Maybe there’s a method to the Royals’ madness

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

The Royals signed four free agents. All four of them potentially have something to offer, and one of them is a virtual guarantee to contribute something.

The four? First baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, second baseman Mark Grudzielanek, starting pitcher Scott Elarton, and catcher Paul Bako.Mark Grudzielanek is the best of the bunch. He’s a smooth-fielding second baseman who hits line drives, gets on base, runs the bases smart, and has good enough speed to lead the team in stolen bases. Grudzielanek could step right in to the #2 spot. In short, he does three things the Royals didn’t do last year. And he just so happens to play the position where the Royals are the weakest.

Doug Mientkiewicz is a puzzler. The Royals already have way too many 1B/DH types, and he’s pretty much the opposite. Mike Sweeney and Matt Stairs have difficulty fielding the position. Mientkiewicz is arguably the smoothest fielding first baseman in the game, but he hits for low average and doesn’t have a lot of power. Although, come to think of it, by Royals standards, Mientkiewicz’s numbers at the plate look pretty good. The Royals didn’t know how to hit, run the bases, or field last year, so having someone who does one of the three very well is an improvement. Besides, if Mientkiewicz comes to bat in a crucial game situation, Stairs can always hit for him. And if Mientkiewicz doesn’t hit, he can come in for defense and save the game with his glove.

I think the Royals are paying way too much for Elarton, but at least the guy had a winning record and an ERA under 5 last season. The only Royals starter with a winning record last year was Ryan Jenson, who went 2-3 with a 7.11 ERA, and the only Royals starters with ERAs under 5 were D.J. Carrasco, who isn’t returning, and Mike Wood, who spent most of the year as a relief pitcher.

In Elarton and Mark Redmond, the Royals at least now have two pitchers who can keep the team in the game while throwing a lot of innings, so they won’t wear down the bullpen as badly as they did last year. If Greinke, Runelvys Hernandez, and Jeremy Affeldt all stay healthy and pitch the way they’re capable of pitching, the Royals will have a good rotation with these two additions. And all of them will be better than Jose Lima.

Paul Bako is a journeyman backup catcher. No reason to get excited there, except he used to be Greg Madux’s personal catcher when both played in Atlanta. As such, Bako will be able to teach the Royals’ young pitchers a few things. There are much worse questions to ask yourself in a game situation than "What would Greg Maddux do?" and Bako will know the answer. Bako may be able to help straighten Zack Greinke out.

But the best thing is that these signings may allow the Royals to sign a corner outfielder who can hit. Right now the Royals don’t have very many better options than George Brett (53 years old) or manager Buddy Bell (54). Maybe now they’ll be able to convince someone that they’re serious about getting out of last place. I think the Royals should have chased Nomar Garciaparra hard and told him he can play shortstop if he wants, but it’s probably too late for that. Jacque Jones and Rondell White are still available though.

OK, U2\’s still got it

Dave Farquhar Music ,

Last night (December 13, 2005) I saw U2 play in St. Louis at the Kiel, er, Savvis Center. It was the third time I’d seen them, and probably the best.The first time I saw them, they played Busch Stadium in 1992 on the Zoo TV tour. The band was very much in its self-parody phase. The second time I saw them, in 1997 at the Kiel Center, they were promoting their not-so-successful album Pop and winding down that self-parody phase.

I didn’t see them when they toured in support of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. There was no good reason for it; I just didn’t get tickets and go.

Longtime U2 fans complained about the two tours I had seen. Seeing them on the Joshua Tree and earlier tours was like a religious experience, they said.

Compared to the other two I’d seen, this was a stripped-down show. No three semi trailers full of TV screens. No giant lemon descending from the ceiling. They had some screens up, which seemed to be mostly for the benefit of the people behind the stage or up in the nosebleed seats.

Rapper Kanye West opened. I appreciated his use of symphonic instruments in addition to samples. But unfortunately the bass was turned so high I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Bono came out and introduced him personally. I’ve never seen anyone come out and introduce the opening act before. I’ve only ever seen someone acknowledge the opening band one other time before (I’d rather not say who that was, because that would be admitting I saw that band live).

U2’s set opened with “City of Blinding Lights,” accompanied by a light show, which seemed like a good set-opener, and is probably my favorite song on the current album. The set was heavy on songs from the current album, of course, but a number of staples of the band were missing.

