David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Eric Davis was one of the most exciting players in baseball in the 1980s, and a feel-good story in the late 1990s when baseball really needed one. He looked like a future Hall of Famer when he broke into the major leagues. So why isn’t Eric Davis in the Hall of Fame?
The Marx 36000 Chesapeake & Ohio gondola is a somewhat realistic-looking gondola with lettering for a midwestern railroad. It was part of their short-lived 7-inch line, though it’s easy to convert to a 3/16 car if desired. The 36000 dates from 1955 to 1957, making it somewhat more scarce than the Wabash gondola. Read more
There is a fair bit of advice out there about fixing a hard to flush toilet. Unfortunately, most of them start with the more expensive and less effective remedies first. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through troubleshooting a hard to flush toilet, starting with the cheap and easy fixes first, not last.
Balthazar Berlinger, an immigrant from Switzerland, kept cows in his back yard where he lived on the 3400 block of Indiana Avenue in south St. Louis. In 1888, he started selling milk over a counter in his living room–fifty years before Prairie Farms.
The Amiga tank mouse refers to the original Amiga mouse design that shipped with the Amiga 1000 computer in 1985, and survived with a different connector into the Amiga 500 and 2000 generations. The tank nickname refers to its bigger, blockier design compared to modern, sleeker devices.
In model railroading, a rivet counter is someone who pays extremely close attention to small details in model trains and points out any deficiencies, often in an annoying manner. It is generally considered a pejorative. In this blog post, I’ll explain the practice of rivet counting and explore where to draw the line between fine scale modeling and rivet counting.
Red Bird Lanes was a popular hangout for all ages for a total of 37 and 1/2 years. Multiple generations have fond memories of bowling there, learning to bowl there, or just hanging out. It stood at 7339 Gravois Avenue, at the busy intersection of Gravois and Hampton, just north of River Des Peres.
For about as long as I can remember, one of the most frequent complaints I’ve heard about Windows is that it doesn’t have an emergency restart or shutdown option, something equivalent to the Linux reboot command. It turns out Windows emergency restart existed, hiding in plain sight, all along. In this blog post, I’ll share the secret.
Darryl Strawberry was one of the most surprising 1980s stars to fall short of baseball’s Hall of Fame. Although he didn’t hit for high average, he was otherwise a five-tool player thriving in baseball’s biggest market. Here is why Darryl Strawberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
Marx train set 9617 was an electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1954. But you may also hear collectors refer to it as Happi-Time train set 9617, because that’s what Marx printed on the box. Collectors call this a transition set.