The Curious Engineer

The Silicon Underground

2011–2014

1,440 posts

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2014 282

December 2014

  1. My son’s Hall of Famers
  2. Gesso: Brushable, non-toxic primer
  3. How to paint outlet covers
  4. The TP-Link TD-8616. It’s a modem. It seems to work.
  5. The Sony breach and why every company should be worried
  6. My Angry Birds pals
  7. Microsoft sues the tech support scammers
  8. My boys and the Hot Wheels Shoebox
  9. In the city, a $6 antenna is all you need
  10. How I blog
  11. How to build a Christmas day cable emergency kit
  12. I fought the white screen, and I won!
  13. Another creative source for S gauge figures: Liberty Falls Americana
  14. The dwindling writing market
  15. Fix a chipped bathtub for $5
  16. Bringing back old HDTVs
  17. Don’t use personal information as your wifi network name
  18. Painting model figures in five easy steps
  19. Creative sourcing for O and S scale train layout figures
  20. Viglink: Looking back after 16 months
  21. An insider’s account of the fall of Radio Shack
  22. What is Winshock?
  23. Why accordion-style flexible drain pipe is against code
  24. What to look for in a 2014 bargain Android tablet

November 2014

  1. 4K displays get affordable for Cyber Monday
  2. Tips for using Dept. 56 and Lemax-type buildings with Lionel trains
  3. Fixing the .NET Framework
  4. Veracrypt is a Truecrypt alternative if you’re looking for one
  5. This should go without saying: Upgrade your WordPress!
  6. More encryption = more safety
  7. What to look for in a cheap laptop in late 2014
  8. When subversion doesn’t get you promoted
  9. How I accidentally fixed the garage door
  10. Enerlites HOSS: an occupancy sensor switch without ground
  11. Diaper raid!
  12. A new way to measure reliability and quality of hardware
  13. How to protect executives traveling to hostile countries
  14. Got tech support scammed? Worry about your credit card, not your computer
  15. Comments are working again
  16. Here we go again. Net neutrality is not Obamacare either.
  17. How to check a train transformer for safety
  18. Retracing the Home Depot attackers’ steps
  19. Baseball cards for the lulz
  20. Don’t buy a house if you can’t afford it
  21. How to repair a dryer
  22. Getting fewer tech support scam calls lately?
  23. Set up your retirement account. Just do it. Then forget it.

October 2014

  1. The power company’s aid in saving energy
  2. This one hurts.
  3. FTDI needs to be charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
  4. How to rebuild a PC in a hurry
  5. An approach for helping demanding people
  6. Don’t buy a “desktop replacement” laptop
  7. Resources for securing WordPress
  8. Why we can’t have nice things: The reaction to IBM’s big black and blue quarter
  9. Defusing in person
  10. The wrong way to reboot a server
  11. Off to the World Series.
  12. Why you should avoid home warranties
  13. Attention St. Louis: Two shock jocks don’t speak for Kansas City, or for the Royals
  14. Statistically predicting successful marriages
  15. HP splits in two.
  16. The meaning of “That’s what speed do.”
  17. How to succeed as an IT contractor
  18. CMD.EXE and its shellshock-like qualities
  19. Do this before hitting send
  20. The Legions of Doom come after a server
  21. What it was like owning a Commodore in the 1980s
  22. Remembering Dolgin’s
  23. Need public domain content? Check out dp.la
  24. What it was like being a Royals fan from 1986-2013