No “New Year’s Day.” No “I Will Follow.” No “Even Better than the Real Thing.” No “Desire” or “All I Want is You” or “Angel of Harlem.”

For that matter, there was absolutely nothing from the albums Zooropa, Pop (their experimental stage in the late 1990s), or Rattle and Hum (the height of their commercial success on the coattails of Joshua Tree). Those were good albums, but, admittedly, not up to the standards of most of U2’s catalog. They also didn’t play anything off their outstanding 1980 international debut, Boy, which I missed, but didn’t expect.

But when a band spends a quarter century making music, something inevitably has to be left out or else the band ends up playing for three hours.

Sometimes because of what was left out, but mostly in spite of it, it was an amazing concert. Some nights, Bono’s voice is so weak that either he has to appeal to the crowd to sing over him, or, in extreme cases, The Edge has to sing. This most infamously happened when the band played in Sarajevo, and Edge had to sing “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Not on December 15. Bono’s voice was clear and strong. When they sang “Gloria,” a raw number from way back in 1982, sounded almost like the studio recording.

Here’s the set list as I recall it:

City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
Gloria
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – In a Little While
Beautiful Day
Original of the Species
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Sunday Bloody Sunday – Rock the Casbah
Bullet the Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo (from the “Passengers” side project with Brian Eno from the late 1990s)
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
Until the End of the World
Mysterious Ways
With or Without You
Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
Yahweh
40

The socio-political messages of old, largely missing from the tours of the 1990s, were back. (Like I said, I missed the previous tour–for all I know, this mode of U2 has been back for four years.) Bono urged the passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the scrolled on the screen. I know there isn’t a lot of support for it in the United States, certainly not from the political party currently in power, but frankly it read a lot like the American Declaration of Independence. “We must not become a monster in order to defeat a monster,” Bono urged.

While Bono’s political leanings are traditionally far to the left of my own, what he was saying sounded perfectly reasonable to this registered Republican.

And although “We must not become a monster to defeat a monster” may sound like an anti-war stance, he dedicated “Bullet the Blue Sky” to the members of the U.S. military serving overseas.

Bono also urged joining an organization intended to end poverty. I’m not going to blindly join an organization just because some rock star tells me to without knowing something about it, but the guy’s sincere and his intentions are good.

The most important thing, agree or disagree, is that U2’s message made the crowd (or at least two of the people in it) think.

Religious experience? Well, maybe not quite, but awfully close. Unforgettable? Absolutely.

The youngest two band members are both 44, but if last night was any indication, U2’s not showing any signs of slowing down yet.

Song lyrics on the web will be the death of the music industry?

Dave Farquhar Music ,

How many times did you hear a song on the radio, like it, then eagerly wait for the DJ to come on and announce what the song was, only to hear the next song? (Which inevitably is something worse, of course.)

It happens to me a lot. So I don’t even wait for the disappointment. I grab a scrap of paper, listen for a few words that sound distinctive (or that get repeated a lot), then when I get home or somewhere that I can mooch a little Internet access, I hit the search engines.

I’ll bet I ended up buying half my CD collection that way.I guess I should apply for a patent on this method of investigation though, because obviously I must be the only one who does this, because posting this stuff online is killing the industry.

Now that I think about it, posting song lyrics might be difficult to justify under the fair use doctrine, especially if your web site is just one big database of song lyrics that somebody else wrote. It’s one thing to quote a few lines of a song–which has always been permitted, even if what you’re writing isn’t a music review–but song after song, in its entirety does cross a line.

The question is whether it does more good than harm. I’m not convinced that online postings of song lyrics and guitar tablatures necessarily harms the sheet music industry all that much. In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with musicians, and most of the musicians I knew sat down with a tape or a CD with a pencil and paper and wore out the fast-forward and reverse buttons playing snippets of songs over and over again, taking notes, until they’d figured out what was being played.

Today it’s faster to search the Internet for that kind of information. But if you couldn’t, you’d probably go do it the old-fashioned way.

And the sheet-music industry doesn’t make any money either way.

Why not just go down to the record store and buy the music? Oh. Well, because you probably can’t. And even when you can, the selection is limited. If you want something other than current hits and staples of a particular popular genre, you probably won’t find it, because sheet music takes up a lot more space than CDs do. So you can order it online, but in the time it takes for the thing to arrive in the mail, you could have transcribed the artist’s entire catalog yourself.

