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Why you need a hobby

Dave Farquhar Baseball, Health, Toy trains February 3, 2015March 14, 2022baseball cards, classmate, Unintended consequences

As security professionals, we deal with a tremendous amount of stress. Like my boss circa 2015 told me about a week into our tenure together, we tend to be perfectionists, and frequently we’re asked to deal with the most cavalier people in our organization. It’s a toxic combination.

One of the first things that boss asked me after we met was what I think about at home. In all honesty, I can’t help but think about work sometimes. But I have a lot of other things I think about at home too. Important things like my family of course, but other important things too, like trains and baseball and baseball cards. And for the last few years I’ve been in the position of mentoring younger members of my team. I always tell them to get a hobby if they don’t have one.

How to ensure you never get another Windows tech support scam call again

Dave Farquhar scams February 2, 2015October 29, 2018AT&T, AT&T U-verse, phone service, spam, verizon, VOIP

I haven’t received a fake Windows tech support call in a very long time. A couple of the operations doing this have been shut down, but based on the continued popularity of the things I’ve written about them, I wonder if some people are still getting them.

That makes me reluctant to block them, just in case they call me again, but if you’re getting those calls and want them to stop, I can tell you how to do that.

My 11th ’35 Goudey: Four Dodgers

Dave Farquhar Baseball February 1, 2015January 18, 2015Burleigh Grimes, Goudey, New York

Like my 10th card, my 11th card was also an Ebay win. It featured four Dodgers players. It’s a common card, with no Hall of Famers, but all of the players were starters for the Dodgers–no filling up space with utility infielders or middle relievers on this card, at least. A Dodgers fan unwrapping this card in 1935 wouldn’t have been too disappointed.

And even though there are no Hall of Famers on the card, there are some interesting stories here. Two of the players were once traded for each other before becoming teammates, and one of the players was the oldest surviving player to play for all three New York teams when he died at the age of 99.

My 10th ’35 Goudey: Ted Lyons and Mule Haas

Dave Farquhar Baseball January 31, 2015January 18, 2015Chicago White Sox, Connie Mack, Goudey, Major League, Major League Baseball, Marine Corps, National League, Philadelphia Athletics

Once I’d drained my local supply of 1935 Goudeys, I turned to Ebay. To keep some sport in it and keep costs down a bit, initially I decided to limit myself to auction listings rather than buy-it-nows.

The first time I looked, I could have bought every ’35 I lacked, spare one, via buy-it-now, and the one I couldn’t find wasn’t an expensive card. To me, that’s not really collecting. Collecting ought to involve some chase, and waiting an extra week for a com

So, in that spirit, I bid on a 1935 card featuring four Chicago White Sox one Sunday evening, and won.

How to re-attach an Omnipod pod

Dave Farquhar Health January 30, 2015July 27, 2016insulin, medtronic

My wife is a type 1 diabetic, and for the past year or so she’s been using an Omnipod to deliver the insulin she needs. She likes the Omnipod a lot better than the old-fashioned Medtronic insulin pumps she used to use, but one problem with the pods is that they can come off before their useful life is over. The pods cost around $20 and our insurance doesn’t cover any extras, so it’s important to be able to revive or restore the Omnipod adhesive if a pod comes unstuck.

The pods are supposed to last three days, but sometimes the adhesive only lasts a day or so. Humidity, sweating from activity, swimming and bathing can all make the adhesive fail prematurely. It seems the pods themselves are a lot more waterproof than the adhesive is. Then again, she says sometimes just the force of changing clothes can be enough to knock a pod off.

Network printers with mismatched Windows versions

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Windows January 29, 2015July 15, 2017hewlett packard, hp, laserjet, UNC, Windows 10, windows 7

Jim, one of the longest-running of my longtime readers, wrote in last week about his experiences getting a venerable HP Laserjet 1100 working between two dissimilar Windows machines. Network printers with mismatched Windows versions always present a challenge.

Not only that, as time wears on, new challenges rise up to replace any old ones that don’t exist anymore. I’ll let Jim share, then add my own experience.

Port 2381: What it is and how to manage it

Dave Farquhar security January 28, 2015August 13, 2017apache, hp, PHP, SSL, vector, vulnerability

I was doing some scanning with a new vulnerability scanner at work. It found something listening on a lot of servers, described only as Apache and OpenSSL listening on TCP port 2381. The versions varied.

Luckily I also had Qualys at my disposal, and scanning with Qualys solved the mystery for me quickly. It turned out to be the HP System Management Homepage, a remote administration/diagnostic tool that, as the title says, lets you manage HP server hardware. It runs on Windows, Linux, and HP-UX. Read more

Add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows January 27, 2015November 16, 2021Click Finish, Click Next, hp, jetdirect card, laserjet, optimizing windows, Technical Preview, Universal Plug and Play, Windows 10

Sometimes you have to manually add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10. For example, I have an older HP Laserjet 4100 with a Jetdirect network card in it that I use to print from all of my PCs over my local area network (LAN). Getting Windows 10 to print to it isn’t difficult but it’s hardly intuitive.

If you have your network printer already set up but just need to change its IP address, I covered that here. If you want to share a locally attached printer with other computers on your network, you can do that too.

Printing straight to the TCP/IP address of the printer is convenient. It means you don’t have to have another computer powered up when you want to print.

Why you need to be planning for Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows January 26, 2015January 25, 20151990s, Technical Preview, vista, Windows 10, windows 7, windows 8

A longtime friend asked me at church on Sunday about Windows 10. My answer was fairly succinct: Windows 7 has five years left in it, so we’ll probably all end up running it at some point.

Microsoft made a number of announcements last week, so here’s what you need to know about it.

My seventh 1935 Goudey: Four Beleaguered Braves

Dave Farquhar Baseball January 25, 2015January 12, 2015Babe Ruth, Bill Terry, Boston Braves, Burleigh Grimes, cardinals, Carl Hubbell, Goudey

The fourth and final ’35 I bought (so far I hope) from Dugout in Webster Groves featured four men who had the misfortune of suffering through the entire Boston Braves 1935 season. All are rather obscure and information about of them was difficult to come by.

“I had a Babe Ruth like that,” the owner said as I flipped through his ’35s, picking out the best condition cards from among the duplicates. My ears perked up. “Really?” I said, mishearing the “had.”

“Yeah, that sold fast.”

Disappointment stings. Of course, the guys on this card knew all about that. Read more