September 2014

  1. Some tough-love money advice I missed before
  2. Why use a CMS like WordPress?
  3. My favorite LED bulbs for 2014
  4. Predicting the future, circa 2003
  5. Bash is worse than heartbleed! Oh noes!
  6. That time I told a tech support scammer my name was Naim
  7. Don’t like paying for software? There’s an answer but old software isn’t it.
  8. More Home Depot details emerge
  9. Compact fluorescent life expectancy
  10. How to repair a Marx electrical pickup shoe
  11. Revisiting Microsoft/Sysinternals Du as a batch file
  12. Windows 9 rumors
  13. Home Depot: A security pro’s dilemma
  14. Phil Kerpen, net neutrality, and socialism: A post-mortem
  15. A security professional fights back against tech support scammers
  16. Scratchbuilding, Marx-style: Finishing the roof
  17. How to clean up a Windows server
  18. Read this before you buy a car
  19. Solving the Windows 0x13d error, aka the 317 error, and watch for the scams
  20. And… Home Depot confirms it’s been breached
  21. IT jobs shortage? Slide over to security
  22. What to do when you have more open slots than drive bays
  23. I’m pretty sure my card’s been breached again, so here’s what I’m doing
  24. Upgrading an HP Mini 110 to Linux Mint 17
  25. This week’s photo leak is a reminder of the need for good passwords
  26. Netstat scam and netstat scammers

August 2014

  1. Outsource your DNS to make your Internet connection more reliable
  2. Tech Central in South Africa trolls the tech support scammers
  3. Net neutrality is not Marxism
  4. Chrome goes 64-bit
  5. Stopping comment spam, 2014 edition
  6. The way home security ought to be
  7. How to cut your water bill
  8. PDQ Deploy looks like an interesting tool for a Windows sysadmin
  9. Why Chinese hackers would be interested in U.S. healthcare data
  10. MS14-045 isn’t a reason to stop patching
  11. Another breach, more credit-card advice
  12. Someone else’s opinion on the best SSDs
  13. WMIC invalid global switch – solved
  14. Windows Vista’s market share is growing. After seeing 8.1, I know why
  15. The Ferguson race riots: An outsider’s perspective from not far outside
  16. The clear and present danger lurking at the edge of your home network
  17. PCs are dead! Tablets are hot! Tablets are dead! PCs are hot!
  18. IT personnel and knowing things they aren’t supposed to know
  19. Vuescan: A review from a non-photographer’s perspective
  20. USB malware: What you need to know
  21. Microsoft releases EMET 5
  22. Re-attaching prewar Lionel trucks
  23. My counterpoint to Forget Frugality

July 2014

  1. Throwback Thursday isn’t for the Java Runtime Environment
  2. The Bing conspiracy
  3. How to stop the 30% of ex-employees who want to access company data
  4. “Please Press 1 to speak with a Microsoft Certified Technician.”
  5. “Windows Technical Support” ups its game–and so do I
  6. Eliminate wifi dead spots using access points
  7. The forgotten computer that changed the world
  8. Throttling the Raspberry Pi
  9. Verizon sabotages Netflix
  10. The legend of Mt. Fuji
  11. The Logitech F310 on Retropie
  12. And… Introducing the Raspberry Pi Model B+
  13. Setting up Retropie on the Raspberry Pi
  14. I don’t want my light bulbs on the Internet
  15. Computer, how old are you?
  16. Hard drive longevity and you (or your business)
  17. Listen to this if you think a router makes you invincible
  18. The phantom tech worker shortage
  19. The Tampa Post on “Windows Service Center” scams
  20. Linux is unrelated to extremism
  21. Why you can’t get a $50 replacement sound/control board for your modern Lionel train
  22. Be careful about cheap phone/tablet chargers
  23. The difference an SSD makes
  24. The Moto E, two weeks later

June 2014

  1. Rick Broida thinks he doesn’t use antivirus software
  2. How to measure the effectiveness of a security program
  3. How to do one-off patches without an Internet connection
  4. XP may not be as bad as it sounds
  5. Don’t run unknown executables for a dollar. And PLEASE don’t for a penny!
  6. What Linkedin is good for
  7. The ultimate budget smartphone: The Moto E
  8. Chasing dreams
  9. What happens when you write a petabyte of data to an SSD
  10. How to fix Firefox–really
  11. A Comcastic-ally bad idea
  12. Fixing an Asus Memopad 7 that wouldn’t power on
  13. Some tips for trolling fake technical support calls
  14. Curious conspiracies… or maybe just progress all at once
  15. The browser tradeoff
  16. Mr. Genius Man from “Windows Technical Support” gets nasty
  17. Steve Gibson on Truecrypt
  18. Chrome and EMET
  19. Tips on buying used stuff
  20. Things I said at the Royals-Cardinals game last night
  21. SSDs for the masses, 2014 edition
  22. Truecrypt and collateral damage

