2002–2010
1,333 posts
2010 143
December 2010
- Who made that power supply?
- DNS and iTunes and other streaming media
- A free SSD alignment tool
- Optimizing Windows’ startup sequence
- Cleaning up what CCleaner can’t
- Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 with USB media
- Screw sizes and tips for various common types of Lionel track
- Merry and blessed Christmas to all
- Don’t use Internet Explorer this Christmas
- How to get more blog traffic without being sleazy
- Thrift-store PCs
- The 15-second rule and other (non) myths
- Bye bye, Zack Greinke
- Upgrading an HP Mini 110 with an Intel X25-V SSD
- Overused (and underused) resume buzzwords
- Who is Bob Feller? An American hero
- How to connect Commodore disk drives
- Using two or more transformers together on a train layout
- How to clean viruses off other people’s systems safely
- Upgrade diary: HP Pavilion a305w
- Sorry about that downtime
- Publishing again
- Instant welding with Aileene’s Tacky Glue
- How to check SSD alignment
- Bubble wrap as cheap window insulation
- Secret weapon of the day: music wire
- Lionel’s going to start producing in the States again! Well, a little.
- Cleaning and storing Lionel track
- Speeding up a sluggish HP Mini 110
- Homemade toy train track
- Ugh. I’m beat.
- If you have a web site, don’t forget Google webmaster tools
- 4 more questions about RAID
November 2010
- RAID 101
- Frequent questions about setting up toy trains and trains and Christmas trees
- Fixing my b0rken WordPress installation
- Transformers for vintage trains
- How to connect a Commodore 64 or 128 to a modem
- Gluing Plasticville – or not
- Churches: Don’t run away from tough questions
- Pontificating on how to blog
- Completely bizarre computer problems? Check your system date
- Google Chrome uses too much disk space
- Making your own Lionel Fastrack terminal sections
- What you need to know to safely replace or substitute AC adapters
- Fix host hijacks or host file hijacks for free
- How to fix old Marx locomotives
- McAlester, OK hates Fred Phelps
- How to fix modern plastic toys
- Are Black Friday computers a good deal?
- Fix or restore Lionel track
- Increasing memory cache to improve Firefox performance
- Predict your SSD life expectancy with SSDLife
- Do Christians hate soldiers? No!
- How to invest without a financial adviser
- Um, no, software shouldn’t have kill switches or time bombs in it
- Fixing weird printing problems in MS Word
- Unfinished thoughts from yesterday
- Just because you can afford it now…
- LED night lights
- It must be that system idle process…
- Short takes: Ed Felten, Sparky Anderson
- It’s been 15 years, and computer stores haven’t changed much
- Outlook send button is gone? Here’s the fix.
- Bias is good?
- Getting bombarded with political calls tonight? Don’t hang up–hit #
October 2010
- Buying a new TV that won’t kill your electric bill
- I got a new side gig
- Computer won’t boot? Check your USB ports
- Attack of the $99 Droid-Pads
- Why every sysadmin needs to know how to hack into Windows systems
- A look back
- Sorry about earlier
- My first Windows 7 build
- Debt magic demystified
- Initiation into guyhood
- Of CFLs, LEDs, and modern lighting in general
- Upgrade and repair options: HP Pavillion Slimline s7220n
- Explain yourself, Mr. Farquhar
- A late adopter’s survival guide to Facebook: Part 3 of 3
- A late adopter’s survival guide to Facebook: Part 2 of 3
- A late adopter’s survival guide to Facebook: Part 1 of 3
- Don’t waste money paying for road hazard coverage on tires
- What burn-in is and why you should do it
- Missing the playoffs because News Corp. and Cablevision are greedy? Build an antenna!
- When a dollar isn’t a dollar
- Using child safety outlets to save energy
- Save money on cables by not buying at retail
- The solution to paper passwords
- SSD myths
- What to do when a Microsoft patch won’t install
- How to secure your wi-fi router
- Tagged!
- Blocking malware at the operating system level
- How I changed servers midstream
- Weekly roundup: 6 Oct 2010
- What to look for in a router
- If Google sent you here instead of to what you were looking for…
- Working for Canonical doesn’t make you pro-Free Software?
- And we have safely arrived in the 21st century.
September 2010
- WordPress may be coming soon. I hope.
- Hey! I’m famous!
- I got an LED bulb, and it is fabulous.
- Barely scraping by on a quarter-mil a year
- The Gray-Hoverman antenna
- Garage sale strategy: Go where the hordes aren’t
- Make Firefox run like new
- Upcoming
- Eric Show and the wrong side of history
- I wanna blow bubbles!
August 2010
- Where I am
- Editing. Or not editing.
- Of politeness and consideration in the connected age
- DVD players as cheap home media centers
- The stunning fall of Mark Hurd
- The best boss I ever worked for
- The American Dream vs. the American Greed
July 2010
- Buy a used business printer and save a bundle
- The Revolution of 1985
- Turn off that stupid IE "throbber" in Explorer windows
- A better, faster Firefox for Windows
- The best band I forgot about?
- Fixing reverting TCP/IP settings in Windows XP
June 2010
May 2010
- Dinosaur hunting
- He likes ’em young
- How to revive an old PC
- Coming soon: Affordable LED lighting
- The $189 window myth
- Tribute to the Asus SP97-V
- The rise and fall of Shack, and how to fix it
- How not to succeed in business
April 2010
March 2010
- A real world example of TEMPEST
- How to buy a laser printer
- Twice-monthly mortgage payment alternatives
- Misguided security
- How to go bankrupt and/or lose your house
- Is linoleum out of fashion? It shouldn’t be.
February 2010
January 2010
2009 62
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
- My standard security lecture
- How the Republican Party is losing me
- The joy of monitors
- Happy Patch Tuesday
- Carousel.
- Wendy’s
- I just downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials
- My last day at Initech
- 401(K) Paperwork
September 2009
- First impressions: HP Mini 110
- Getting more screen real estate in Firefox
- Barfy
- Why I quit my job
- Slimming down Windows XP for SSDs and nettops
- And… bailing out.
- End of the innocence
- Installing Windows off USB
August 2009
- Diving into real estate
- Saying goodbye to my Lexmark 4039
- Password pain
- Running a marathon with no plan
July 2009
June 2009
- Modem madness
- Yes, thermal curtains work
- Boundaries
- The 2wire 1701HG and its dodgy power supply
- Do thermal curtains work?
