Albert Pujols, mercenary

Dave Farquhar Baseball, St. Louis , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m a Royals fan living in St. Louis, so my perspective on Albert Pujols has always been that he’s the one who got away. He went to high school and college in Kansas City, but somehow Royals scouts overlooked him. The Cardinals signed him, and he became a once-in-a-generation player. Even if he never plays another game in the majors, he’s a lock for the Hall of Fame.

Fans loved him, because, well, who doesn’t like a guy who hits .299 with 37 home runs and 99 RBIs in the worst year of his career? He’s always been detached and distant, but St. Louisans will forgive that for wins and numbers. He talked about being a Cardinal for life, but then St. Louis woke up on Thursday morning, drove to work, and found out on the rush-hour radio that he was gone, signed to the Los Angeles California Angels of Anaheim, the Tikki Tikki Tembo Nosa Rembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Pen Pembo of baseball.

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I could ping my router, but not the rest of my network

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , ,

I don’t know what happened, but my Ubuntu Linux server crashed hard the other night. And when I brought it back, the rest of the network couldn’t see it. I could ping my gateway (router), and the server was pulling an IP address over DHCP, and the rest of the world had connectivity to it, but I couldn’t ping anything else on the network. And my Windows machines couldn’t connect to it.

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I need a hair dryer, some nail polish, and two clothespins

Dave Farquhar security , ,
I need a hair dryer, some nail polish, and two clothespins

At least it looked like a clean break.

I commonly run errands mid-evening because strapping my two kids into seat belts is a good way to keep them from tripping over their own shadows and hurting themselves. So we did that one night, and when we got home, my wife logged onto Facebook, where a picture of my sister’s USB flash drive greeted her. It was in pieces.

“Have her call me,” I said.

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2011 retail tinplate finds, at Big Lots and Shack

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you’re a tinplate fan like me, it would behoove you to make a trip to Big Lots sometime this week. Big Lots has a selection of building-shaped cookie tins priced at $5 each. The buildings include a town hall, post office, bakery, and general store. Additionally, my old friend Radio Shack is selling a building tin full of AA and AAA batteries for $10 until December 10 (it’ll be $20 after that).
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No, purchaser reviews on online web sites aren’t worthless

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

A magazine editor whose name I dare not mention pontificated this weekend that it’s never worth reading reviews on web sites like Amazon.

I expect more from someone with that job title–better writing and better thinking. There are times for words like always and never, but this certainly isn’t one of them. The reviews certainly have their uses. The trick is knowing how to read them.

Here’s how to wade through the muck, find good reviews, and use those reviews to find good products.

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How to wire LEDs and other circuits risk-free

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,
How to wire LEDs and other circuits risk-free

I see a lot of questions about how to wire up circuits, and unfortunately when people ask these questions on train forums, those innocent questions often devolve into heated and unproductive discussions focused on the math and physics involved, or other creative things that overcomplicate the project, and it scares off a number of people, often including the person who asked the question.

Usually what the person asking the question really wants is to not spend a whole Saturday soldering a circuit together, only to find out in the end that it doesn’t work.

So I’ll attack that issue. Here’s how to stage a circuit, find out in a matter of minutes whether it will work, and delay the soldering until you have something promising.
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What do you have against Frank White, Mr. Glass?

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

The Kansas City Royals didn’t exactly fire Frank White this week. They just dumped him like last week’s garbage.

And that’s a completely classless act, given Frank White’s history with the franchise. Frank White literally helped build Royals Stadium–now Kauffman Stadium. He worked on the stadium construction crew as a teenager. He went to the Royals baseball academy, worked through the Royals’ minor league system in three years, then played 17 years for the Royals at second base, winning 8 gold gloves, appearing in five All-Star games, and hitting cleanup in the 1985 World Series. He did everything the team ever asked of him, and he did it well. After his playing days were done, he came back to the Royals in 1997, where he’s done various jobs but has rarely been appreciated.

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Balancing safety and versatility

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

John C Dvorak has a very simple solution to the HP printing problem. Lock down the firmware so it’s not upgradeable. And while we’re at it, do the same thing to routers and other equipment.

This solves the problem of loading rogue firmware on the devices, but there are several problems with such a draconian approach.
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