David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
So you’ve got WinZIP installed and have to upgrade it for security reasons. Like a good compliance-minded sysadmin, you run the patch, and the installation fails. You get the error message that wkqkpick.exe is in use.
Since you’re smarter than the computer, you fire up Task Manager to go show wkqkpick.exe who’s boss, only the operating system tells you Access Denied. Now what?
So, I got my hands on a working Nintendo NES and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out cartridge. I used to play that game at my cousin’s, about 20 years ago. It’s addictive.I think the nice thing about this game (and a lot of the older games) is that they’re easy to learn, and they’re challenging, but if you look closely enough there’s a definite pattern, so you can learn to play the game well and win.
I can’t remember exactly how far I used to be able to get in this game, but this time around I had a whole lot of trouble with Soda Popinski. Most of the advanced boxers have one big weakness and it’s the key to beating them. Soda Popinski doesn’t have one. What I figured out is that he’s predictable, and he’s fairly slow. So you beat him by anticipating and dodging his punches, throwing a whole bunch of punches yourself whenever you get the opening, and not worrying if it takes three rounds to get a KO or TKO.
Now if I can just get my timing right to beat Bald Bull in the next match…
When I read more about the perpetrator of the massacre at Virginia Tech, I thought the same things I remember thinking about Columbine. And I wasn’t the only one with those thoughts. After Columbine, I was corresponding with one of my best friends from college, and she said the descriptions of those two guys really reminded her of me.
So the question then, as now, is, why am I a reasonably productive member of society while other people like me kill dozens of people?Bullying.I certainly got bullied a lot growing up. In the sixth grade, I had no consistent friends, and by seventh grade, I had no friends at all. People would talk to me when I knew something they needed to know, but aside from that, they threw stuff at me, or tried to break my leg. We moved to St. Louis the year after that, and I counted down every single day.
I got bullied in St. Louis too, but at least I had some friends.
What happened? For one thing, by the time I was 18, I knew none of the people who gave me trouble, including the kid in Farmington who made my life pure hell, managed to finish high school. Now, I know some very intelligent people who didn’t finish high school either, and I mean no disrespect to them, but I did take a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing something they didn’t. Not having to work all that hard at it gave me even more satisfaction.
I guess the difference for me was that I had a number of adults tell me from a very young age that I could accomplish a lot. So I didn’t just believe I’d accomplish more than those (insert family-inappropriate noun, plural, here). I knew I would. And that was enough to satisfy me. There wasn’t any need to spill blood.
It’s been years since I heard anything about any of them. The last I heard, the crowning achievement for one of them was holding down a job at a sandwich shop. Astounding. Probably my tax dollars are helping to support the others, if they’re even still alive.
One thing I learned as an adult is that there’s no need to take vengeance on people like them. They’ll do far, far worse things to themselves than the worst thing you could do to them.
Depression and mood swings. In college, I’m not sure that I was known for much of anything else. I was never diagnosed with anything, and I’ve had my moments in the years since, but my struggles have never prevented me from doing the things I need to do in order to survive.
The difference? Mainly, I got help when I needed it. A counselor’s outside perspective is a wonderful thing. And at the end of a particularly nasty breakup right after college, I attended an experimental group therapy that really helped. In a nutshell, it used secret society tactics to break you down and get you to admit who you really are underneath all that stuff the world piles on you. The theory is that if you get rid of all those masks and be authentic, you’ll function better, and people in general will like you a lot better too.
Also, I really think proper nutrition helps. I think things are worse now than they were 20 years ago, which frightens me, but we eat a lot worse now than we did even 20 years ago. Hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup are evil, evil things, and it’s amazing what a difference eliminating those from your diet will do. There are lots of good books out there, and used copies are cheap. Familiarize yourself with the writings of Dr. Mark Hyman, for starters. Used copies of his books sell for less than $5 online now. They’d be a bargain at $100.
Trouble with women. I could so be a poster child for this one. If you’re reading this because you’re frustrated with the world partly because you have difficulty starting relationships with women, or all your relationships go south really fast, I have two bits of news for you. First, you’re not alone–I’ve never heard a story from anyone else that I couldn’t top. I was the worst of the worst. Second, it doesn’t last forever. I’m married now, and happily at that.
There’s a lot to say about women, but there are probably four things that matter.
1. Think long-term. It’s morbid, but the answer to this question is very important. If something happened to you in 10 years, do you trust this woman to raise your kids right, and does she have the ability to see to it that all their needs are met? I’ve only met one woman, ever, who wasn’t related to me who passed this test. I married her.