And besides, most musicians don’t have any money. And the musicians I know who do have money didn’t make their money making music.

So I suppose the Music Publisher’s Association is probably justified–from a legal standpoint–in going after web sites that are just a cache of lyrics. But when they do, expect CD sales to take another hit–especially sales of back-catalog discs and acts who haven’t quite hit the big time yet. Of course the RIAA will just blame downloading and CD burners.

There’s a way around this, of course. The songwriter can do whatever he or she wants with the words.

And if the songwriter wants to make more money than the average substitute teacher, I suggest posting those lyrics online, so that when the song manages to get played on some station on the far left side of the dial and 12 people hear it, the four people who like it can do a search and buy it. They might sell less sheet music. But they’ll sell a whole lot more records.

Why I\’m Lutheran

Dave Farquhar Christianity

Reading Charlie’s blog pointed me at a debate (I’ll use polite words) between a Calvinist and a Lutheran. I’m vaguely familiar with the Calvinist; the Lutheran is someone I’ve met personally and I’ve even fixed his computer and on one or two occasions ate lunch with him.

I’m going to keep my diatribe simple. Very simple. Because I fall somewhere in between the two of them. (But I am Lutheran.)I’m Lutheran because of doctrine. Period. I don’t give a rip about Lutheran tradition. I’m not a 16th-century German. I’m an American of Scottish, English, and Irish descent with just a little German in me. Jesus wasn’t German and neither am I, so there’s nothing sacred to me about German traditions. If a church hocked its pipe organ and used the proceeds to buy bagpipes, I’d try to turn a cartwheel.

Music is one of the first things people notice about a church. So I fall in the camp that the music ought to be something that people can relate to. If the people who live around the church happen to be 16th century Germans, well, Martin Luther had an answer: Pipe organs, and sing in German. Novel idea. It worked. If the people around you are Scottish nationalists, then bagpipes would be a good idea. If the people around you are 30something 21st-century Americans, then it makes sense to consider guitars and drums. At my church last Sunday, horror of horrors, they actually used a Leonard Cohen song with Christianized lyrics as a hymn.

So, to some Lutherans, that makes me a Calvinist. And I do have some experience with Calvinism.

It was at a retreat sponsored by a Calvinist non-denominational organization (Great Commission Ministries) that I sang in church for the first time in nearly a decade. It was at that same retreat that God actually felt real for the first time in more than a decade. I suppose some Lutherans would call this a neo-Pentecostal movement because they talked about the Holy Spirit. Lutherans don’t talk about the Holy Spirit very much. It makes them uncomfortable.

I have to agree with the Lutheran that Calvinists tend to keep Jesus on the bench a little too much. But Lutherans keep the Holy Spirit on the bench too much.

And it’s not like the message at that retreat was emphasizing speaking in tongues or anything like that. I guess the reason he got through to me on that Sunday afternoon was because I’m a guy, and the Holy Spirit he presented was a tool. Plug the Fruits of the Spirit into you, and you see what’s wrong. If you read the fruits of the spirit and you don’t see you, then that means God isn’t working as well in your life as He could be. So what do you do about it? It has nothing to do with speaking in tongues, or that weird feeling in your stomach (I’ve had that). Ask Him to come in! What a novel idea…

So why am I Lutheran? The events that followed that weekend, frankly. Soon afterward, everything fell apart. And I mean everything. When I asked the people in my church home what everything that was going on meant, I got a long list of things I was supposed to be doing. None of it sounded right. So I started reading the Bible. Cover to cover. It took me about 10 weeks. I took the advice to heart and asked God what was wrong, what was missing. And you know what the answer was?

Grace.

My old Lutheran confirmation class definition of grade came to mind: God’s riches at Christ’s expense.

No room for Dave in that definition.

I asked around a little about grace. The definition I received had Dave in it.

So I asked whether I wanted to rely on Dave to get it all right, or whether I wanted to rely on God.

Well, if Dave could get it right, there wouldn’t be much need for Jesus, would there?

Over the course of the next few months, God led me to a Lutheran church that remembered the definition of grace and also offered the things I’d liked about that Calvinist evangelical experience: sermons that were relevent to daily life and music that helped me look forward to church, rather than being something that has to be endured.

I would have traded away the music and the easily applied messages for that correct definition of grace.