May 2009
- Improving DSL speed
- New wiring
- Why piracy matters
- Like father, like son. Plus, a tribute to Quantum
- A couple of links, one with a quote from Yours Truly
- Tips for running a garage sale
- I think I found my next major purchase
April 2009
- Counterfeit software
- I found a blog
- Wiring the house
- The "good enough" PC
- The Pure Digital Flip Ultra F260W
- How to make a really nice $500 computer
- And this is why I don’t drink
- Marley and Me
- Who needs an SSD anyway?
March 2009
- Letting go
- How to use compression to help life with an SSD
- Sitting in the lap of luxury with an OCZ Vertex SSD
- Very brief first SSD impressions
- Waterslide decal tips and tricks
- This could be the one… SSD for the masses
- The Maryville church killing suspect was denied insurance for mental health treatments
- I didn’t cause the depression
February 2009
January 2009
2008 100
December 2008
- Be careful where you buy your screws
- Second impressions: Intel D945GCLF2, aka the dual-core Atom desktop board
- Pale Divine: St. Louis’ biggest band
- First impressions: Intel D945GCLF2, aka the dual-core Atom desktop board
- A shift may be coming
- New life for a Compaq Presario S5140WM
- The Western Electric 500
- Cars for trains
November 2008
- How to turn around an automaker
- Since nobody’s talking yet about the Coco Crisp trade, I will
- What I\’ve learned about working with Marmoleum click tiles
- Lionel at Target
- Use your coupons!
- So what now?
October 2008
- What to the rich do with their money?
- Insulate hot water pipes
- When it makes sense to cheat on the envelope system
- R.I.P.? The American Dream
- How does the live-within-your-means movement apply to the current recession?
- Getting serious about budgeting
- The effect of registry optimizers on a run-of-the-mill PC
- Dead computer? Check the CPU fan.
- How to pay off the national debt in less than 30 years
- DIY paper CD cases
- On transitioning from high school to college
- That’s David L. Farquhar, Security+ now
September 2008
- Cheap upgrades
- Adventures in flooring
- Buffer overflows explained
- How to clean up your computer before you sell it
- The death of Lyman Bostock
- So is a Costco membership worth it?
- Your CFLs won’t kill you
- SSDs come of age?
- My hot water heater: 1984-2008
- DOS nostalgia?
August 2008
- Psst… Wanna compete with Best Buy?
- Why you should always stop at railroad crossings
- How to become a millionaire in 10 years (safely)
- Why I still like Debian
- Spray paint patio furniture
- An old formula for making money
- So, should I buy a different car?
- The international man of mystery
- Shut up, McCain. Obama is right this time.
- Secret Service BBS raids from the other perspective
July 2008
- Joel Osteen considered
- Intel\’s Atom mini-ITX board has some interesting possibilities
- What order should you pay off your debt?
- I hate to admit it, but Intel’s NIC drivers are awfully nice
- How I survived a weekend in July in the midwest without air conditioning
- Anyone up for a $239 SSD?
June 2008
- Paid in full.
- Why men have difficulty with fashion
- Why Firefox will probably always have mixed acceptance in corporate environments
- Firefox 3 is out
- Fathers: Give your family a gift this Father’s Day weekend
- $13.99 a day for three days isn’t $39 total!
- Registry optimization
- How eBay is ruining itself
- More on Manhunt, plus revisiting Dr. Mudd
- A book I\’ve been meaning to read for a very long time
May 2008
- Escape from Windows 98
- How Generation X can take this country back
- My poor-man’s SSD boots DOS really fast
- One solution to the family IT man problem: Standardize
- Better upgrade advice
- My SSD experiment, coming soon
- Was California Republican Tony Krvaric Strider of Fairlight?
- Lawnmower Adventures, Part 2
April 2008
- Dave switches to Office 2007
- Being more interested in growth than being Lutheran? Hardly.
- And now, a few words about the first-place Kansas City Royals
March 2008
- The economics of mass transit
- Flooding
- An insider’s view of the Atari ST
- Don’t fall for get-rich-quick schemes: Check out the claims before you sign
- Make something! Fix something!
February 2008
- The sad story of Scott Spiezio
- What net neutrality means and why it\’s a good thing
- Getting domesticated (or at least more handy)
- Misplaced faith
- This changes everything
- The argument for paying your mortgage off early
- Identifying what processes are talking on your Windows box
- What’s wrong with Kirkwood?
- Everybody is creative
- No reason for brand wars
- Fighting Web rage
- Ve hev vays to uninstall Symantec Antivirus
- Making trees from wire, plaster and lichen
- A big time test for Nlite
- The Nlite-d Compaq revisited
January 2008
2007 98
December 2007
- Fifteen minutes a day
- The Christmas train
- Trailing edge computing
- Commodore’s founder comes out of hiding
- Mark Littell: Playoff goat to YouTube star
- Fixing erratic Lionel Fastrack
- The most thorough article to date on the decision not to prosecute
November 2007
- Updating Windows without a network connection
- Installing Windows from a USB device
- Decorating for Christmas again
- What I learned today about Black Friday sales
- Saving the world (but not necessarily your wallet) with biodiesel
- Fixing choppy audio in Windows XP SP2
- My children, right or wrong
- Parents aren\’t supposed to act this way
- If you have wireless, you need DD-WRT
- Upgrade diary: Compaq Evo D51S
- Does window insulation film work?
October 2007
- If you think you can do it so much better, then do it yourself
- Getting old
- Why I generally buy AMD
- Don’t try to do it all at once
- What to do when an Xbox DVD drive sticks
- Another year, another manager
- Why first-generation flash SSDs are a bit disappointing
- Using video memory as a ramdisk in Linux
- Surviving a recession
- Well, I\’m a Christian and I don\’t crave violence
September 2007
- How to fight the City of St. Louis’ red-light scam
- Why I never kept up with the Joneses
- Why I like MS Office better than OpenOffice
- St. George story seems all too believable
- Garage sale adventures: The treadmill
- How I fought the insurance company and lived to tell about it
- Beware of scammers on Craigslist
- Why your old computer or game system turned yellow
- Best. Documentary. Ever.