May 2014

  1. Windows XP rises from the dead… accidentally
  2. St*ff my three year old says
  3. Why don’t they just hire some hackers to stop the other hackers?
  4. Firefox memory high? It might be Adblock Plus
  5. Takeaways from Patrick Gray’s AusCERT coverage
  6. Web browser plugins you need to uninstall now–even if you have a Mac
  7. The danger of conspiracy theories
  8. Happy birthday, Rubik’s Cube!
  9. How to write reviews without getting sued
  10. Improving Garmin GPS units
  11. Stand up for net neutrality
  12. The droid I’m looking for: The $129 Moto E
  13. Windows Technical Support calls me again
  14. What I did for Mother’s Day
  15. Data compression, 1980s-style–and why PKZIP won
  16. Larry Page’s exile and rebirth
  17. The desperation economy
  18. Microsoft was wrong whether it patched XP this time or let it burn
  19. IE gets patched and XP gets a reprieve
  20. The ultimate command-line ZIP utility

April 2014

  1. The publicity around security is a good thing
  2. Windows XP gets its first forever-day
  3. How thousands of Atari cartridges ended up in the desert
  4. The Warhol Amiga discovery in context
  5. IT security vs. the construction industry
  6. Training future cassanovas
  7. Five malware myths
  8. Don’t defrag Android. TRIM it.
  9. Bethlehem Lutheran Church sacrificed its sanctuary for a greater good
  10. Password advice in the wake of Heartbleed
  11. How to light the underside of your train table
  12. Why AMD’s turnaround is working when so many turnarounds fail
  13. Passwords you need to change in Heartbleed’s wake
  14. I want to feel for this ad executive, but I can’t
  15. Happy late 50th birthday, z/OS!
  16. SSDs in business: The time is right
  17. How I turned a junker PC into a trap for scammers
  18. Cheap, simple application whitelisting
  19. Training hackers in schools
  20. Don’t forget the .NET Framework when troubleshooting

March 2014

  1. I am not in jail.
  2. Troubleshooting machines that won’t update from WSUS or SCCM
  3. The time bomb in your older computer
  4. How to get 1440×900 resolution out of an Nvidia video card
  5. The curse of the computer builder
  6. When Linux is easier than Windows
  7. The estate find that broke my slump
  8. So I’m not the only one ditching Microsoft Office
  9. How to patch less
  10. Google is your friend if you have an old scanner
  11. So just how dangerous is an old, out of date operating system anyway?
  12. Macs aren’t the only computers that last forever
  13. Model railroading as fan fiction
  14. Some stock advice from the Post-Dispatch
  15. Cree releases a $20 100W-equivalent LED bulb–but do you want one?
  16. And in a story that should surprise no one, Target’s attack was unsophisticated
  17. Why tech encourages bad managers–and hope for those who want to be good managers
  18. The bitcoin-train connection
  19. Microsoft is offering some help in migrating off XP
  20. Spritz promises to revolutionize speed reading
  21. The trade off of fidelity and convenience in marketing, and how it doomed my favorite company
  22. Why you need to guard your Backup Exec servers
  23. Free Windows 8.1 upgrades: Right idea, wrong target
  24. Finding a connection to my Dad in a suburban St. Louis estate

