Somewhere, stashed in a corner of the basement or a closet, pretty much anyone who works on computers or even has just owned computers for a long time has a stash of obsolete hardware, stashed for a just-in-case moment.
Coming soon: Affordable LED lighting
Affordable is relative, of course. LED lights are a long way from costing less than CFLs, and of course, the old-fashioned incandescents are still cheaper. But the Ecosmart LED bulb that Home Depot is about to start selling for $20 costs half as much as competing offerings from GE and Philips.
They use 8-9 watts to provide equivalent light to a 40w incandescent, work in dimmers, are made in the USA, and have an estimated life expectancy of 17 years. So I think I could be persuaded to buy a couple.But speaking of CFLs, I’ve been buying them since at least 2003. They get a bit of a bad rap, but in my experience, not all CFLs are created equal. Some of the first CFLs that I installed 7-8 years ago are still working. I’ve had others only last a few months.
I can think of two possible reasons for this. I bought my first bulbs at Home Depot. Later, I switched to buying bulbs at Kmart. The bulbs I was buying at Kmart were considerably less reliable. A couple of years ago I switched to buying bulbs at Costco. Fed up with replacing CFLs, I started writing the date of purchase on the bulbs and saving my receipts at that point. But so far, none of my dated bulbs have burned out.
So I think changing brands can make a difference. If a bulb burns out before its time, buy a different brand next time. And write the installation date on your bulbs so you can be certain the bulb really did burn out before its time. Given the number of fixtures in most homes, it can be difficult to remember exactly when it was you changed a bulb.
The other thing to check is the fixture itself. The base of the bulb contacts a copper tab inside the fixture. Over time, this tab can get mashed down, causing poor contact, which causes arcing and damages the base of the bulb, leading to decreased bulb life. If you want to fix this, cut off power to the outlet from your breaker box or fuse box, remove the bulb, and bend the tab to about a 20-degree angle. Turn the power back on, turn on the light switch, then start twisting the bulb into the socket. Stop turning just as soon as the bulb lights.
The $189 window myth
The other house had problems with its windows. Multiple problems. The inspector recommended not messing around and just replacing all of them. The realtor suggested using “one of those $189 places.” He didn’t recommend a specific one. I ended up learning about the $189 window myth.
Tribute to the Asus SP97-V
In need of an obsolete but reliable PC for a project, I searched a dark corner of my basement, a last stop for castoff PCs before being sent off for recycling. I found one. Predictably, it had an Asus motherboard in it. Specifically, it had an Asus SP97-V in it, a budget Socket 7 board from the late 1990s sporting a SiS chipset with integrated video that worked well with Cyrix and AMD CPUs.
The rise and fall of Shack, and how to fix it
Wired has a nostalgic piece on the not-quite-late, not-quite-great Radio Shack. I think it’s a good article, but it glosses over part of the reason for the store’s decline.
It blames computers.But blaming computers ignores Tandy’s long and successful run in that industry. Most Apple fanatics and other revisionist historians conveniently overlook this, but when Apple launched the Apple II in 1977, Tandy and Commodore were right there with competing offerings. I don’t know about Apple, but Tandy and Commodore were selling their machines faster than they could make them.
How not to succeed in business
So I have this house. Not the house I live in. It was a foreclosure, apparently one the previous owners walked away from about a year before we bought it. So it sat neglected for a year, and most likely, for several years before that.
I got in over my head a little, so I sought some help. Mowing the half acre looked like a smart thing to outsource.My neighbor’s son mows lawns. He mowed mine for the first year I lived here, but he mowed a little too frequently for my tastes, and he charged more than I could afford back then. Rather than call just anyone, it made sense to drop him a line.
He visited the place. I asked for a quote. He said $300.
Yeah, about three times what I expected was the worst case scenario.
I told him I wasn’t looking to have the place landscaped, nor was I looking for a really thorough job. I just wanted the lawn cut. One quick pass with a big mower, make the place look like someone kinda-sorta cares.
He argued with me a little about what needed to be done. I told him, point blank, that I didn’t have $300 to give him. Which was true. Rehab projects have a way of running away with the budget. The trick is to not spend on frivolous things. Like $300 lawn jobs.
He offered to give me a month to pay him.
I suggested a few other things to try to pare back expenses. He wouldn’t budge. He said pretty much anyone else would charge the same thing, and not to let the yard sit much longer because then it would really be out of control.
So I made a phone call, but not to another lawn guy. I called a lawnmower repair guy, to see about getting my piece-of-junk, died-two-cuts-into-its-second-season 6.5 horsepower Toro mower fixed. Fifty bucks plus parts, he said, and he’d have it done in about a week.
Meanwhile, I bought a battery-powered weed trimmer. It was $120, but I didn’t want a gas one, and it would take $100 worth of extension cords to reach back to the house from the far reaches of that yard.
Today I spent four hours out there with the Toro. At times it was overmatched. The guy next door came outside and decided to coach me, offering unsolicited advice to buy a bigger mower, on how tall the grass was, and, finally, how to start my Toro. All with lots of laughs along the way.
"I had it running earlier," I said. "It’s just being cranky."
Turns out the mower doesn’t like being low on fuel. It took a while to remember that, because it’s been a while since I last ran it. When I drove to the gas station, the neighbor went back inside. Thankfully, he stayed there.
For obvious reasons, the mower wasn’t happy chewing on waist-high grass. But it did surprisingly well on some nasty-looking weeds on the other side. And although it took some time, it got the job done, burning less than 2 gallons of gas in the process.
Considering the neighbor’s kid sad he’d have to have two people out there for three hours with his big mowers, four hours working alone isn’t bad at all. Out-of-shape me got it done in just an hour more with a 22-inch mower with 6 1/2 horses on the deck, so I’m not sure what he was going to have his other guy doing, but that’s his business.
