Looking back at Sam Posey’s Playing With Trains

Dave Farquhar model railroading, Toy trains , , , ,

I finally got around to reading Playing With Trains (here’s a Nook link), sportscaster Sam Posey’s 2004 memoir of 50 years as a model railroader.

Of course I was mostly interested in the first couple of chapters, where he talks about growing up with Lionel trains. It’s more a personal recollection than a complete history, which was his intent, but that’s good. The history of the consumer perspective often gets lost. He and his mother regarded American Flyer as more realistic but flimsier; Lionel was rugged but ran on unrealistic 3-rail track.

Here’s another interesting tidbit: Growing up in the 1950s, your big toy was either a train set or a fort playset–normal families couldn’t afford both. I was vaguely aware that the fort playsets existed but didn’t know that about them. Read more

More details on the Target hack come to light

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

Yesterday I read that the Target malware resided on cash registers (which I’d heard elsewhere before), and that the first step to getting there was via a compromised web server.

And that led to a question in the comments, that sounds like it came from an IT professional:

don’t they have their network segregated into zones!!!? It shouldn’t be possible for a web server to touch a POS system in a store….

The commenter right, it shouldn’t be. But it doesn’t need to be, either. Read more

How to increase the capacity of a Log Logic appliance by 45%

Dave Farquhar security, Software , ,

My 9-5 gig revolves primarily around Tibco LogLogic (I’ll write it as Log Logic going forward, as I write in English, not C++), which is a centralized logging product. The appliances collect logs from a variety of dissimilar systems and present you with a unified, web-based interface to search them. When something goes wrong, having all of the logs in one place is invaluable for figuring it out.

That value comes at a price. I don’t know exactly what these appliances cost, but generally speaking, $100,000 is a good starting point for an estimate. So what if I told you that you could store 45% more data on these expensive appliances, and increase their performance very modestly (2-5 percent) in the process? Read on.

Read more

The new trend in monitors

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Although interest in 4K television is understandably lukewarm at best–high definition only arrived about 15 years ago, the standard it replaced lasted half a century, few people are itching to replace the sets they’ve bought in the last decade when they still work, and there’s precious little 4K content–39-inch 4K televisions are proving to be popular.

But they aren’t going in living rooms. They’re going on desks, connected to computers.

Read more

Why the Target data breach news keeps getting worse, and what you need to do

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , ,

As you probably know, last year some still-unknown criminals stole a whole bunch of credit and debit card data from Target. And the story keeps changing. First there weren’t any PINs. Then they got the PINs, but no personally identifiable data. Well, the latest news indicates they got credit card numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and for a whole lot more people, and probably from a longer length of time than just late November to mid-December.

There are a few things you ought to do if you shop at Target, which many people do. Read more

Allstate electric train sets by Marx for Sears

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Allstate electric train sets by Marx for Sears

In the 1950s and 1960s, it was possible to walk into Sears and see Allstate electric train sets on the same shelf as Lionel and American Flyer. These trains are still somewhat common today. That leads to some further questions. For a number of years, Marx made train sets for Sears and put the Allstate brand on them.

In the 1950s and 60s, Sears owned the Allstate insurance company and therefore the Allstate trademark. Sears had Marx put the Allstate brand on train sets that were exclusive to Sears, which they sold alongside Lionel and American Flyer electric trains.

Read more

What your health insurance company doesn’t want you to know

Dave Farquhar Health , , ,

My wife is a Type 1 diabetic. She’s the type of person insurance companies go out of their way to deny coverage for, and while I suppose I can say I’m used to them not covering her without a fight, I’m not exactly good at fighting the system. What I’ve learned the hard way is that you need to make sure, every time you change health insurance, that you have at least 12 months’ worth of certificates of creditable coverage. And don’t expect them to tell you this.

You see, the more you don’t know, the more they can deny coverage and rake in profits. Health insurance isn’t about health, you see. It’s all about profits. Read more