a dataframe in Python?

You’ll frequently hear the word dataframe thrown around, sometimes by data scientists or Python programmers. It can be an intimidating subject but it doesn’t need to be. Let’s talk about what a dataframe is in Python, in lay person’s terms, and how you can use them.

Read more

Marx train set #26259 from Montgomery Ward

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx train set #26259 from Montgomery Ward

Marx train set #26259 is a somewhat unusual set, dating to the mid 1950s. Marx sold it through Montgomery Ward, and it is something of a transition set. The cars didn’t exactly match the locomotive and tender.

Read more

Fast Copy: Best and fastest copier for Windows?

Dave Farquhar Windows
Fast Copy: Best and fastest copier for Windows?

People sure have strong feelings on their Windows copy utilities. Each of the command line utilities has their own strengths and weaknesses. But when it comes to copying with the GUI, a lot of times we just settle for Windows Explorer. Fast Copy is a utility that provides GUI ease of use with the power of the command line utilities. I think it might be the best file copier for Windows.

Read more

Atari Jaguar won’t power on? Try this

Dave Farquhar Retro Gaming
Atari Jaguar won’t power on? Try this

The most common problem with an Atari Jaguar is not being able to power it on. Usually this is due to user error rather than a hardware fault, so here’s how to quickly fix the problem.

Read more

FreeDOS on physical hardware

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
FreeDOS on physical hardware

Vintage computing has gotten expensive. One way to enjoy the vintage computing experience on a budget is to install FreeDOS on aging physical hardware that isn’t quite old enough to be collectible, building what some people call a time machine. I had someone ask me on Mastodon to walk them through the process.

The goal was to walk someone through a project that would be affordable and not require someone to have a storage unit full of hardware already. If you’re ready to graduate from DOSBox or FreeDOS on VirtualBox and onto bare metal, this project is for you.

Read more

Marx 556 caboose

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 556 caboose

The Marx 556 caboose was a staple of Marx’s 6-inch line, running from 1937 to 1952. All the variants are minor and only the lighted version is rare or valuable. The 556 is a good car for toy train operators, and also makes a nice Christmas train or display piece because of its color choices. Read more

Fixing a sticky Teac 5.25 inch floppy drive

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Fixing a sticky Teac 5.25 inch floppy drive

I have a Teac FD-55BV 5.25″ 360K floppy drive for my Tandy 1000EX. Teac drives tend to be very reliable, but this one had one problem. The spindle clamp would stick when I opened the lever and tried to remove the disk. Here’s how I fix a sticky floppy drive, and you can too.

Read more

What manual testing is in security

Dave Farquhar security
What manual testing is in security

The SANS vulnerability management maturity model has an entire section on manual testing. That may not be a phrase you hear very often because there are several types of manual tests. So what is manual testing in security?

Manual testing is a form of security testing, namely, looking for security vulnerabilities in a non-automated or semi-automated fashion at most. It is not the same as vulnerability scanning like one does with tools like Nessus or Qualys.

Read more