To me, that’s the great hidden treasure of Lutheranism. Grace. And those are the roots. It was grace that told Martin Luther that indulgences were wrong, not hearing the tune of “A Mighty Fortress” outside the door. (Not that there’s anything wrong with “A Mighty Fortress.” Our church plays old songs too sometimes, to remind us that the God who was there for our multiple-great grandparents is the same God who’s with us today.)

A couple of years ago, I found myself in a Methodist service. I’ve always admired the Methodists. My wife was raised Methodist. But there was something about the service that reminded me of why I’m Lutheran. Again. We confessed our sins. And then that was it. There was a sort of brief assurance that you’ll do better next time.

Hello? Forgiveness? Please?

Half of the equation was gone. After we confess our sins at my church, my pastor always says something like this: “It’s my great privelige to announce to you that your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Exactly what he says varies sometimes, but he always starts out with something like, “It’s my great privelige.” This is good news he’s delivering! It’s the only reason we’re all still here! He should be glad to be saying it, and we should be glad to be hearing it. And yes, I know what he’s saying isn’t exactly what the blue book says he’s supposed to say. It’s more important to him to tell us this is good news than it is for him to tell us he’s called and ordained. We already know that because he’s the one who’s up front and talking.

Sometimes he even reads a verse from Scripture to prove it. I kind of wish he’d do that a little more often.

The great theologians will be annoyed that I didn’t throw Bible verses around. But I’m reminded that Jesus said this is simple enough that a child can understand. A lot of times–well, most of the time, probably–we make this way too complicated. Christianity is very simple.

A pastor put a question on a confirmation test once. It read: “If you died tonight and God asked you why He should let you in to heaven, what would you say?”

The right answer (which, as I recall, I got wrong) was one word. Don’t read on. Stop for a minute and see if you can figure out what the answer is supposed to be.

Jesus.

If you get that answer right, and you know why that answer is right, then it doesn’t matter all that much what else you believe. If everything else you believe is wrong, you’ll get to heaven by the skin of your teeth. But so will those rare people whose beliefs are 100% dead on right. (I don’t know who those people are, by the way. I’m pretty sure that I’m not one of them and that I fall somewhere in between. And even if I had all the education in the world, I doubt I’m smart enough to be able to figure out who they were.)

But at least I got that important question right. And hopefully you do too.

Aliens on my train layout

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

I bought a couple of aliens for my train consist today. At the annual TCA Ozark Division train show at Lutheran South that happens every December, I spotted some lonely American Flyer bodies sitting neglected on a table. There were two steam locomotives, a gondola, a boxcar, and a caboose. I looked at the locomotives but there wasn’t any way I could remotor them with parts I had available. I did buy the boxcar, and then came back for the gondola.

I spent a total of $3 for these artifacts from 1958. Not bad.The problem for me is, they’re from 1958. American Flyer was doing S gauge in 1958. I’m into O gauge.

But that’s OK.  S gauge is 1:64 scale. O27 (which is the flavor of O I like, because it’s what I grew up with) is supposed to be 1:64 scale. Hold an American Flyer S gauge gondola up next to a Lionel or Marx O27 gondola, and they’re awfully close to the same size. Sure, there’s some difference, but when you look at real trains, not every boxcar is exactly the same height, and not every gondola is exactly the same height and length either.

K-Line took some criticism when it dusted off the old Marx O27 molds, outfitted them with S gauge trucks, and tried to market them to S gaugers because the Marx boxcars are taller than the American Flyers, and when you measure the Marx car with a scale ruler, it’s a funny length. But most people don’t notice. When I put a Marx O27 boxcar next to my Flyer 805 with O27 trucks on it, the difference wasn’t as pronounced. You can tell the Flyer is shorter, but something about the O gauge trucks makes the difference harder to notice.

It took me about 10 minutes to outfit the Flyer gondola with some spare Lionel trucks I had kicking around. Then I decided I wanted a conversion car, so I put a Marx truck on one end and a Lionel on the other. It looks good with my Marx and Lionel gondolas.

It took me considerably longer to get the boxcar in running order, since I had to fashion a frame for it. So I grabbed a bunch of junk from the scrap box and I fashioned a frame. That ended up taking me a couple of hours to do (I can do it a lot faster when I’m doing several at once and I have all my tools and materials in order). For what I make per hour, I could have bought several nice boxcars, I know. But this was more fun than what I get paid to do, and besides, nobody was offering to pay me to do anything today. And besides, rescuing a lonely boxcar off the scrap heap is a whole lot more meaningful than just plunking down some cash.