August 2007
- Robocopy categorized as social/dating?
- Dog stories
- Meet Robocopy
- How to use your computer skills to earn some extra money
- Net neutrality has little to do with censorship but it\’s a good idea anyway
- Replace your video game system’s power cord cheap
- My baseball heroes
- This is why Joe Posnanski is one of my favorite sports columnists
July 2007
- Integrated components vs discrete
- Dateline\’s getting sued
- What to do when you\’ve been ripped off in a buy/sell forum
- Is it OK to sell gifts on eBay?
- I’m only gonna ask this once.
- A story of a truck, some trains, a vet, and a possible scam
- Optimizing a brand-new PC
- Why study genealogy?
- How I saved $380 on a cellphone plan
- Improve your Internet connection speed by adjusting your MTU
- Save energy and money with smart power strips
- Optimizing Firefox
- The Police put on an unforgettable show
- I’m going to see The Police tonight
- How to find motivation to balance your budget
June 2007
- Run the right version of Windows for your PC
- How I became interested in system optimization
- How to defrag when defrag just keeps starting over and over
- Take some steps to improve your health today
- Rod Beck is a sad loss
- The best way to optimize your firewall: Use hardware
- Dave and Emily’s healthy vegan whole-wheat pancake recipe
- And here\’s something for you…
- Replace your Antivirus software with this freebie and regain your performance
- The best defragmenter for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista
- A better registry cleaner
- Event ID 1202 with error code 0x8 (8)
- My 2007 trip to Chicago
- The little-known story of Commodore
- So gas/solar/electric hybrids might make sense
- Maybe this is the end of being like a yo-yo
May 2007
April 2007
- Meet Melvin.
- What to do when you can’t upgrade WinZIP because wkqkpick.exe is in use
- Blister on my thumb…
- Random thoughts on the Va Tech massacre
- The Calvin and Hobbes search engine
- The Three Dog Bakery
- We just lost the best pure writer alive
- I wish I’d tried out Cafe Manhattan much sooner
March 2007
- Cheap, effective terrain scenery
- My latest excursion to the east side
- Where have you gone, A.C. Gilbert?
February 2007
January 2007
2006 54
December 2006
- I rebuilt a Dell Dimension 4100 last night
- An O scale glossary of sorts
- In case anyone\’s wondering why I don\’t run an open forum anymore…
- So my Royals got some pitching…
November 2006
- Setting up the tree and the train
- How to get Black Friday specials without camping out before the crack of dawn
- Original Sony Playstations as high-end audio components?
- Cars (as in vehicles) for train layouts
- A story of baseball, drugs, vengeance and redemption
- Don’t overlook thrift stores when looking for software
- Don’t paint on Mondays (or any other bad day)
- My lawnmower adventures
- I found what looks like a useful Windows scripting language
October 2006
- Lionel trains at Target, 2006
- How to assemble a plastic model kit
- It’s time for some electricity in St. Louis
September 2006
- Hey, Carbon Leaf has a new record out!
- Western Electric rotary phone tips and tricks
- Give me a little time to process what I just saw…
- The overworked American
- I guess crate-trained means the dog is trained to get out of the crate
August 2006
- I now have a dog.
- How to organize your thoughts and notes
- Playing around with LyX
- Living without electricity for five days
- Well, that was fun.
May 2006
- Dealing with being laid off
- My $8 secondhand Lionel
- Windows 2000 without Internet Explorer
- If the site\’s been slow lately, I apologize
April 2006
- Conservative economics vs. the oil crisis
- A couple more ideas for saving gas
- Upgrading my mother in law’s Compaq Presario S5140WM
- Recapturing the charm of someone else’s dad’s American Flyer train
- A Gospel according to Judas?
- Stock up on compact fluorescent lighting
- Well, at least this year the Royals showed up to play
March 2006
- How to get a Commodore 64 for $20
- Choosing quality over quantity
- Making stuff the old-fashioned way
- Taking one for the team
- Frequent your local produce market
- How to get my job (2006 edition)
- Barry Bonds is no Kirby Puckett
- Get your valuable Windows licensing information from Microsoft!
- Myspace and blogging isn’t inherently bad
February 2006
January 2006
2005 131
December 2005
- Maybe there’s a method to the Royals’ madness
- OK, U2\’s still got it
- Song lyrics on the web will be the death of the music industry?
- Why I\’m Lutheran
- Aliens on my train layout
- I\’m published again
November 2005
- My first impressions of Pandora
- Keeping a Lionel 1122 switch from buzzing
- Time to winterize the house…
- The tipping point of obsolesence
- This isn\’t the weirdest thing I\’ve seen stolen
- The new nontraditional homeless
- Dumbest line I heard all day, Installment I
- BMW is opening a plant in India
- In honor of Southwestern Bell and AT&T getting back together
October 2005
- Atari vs Nintendo
- Speeding up Openoffice
- Well, that solves one mystery of the universe
- H1B abuse
- I still leave my PCs powered on
- Firefox simplifies Tinyurl
- Firefox popups got you down?
- Robin, thank you and goodbye
- Need a cheap NAS? Grab this floppy and an old Pentium and you’ve got it
- Have you noticed your inbox is lighter lately?
- Windows 2000 in 32 megs of RAM
- How to retire a millionaire without doing much of anything
- It\’s finally out!
- Cheap buildings for a train layout
- The truth about DVD recordables
September 2005
- Another look at color laser printing
- A reminder about the most obvious money saver
- Microsoft getting into the backup business?
- Make sure you use this link before it gets sued off the web
- Can the Royals be saved?
- Another meaningless security report…
- Another take on Google’s digital library
- Total retro overload
- Gigabit prices hit the mainstream
- Relief for high gas prices?
August 2005
- Insourcing time
- Joe\’s Secondhand Lions
- No, Pat Robertson\’s comments aren\’t \"very Christian.\"
- How to improve your laptop\’s speed
- How to make your laptop more reliable (or at least die trying)
- The road to financial independence
- I just got back from vacation on the Gulf Coast
- We’ll have to wait longer for PCI RAMdisks
- Why small business is better than big business
- I want to believe Palmeiro
July 2005
- This author says used book sales don\’t hurt authors or publishers
- Sticking PDFs together
- The best business book I\’ve ever read
- Beware Nigerians seeking computer equipment
- Not enough IT workers?