February 2014

  1. My greatest estate find
  2. Some security short-takes I never got around to posting
  3. The world’s fastest budget PC
  4. More about Pfsense, the alternative to the crappy consumer router
  5. How I freshened the paint on a Lionel RW transformer
  6. Consumer routers are the security vulnerability of the year, so far
  7. How to downgrade a Log Logic universal collector
  8. Why it’s a good idea to schedule your router to reboot
  9. What am I giving up for Lent?
  10. Farquhar’s security New Year’s resolutions
  11. The side-smoking Marx 666 locomotive
  12. Why I set work aside for a while before calling it done
  13. Linksys routers are under attack, and here’s what you can do about it
  14. Getting past your own biases
  15. How I fixed an Americana (GE) anti-tip bracket that didn’t work
  16. My Windows 8.1 experience
  17. How to slipstream updates into Windows 8.1
  18. Greenberg Marx errors: The Union Pacific 3824 caboose
  19. The high-dollar cardboard box
  20. Time to update Flash again. This is a big one.
  21. The Post-Dispatch may be giving the wrong idea about the dollar value of vintage computers
  22. Let’s talk about net neutrality
  23. What to say to a coworker who was laid off
  24. Giving Libre Office another look
  25. Marx windup 490: An unexpected rarity

January 2014

  1. My impressions of the TP-Link TL-WR841N
  2. Merge CSV files from a command prompt
  3. Android Kit Kat lands on the Nook Color
  4. IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000
  5. Things my sons say to me as I leave for work
  6. Three months with Viglink
  7. The Marx connection to Hafner
  8. The Channel Master DVR+ is a cord-cutter’s secret weapon
  9. CFL bulbs burn out quickly? Here’s what to do.
  10. Why you may not want a Nest
  11. Kickin’ my wireless oldskool, WRT54G-style
  12. KSDK-TV was wrong to test Kirkwood High School’s security
  13. Looking back at Sam Posey’s Playing With Trains
  14. More details on the Target hack come to light
  15. How to open a D-Link GDS-2205 5-port gigabit switch
  16. How to increase the capacity of a Log Logic appliance by 45%
  17. The new trend in monitors
  18. Why the Target data breach news keeps getting worse, and what you need to do
  19. Allstate electric train sets by Marx for Sears
  20. This curmudgeon knows who wants a 12-inch tablet
  21. What your health insurance company doesn’t want you to know
  22. Why last week’s “news” of the NSA’s quantum computer project doesn’t bother me
  23. DD-WRT as an access point
  24. How I upgraded a TP-Link TL-WR841N to DD-WRT
  25. How I fixed a Lionel RW transformer
  26. Another day, another router backdoor
  27. Beyond compliance: Maturity models

2013 374

December 2013

  1. Gene Kim on scheduled maintenance
  2. My $30 desktop PC upgrade
  3. How to paint model railroad scenery
  4. Cutting through the fluff around the Target PIN breach
  5. Those marketers targetted the wrong guy
  6. Losing the luster of Christmas–and something of a cure
  7. What I’m doing to protect myself after the Target data breach
  8. The New York Times’ dialect map can’t figure me out
  9. What on Earth is a Mainframe?: A review
  10. The NSA’s disaster aversion by keeping BIOSes safe for the free world
  11. A quick security improvement: Change your IP range
  12. The ghost in the network
  13. A $99 tablet that doesn’t stank
  14. The safest way yet to clean your train track
  15. Hacker chasing, circa 1987
  16. Why the government (and others) still deal in floppy disks
  17. A meeting secret weapon: the potato
  18. The Phoenix Project: A must-read book for anyone who aspires to IT leadership
  19. The three things that make a difference
  20. Things to do for your relatives’ computers this Christmas
  21. Hostsman makes it easy to block malware with a hosts file
  22. Getting a proper Start button back even when Microsoft doesn’t want to give one
  23. Upgrading a D-Link DIR-615 to DD-WRT

November 2013

  1. An easy fix for a Lionel ZW with dead posts
  2. Beware the Black Friday electronics
  3. A Thanksgiving story that will make you laugh so hard you’ll cry
  4. And it looks like OCZ is no more
  5. How to get started in regulatory compliance
  6. Testing gift electronics before wrapping them is an excellent idea
  7. Using antivirus to deliver a virus
  8. The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 review: It’s a nice inexpensive tablet
  9. Can you mix Lionel and Marx track? Yes, pretty much.
  10. How long does a hard drive last?
  11. The problem with Lifehacker’s computer manufacturer ranking
  12. Cleaning a hard drive with Linux
  13. The Feit Electric G25 LED globe from Costco
  14. How to treat nerve issues with vitamins
  15. Why you need a voltmeter on your train layout
  16. You need a Yubikey.
  17. What to do if you’re a charity stuck on Windows XP
  18. Deconstructing the healthcare.gov website fiasco
  19. How I find podcasts to listen to
  20. What to do when the layoff comes
  21. Need a load for your Marx plastic flatcar? Look to Tonka.
  22. Taking back the drive time
  23. Baidu: The lightweight browser for low-end Android
  24. Benchmarking Android
  25. Android ROMs explained
  26. Rooting: Just do it.