Once it was all together, I grabbed Dad’s old Lionel 2037 and put it on a loop of track on the floor with the Flyer 803 and 805 and a Marx boxcar that I rescued from a similar fate about a year ago. I had to work out a few kinks of course, but it wasn’t long before the consist was running smoothly.

I know a lot of people who run 1950s trains tend to do so homogeneously. It tends to be all Flyer or all Lionel or all Marx. But all of them have their strengths. For one, all of them did cars that the others didn’t. While American Flyer’s locomotives are amazingly smooth runners–even their cheapies–I don’t think American Flyer made anything that has all of the positive attributes of the Lionel 2037: It’s no slouch in the smooth running department itself, it’s a great puller, it’s reliable, and it’s common as dirt so you can easily find a good one for around $70. And as much as I like Marx, Marx never made anything quite like the 2037 either. The Marx 333 can’t pull with a 2037, it’s nowhere near as common, and these days it’s more expensive too.

But Marx and American Flyer made plenty of cars in plenty of roadnames and paint schemes Lionel never made. And when they did overlap, there tended to be some differences, just like you see in real life. So turning some dilapidated American Flyer cars into O27s was a nice way to add some unique rolling stock to my roster.

I’m happy. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more American Flyer cars that need running gear.

I\’m published again

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

It was a small-time gig, but if it helps pay the bills, that’s all that matters. I published a guide to refurbishing 1950s Lionel, Marx, and American Flyer trains over at Associated Content.I guess it’s ironic that I used a picture of an American Flyer train, seeing as I only owned a postwar Flyer S gauge train for about two weeks before I traded it for some Marx stuff. But it was the only picture I had handy.

My first impressions of Pandora

Dave Farquhar Music ,

So I’ve been messing with Pandora, a new music service.

It’s interesting. Not foolproof, but interesting.The theory goes like this: Have highly experienced musicians overanalyze pop music, identifying its tonal qualities, and based on the qualities you find in a song that the masses (or any given individual) like, predict other songs that will have the same appeal because they share the same tonal qualities.

So I signed on, and it asked me for the name of a band or a song that I liked. So I picked “City of Blinding Lights” by U2 out of the air.

Two songs later, it played “Read ‘Em and Weep” by Meat Loaf.

Say what?

I gave it a chance. I thought more of Meat Loaf when he was a one-hit wonder than I did after he made that comeback in the ’90s. And this song is the epitome of why.

Let the record state that I don’t like over-the-hill wanna-be hard rockers singing songs that were originally written by Barry Manilow!

Note that I’m emphatic enough on that point to break out the italics and the exclamation point. I’m almost emphatic enough to break out the blink tag.

If I lose coolness points for not liking Meat Loaf-sung Barry Manilow cover tunes, then so be it.

I suppose it did have somewhat similar musical qualities to U2’s City of Blinding Lights. But this just goes to show there’s more to music than just, uh, the music.

To its credit, it did pick out a song by Delirious? that I liked.

But I guess U2 isn’t exactly the best experiment for something like this. While U2 has a reputation for all of its songs sounding the same, any serious U2 fan will point out that it’s several of U2’s hits that sound similar. But if I were to whip out a few of U2’s lesser hits, like, say, “A Day Without Me” off Boy and “The Fly” off Achtung Baby, to name two of the better songs off their two best albums, you might be hard-pressed to identify the band.

And since that’s one of the things I really like about the band, I abandoned the experiment. Tonal qualities alone won’t find another U2.

I forgot about the first time I ever heard “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The reaction? “U2 records albums?” Yes, when I was 13, I thought U2 just toured and put on political demonstrations and that making records was an afterthought.

Sometimes the appeal isn’t just the music and how it’s played. Need another example? Anyone care to do a survey of how many people watch Jessica Simpson music videos with the volume muted?

So now that I’ve talked about why Pandora can’t work, let’s talk about when it does work.

After the Meat Loaf indignity, I typed in “What About Everything, Carbon Leaf” into Pandora. And it came back and said it didn’t know that song. So I just typed in “Carbon Leaf.” It came back and described Carbon Leaf as a band that uses subtle harmonies, electric instruments up front, a mixture of acoustic and electric in back, and prominent percussion.