- Professional blogging?
- Cheap train accessories from Big Lots
- Windows for Morons
- Don\’t blame the demon
- Should journalists protect their sources?
- A journalist\’s take on how to eliminate snoring during sermons
June 2005
- Coming back
- How to read electronics schematics
- Microsoft buys and then discontinues Linux/Unix antivirus products
- Counting change
- Can Google compete with Paypal?
- Well, Episode III could have been worse…
- Whatever happened to risk-takers?
- Speed traps in south St. Louis
- Operating System Not Found, Missing Operating System, and friends
- Intel inside the Mac–no more question mark
- Finally! A $60 RAMdisk on a PCI card
- Light at the end of the tunnel?
- Making a curtain rod on the cheap
- Working with idiots can kill you
- I got lucky and scored some cheap figures yesterday
May 2005
- Will Buddy Bell turn it around in Kansas City?
- The Microsoft Killer
- A cheap and lazy way to make insulated track sections
- Build a quiet and reliable toy train layout
- Score one for property rights in St. Louis
- So the Department of Homeland Security is now the copyright police?
- Hey publishers, get over Google Print already!
- Intel inside a Mac?
- Caveats with LCD flat-panel monitors
- Building an up-and-under layout with a K-Line trestle
- Whatever happened to… online politeness?
- My family threw me a wedding shower this weekend
April 2005
- Dvorak is at least partly right about the gaming industry
- Selling untested memory is new? Whatever.
- New Order is back?
- In honor of tax day… Basements.
- Gas-saving sites miss the obvious
- Are blogs credible?
- Adobe buys Macromedia!
- Punishing the curious for something that should have never happened
- What happens when you overclock
- Survey sites, revisited
- Motivation for living cheap to get out of debt
- Fixing Backup Exec with Hisecweb installed
- Who’s in hell?
March 2005
- In case you’re still having a case of the Mondays
- Are computer repair people all amateurs like this BBC reporter says?
- Basic Windows printer troubleshooting
- Vindicated?
- Moral Dilemma
- Wikipedia hits half a million entries
- A compelling toy train layout with animations done on the cheap
- Cheap ground foam for trains
- Super glue tips and tricks
- How to make a national sales tax work–fairly
- Tonight I did something I’ve never done before
February 2005
- Dvorak’s PC Magazine Linux column: Crazy or Clueless? Clueless.
- A User Friendly waiting to happen
- A train layout photo
- Nickel and dime your way to prosperity
- Terms of use for this site (Or: Deep-link me, please)
- It’s hard to know what to make of Jose Canseco’s steroid allegations
- How to build and paint miniature buildings (and make kids have fun with what they learn in school)
- Another story of eminent domain gone wrong
- The story of MTH vs. Lionel
- The government exists to protect and serve its citizens, not the other way around
January 2005
- I’ve been messing around with Backup Exec 10
- So we\’re complaining about our economy…
- Troubleshooting Packagefortheweb packages
- Making a Marx run like a Marx again
- Seen on Slashdot: PC cases made of Lego
- Gatermann captured me demonstrating how to run a steam locomotive
- How to connect a Commodore 64 to a television
- Recover your Windows CD key
- When in St. Louis, don’t miss the City Museum
2004 221
December 2004
- XTrkCad model railroad track software is going open source
- Making fill patterns in Gimp
- Another site listing spyware-free software
- Freesco still works as a router/firewall in a pinch
- David Eckstein signing makes sense for the Cardinals
- Paint.NET is fine for what it\’s intended but no Gimp killer
- Rebuilding in Kansas City
- Fixing a computer that shows the wrong partition size after resizing
- Why do people pay $35 for lists of paid survey sites?
- Now that’s customer service
- Ways to keep your NT/2K/XP system defragmented
- A Linux-based GPL\’ed disk partition table recovery program
- IBM dumping its PC business?
- Quieting and lengthening the life of a case fan
- Running Knoppix on a Proliant with a SmartArray controller
- Read this if you are using the free AVG 6.0 antivirus software
- Revolutionary new computer maintenance trick!
- Expect things to be sporadic until 10 PM tomorrow
- The search is over, my life is complete…
November 2004
- A good tool for salvaging really bad photographs
- How to get that dusty old train running again
- I’d actually consider running a screensaver
- The Commodore 64 Direct to TV is out
- How to use Knoppix to replace at least $100 worth of must-have utilities
- What to do if you can’t find a Lionel Polar Express set
- Things to look for in a wireless router
- Disk defragmentation in Windows 2000, XP, and, uh, NT4
- Things to look for in a flatbed scanner
- The HP 4101mfp multifunction device
- Lionel bankruptcy
- Graphics software for Windows revisited
- Creative ways to destroy computer data
- Pay off a mortgage in five years
- Troubleshooting a Compaq Proliant 1600
- Wake up your Backup Exec remote agent
- R. Collins refuses to concede the election
- I like Firefox 1.0
- So there is a benefit to running Windows Server 2003 and XP
- Firefox 1.0 is out, and mozilla.org is down
- Flash drive durability vs. microdrives
- Umm, no, as a matter of fact everything isn\’t OK…
- How to get a provisional ballot
October 2004
- Problems the last two days
- Apple II clones
- Team of destiny?
- Floppies, meet your replacement
- Cheap source of parts for projects, electronic or otherwise
- Odd genealogy fact of the day: Bush and Kerry are cousins
- Cheap hardware won’t stop software piracy
- Who could have scripted a better ALCS than this?
- Resolving an issue with slow Windows XP network printing
- The almost-was Bill Gates
- What pop singer is your OS?
- Troubleshoot your locomotives on the floor!
- Darl\’s getting a blog…
- Intel scraps its 4 GHz P4!
- What’s this deal with RFID chips in humans?
- Schilling didn’t read the script
- Build better ads with Taguchi
- I helped my girlfriend move this weekend
- Undocumented Backup Exec error
- Dave Farquhar\’s rules, Part 1
- Backup Exec misadventures
- Hard drive upgrade tips for older PCs
- Ghost won\’t let me use my monster hard drive!
- Love is patient, love is kind, love is not a license to say anything you want
- Refinishing without refinishing
- Taking decent photographs
September 2004
- Remember type-ins?
