Set up your retirement account. Just do it. Then forget it.

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , ,

My new mortgage company wants to see the balance of my 401(K) account. That turned out to be a bit of a problem, but for the right reasons.

You see, I might or might not get 401(K) statements. I don’t look at them. Sometimes I save them. Usually I don’t. So I hadn’t looked at my 401(K) balance in years, and I really only had a vague idea what was in it. I knew there ought to be enough to make the lender happy.

What I found when I finally got my hands on a statement shows why part of my strategy is to never look at the account. Read more

This one hurts.

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I tried to write the day it happened. I couldn’t write anything that made any sense. Mostly I sat and stared. I told myself when the Royals made the Wild Card, I’d be happy with whatever happened, because it was postseason baseball for the first time in 29 years.

But as they kept hanging on and steamrolling opponents, I got greedy. And it’s hard to feel guilty for getting greedy. Because I don’t know when this will happen again. Read more

FTDI needs to be charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

FTDI is a company that makes computer chips for USB peripherals. Their chips are frequently cloned, which is an issue they have a right to deal with. But they have to be careful.

Breaking suspected cloned chips that consumers bought in good faith is the wrong answer. If I did that, it would be called hacking, and I would be sitting in jail right now, and probably would be facing a quarter-century in prison. Read more

An approach for helping demanding people

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I found myself in a conversation this past weekend about demanding people–specifically, people who every time you hear from them have a litany of 10 complaints.

At that point the conversation took a U-turn. “Yeah, how do you deal with people like that?”

About three years ago I met someone who was really good at that, and fortunately I was in a good position to watch him work and he didn’t mind. I’m still not as good at it as he is, but few people are, and we would all do well to try to be better at it.

Read more

Don’t buy a “desktop replacement” laptop

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Saving money , , , , , , ,

I found this oldie but goodie Lifehacker article: When two computers are cheaper than one. It advocates buying a cheap laptop and building a desktop PC to meet your computing needs.

I think it makes a lot of sense. A few weeks ago, a coworker asked me what the most I would be willing to pay for a laptop. I hesitated, thought for a while, and said you might be able to convince me to spend $600. “Wow,” he said. “I’m considering a $3,500 laptop.”

I wouldn’t. Read more

Defusing in person

Dave Farquhar security , ,

My name, and my department’s name in general, gets thrown around a lot at work. We have a bit of a reputation as the can’t-do guys.

Professionalism dictates I not go into specifics about what kinds of things we reject or disapprove, but if I were to explain them, no security professional would disagree with me.

The other side of the argument, of course, is that the system still does its job the way it’s supposed to do and the system cost a lot of money. Here’s a story of a tense situation and how we were able to come to an understanding. Read more