2. Stay grounded. Often I found myself imagining the things I didn’t know about a woman I was chasing. It was easy to get caught up in that and not realize that it was that image I was infatuated with, not the person. Don’t invest a thing emotionally in someone until you know an awful, awful lot about her. Otherwise, she’ll just disappoint you.
3. Be nice. Most guys aren’t nice to women. I don’t think I met any women who really valued that until I was pushing 30, but being nice to women will eventually pay off, so it pays to start this minute. You’ll need practice.
4. Mostly, women want to talk. I think this is the big secret that I didn’t learn until I was in my late 20s. Be pleasant to talk to, and let them do most of the talking. You’ll know when they want you to talk (they’ll tell you). Listen at least twice as much as you talk. Getting them to talk is the hard part, but there’s a book about that. Go to the library and at least thumb through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a classic. It’s not specifically about women but it will help in that and every other relationship. I wish I’d known about that book when I was, say, 14.
Right and wrong. I’ve always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and I get infuriated when I see people do wrong. That cost me my job a couple of years ago, but it could be worse. There could be blood on my hands.
I’m 32, which isn’t terribly old but it’s given me plenty of time to watch people ruin their lives. I’ve certainly wanted revenge plenty of times, but the people I’ve wanted revenge on always manage to do worse things to themselves than anything I could have ever done to them. Remember, stupidity is a talent, and I’m sure the stupid people in your life have lots of it, just like the stupid people in mine. Just stay away from them and let them ruin their lives. They don’t need your help.
Jealousy of wealth. I hate seeing people flash wealth too, especially when that wealth was either handed to them, or acquired dishonestly.
All I can say is that for all the rhetoric that’s out there, the United States does still have lots of opportunity for people. There’s a very simple formula for getting rich, if you want to know it. Go to the library and pick up The Millionaire Next Door. If you can hold down a job, you can get wealthy and stay wealthy in this country.
The tougher half of the equation is finding something that you enjoy doing. Find something that interests you and doesn’t seem like work, then find a career that fits that. Talk it over with your guidance counselors. That’s their job.
Planning. In both cases, the perpetrators have been very good, or at least meticulous, planners. Planners have a huge advantage over the rest of the population, because they can imagine something, and they can figure out how to make that happen. I dated a girl once who had one dream in life–to join the Air Force–and due to health problems she couldn’t get in. She had no direction and no idea what she wanted to do with her life after that. It’s pretty sad.
So if you can plan something and it sounds reasonable in your mind, you might as well make it something positive. It’s cliche, I know, but with enough patience and determination, it’s possible to turn almost anything you can envision into reality.
I published a book before my 25th birthday. It was something I’d wanted to do since I was in second grade. Of course when I was in second grade I had no idea what I wanted to write about. But as I got older I learned the things that I needed to do to make it happen. Along the way I wrote a few things that I thought might be it and turned out not to be, but I didn’t let myself get discouraged. When the right opportunity presented itself soon after I turned 24, I recognized it and I took it. About a year later, I walked into a large bookstore and saw a book with my name on the spine sitting on the shelf.
If that sounds like something you would like, you can do it too. Or maybe you’d rather do something else, like design a practical electric car. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you enjoy doing it and it helps someone.
This isn’t terribly organized or coherent, and it’s getting really late. But if this helps someone, then it was worth it.
Sometimes a real gem turns up on Digg. Like the Calvin and Hobbes search engine. Remember the punch line from a priceless strip, but don’t remember much else? Key it in, and it’ll find the strip for you and tell you when it was published.
I found most of my favorites by searching for “aiee!”
I sure hope bringing attention to it doesn’t make it go away…
So yesterday I was in the Clayton/Ladue area. I had someplace I needed to be at 8, and then again at 8:45. So I went looking for someplace to get a cup of coffee and something to eat.There’s no shortage of coffee shops in Clayton, but most of them looked expensive–and not only that, you also have to pay to park, and the cost of parking in Clayton is pretty close to what I was looking to pay for the cup of coffee.
Finally, on the outskirts of Clayton, I found a plaza. I saw a sign that said "Three Dog Bakery." That sounded promising. I pulled in. I quickly noticed a sign that said "Please, no food or drinks." No food or drinks in a bakery? That’s like a "No firearms allowed" sign on a gun shop.