- Pretentious Pontifications: Raunche sells out
- Tin litho buildings for a traditional pre-war train layout
- Fixing Windows font sizing. Sort of.
- My brother\’s speck and my log
- Taking the losses with the wins
- So, do you still think having Internet Explorer on your server is a good idea?
- Vertigo!
- The power of the blog
- Spam that infects your computer
- So, what OS are you?
- Fascination with old technology
- Selling my soul to Google
- Bounty-hunting spammers
- Last weekend\’s find
- Squeezing some life out of an aging Windows 2000 PC
- This is another lame Johnny Ramone tribute
- Next time you want to forge some documents…
- How to get your RSS/RDF feed working with Mozilla Firefox\’s Live Bookmarks
- Will Firefox be Netscape’s revenge?
- VMWare is in Microsoft\’s sights
- Converting Bachmann On30 cars to O or O27?
- Sick.. AGAIN.
- Lean, mean Linux
- A first look at Inkscape
- Is there hope in Kansas City for baseball?
- Any Unix gurus care to help me with mod_rewrite?
- I\’ll try to check in later this weekend.
- The big question: PC or Mac?
- Getting rid of some rust on old toy trains
- Is this Apple a surprise to anyone?
- How did I miss Symantec buying out PowerQuest?
August 2004
- What day is it again?
- VMWare’s P2V is mildly disappointing but can still save the day
- Hey, score one for copyRIGHTS!
- A political announcement from R. Collins
- How my cars got their names
- Confessions of a former Best Buy salesman
- An easy coupler height fix for prewar American Flyer
- They\’re just toys
- Need to squeeze a little more on that floppy?
- Determining the age of electronic equipment
- I was on vacation
- I didn’t expect to hear that on the radio…
- Online support of Katie.com is inspirational but misguided
- What to do when a PC is too bogged down in spyware to run the tools
- 3-2-1 Studios has been sued out of business
- Setting the MTU automatically in Debian
- No surprises in the PC Magazine reliability/service survey
July 2004
- Basic Internet Explorer troubleshooting
- It\’s that time of month again, time to Slashdot the Wikipedia
- Removing paint from old plastic models and toys
- Thoughts on backups
- Your Fair Use rights are in danger (again)
- Leave your DIY PCs at home
- A model railroad scale conversion chart
- The second-cheapest way to get household necessities
- A super-cool Mozilla extension
- Some painting tips for around the house
- It\’s 2004, and that means a new presidency
- If you use Mozilla, you need to read this
- A few short tips on buying laptops
- What browser should I use?
- Commodore’s back!
June 2004
- American Model Toys and Kusan trains
- A search engine that learns
- Pretentious Pontifications: R. Collins for President
- What’s an aluminum can worth?
- I miss my rivalry
- Two useful tools for upgrading Windows servers
- Open sourcing code doesn’t necessarily mean people will rush to it
- So whatcha whatcha whatcha want? So whatcha want?
- Looks like Windows XP SP2 is gonna break stuff
- The unheralded bargain in O gauge trains
- Help! I do tech support for everyone I know! (Version 1.1)
- That PC wasn’t broken, it was just spyware
- Running Marx and Lionel trains together
- Advice for setting up a computer lab
- A first look at Mozilla Firefox 0.9
- Save your computer–lose the screen saver
- Visiting the house where my ancestors grew up
- KC: Don’t give in to Scott Boras
- You still think outsourcing is a good idea?
- Go get ’em, SCO!
- Visiting a movie sneak preview
May 2004
- Milestone
- A Bing in Marx clothing
- The quest for BBQ in St. Louis takes me to Smokin’ Al’s
- What’s wrong with Iraq this time around
- Dude, that Dell\’s, like, totally bent!
- Building some cheap train shelves
- Shopping an estate sale for trains
April 2004
- The problem with online streaming video
- Creating vignettes on a train layout
- Scribus isn\’t a bad open-source DTP program
- Congratulations to Wikipedia for two Webby nominations
- One way for neighbors to harass each other
- Conversation in a hardware store checkout line
- Umax scanner drivers
- Outsource your home e-mail to keep viruses at bay
- Useful online Genealogy databases
- OK Tony, I still believe
- Thank you, Kurt
- In honor of Charlemagne\’s birthday…
March 2004
- I need to build this in O gauge
- Well, I’m a Slowlaris administrator now
- A taste of… Missouri, I guess
- A Soviet train on eBay!?
- Insulating electrical outlets
- Sorry I’ve been AWOL lately
- A link for the artistically inclined
- Suddenly I wish I could buy Mopar spark plugs at Autozone
- Sneaking up on you: Affordable Gigabit
- Munich\’s unexpected migration costs prove nothing so far
February 2004
- Learning about scratchbuilding the hard way
- Two new things are working
- I need to use this for my e-mail signature line
- Salary cap? Baseball needs something
- So, I was gonna write some cool stuff this weekend…
- Running ancient DOS games on modern Windows
- Fixing a Marx 490 O27 toy locomotive
- Today\’s focus on Christ\’s death is misplaced
- The DSL connection was down this morning
- Buy, don\’t build, enterprise servers
- Wikipedia hits 200,000
- Registrations aren’t working for everyone
- Make Linux look like Windows XP
January 2004
- Gateway buys eMachines
- Outsourcing hurts all of us
- MyDoom/Novarg Gloom
- Misspelling for profit (or lack of it)
- Free graphics software for Windows
- Operate incompatible rolling stock together with conversion cars
- Optimizing dynamic Linux webservers
- And we\’re live
- Status update
- Troubleshooting Marx remote turnouts
- The end of the world will be October 3, 2002! Make that Jan. 17, 2003! Er…
- A more permanent home for Dad’s Lionel
- The economics of color inkjets vs. color lasers
- Reports on the death of film are [you know the rest]
- Myths about the 1904 World’s Fair
- Linkfest Saturday
- I hope someday I’ll understand this model railroad electronics page
- Making two-part plaster molds
- Linux kernel 2.6.0 is in Debian Unstable
- Slimming down the bird: A 2.6 kernel for PCs with 4-8 megs
- Vintage signs and lighting for your toy train layout
- Advice on troubleshooting and buying printers
- Who will speak up?
