Words of wisdom from an unexpected source

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

I read something this past week that made me both hopeful and very sad all at once. The guy who said it is right. I won’t say his name, because in these toxic times, a person’s reputation can often get in the way of anything else they have to say.

[L]et’s model for the country something that the country desperately needs: people who have different ideas coming together, and in a civil way, discussing those differences.

That, more than anything, is what’s missing in Washington, what’s missing on Facebook, what’s missing on Main Street, and what’s missing on television, especially on the cable news stations and on Sunday morning talk shows. Read more

Check your smoke detectors, please. And make sure you have more than one.

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

Early Monday morning, a fire broke out a couple of streets over from me. Sadly, there was one casualty, a seven-year-old second grader who attends the same school as my oldest son. His older sister heroically came and got him and tried to lead him out the front door, but they became separated and he lost his way.

The paper noted that there have been a large number of fires with fatalities in my area in this past year. It did not speculate on the reasons, but I think I know why.

I think inadequate smoke detectors have a lot to do with it. Read more

The limit to how far you can go should be how hard you try, not where you came from

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

We took the boys to Springfield, Ill., this past weekend, mostly to go to children’s museums, but we also wanted to take them to Abraham Lincoln’s home. Lincoln’s home, and most of the homes on the block, are preserved and look today much like they looked in 1860, when Lincoln moved out.

We toured the home, and the tour guide left us with some important words that I hope will sink in with the boys. But one person on the tour asked more questions than anyone else. That person would be my oldest son. Read more

Forget the word “should.”

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , ,

After talking with another former classmate/newsroom-mate, I wanted to bring out the highlight from yesterday. I’m not saying this would have saved Brian, but it was life-changing for me, and I’d say there’s probably a 10% chance it can be life-changing for you, too. If you’re one of the 90%, it’s more likely to be merely helpful.

The problem is the word “should.” And while I generally think striking words from the English language is a bad idea because language control is thought control, this is one instance where I don’t think thought control is a bad thing. “Should” is a club that we use to beat ourselves up with far too often. Read more

Just reach for it.

Dave Farquhar Personal , ,

I lost a college classmate this week.

We weren’t close, so I didn’t take it as hard as some of our newsroom-mates undoubtedly did. But at the very least, as a human being with a soul and with two kids, I feel bad for the wife and two kids he left behind. It shook me up enough that a couple of my coworkers asked me Wednesday morning what was going on. I told them.

“Don’t try to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense,” the smartest guy in the room said. Read more

A new Hisense Sero 7 Pro ROM

Dave Farquhar Android ,

I’ll get back to the Android questions momentarily, but here’s an interesting development: randomblame on XDA-Developers has managed to develop a working Jelly Bean 4.3 ROM called Jelly Time for the Sero 7 Pro, even without kernel source.

As one would expect, the workarounds are causing some issues, but even with the limitations he’s working with, the reports have been very good. I’ll be trying it out on my Sero 7 Pro as soon as I have a bit more time.

Smartphones and tablets… What’s the point?

Dave Farquhar Android , , , , ,

A longtime reader who asked to be anonymous got his first tablet and smartphone a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed, to say the least. “What’s the point?” he asked me privately.

To be honest, I understand. I got my first tablet a couple of years ago–a Nook Color that I loaded Cyanogenmod on. And, to be honest, once the thrill of hacking an e-reader into a full-blown tablet with no restrictions on it wore off, I didn’t do a lot with it. When I thought of it, I would check the weather on it when I was getting ready in the morning, and maybe glance at my e-mail with it, but mostly it sat on my end table. I probably used it 15 minutes a week.

Read more

Tweaking the Android I/O scheduler

Dave Farquhar Android , ,

On my Nook Color running Cyanogenmod, inside Settings, Performance, there’s a mysterious setting called I/O Scheduler. Storage performance (I guess I can’t call it disk performance anymore) is critical to overall system performance, but it’s also easy to get wrong. I assumed the default setting, something called cfq, was optimal.

I was wrong. Let’s explain why.

Read more

Clean up after Windows Update

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

Thanks to a new tool that Microsoft pushed out in 2013, it’s very easy to clean up after Windows Update and free up a bunch of disk space.

In 2013, Microsoft released a new Disk Cleanup tool. Click your start button and type “Disk Cleanup” to launch it. If you see a new option called “Clean Up System files,” you got the update. If you don’t see it, visit this page (Internet Explorer-only, unfortunately) to grab it. Read more