October 2013

  1. How to edit a hosts file in Android
  2. I hope Motorola’s build-your-own smartphone idea catches on
  3. I have a new favorite Android ROM for the Nook Color: MROM
  4. Unintentional showrooming
  5. Obstruction on the basepaths
  6. Young people aren’t interested in information security? I think it depends on your definitions.
  7. Words of wisdom from an unexpected source
  8. Check your smoke detectors, please. And make sure you have more than one.
  9. The limit to how far you can go should be how hard you try, not where you came from
  10. Forget the word “should.”
  11. Just reach for it.
  12. A new Hisense Sero 7 Pro ROM
  13. Read this if you have a D-Link router
  14. Smartphones and tablets… What’s the point?
  15. Tweaking the Android I/O scheduler
  16. Clean up after Windows Update
  17. Saving money on a smartphone
  18. The deal with Android memory usage
  19. I got a Chromecast. I think you should too.
  20. 9 things your landlord won’t tell you: A rebuttal
  21. Excel won’t scroll down or otherwise? Try this
  22. Hints for surviving if the shutdown put you out of work
  23. Why there’s scarcely any aftermarket firmware for Hisense Sero tablets
  24. How to disable wallpaper when you’re not running Cyanogenmod
  25. Speed up Android with these six tips
  26. Fighting OS rot and lag in Cyanogenmod 10.3

September 2013

  1. Ctrl-Alt-Del history: non revisionist edition
  2. “Mario” from “Microsoft” calls the wrong guy
  3. Financial advice from Kiplinger
  4. How to take a screen capture of a web site in Windows
  5. How Ives-branded track clips ended up in Lionel sets
  6. The 11 Neff Hall chop shop
  7. Leaving his mark. Or his Matt.
  8. The outbound firewall controversy
  9. Why I’m a one-space-after-a-period guy
  10. Another perspective on Y2K
  11. Don’t research when you’re in a groove. Yes. That.
  12. Clear print queue command line sequence
  13. Doing more than one operation per line in a Windows batch file
  14. Juice Defender helps your Android battery life
  15. The hall of famer lets me down
  16. Sculley on Jobs
  17. Clean your air conditioner at home
  18. A programmer writes about writing
  19. How I freed a seized-up garbage disposal
  20. Install an outlet for an above range microwave
  21. Amazon bundles free/discounted e-books with print books
  22. Don’t be too surprised that financial writers don’t follow all of their own advice
  23. The pizza procession
  24. A modest second-base proposal

August 2013

  1. The trouble with routers
  2. How to make an LG LD301EL dehumidifier drain the water out of a hose instead of the bucket
  3. LOAD “*”,8,1 – what it means
  4. Better than the shirt off my back
  5. Calibre turns 1.0
  6. Cringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs
  7. Bombshell: Ballmer steps down from Microsoft
  8. DoSing your cubicle neighbor
  9. How I fixed a dead electrical outlet. Sort of.
  10. Don’t build a drill press out of PVC pipe
  11. Webcam spying gets more attention
  12. When a photocopy isn’t
  13. I’m glad Ryne Sandberg is getting a chance
  14. Goodbye Amazon Affiliates, hello Viglink
  15. Bad news about smartphones, but maybe not all bad
  16. The Sero 7 tablets got cheaper last week and I missed it
  17. Go to college, but don’t go broke doing it
  18. No, using an emergency fund to pay off credit card debt isn’t a good idea
  19. Watch your embedded security
  20. Wget is not a hacking tool

