David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Lifehacker posted a controversial computer manufacturer ranking this week. I’m not sure how you can rank anything with Apple, HP, and Dell in it and not be controversial–someone’s going to be offended that their favorite isn’t at the top and their least favorite isn’t dead last–and while I agree with it more than I disagree with it, there are at least three problems with it.
So, let’s go. Read more
A friend asked me a favor in church one Sunday: He had a computer he wanted to clean off so he could donate it, but since it had financial data on it, he wanted to make sure it was cleaned up securely. I recommended Darik’s Boot and Nuke, which I’ve recommended before, but he wasn’t able to get it working for whatever reason. So he asked if I would clean it if he dropped it off. I agreed.
Rather than burn a DBAN disc, I just took the hard drive out and put it in a Linux box and wiped it with that. It was easier than trying to find a blank CD.
I spied a 3-pack of LED globe bulbs at Costco last week, priced at $20. This is a ridiculously good price on LED globe bulbs–typically I see them at $15 apiece at the home improvement stores. After verifying that, I picked up a package to try out on my next Costco run. While they aren’t the best LED bulbs I’ve seen, they’re easily the best deal I’ve seen on LED globes, and I’ll be buying more of them. Read more
In church this morning, the woman sitting behind me told me she was having a nerve issue that was affecting her hearing. She was the second person this month to come to me with a nerve issue, so I wanted to relate how I treated my own nerve issues in the past (which saved me a surgery and saved my career).
First, a disclaimer: I am not a doctor. If any of this makes you nervous, talk this over with your doctor. At least in my town, there are a ton of people peddling snake-oil remedies at inflated prices and, essentially, practicing medicine without a license. Doctors go to school for seven years for a reason, so if you have an issue, talk to your doctor about it. Let the doctor know you want to try this out with vitamins too. Talk to your doctor and your pharmacist about any possible interactions between this and whatever other treatments you are doing. Interactions are unlikely, but they went to school for this stuff, so take their word for it over mine.
Are we good? Good. Let’s talk vitamins.
I’ve advocated voltmeters on train layouts before, but I realized something, after checking out a new-to-me Lionel KW transformer: It’s very easy for a vintage transformer to deliver more voltage than you intend, and through no fault of its own.
The “problem” is that transformers step the voltage down on a percentage basis. In the 1950s when they were designed, household voltage was 110 volts. So a transformer designed to deliver a maximum of 20 volts stepped down to 20 from 110. Today, however, it’s not uncommon for the voltage at the outlet to be 115, 120, or even 125 volts. So that maximum throttle of 20 volts is now closer to 22 volts in this day and age, because you can safely assume the source voltage is 10% higher. And the voltage markers on your transformer, which never were all that accurate to begin with, will be even less accurate.
Most postwar Lionel trains are designed to run at 18-20 volts, so if you turn the throttle to the max, you’ll probably overvolt them. The situation gets worse with other makes of trains.
Marx and American Flyer trains run fine off a Lionel transformer, except that they’re designed for a maximum of around 14 volts. So it’s very easy to unintentionally overvolt those trains to 22 volts if you turn a Lionel transformer to the max. They’ll run, but they’ll soon overheat and the windings on the motor armature will burn and short out.
While one venue I won’t mention by name might advocate only using modern transformers, a more practical and sensible approach is to add a $6 AC voltmeter to your setup, to make sure you’re never delivering more than 14 volts to your trains. While you’re at it, you might add a similarly priced AC ammeter to make sure you’re not overloading your transformer either. See my earlier post for instructions on wiring them in.
I mentioned the Yubikey as the ultimate solution stolen passwords on the excellent Yahoo Marx Train forum, and another member asked me to elaborate on it. Rather than take up a lot of space with some off-topic discussion, I decided it would be better to write about it here.
The Yubikey is a great idea, but I have reasons for using something else. I am a computer security professional by trade, but I will try to avoid as much techno-jargon as I can, and explain what I do use.
If you’re a charity still running Windows XP, hopefully you’re spooked about Microsoft pulling the plug on XP in April 2014. If you aren’t, get spooked, because you’ll be sitting on a major security vulnerability.
The question is what to do. You do have a few options.
By reader request, I’m going to grab onto the third rail and talk about the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare/healthcare.gov website fiasco.
As someone who has been involved in a large number of IT projects, inside and outside the government, successful and failed, I can speak to that. I know the burning question in everyone’s mind is how can three guys banging away at a keyboard for three days build a better web site than the United States Government?
The snarky answer is that the best projects I’ve ever worked on have been when someone asked for something, then one or two other guys sat down with me and we banged away at a keyboard for a little while and didn’t tell anyone what we were doing until we were done.
But it’s probably more complicated than that. Read more
An IT pro I went to high school with–he was a year or two ahead of me, so we weren’t quite classmates–got a layoff letter this past week, along with the rest of his department. It was a large, successful company making purely a financial decision to offshore a bunch of jobs, and unfortunately he got caught in the crossfire. It reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, so now’s as good of a time as any.
The details about his layoff and my layoffs are unimportant. What’s more important is what to do next. There are definitely things I know now that I wish I’d known years ago, so I’ll share them now.