Rest in Peace, Mrs. Hill

Dave Farquhar Personal

My first day of high school didn’t go well. I had trouble finding my locker and trouble getting the thing to open, but that was nothing compared to what happened mid-day. I misread my schedule, went to the wrong lunch period, couldn’t find the science wing, and ended up 25 minutes late to Mr. Rusch’s earth science class. Mr. Rusch was understanding but stern. My next class was Mrs. Hill’s freshman English. Our assignment was to write a letter to someone, telling about our first day of high school. Well, I had a story to tell, so I took a pencil to paper and I told it.

“This is good,” she said after she read it. “You’re very good.” And from that day on, Mrs. Hill went out of her way to help me learn how to write. So for four years, I went out of my way to take her classes.

Mrs. Hill died on Wednesday. She retired about a decade ago, but from what I understand, her health really didn’t allow her to enjoy her much-deserved retirement the way she should have. I can only think of two other teachers who ever pushed me like she did.

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Downed by a network cable

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking ,

My web server fell off the network today. I assumed the onboard network card had died, because all the standard troubleshooting got me nowhere. I couldn’t ping it, it couldn’t ping anything else, and ifconfig eth0 showed it was transmitting, but not receiving anything. And restarting all of my network equipment didn’t help.

So I dug around for a network card and struggled to remember how to configure a NIC in Linux, seeing as that’s something I haven’t had to do in six or seven years. But first I hoped I could just plug in a NIC and it would work, like magic. It happens sometimes.

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How to power your computer up from away from home

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, security, Servers and Networking , , , , , , ,

The low-tier, DIY VPN has proven popular. The biggest drawback with its approach has been that it requires you to keep a PC on at home. But if your computer is configured to hibernate after a period of inactivity, or if the power goes out, you’ll have a problem.

If you’re willing to do some work, you can use Wake-on-LAN over any Internet connection to solve that issue and power on the computer at will.
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Tradeoffs at the low end: Cores or Cache?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

I’m looking at building myself a new PC for the first time in years. That’s a little bit of a misnomer though. Today, building a PC can mean bolting as few as two components into a case and connecting four cables. Building PCs in the 1990s was a lot more difficult. I remember in 1994, during one of my first builds, someone walking past in the hall, looking at the mess of cards and cables, and asking, “How do you know which one goes where?”

Today, the assembly is pretty easy. Figuring out what to buy is harder. In 1994, the differences between the various flavors of 386 and 486 chips available was confusing, but it all fit on an index card. Mainly the difference came down to the amount of memory the chip could address (386) and whether it had a math coprocessor (486). Beyond that all you really had to worry about was clock speed. Back then the research took 30 minutes and the system took hours to build.

Today there are two chip manufacturers (down from four) but they both have half a dozen product lines. And nobody really talks about clock speed anymore. That’s fine because clock speed was a crude measure of performance, but is throwing numbers like 560 or 840 or 965 on the chips really any better? Today the research takes hours (if not days) and the system goes together in about 5 minutes. Shake the bag right and it could just come out of the bag fully assembled.
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What I would do to fix Dr. A’s computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Software, Windows , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I left my conversation with Dr. A nearly convinced he doesn’t really need a new computer. The local store is pitching him a new $700 Dell Inspiron with a 1 TB hard drive and 6 GB of RAM and a 17-inch screen. But he could upgrade to a 1 TB hard drive for less than $125. If he doesn’t want to switch to Windows 7, his current Windows XP Professional will only use 4 GB of RAM anyway. Upgrading to 4 GB of RAM will cost less than $40. And looking at the new system, I don’t know that its CPU is all that much more powerful than what he already has.

To me, the clincher was this. I asked myself the question whether, if I were offered a machine exactly like his for $200 or $300, would I buy it. And it was an easy answer. I would.

I haven’t done a thorough analysis of the machine, but I’ve seen enough to have an idea what it needs. Much of it will seem familiar, if you’ve been reading me a long time.
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HP or Dell?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

Dr. A is disenfranchised with his Dell. Seeing it, I understand why. It frequently interrupts his work with Dell-branded system optimization programs that scour his hard drive for shortcuts to fix and other mundane things that only need to be done once a year, if ever. It does no harm–other than interrupting him of course–but who wants an OCD laptop? So he said he’s considering switching to HP. The only problem with that is that if you’re not careful, you can end up with an HP bundled with similar stuff.

So is there a difference? Read more

Questions to ask when buying a computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware ,
Questions to ask when buying a computer

I had a conversation with someone having computer issues, so he’s thinking about buying a new one. He went to my favorite store, but one thing he said got me thinking about questions to ask when buying a computer.

“I’m not convinced all the people there know what they’re talking about,” he said.

Fair enough. And that doesn’t matter when I’m doing the shopping, but not everyone is me. So here’s what you need to know if this isn’t what you do for a living.

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Creative play with boys

Dave Farquhar Parenting , , , , ,

On Saturday morning, my wife went out for a few hours to run errands and left me home with the boys. And when she came home, I was on the living room floor building a garage out of Mega Bloks (an oversized Lego knockoff for toddlers) with them. My oldest is really, really into Cars right now (the Pixar movie, not the New Wave band), and that improvised Mega Blok garage was just about the greatest thing ever–well, maybe just all day, which in a 3-year-old’s mind, might as well be forever.

“I never would have thought to do that with boys,” my wife said.

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