- When will we learn to ignore Pete Rose?
- Beware the -ing
- Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario 7360
2003 198
December 2003
- A Free, Open-Source alternative to WinZip
- Beware the “flat screen” scam
- Thinking on Compaq Presario upgrades
- Numotizine: The ultimate treatment for a cough
- I”m back from vacation, and now I’m rich!
- R. Collins celebrates his birthday
- Optimizing Windows networks
- More tips for playing with toy trains
- Recapturing the charm of Dad’s Lionel train
- Easy and secure remote Linux/Unix file transfers with SCP
November 2003
- Preserving those new (and old) holiday memories
- Yet another genealogy tip
- This is still a blog
- Getting started in Genealogy
- Royal roots
- Finding my roots
- When will we take security seriously?
- Using your logs to help track down spammers and trolls
- Shrinking Windows 2000 and XP
- When an AMD system gives you problems, always suspect the power supply
- FTE – a DOS-style editor for Linux
- The first PC I ever built
- What to expect around here
October 2003
- The R. Collins Guide to Health
- Hello, Railtycoon!
- Why IPO?
- Knoppix: A low-commitment way to try Linux
- A coupla MP3 jukebox solutions
- Looks like I’m a Florida Marlins fan now
- Fighting spam two ways
- Yes, I’m alive
September 2003
- Rediscovering OS/2
- Spend your computer money on your monitor, not some hopped-up CPU
- Hey Royals: This St. Louisan still believes
- Mice and motherboards and keyboards
- Cheap computer gear for the week of Sept. 15
- Time to review Beautiful Lumps of Coal
- Selling out
- Dave’s MP3 jukebox of his dreams–almost
- Hacking Mozilla Firebird
- Hey, I almost forgot: New David Crowder
- Who wants to build an MP3 jukebox when you can go shopping?
- Time for me to ask the questions for once
August 2003
- Some baseball players entertain; Dave Dravecky changed my life
- Dave’s formula for winning a pennant
- Time for a core dump
- A worthwhile link for Christians wanting to stay in touch with the rest of the world
- At the request of a friend: Your thoughts on feeding tubes?
- Shrinking Windows 9x
- The battle of unforgiveness
- Fiction again
- A few words from Dave the Bloody Pulp after learning about NT software RAID
- 1997 again: Spending an evening with White Light, White Heat, White Trash
- A day of catching up
July 2003
- How to remember lots and lots of stuff
- Accessibility: God, the computer field, and me
- An easy, low-budget CMS
- Maybe someone in the music industry is starting to get it
- More on building under a small Linux environment
- So there is a uClibc-based Linux distribution
- A tiny Linux server distribution? Maybe?
- Time for more potshots at SWBell
- An author reflects on publishing
- I’ll be back later, I hope
- Quirks about St. Louis
- God cares about our concerns, even when we’re not brave enough to talk about them
- Why my ramdisk techniques don’t work with XP
- More on tiny but potentially modern Linux distributions
- Yes, I’m still alive
June 2003
- That wasn’t the Sunday I had planned
- A text-mode download manager for Linux/Unix
- I’m taking everyone’s advice and doing what I love
- The best news I’ve heard in a long time: The Public Domain Enhancement Act
- A question for pastors and other church leaders about singles’ ministry
- A trick to give your fictional characters some consistency
- The Royals came to me this weekend
- Date or Soul Mate… reviewed.
- Why was I cruising Lindbergh on a Friday night?
- First impressions of VMWare
- That’s it, I want to be an author again
- Do something for copyright freedom
- Why is there a stigma about meeting people online?
- Nasty weather takes down a site (this one)
- What I’ve learned about love
- To cheat or not to cheat?
- Heading back to Way Back When for a day
May 2003
- DietLinux — a Linux that boots in under 10 seconds
- My adventures in bureaucracy
- CompUSA’s $30 house-brand router looks like a rare bargain
- How to get rich–the Biblical way
- Love can mend your life but love can break your heart
- Sorry about that
- Yes, I’m here and looking for something to write about.
- Don’t read this if you don’t want a cheap (under $200) DVD burner
- Creating images of floppy diskettes with Linux or DOS
- SCO stoops to RIAA tactics
- Cinelerra 1.1.6: An open-source video editor for Linux
- Life has returned to Royals Stadium
- My brief experience with a Proliant ML570 server
- I took the plunge. I bought a Civic.
- Good news for Optimizing Windows fans
- Time to shop for a car again
- It’s time for a more holistic approach to depression
- My well-dressed visitors
- What to do with those e-mail forwards
- How to heal
April 2003
- If I had my own Linux distribution
- Outages
- This guy was anti-Microsoft years before anti-Microsoft was cool
- An easy way to improve audio quality
- Watch this space: Microsoft buying Universal
- What brand of hard drive should I buy?
- Linux gets more attractive on the Xbox
- This is a so-you-know-I’m-alive post
- What needs to happen for Linux to make it on the desktop
- A RAID array of floppies?
- So far, 2003 looks like 1984, only better
- An irreverent look at April 4 in history
- An irreverent look at this day in history, April 3
- Maintaining a healthy distance
March 2003
- Good thing: It’s baseball season. Better thing: My Royals won
- Sorry I’ve been away
- This is priceless
- A tribute to Adam Osborne
- I’m back
- Replacing wall warts with PC power supplies
- The Abit BP6 and modern Linux distributions
- Slashdot just located another sleazy spammer
- Fun with 419 spam
- Can I ever buy a record again?
- What to do when Windows breaks
- Spam, spam, spam, spam–how I got less of it
- Recovery fluff
- How to determine which device drivers to use in Linux
- My what-I-did-tonight piece
- What large market for x86 Unix?
- Optimizing a web server
- The future of the computer industry (especially Microsoft)
- Will this go down as my greatest crime against humanity?
- Am I better than 50%?
February 2003
- I’m coming up for air
- Pretentious Pontifications: Tape drives
- Writers vs. Critics
- The $799 Lindows subnotebook
- I just built a PC
- How DOS came to be IBM’s choice of operating system
- How IBM and DOS came to dominate the industry
- My experience with online dating doesn’t match PC Magazine’s
- Read this before you tell me what to believe
- The bloatware antidote for Windows
- Pretentious Pontifications: The word of the day
- Mozilla 1.3 has gone beta
- Dave goes to the doctor
- What’s your favorite cold remedy?
