David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
When you’re enrolling in your employer’s 401(K) plan, one of the most difficult questions is your 401(K) asset allocation. They’re limited in what advice they can give you, so I’ll share what’s worked for me.
The key to 401(K) asset allocation is to get a good mix of stocks of large companies, medium-sized companies, growth stocks, international stocks, and bonds. This helps you to do well over the long term, even when the market has bad years.
What can damage a Lionel train? Neglect and abuse, basically. When well cared for, they’re pretty bulletproof.
There’s not a lot that can damage a Lionel train, as long as you store it in conditions that wouldn’t make you terribly uncomfortable, run it within spec and maintain it occasionally.
Whether you’re looking to clean it or service it, sometimes it’s necessary to take apart an Atari 2600 console. The iconic older models can be a little tricky to open up or take apart and put back together, but they aren’t super difficult. Here’s how to disassemble an Atari 2600 VCS.
An Atari 2600 or VCS is held together by 4-6 screws on the underside. The two screws at the front of the console sit at a conventional 90-degree angle, while the rear screws sit at a tricky 60-degree angle.
When you need wood glue, there are a lot of good choices you can use. Maybe too many. Titebond is a popular choice, but there are three different kinds at three different price points. What’s the difference? Why buy the original vs Titebond 2? Why buy Titebond 2 vs 3?
Both Titebond 2 and Titebond 3 are for outdoor use. The differences you’re most likely to notice are that Titebond 3 dries about half as fast and can work at a minimum temperature of 45 degrees vs 55 degrees.
Bobson Dugnutt was a fictional baseball player in the 1994 console game Fighting Baseball, the Japanese version of MLBPA baseball published by EA. He was a bench player for the Milwaukee franchise, a backup outfielder and pinch hitter.
Lack of a license to use the real names of baseball players led to a Japanese baseball game where they made up American names, with uneven results. Bobson Dugnutt was the most absurd name in the meme inspired by the game Fighting Baseball.
My employer started offering a Roth 401(K) option this year. I was pretty excited about it, but it confused most of my coworkers. I walked them through the Roth 401(K) vs traditional 401(K), and my explanation helped them enough that some of them opted to take that route. Let’s look at the differences so you can decide which is right for you.
A traditional 401(K) is tax-deferred, which means you get a tax deduction this year for contributing, and you pay taxes on it in the future when you withdraw it. A Roth 401(K) offers no tax deduction this year, but you owe no taxes when you withdraw it, no matter how much it grows.
Truth be told, most of our train tables are probably overbuilt. The size and strength of them isn’t the only consideration, and overbuilding them probably does make construction a little easier. But we also don’t need to go crazy with our materials. Here’s how much weight a train table can support.
If you want to start a religious war, go on a forum and ask about an SSD vs HDD and why you should buy one over the other. I’m not quite sure why this is so controversial. But it is. Let’s look at the advantages SSDs have over hard drives, and when hard drives make more sense. I’ll also go into when I think this will no longer be true.
SSDs have numerous advantages over hard drives. They have faster seek times, faster read and write speeds, lower power consumption, less noise. they fail predictably, and are more reliable. The main disadvantage is cost, though even that is changing.
When I first started interviewing for security jobs, I remember some of the jargon confusing me. “Infosec” was one of those terms. Getting that first job is hard enough without getting your resume binned over not knowing the word infosec. So what is infosec, what does it stand for, and how do you talk intelligently about it?
I recently upgraded the memory in my HP Z210 workstation, and had a really hard time verifying everything was working right afterward. Here’s how to enter BIOS setup in HP computers.
It’s usually the F10 key that enters the BIOS in HP computers. But several things, including network boot, can interfere with this, so it helps to know my tricks.