I looked at the storefront again, and I realized this wasn’t the kind of bakery I was looking for. This particular establishment sold gourmet dog biscuits.
I had strayed pretty far out of my element.
A little further down, I found a grocery store. I got an 89-cent cup of coffee there.
Everyone and his uncle is writing about Kurt Vonnegut today, I’m sure. I have to admit I wasn’t a Vonnegut fanboy by any stretch, but I had a great deal of respect for him. I always thought he was the best writer alive during my lifetime.I know I’ve read a few of his short stories from time to time. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five (which is probably something everyone in Washington D.C. ought to read–I think we’d be better for it as a nation) but I should. It’s a common book, so the next time I see a used copy, I’ll buy it and read it. That could be Saturday for all I know.
But a Vonnegut essay did have a profound effect on me. I first read it at 18. It was a short, probably 400-word essay titled How to write with style, written for a paper company as a promotional piece. Go read it.
My favorite passages:
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
Had I heeded this advice at 21, there’s no telling how many things I would have published by now.
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Don’t visit dictionary.com and try to work the word of the day for the last week or so into what you’re writing, in other words. (Yes, some people do that to try to make themselves sound smarter than they are–including people who should know better.)
The writing style which is most natural to you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child… I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench… I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.
I was going to say it’s steel that’s galvanized, not tin, but technicalities aside, everyone else’s opinion of his own sound was much better than his own. There’s another lesson here: If you find yourself enjoying your own writing too much, your ego is too big.
I just have one other thing to add. Vonnegut hated developing new characters. If you’re an aspiring fiction writer, a way to get around this weakness if you have it (I do) is to keep elements of the story on notes on index cards rather than sitting down and writing furiously, which is my natural inclination and I’m sure I’m not the only one like that. The two most important elements of a story are plot and characters, and it’s the characters that make it interesting. Start with a few lines out of a psychology book that seem to describe someone you used to know, then flesh in some details. Imagine how those people would interact with the other people you’re creating, and the world in which you’re placing them.
And so it goes…
My wife and I tried someplace different for dinner tonight. Cafe Manhattan has been near the intersection of Lindbergh and Tesson Ferry since 1989–longer than I’ve been driving. And since it’s just a couple of miles away from where I went to high school, where I live, and where I worked for seven years, I’ve driven past it a lot.
Big mistake. But it’s going to be in heavy rotation from now on.In 2006, Cafe Manhattan got the RFT award for best milkshake in St. Louis. So I had to try it. It’s done up the old fashioned way, and you get the metal cup, and I’ll admit it’s awfully good. I’ll put it ahead of local favorite Oberweis, but it’s not quite up to par with Crown Candy Kitchen. Of course for me it’s also a much shorter drive.
The other reviews suggested to me that Cafe Manhattan is a greasy spoon, but that’s not really a fair label. Not everything is deep-fried or grill-fried, and there’s a very surprisingly large number of vegetarian dishes on the menu. I wouldn’t call it a health food place, but if you want a place to eat and there are vegetarians in your party, this place is a winner.
The menu claims the hamburger is the best in St. Louis, so of course I had to take up that challenge. It was very good, but I think the burgers at Concord Grill, a couple of blocks away, are better. Let it be known, however, that regardless of Citysearch’s claim that Hardee’s makes the best burger in St. Louis, that Cafe Manhattan’s burger is much better.
My wife had something called a Liberty Melt, which was a bunch of veggies on whole wheat bread with some type of Wisconsin cheese on it. Not my thing, but she loved it. She’s a vegetarian now, which can make going out a little difficult sometimes, but she changed her mind about four times about what to get before settling on this one. She wasn’t disappointed.
The service was excellent. The place was packed, and yet everything arrived quickly. The meal probably arrived 10 minutes after we placed our order–faster than some fast-food restaurants. The staff was attentive and courteous and kept our glasses full.
And I almost forgot the atmosphere. The building it’s in used to be a Naugel’s–one of many local Mexican fast-food chains that have come and gone–but they’ve done a lot with it. The interior has classic diner floor tile and tables, and there’s a jukebox in the corner. But along the ceiling there’s a shelf that runs the perimeter of the dining room stuffed full of Americana–old soda bottles, signs, toys, and other neat things. Lots of casual dining chains try for that look, but Cafe Manhattan does it better.
As far as having the best milkshake, best burger, best pizza, or anything else, if you’re willing to look, you’ll find one or two places that are a little bit better at each of those things. But I doubt you’ll find anyplace that does all of it better.