- More Wikipedia adventures
- Beware the leaky capacitors
- Sam’s Club offers $299 Red Hat Linux boxes
- Ah, so there will be a Railroad Tycoon III
- The day after the Columbia
- We just lost the Columbia
- Confessions of a SQL 7 junkie
January 2003
- More Wikipedia adventures
- Windows 98 CD-ROM drive not working? Try this
- Microsoft’s Slammer pain is good for everybody
- Update Expert is something for your NT power toolbelt
- Go back in time at open-video.org
- SQLSlammer takes its toll on the ‘Net
- Quieting a noisy PC
- Open a blg file in Windows
- Sorry about the downtime
- Houston is Microsoft’s problem: Alternatives to Microsoft Office
- New stuff and old stuff
- What am I going to have to carry around next?
- The answer to the blog feedback problem is not more weblog-ese
- More changes on the way
- Running a Web site without static IP with Linux and DynDNS
- If this isn’t real Christianity, it’s really close
- Network infrastructure for a small office
- Windows potpourri
- The low-end server
- Eldred loses, and so do the rest of us
- So this is how Worldcom does business?
- Finally–GPL antivirus for Linux
- This unusual case wants to house your next PC
- Umm… Don’t water-cool your power supply
- Vaguely productive Saturday
- Rethinking Movable Type and b2
- A reminder: 30 Days to a More Accessible Web Site
- How to make a video that ignites people’s passions on your issue
- The RIAA owes you $20
- Work miracles on your photos and scans with Qimage Pro
- Disadvantages of Windows 3.1
- Help! I do tech support for everyone I know!
- An airport story
- This is a blog
- Power supply secrets
- Cheap PC upgrade options
- How to connect a C-64 to a modern TV’s S-Video input
2002 326
December 2002
- Looking back on 2002
- Need public domain art?
- Another look at Mozilla’s anti-spam features
- Giving something back to the intellectual commons
- Ways to save money on your DVD player
- Merry Christmas
- Picking a power supply for my video editing PC
- These guys have a clue
- I’m returning to the Web’s good old days
- Santa Claus reportedly considering Linux
- Fare thee well, goodnight, and goodbye to my friend, OS/2
- Roll your own news aggregator in PHP
- 0wnz0r3d by an electrical storm
- A b2 user looks longingly at Movable Type
- apt-get install aclue
- End of the road for CD burners?
- My contributions to the Wikipedia
- Tell Pete Rose to crawl back under his rock
- Why I dislike Microsoft
- This commercial was just wrong
- That was nice.
- Laptop or desktop?
- Straight talk on cheap laptops
- Dumping a list of installed packages on a Debian system
- Another day, another gray
- The Compaq DL320 and Ghost
- Cheap laptops from Sotec
- A tip for amateur moviemakers: Record everything!
- News flash: Windows is cheaper than Linux!
- Phillies’ signing of Thome is about confidence, not wins
- Dot-matrix printers in Windows
November 2002
- My first lengthy exposure to digital photography
- Transferring VHS movies to VCD or DVD
- Upgrade diary: Gateway G6-400
- Increase the speed of your Web pages
- Got tech skills? Here’s a Christmas idea
- Watch your favorite blogs, effortlessly
- Analysis: Big retailers unite to make DMCA look stupid
- These guys want your spam
- Red Hat and Debian fans debate desktop Linux
- Pretty Boy rides again (unfortunately)
- Building with the Antec SLK2600AMB
- I have seen the future, and it works!
- Basic design principles
- Back in business
- Old computer magazines
- Picking out a camcorder
- Don’t try this at home
- The Sapphire Radeon 7000
- It’s election day.
- A nice upgrader’s motherboard and a cheap fan
- New Freesco
October 2002
- This case feels like a contender
- The worm that’s not a worm
- An emergency POP client
- Linux network diagnostics
- More wireless networking
- Let’s talk wireless networking
- That Middle East oil rumor
- A moving story
- In defense of Wordstar
- Adding a network card to Linux
- A semi-easy firewall
- Phoenix hits 3, er, 0.3
- Telemarketers, go away
- Switched off
- Self publishing to success
- A total blast from the past
- A home Linux server? $1200?
- Porches
- Baseball strategy 101
- Milestone!
- Good things come to those who drag their feet
- A useful Debian tool
- Linkfest since I’m busy
- Too busy for Aimee Mann
September 2002
- A safe way to test power supplies
- How to reinvigorate the Royals
- The way baseball ought to be
- Reviving a laptop
- Looking for stock video footage?
- Am I going to hell?
- Pretentious Pontifications: Finally, a respectable entry-level system
- I’m back.
- How to get started in the IT industry
- You are looking at a genu-ine inventor
- The best band you’ve never heard of
- Patch your Linux distros
- Wait on buying a high-end AMD CPU
- So what do we do now?
- Where are we now?
- I’m in debt
- Video editing on a shoestring
- Problem children
- The truth about Butch and Eddie
- Feeling cynical
- Remember your first car?
August 2002
- Jon, God just did something for me
- Will today ruin baseball?
- Replacing my IDE CD-ROM with a SCSI CD-ROM
- The unauthorized biography of rms
- Don’t bury publishing yet
- Toss your web browser
- Well, that was unproductive
- The ten-minute guide to oppressing women
- Legalism is just the first sin all over again
- The best week of my life revisited
- This is so ridiculous I can’t parody it
- I’m not ready to come back yet, but here’s someone who is
- My neck hurts.
- Pretentious Pontifications: The needs of the fast-paced life
- Mail: Data recovery 101
- Our inflated egos show on our streets
- Promising ways to fight spam
- A prank no more
- From the truly absurd dept.
- Upgrading an eMachine
- The ultimate DOS boot disk
- Darrell Porter is still worthy of respect
- Something for your dart board
- Dude… I put a CD-RW drive in a Dell!
- The pundits are wrong about Apple’s defection
- An interesting type of cluster computing
- St. Louis just lost more than a great catcher
- This year, Selig outshines even Steinbrenner
- Milestone
- A story about lapsed domain names
- Who needs Ghost?