I’d never thought about it that way, but that was what made the band catch my ear in the first place. The line “What about aeroplanes?” had a lot to do with it too, but Pandora’s technical description tells how the band said, “What about aeroplanes?” Had it been Pantera asking “What about aeroplanes?” I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much.

But when I think about the alt-rock that was being recorded in the early 1990s, before it became all-grunge-all-the-time, that description of Carbon Leaf pretty much could apply to the songs by Sugar, Material Issue, Aimee Mann, The Connells, and, for that matter, even Weezer, that I liked.

So out of curiosity, I punched in “The Sisters of Mercy.” It came back and asked if that was a song or a band. I had the band in mind, rather than the Leonard Cohen song. Leonard Cohen is an example of someone whose lyrics I like, even when I often don’t like the music.

It identified the Sisters of Mercy as having hard rock roots, electronica influences, and an emphasis on minor key tones. Fair enough.

Problem is, it gave me Pig Society by Dope, Loco by Coal Chamber, and Set Me Free by Velvet Revolver, followed by Big Truck by Coal Chamber (which sounded like a monster truck rally).

How much does Andrew Eldritch know about monster trucks, anyway?

Once I gave it enough thumbs-downs, it tried Sonic Youth on me. Sonic Youth isn’t very goth, but it’s a much better fit than something called “Big Truck.”

So I decided to see what it said about Joy Division. “Punk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping, electronica influences, and minor key tonality,” it said. OK, basically Sisters of Mercy minus the heavy metal with a little punk instead? I’ll buy that. I let it play. So far, no songs about monster trucks, but the songs it did play were songs I wouldn’t mind hearing again. Tactic learned: If you punch in one band and don’t like what it finds you, punch in the name of a somewhat similar band and see what it finds.

For entertainment value, I have to give Pandora some props. Sometimes the entertainment value is unintentional. But hey, even Babe Ruth only hit a home run 8.5% of the time. There are worse ways to discover new music than this.

Like turning on the radio, for instance.

Keeping a Lionel 1122 switch from buzzing

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

The other day I helped someone troubleshoot a Lionel 1122 switch that was buzzing and not operating. I don’t have time to take pictures or anything but hopefully this brief rundown will be helpful for someone.First, some background information: The Lionel 1122 and later switches are designed to switch automatically for an incoming train, because a train approaching the curved section of the switch when the switch is set straight will derail.

The buzzing generally is caused by a short circuit making the switch think a train is approaching when it isn’t.

This same procedure will aid in the troubleshooting of Lionel O22 switches as well as later non-derailing switches made by Lionel and K-Line.

First, remove the troublesome switch from the track. Connect two wires directly to the transformer, and touch one of the wires to any center rail. Touch the other wire to one of the outer rails of the curved leg. If the switch doesn’t snap, touch the wire to the other outer rail. The switch should operate. Whichever rail causes the switch to operate when touched with a wire needs an insulating O27 track pin, rather than a standard metal track pin. These pins, which used to be made of fiber but are now made of plastic, are available online and possibly from your local hobby shop.

Now that you’ve confirmed the curved leg works, repeat for the straight leg, and insert an insulating pin into that rail if one isn’t already present. If the switch operates on both legs in this fashion, the switch is operable and you just have a short circuit somewhere.

If the activating rails already had insulating pins and the switch still buzzes, you have a short circuit somewhere and you probably need to add more insulating pins. The center rail should never be insulated. But you may need to add insulating pins to several of the other rails. The easiest way to do this is to set up a simple loop on the floor with two switches, connect a transformer, put a locomotive on the track, and apply a little bit of power. If one or more switches still buzz, add insulating pins until the buzz goes away. This solution worked for us and got a layout that had two buzzing 1122s (out of three total) working again.

Time to winterize the house…

Dave Farquhar Saving money , ,

We had a day last week where we topped 80 degrees and set a record, so small wonder I never thought winter would actually get here.

But we’ve had our first good freeze and it looks like that’ll be a weekly thing from here on out (assuming we don’t get multiples every week), so it’s time to winterize the house.I learned about plastic film window insulation when I was in college and lived in a drafty old barn–it wasn’t really a barn, but it felt like one–where the inside temperature was rarely higher than 60 during the winter and space heaters were strictly prohibited. It’s best to buy the stuff at the end of the winter and save it for next winter, but if you’re like me, you always underestimate how much you need.