And while the place was busy, this was a Saturday night. Had we gone to O’Charley’s or Friday’s or Applebee’s at that time, we would have had to wait. We didn’t have to wait and we got better food.
Now I know what I was missing when I drove past those hundreds–if not thousands–of times. We’ll be back soon.
Most traditional toy train layouts feature painted scenery: After plopping the 4×8 sheets down on some 2x4s to make a table, the hobbyist grabs a brush and some dark gray and green paint and paints roads and grass on the board.
If you want something that looks a little better than that but doesn’t take a lot of time, here’s my method, which takes 2-3 hours to complete.This method works well for traditional toy train layouts and for wargaming scenery, where ultrarealism isn’t paramount. You can also mix the method with modern model railroading methods if you wish, if you’re modeling flat land or flat areas.
First, buy enough 1/8 inch 4×8 hardboard sheets to cover your area. If you go to Lowe’s and ask for Masonite, you’ll get what you want. If you go to Home Depot, you’ll have to ask for hardboard (Masonite is a brand name, and Home Depot doesn’t carry it). A lumberyard should also have what you need, if there’s one near you that the big-box home improvement stores haven’t run out of business. When I bought mine, a 4×8 sheet cost about $6, so this project costs a lot less than those Life-Like grass mats that some people use. And unlike those mats, these don’t shed.
I had the boards cut into smaller boards ranging in size from 1×2 to 4×2. I can then arrange the boards on my tables, leaving six inches between them for roads, and then I have curbs and stuff on my layout. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I took the boards outside and painted them. Don’t worry if you’re a horrible painter; you don’t have to be any good to use this method. I used random spray paints (whatever I had) of various shades of green, yellow, and brown. The greens I had on hand had names like Hunter Green, Forest Green, and Meadow Green. All of these came from garage sales and estate sales so they cost me very little (25 cents per can, usually). Cheap spray paints from Dollar General and other private-label brands are just fine for this project if you don’t have it on hand or you don’t make a habit of visiting every single garage sale in your neighborhood every Saturday like I do.
Here’s an unpainted board.
Next, take a shade of green and spray it. Don’t go for total coverage. Don’t think of it as painting the board; just try to stain it.
Here’s a board with one coat of green on it.
Now spray a different shade of green on it. Again, don’t go for total coverage. You’re making the green look less uniform and more random. But leave a little brown still showing.
Now dust some yellow and/or brown over the board. Basically spray the yellow above the board and let droplets fall where they may. This breaks up the monotony a bit and gives the illusion of texture. As you can see, my yard isn’t a uniform shade of green either, especially not in March.
And here’s a closeup of what a board will look like when finished.
Let the boards dry out in the sun for a few hours, then you can take them inside and use them.
This method is similar to what British train manufacturer Hornby must have used to produce its scenic panels, which it sold before WWII. They’re quick and easy and cheap, and if you vary the shade enough and lay on enough yellow and brown, the result doesn’t look like the surface of a ping-pong table.
If you want, before you lay the boards on the layout, paint curbs and lay down sidewalks where appropriate. To paint the curb, get a good-sized brush, mask off about 1/8 of an inch from the edge, and then paint the edge and that 1/8 inch from the side with acrylic paint. A bottle of Delta Ceramcoat from a craft or discount store, at a price of about a dollar, ought to be enough to do the trick. You could mask and spray the edge with white or gray primer, but I find I can do this part about as fast with a brush, and using a brush and acrylic paints lets me do this part indoors.
If you want more realistic scenery, you can get boards and then paint a base coat on them, then spread glue on the surface and sprinkle Woodland Scenics materials on it. The result is quick and easy and portable scenery that looks a little more realistic.
Take the boards inside, arrange them on the table, lay down some material for roads, lay down your track and ballast (if desired), and you’ve got very quick, easy, and inexpensive terrain for your layout.
Yesterday, after a long day and a long week, Gatermann called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the east side.
So we met up before lunch and paid a visit to one of the east side’s finer establishments, and I brought my camera. Sometimes the things you see over there are pretty dirty, but this time we saw real beauty, and I brought back a picture… from the Kansas City Southern railyard.