- Crime’s downward spiral
- Here’s a promising site
July 2002
- Copyright terriorists can’t take what they dish out
- Building a budget PC
- My next project
- And the axe falls
- Buying a monitor
- The best Linux distro meets the best file system
- Drowning my sorrows in cholesterol and punk
- Dude! I’m getting a… Packard Bell!
- All of this and nothing
- Looks like Premiere 6.5 will be a keeper
- I think I need to learn about VCD
- Words to live by
- Where does faith come from?
- A class act
- What’s the matter here?
- Must… sleep…
- I know that this is not goodbye
- Why I stand by my Royals
- I know better
- Unjust and harsh
- I thought this went without saying, but…
- Reaching out to my brothers, locally and far away
- Another All-Star Flub
- Windows XP networking advice
- So you think Linux is unproven?
- Ch-ch-ch-changes
- My spiritual journey
- What I’ve learned in my current video project
- Do I have to title this?
- They don’t make ’em like Ted Williams anymore
- It’s about people
- Who do you trust the least?
- The coolest thing that happened to me, personally, in Belle Glade
- Update your BIND servers
- An easy way to get Debian 3.0 before you can buy it
June 2002
- How to pray
- Possibly the first Apache worm
- The craziest thing I’ve read in a long time
- Palladium and You
- And forgive us our trespasses…
- They don’t make ’em like Lyman Bostock anymore
- Long day.
- Ten Years of Life
- Dealing with the loss of a father
- Doh 2
- A couple of brief stories
- I’m back.
- Outta here.
- Optimizing Windows 2000
- A human being prefers being something else
- The reason for last night’s weirdness
- Should I file this under ‘Christianity’ or ‘Writing?’
- Introducing the Silicon Underground Portal
- Will ZDNet ever get a clue about Linux?
- Walter Johnson, Mizzou economics professor
- A DOS-style editor for Linux
- The most disturbing story in the Old Testament
- Let’s talk about journalism
- Dumb things I’ve said to girls
- And we’re live.
- Disguising a Linux box for the big, bad world
- Coming soon: My best line ever
- A dream realized: Mozilla 1.0
- Getting out of a sticky BIND
- What am I?
- Let’s be rational when we talk about the War on Terror
- A useful Linux app for your CD-R
- Trolling ’round the ‘net
- Wiping a disk securely
- Let the teens and 20somethings rise to expectations
May 2002
- Klez is nasty!
- Testing a blown AC adapter
- Guidance in re-installing Windows 98SE
- The immoral, despicable “journalism” at the Church of the Nativity
- Pretentious Pontifications: Tennis
- Retro is in, so I’m bringing back some old stuff
- Optimizing Web graphics
- R.I.P.: One W2K box
- Leave Mike Piazza Alone
- A stupid BIND trick
- I was wrong, but I wasn’t alone!
- Analysis of the Apple Mac Xserver
- The tightrope of Web design
- Browser test
- Why is party living more socially acceptable than playing video games too much?
- Going live
- A tale of two catchers who became managers
- First look: The Proliant DL320
- Stand by your SCSI.
- The disaster of not knowing who to call
- The St. Louis I never knew
- My Klez adventures
April 2002
- How the other half lives
- The giant homo sapien conspiracy against me
- I shoulda stayed home and read a book!
- Man on a mission.
- Another ordinary Monday…
- The Kansas City Royals, where everything is wrong
- Linux sites I read regularly.
- News analysis
- Pretentious Pontifications, Part III
- Recovery time.
- Dell and Gateway upgrade caveats
- My video editing ephiphany
- A Saturday mixture
- How to get my job
- I’m here to tell you how busy I am
- Planes, trains, and computers
- Vintage PCs and bubblegum and Unix and Windows server crashes
- Technobabble
- Baseball season is here, and so’s Baseball Mogul 2003
March 2002
- Some video editing tips from the school of hard knocks
- Cult of Linux, and cheap cheap hardware
- Dave installs Windows XP
- Spontaneous system reboots
- Sexual Harassment training
- Personal problems.
- I just got back from a Third Day concert
- Linux reliability
- Pretentious Pontifications, Part II
- We’ve got problems.
- CSS and XHTML and standards
- Overdue update on Katelyn
- Honest, the money was burning a hole in my pocket!
- A couple of quick things
- Dinner with an old friend
- Pretentious Pontifications: Meet R. Collins Farquhar IV
- Heat compound and reliability
- Adventure in SCSI
- How to build a reliable PC.
- Linux Performance Tuning
- Full disclosure and integrity
- The penguins are coming!
- Repairing corrupt IE installations
- Microsoft’s temper tantrum
- Encryption on the cheap
- Stopping spam.
- Catching up.
- More video editing
- Printing with HP
February 2002
- Ugh
- The hysteria on StarOffice…
- OK, I’m back…
- Upgrading a P2-300
- Another RISC platform for Linux
- Cheap network hardware
- Time for some Pakistani justice
- A kids’ game
- Big trouble
- Trolling the web for nothing in particular
- Promise, not powerhouse
- Oddity of the day
- More Linux tricks
- Linkfest Friday…
- Priorities (Or: How to spend Valentine’s night on the couch)
- Optimizing a Linux box in-place
- Asbestos underwear time
- Is Windows optimization obsolete?
- PC slumming
- A philosophy of life
- And this surprises people because…?
- Another entry from the Clueless Dept.
- All in no particular order…
- Off to a funeral visitation
January 2002
- Katelyn update.
- How Linux could own the education market
- Ho-hum.
- It’s a girl!
- St. Louis secrets
- Tweaking Debian for all it’s worth
- Building an inexpensive PC
- Utility infielder
- It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times…
- Much ado about nothing and other stuff
- Who put me in charge?
- What on earth is going on?
- I’m fried.
- Another Katelyn update.
- Not much new on Katelyn
- Bad news on Katelyn
- Why Linux stands a chance
- Another Katelyn update
- If you want to chase rainbows…
- Why I run Debian, and some Debian tricks
- Linux on a Power Mac 7500
- (hopefully) small setback for Katelyn
- It’s time.
- Update on Katelyn
- Katelyn’s out of ICU!
- Katelyn is improving
- Update on Katelyn
- A reminder from your sponsor…
- That faith thing.
- Another update.
- More on Katie…
- Happy New Year!