home depot

I’m pretty sure my card’s been breached again, so here’s what I’m doing

Dave Farquhar security ,

So it’s starting to look like Home Depot got breached. Nobody knows yet how bad it is. I decided to be proactive and call my credit card company because I shop at Home Depot a lot, and they just read me a canned script. OK, they don’t want to know if I think my card was among those breached.

Here’s what I’m doing in the meantime. Read more

Check your smoke detectors, please. And make sure you have more than one.

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

Early Monday morning, a fire broke out a couple of streets over from me. Sadly, there was one casualty, a seven-year-old second grader who attends the same school as my oldest son. His older sister heroically came and got him and tried to lead him out the front door, but they became separated and he lost his way.

The paper noted that there have been a large number of fires with fatalities in my area in this past year. It did not speculate on the reasons, but I think I know why.

I think inadequate smoke detectors have a lot to do with it. Read more

Another month, another go-to LED bulb

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , , ,

LED lighting seems to change constantly. I read about Cree’s LED bulbs a good 12-18 months ago and they sounded too good to be true. In a way, they were, because you couldn’t buy them anywhere. The wait is finally over–they’re finally available, though only at Home Depot. I tried out their 800-lumen (60W equivalent), 2700K, 9.5W bulb, which currently costs about $13. It’s a good bulb that lives up to the hype.

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Is it better to be a consultant or an employee?

Dave Farquhar Careers , , , ,

I ran into a former supervisor from many years ago at the local Home Depot this evening. We had a pleasant discussion. It reminded me of a question I asked, right around the time he and I last talked. I asked whether it’s better to be a consultant or an employee.

Here’s what I would say to my 2005 self if I could, somehow. I present it here since I know someone else must have the same question.

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Nobody respects craftsmanship anymore

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

The New York Times laments the decline of craftsmanship and its side effects in the United States.

A generation ago, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for men to make their own kitchen cabinets. And those cabinets, if built correctly, would last several lifetimes. The cabinets my great-great grandfather built before the turn of the previous century survived just fine into my lifetime. A year ago, a prospective tenant took me to task for having such handbuilt cabinets in a rental house, and pointed to a couple of other rental houses–with particle-board Home Depot junk in them–as having “better updates.”

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Farewell, Crestwood Plaza

Dave Farquhar Retail, St. Louis , , , , ,
Farewell, Crestwood Plaza

The Sears anchor store at Crestwood Plaza near St. Louis closed in May 2012. It was a long, slow decline, and nobody knew what was next. More than five years later, there’s still nobody who knows what’s next.

I went there a couple of weeks before it closed, and I bought a multimeter at a heavy discount, but most of the kinds of things I would have been interested in buying were long gone. The rest of the old mall was mostly empty. The last of the smaller tenants left in 2013. Read more

My household’s energy usage dropped 19% in 2011

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , ,

I got a letter from my utility company Saturday morning. Inside was a chart, comparing our household’s energy usage from 2010 and 2011. It dropped 19 percent.

Considering our total bill for 2011 was over $900, that’s hardly chump change. Read more

Lowe’s just doesn’t get hyperlinks

Dave Farquhar Copyright ,

Lowe’s has a long license to link to its site.

Let it be known that if you want to link to me, you can just do it. Link to any page you want, as many times as you want. You’re doing me a favor if you do. In fact, I find it funny that a commercial site would tangle up something as important as linking in bureaucracy like that. As much as they worry about SEO, there’s still nothing in the world that improves your search results like good, old-fashioned 1994-era links.
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The LG 593260 LED bulb from Costco

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , ,

I bought a 2-pack of LG LED bulbs from Costco for $16. They aren’t as good as the bulbs I bought at Home Depot in 2010 or the ones I bought at Lowe’s last year, but for the price difference, they’re probably worth it at least in some cases. The Home Depot bulb sells for 25% more and uses 1.1 watts more energy; the Lowe’s bulb sells for 50% more.

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Of CFLs, LEDs, and modern lighting in general

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , ,

Compact Fluorescent and LED light bulbs just couldn’t stay out of the news this week, and boy, is there some bad information still out there.

Let’s start with Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker, who recently discovered a form of libertarianism after years of voting a straight Democratic ticket. She said three things about CFLs in an interview with Village Voice Media: Read more