This is KCSM 4679, a General Electric ES44AC diesel-electric “GEVO” (General Electric Evolution) locomotive painted up in the Kansas City Southern’s new old paint scheme. Some 50 years ago, KCS used a colorful paint scheme, called the Southern Belle, much like this one. Retro paint schemes are in these days–the Union Pacific started the trend by painting up some locomotives in schemes honoring the railroads they’ve taken over through the years, and judging from the current appearance of UP 1982, the unit painted for the Missouri Pacific, they don’t ever wash those locomotives either (I told you some of the stuff on the east side is dirty)–and the KCS dug out its best paint scheme from the past, updated it a little, and I think the results are striking.
KCSM 4679 is supposed to be painted up for the KCS’ Mexican subsidiary (hence the “de Mexico” on the side) but the front of the locomotive and the herald on the front side says plain old KCS.
There’s some talk that this one’s headed back to the paint shop to replace the herald. The locomotive has been sitting in the yard for the last four days, so this could be the reason.
This is probably stating the obvious, but I’m going to say it. Never actually set foot in a railyard unless you have permission from the railroad. It’s trespassing, and can be dangerous. Stay on public property (the road, shoulder of the road, or sidewalk if there is one) and photograph from there.
I would have liked to have gotten a picture of the UP’s Mopac heritage unit, UP 1982, but when it was sitting in the UP’s Dupo yard there was another train parked in front of it. We were in a decent position to catch the train after it left on its way to Chicago, but it was stuck behind a ballast train doing track maintenance. Unfortunately the last two cars on the ballast train derailed, so UP 1982 stayed parked where we could see it with the naked eye but couldn’t get any good shots of it.
If you’d like to see some shots from the day from the camera of a real, professional photographer, visit Gatermann’s place.
I bought an Erector set today. I’m not talking the stuff in the stores now. I’m talking a real Erector set, an honest-to-goodness Erector #7 1/2 manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut by A.C. Gilbert. The booklet in the set was dated 1951.A.C. Gilbert was the closest thing the 20th century had to a Renaissance Man. Gilbert paid his way through medical school (at a school you might have heard of–Yale) by working as a magician. He was an accomplished enough athlete to win a gold medal in pole vaulting in the 1908 Olympics. And for whatever reason, he decided not to pursue a career in medicine, instead founding what was one of the largest toy companies in the United States during the early and middle 20th century.
I owned an Erector set growing up, but now that I’ve seen the sets my dad’s generation grew up with, I see they just weren’t the same. The instruction manual started out with a signed letter from Gilbert himself, encouraging kids to learn about how things work, be creative, and have fun doing it.
My Erector set came with a lot of pieces so you could make a lot with it, but this set came with more, and more complex pieces. You could make a car with both my set and this set, but the car with the set I had was driven by pulleys. This set came with enough to make a full-blown gearbox.
It’s frustrating to me that we don’t teach our kids how to make anything anymore. I’ll grant that there’s something to be said for transferring manufacturing and manufacturing know-how to the developing world, but we’re doing it at the expense of knowing how to make anything ourselves. And when we don’t know how to make anything, we can’t really imagine what’s possible either.
Gilbert enjoyed science, and he wanted kids to enjoy it as much as he did. So he invented a series of toys–of which the Erector set was just one–that taught kids that it was possible to make and do fun things with science.
Going to school in the 1980s and 1990s, pretty much all I ever learned math and science was good for was blowing stuff up. I had some teachers I admire to this day (though I had some who weren’t good for much), but somehow they never really got through to me.
I’m not saying that if there’d been a decent, real Erector set on the market when I was a kid that I would have wanted to take physics, and even if I had, I know I wouldn’t have learned much from the physics teacher at my high school, but I definitely would have turned out different. Probably a little bit better. At the very least, Dad and I would have had something to talk about, since he had a degree in physics and would have been able to explain what was going on inside that gearbox.
I have no idea what they teach kids about science in schools now. I know they don’t learn much at home.
Gilbert was a good man in other regards too. When his competitors started unionizing, he didn’t have anything to worry about. He went to his employees and told them he could give them a better deal. Gilbert gave his employees benefits and took care of them, and for the most part they loved him for it.
We don’t have a lot of athletes worth admiring anymore, and we don’t have a lot of businessmen worth admiring either. I can’t think of a single example of someone who was accomplished in both fields.
I think if we had an A.C. Gilbert alive today, we’d be in much better shape as a country.
I bought that Erector set with resale in mind. I got a good deal on it and was pretty confident I’d be able to flip it and make a quick 25 bucks from it. But now I wonder if I should keep it. If I have a son, I’ll want him to have it.
But even if I never have a son, maybe I should keep it purely on principle, to remind me of what we used to be, and the potential we threw away.