So now the job’s done. I’m out four hours and $186, but the grass is cut, and I have a mower that might work another year and a weed trimmer to show for it. It’s all sitting in the garage, ready for next week.
As for the neighbor’s kid, well, I don’t think there’s any reason to call him again. I need people who are willing to work with me. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think if I’m signing the check, I ought to have some say in what work gets done and how it gets done.
What’s wrong with American manufacturing and industry
I read a disheartening story today. It’s the story of an entrepreneur, making models out of his garage and selling them. A competitor took a liking to his models and started selling crude copies of them, made in China. The competitor is so much larger than him, he can’t afford to sue.
There’s something even more sad than this story, however. It was some people’s reaction to it.The whole thing started out as hearsay on a train forum. Someone noticed a striking similarity between two companies’ competing products. Fans of the larger company rushed to its defense, and someone who claimed to know someone came in with claims about the larger company copying the smaller. Eventually the person who designed the originals chimed in and confirmed that yes, the designs were his, right down to the placement of the cracks on the sidewalk being identical.
He went on to say in very human terms who it hurt. He’s a guy in southwestern Missouri who could make more money as a draftsman, making buildings out of his home for the love of making buildings. He sells the design to another small company in Maine who buy materials, produce parts, and assemble them into kits for sale, employing a handful of Americans along the way.
And, if sales deteriorate too far, eventually he may have to go back to work as a draftsman. Which most likely means some other draftsman will be looking for a job.
Buying the crude, cheap Chinese-made knockoffs from the other company hurts the designer. But not only that, it ripples over to the manufacturer/distributor and its suppliers, all of whom are employing Americans who are just trying to earn an honest wage working for small businesses.
But the copies sell for about half the price.
To some of the people hearing this story, the end–half-priced models–entirely justifies the means. The cheap copy is, well, cheaper, and more convenient–requiring less assembly and being easier to find, since the larger competitor sells its products in more stores–so that’s all just fine and dandy. Who gets hurt doesn’t matter as long as the purchaser is happy.
Maybe the guy just likes jerking people’s chain, or maybe he really believes this, but he was painting the people who felt empathy for the designer as the ones with the problem.
Others present an easy solution: Sue. Well, he’s not stupid. One look at his models should tell you that. He looked into that. The problem is that a one-man operation can’t hope to compete with a company that sells $50 million worth of product per year. Imagine what happens if the larger company generates a mere 100 hours’ worth of billable work for the smaller company’s lawyer, at $400 per hour. That’s a $40,000 legal bill. If the kits sell for $75, their wholesale price is less than 25. That means he has to sell 1,600 kits to cover the legal bill. And in the meantime he also has to sell enough kits to pay himself enough to pay his mortgage, utilities, and put food on the table.
If that $40,000 doesn’t sink him, maybe the next 100 hours’ worth of work will. All they have to do is delay the trial long enough to make giving up look like the best and most reasonable alternative. They don’t have to be right, and they don’t have to win. They just have to make sure the other guy runs out of money first.
Now I know the majority of Americans have no interest in wood and tin 1:48 scale models of general stores. But the wonderful thing about American capitalism used to be that someone working out of a garage or spare bedroom could make niche products and sell them to the people who want them without breaking any laws. It’s one of the ways our ancestors got ahead in life.
I’m not sure my son’s generation is going to have those same opportunities. Not when a big company can come steal products from guys like Dale in Carthage, Mo. with no fear of recourse, and self-centered consumers will gladly snap them up, just because they’re cheaper, even if they know they’re buying stolen property.
People can blame Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or NAFTA or unions or any of the other usual scapegoats for being the reason why jobs are hard to find. But none of those guys caused the predicament that Dale in Carthage, Mo. is in.
That’s purely the fault of the people who buy knockoff products, with a narcissistic, end-justifies-the-means attitude, and the people who tolerate it.
But it’s a lot easier to blame the politicians than it is to look in the mirror.
A real world example of TEMPEST
In studying for my CISSP, the topic of TEMPEST came up. TEMPEST is, essentially, interpreting the electromagnetic waves given off by electrical devices to recover the data they contain. This can happen accidentally, or on purpose.
An accidental example of this happened to my neighbors in college.Darren lived directly below me. Scott lived across the hall. Darren had a cheap, no-name 486SX clone, and he lived on it. Problem was, it interfered with Scott’s TV.
One night, Scott got fed up with it and called Darren on the phone. "Get off your computer," he said.
"Can’t. I’m doing my homework."
"No you’re not, you’re playing Solitaire. Cut it out so I can watch TV."
Not only was Darren’s computer interfering with Scott’s TV, but Scott could see what Darren was doing. Not plain as day, but close enough.
The next semester, Darren traded his PC in for a slightly faster Dell, and Darren’s Dell got along just fine with Scott’s TV.
Extreme examples like this are rare, but possible. Even today.
How to buy a laser printer
I had to buy a laser printer in a hurry over the weekend. I bought a Samsung ML-2525, which I believe to be a reasonable choice, but not necessarily the best choice I could have made. It’s tiny, whisper quiet, and very fast, and it was on sale for 70 bucks, though sometimes you can get one for as little as $59. At that price, it’s hard for buying it to be a terrible decision.
Please note that this advice is for home and light small-business use. For business use, scroll to the end.
Twice-monthly mortgage payment alternatives
The debate whether making a twice-monthly mortgage payment saves money is making the rounds on some popular blogs right now. The idea is paying your mortgage every two weeks rather than every month in order to save money. Whether this trick works depends on several things, but the most important part is that you shouldn’t pay a penny extra for this service. You should also consider twice-monthly mortgage payment alternatives.