The tape that came with one of my kits seemed strong enough to hold a car together, while the tape that came with another kit isn’t suitable for wrapping a present, let alone holding plastic to cold aluminum window frames. I ended up using packing tape to hold part of the plastic to a window, since I ran out of good tape.

Of course when I was finished with one package, I ended up with three odd-sized pieces, none of which fit any of my windows. So I tried an experiment. Out came the packing tape and the scissors. I taped together the odd-sized sheets to make one suitable for one of the windows, then I put it in the window. It held together just fine when I hit it with the hair dryer to shrink it into place. I don’t think this method will get wife approval, but it works. I guess I can tell her that Red Green would have used duct tape.

I also changed my furnace filter. My size was sold out at all of the usual places I buy them, but I happened to find them at Big Lots for $1.79 each. They’re rated for two months instead of three and they probably don’t catch as much, but they’re definitely better than the clogged filter that was in there. I don’t know when the last time was I changed the filter. Shame on me. For $1.79 I need to be changing it every month because it’ll save me a lot more than that if I don’t do it, at least in the summer and winter months.

I also went looking, without success, for insulation pads for electrical outlets and light switches. I have some double-sized ones and other oddities that I didn’t have a good fit for. When I came home I still didn’t have a good fit. So I ended up removing the plate, taking a styrofoam meat tray, and cutting my own with a hobby knife. It’s not quite the same material commercial insulators are made from, but it has good insulating properties and it’s hard to beat the price.

Of course I’m looking for other ideas, but these three things are a good start. I installed a programmable thermostat about two years ago and it paid for itself in the first month. The basic models cost half as much now.

Addendum: After sealing the sliding glass door and two of the three largest windows in the house, last night after the programmable thermostat kicked down I noticed that the temperature in the house dropped by about a degree an hour. The temperature inside the house started at 70, and the low overnight was around 30. I know under similar conditions earlier in the week, the temperature was dropping at least two or possibly even three degrees an hour.

I think that plastic is going to pay for itself very quickly.

The tipping point of obsolesence

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Gatermann just sent me a link to a $33 Dell P3-500 at Surplus Computers. It got both of us feeling old, because the day when that was a hot machine doesn’t seem long ago at all to either of us.

My initial reaction: That’s a lot of computer for 33 bucks. You get a 500 MHz CPU, 128 megs of RAM, and a 6 gig hard drive.

And then I got to thinking about it some more. I can think of people who could get by with that machine, but there’s a good reason why the P3-500’s star has fallen and you can get one for $33 without feeling like you’re at a Who concert.I guess first and foremost, you don’t get an operating system. That’s fine; OEM copies of XP home are cheap enough. Older versions of Windows are even cheaper because nobody wants them.

But even if you’re running 2000, you really want a minimum of 256 megs of RAM. For XP you want more than that; my mother-in-law’s PC, which is a Compaq with some flavor of Athlon in it, really drags these days because it only has 256 megs.

So I bopped on over to Crucial to see what I’d need to make that old Dell Optiplex GX1 rev its engine. And the price of a 256-meg DIMM was (sit down): $77.

So to max out the memory on this $33 machine, you’d need to spend another $231.

Gatermann just bought a gig of PC3200 DDR memory for $98.

So rather than spend $231 on 768 megs of PC133 SDRAM, you’d literally be better off buying the PC3200 and getting a $50 motherboard and a $60 CPU to put on it.

Trouble is, this is a Dell. You can’t swap off-the-shelf motherboards into a Dell. Some Dell cases will take a standard board, but you’ll have to replace the power supply. But the GX1 doesn’t use an ATX board.

That’s why this system costs 33 bucks. It’s pretty much at a dead end, and the memory it uses is no longer a mass-market item, so its price is inflated. It’s the same thing that happened to the 72-pin EDO SIMMs we used to put in our original Pentiums–you know, the ones that topped out at 233 MHz.

It’s a great machine for a tinkerer who happens to have a lot of PC100 or PC133 memory around, or for the Ebay addict. Obsolescent memory always sells more cheaply on Ebay.

I’ve always been in favor of upgrading a computer until it no longer makes economic sense to do so. If you’ve ever wondered when that is, this is a classic example.