Last week a commenter asked me why the whistle button makes a Lionel train speed up. This behavior may seem unusual but it’s normal and solves a problem.
Save money on a PCIe dual NIC
I’ve written before how to get a standard PCI dual NIC for a low, low price–but what about a PCIe dual NIC? PCI Express needs love too, of course.
It turns out it’s not hard to find a good, cheap PCIe dual NIC either.
How to use Liquid Nails construction adhesive
If you’re wondering how to use Liquid Nails or another construction adhesive, read on. There’s no shame in that. I was 30 years old before anyone told me.
Cleaning Lionel trains: A hobbyist’s advice
It’s that time of year again, when people start thinking about getting their Lionel trains out and setting them up, and sometimes, cleaning Lionel trains to make them presentable is necessary first.
Fortunately, Lionel trains aren’t hard to clean.
Add an outlet to a light switch line
For any number of reasons, a lot of rooms, especially bathrooms, don’t have enough electrical outlets. Those rooms probably do have light switches, though, and that’s good news. It’s possible to add an outlet to a light switch line. The better news is there’s usually more than one way to do it. Here are some options.
Robert Koch Hospital, St. Louis
The last exit on I-255 in Missouri before the Illinois border is Koch Road. Turn right on Koch Road, in a community now known as Oakville, and you run into the curiously named Robert Koch Hospital Road, which runs through a residential area. But where’s the hospital? It turns out Robert Koch Hospital was demolished in 1989. But stories of this hospital, including rumors the site is haunted, spread through generations of St. Louisans, even those who don’t know the hospital’s name. Its presence explains why a 500-acre swath of land along the Mississippi River in a popular upper middle class suburb remains an isolated, lonely place. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, the site seems cursed.
Robert Koch Hospital was established to help St. Louis deal with a cholera epidemic that killed 6 percent of its population. It survived for decades, mostly treating tuberculosis, until medical advancements alleviated the need for an isolated quarantine hospital in the area.
SSD native command queuing (NCQ)
What is SSD native command queuing (NCQ)? Think of it as a technology to make SSDs more efficient.
Lionel transformer pinouts
When wiring a Lionel layout with multiple transformers, it helps to know the pinouts, or what posts output what voltages. Lionel published a few lists over the years but none were complete. Here is my list of 33 different Lionel transformer pinouts.
Fix a Roland XP 50 with no sound
One of my sons wants to learn to play piano. It just so happens I own a Roland XP 50 keyboard that I kept in storage for a number of years. It didn’t work when we hooked it up, but we figured out how to fix a Roland XP 50 with no sound. Spoiler: The problem was the battery. Fortunately, it’s not hard to replace a Roland XP-50 battery.
Robert Rayford (Robert R): AIDS in St. Louis in the 1960s
The sad story of Robert Rayford (aka Robert R), the first documented case of HIV/AIDS in the United States, shows that if timing had been a little bit different, the AIDS epidemic could have happened a decade earlier than it did, and its epicenter could have been St. Louis instead of New York. His story raises some unsettling questions. How did HIV end up in St. Louis, of all places? And why did it stay local to St. Louis rather than becoming an epidemic?
His story made me uncomfortable, and sometimes that’s how I know it’s time to dig in a bit more. Trouble is, the more I dug in, the more uncomfortable I got.