Cheap cable management

If the back of your desk is a rat’s nest, here’s a cheap way to manage those cables.

This method uses a $4 box of large binder clips, plus some screws and washers. You may find it’s cheaper to buy a box of screws and washers as well.

I worked in a shop once where they contracted out the cable management. Calling those guys perfectionists was the understatement of the century, but their cable runs looked like a work of art.

There seemed to be two keys. One is getting your cables a uniform length. You can’t necessarily control that completely, but you can bundle up the slack space somewhere that it won’t be visible. The other key is bundling the cables tightly at regular intervals. Velcro strips are invaluable for that, though you can use cheap and cheerful wire ties if you don’t move cables around very often.

Where I was when I first heard about the end of the world

Since all the cool kids (or at least some of them) are writing about the end of the world, I thought I’d write about where I first heard about this.

I’m such a notorious cheapskate, the Mayans had a folk song about me. I was at a library sale, scooping up cheap books, in the summer of 2007. You meet some interesting people at these places, and one of the more colorful is a guy named Jim. Read more

Dvorak: The future of retail is search

This week in PC Magazine, John C Dvorak said the future of retail is search. He’s right.

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Sorry about the downtime

MySQL crashed on me sometime late Sunday or early Monday. Somehow the server managed to serve up 5-6 pages per day in a catatonic state on Monday and Tuesday. So I spent my lunch break digging into the problem. Read more

Don’t hide your abilities to avoid bullies

There’s a disturbing story on Slashdot today: Kids are playing dumb to avoid being bullied.

I have two things to say. I was bullied when I was a kid. In seventh grade, it was me against the world (or at least the entire school), and the problem followed me, though not as intensely, through two more schools, until sometime in my sophomore year.

But it gets better. Trust me on that. Some of the losers who picked on me never graduated high school. Some spent time in jail. Some couldn’t get a date if their lives depended on it now. Their lives peaked right around age 18. Meanwhile, things are pretty good for me, largely because each time I’ve been told to pass a long test if I want to keep my job, I’ve been able to do it.

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Certifications are a scam! A rebuttal

I overheard a couple of people talking a few weeks ago, and one said, flat out, “Certifications are a scam!”

As one who has two security certifications (Security+ and CISSP), I disagree. Now that I’ve had my first post-CISSP professional review, I disagree even more strongly.

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LED bulbs and breakability

A longtime friend posted something on Facebook about CFL bulbs–namely, that in addition to containing mercury, that they also emit ultraviolet light. I thought everyone knew that fluorescent lights emit more UV than other types of lights and that wasn’t news, but maybe not.

I pointed out that LED bulbs don’t emit any UV light at all, and the proof is that bugs aren’t attracted to LED lights. They’ll come to an incandescent or a fluorescent light though.

He asked if LED lights pose any hazards if they break. I now have an answer. Read more

The lightbulb reinvented

Timothy Hunt asked me (via Twitter) if I’ve seen the lightbulb reinvented, an LED bulb that screws into a standard socket but has wi-fi capability so you can tune its light temperature and otherwise control it with a smartphone.

I hadn’t. But I found it interesting, and appreciate the mention. Read more

Hey! That’s your teammate.

I don’t remember much about playing baseball in the fifth grade. I was an outfielder, but I don’t remember if I played left or right field that year. I don’t remember if I hit at the top of the order, or if I hit sixth.

My main memory of that year is one specific incident. I don’t remember the context, but either during or after a game, one of the players was hassling another player.

“Hey!” I heard my dad’s booming voice yell. “He’s your teammate.” Dad didn’t have to add the words, “cut it out,” because the bully understood. Dad’s stern rebuke, plus the glares from the coaches put an end to it.

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How to block annoying posts on Facebook

Lifehacker came through with a gem this morning: How to block annoying political posts on Facebook. Though it’s really about filtering, so you can filter on pretty much anything with it, not just the names of political parties and this year’s candidates. Pretty much anything that people rant about on Facebook would be game for this.

It’s easy enough to just unsubscribe from certain people completely or in extreme cases, un-friend them. But this gives you a less extreme option.