July 2013

  1. Not your father’s Celeron
  2. How many Fortune 25 companies does it take to change a light bulb?
  3. How we learn
  4. Windows NT turns 20
  5. Libre Office and Open Office both grow up a bit–together
  6. Have a busload of servers? Need to know what version of Windows they’re all running?
  7. Hisense pushes out a Sero 7 Pro update
  8. Wookie suits at work
  9. How Shloosl can copy a key from just a photograph
  10. What you should know about your first credit card
  11. Reports of the Droidpocalypse have been greatly exaggerated
  12. Now that Microsoft is IBM, it needs to avoid IBM’s big mistake
  13. Lionel in the non-hobby media
  14. Lawn mower blade bolt stuck? Try this
  15. Mimi rescue mission
  16. What I miss about the old days of computing
  17. Computer burn in explained
  18. Rest in peace, PC World
  19. Getting started in compliance: Start by doing the right thing
  20. A war story in progress
  21. You can’t collect everything
  22. The price of Amazon
  23. Something that shouldn’t be there
  24. Don’t be too impressed with Snowden’s “ethical hacking training”
  25. It’s the end of SSDs as we know it, and I feel fine
  26. Fix a Dell Poweredge R320 network port
  27. LED bulb garage door opener interference
  28. Cyanogenmod 10.1 runs surprisingly well on a Nook Color
  29. EMET protects against what your antivirus cannot–and it’s free

June 2013

  1. I’m going to have something really good coming up later this weekend
  2. How to build Lifehacker’s retro coffee table on the cheap
  3. Microsoft’s bug bounty is a step in the right direction
  4. I found a reasonably good, inexpensive keyboard for the Sero 7 Pro
  5. What to do about PRISM is unclear as of yet
  6. Looking to hire IT talent? Write a good job description
  7. Snickering at the Emachine
  8. Hate is a strong word, but here’s how you irritate your sysadmin
  9. Cnet tackles the Gigabit Internet question
  10. SSDs are getting a boost
  11. This week in mobile
  12. Buy or rent? Here’s a datapoint
  13. How to disable animation on a Hisense Sero 7 Pro (or anything else running Android 4.2)
  14. The $99 Android tablet of 2013: The Hisense Sero 7 LT (or Lite)
  15. Robinson Cano: “The fans don’t understand.”
  16. AMD hits 5 GHz
  17. “Why do we have a server named ‘Vicious?'”
  18. More thoughts on the $150 Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet
  19. How to check your Java version
  20. Where Microsoft lost its way
  21. Java. My bestest buddy.
  22. Advice on building your own PC on the cheap
  23. Give your antivirus software a workout
  24. The good-enough $99 Android tablet
  25. Are video games a good investment?
  26. Brief first impressions of the Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet
  27. New security features for Evernote
  28. Something strange is going on
  29. No, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up

May 2013

  1. Who are the 10 people you’d call if you were laid off tomorrow?
  2. Why your favorite web site’s password strength meter is full of hooey
  3. What keeps a good security guy from turning to the dark side
  4. Another month, another go-to LED bulb
  5. Remembering Private McAdow
  6. Replace a microwave over the range
  7. Use Audacity to sneak an extra podcast in each week
  8. Farewell to a St. Louis Christmas tradition
  9. Deconstructing my conversation with “Computer Maintenance Department”
  10. This “Computer Maintenance Department” sure doesn’t know much about computer maintenance
  11. How to help the tornado-struck community of Moore, Okla.
  12. How I accidentally found a way to mess with “Peggy”
  13. An upgrade. And an upsell.
  14. There are several things to like about the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013
  15. Blame IT.
  16. “It’s your happy place.”
  17. Antivirus progress
  18. Windows vs. Linux kernel performance
  19. Notes on the Compaq Presario SR2011WM
  20. Two simple ways to increase your credit score
  21. The NSA’s guide to finding things on the Internet is available now
  22. “Computer Maintenance Department” called me again from India
  23. It’s time to strike down the red-light cameras
  24. Linux admins beware, there’s a web server exploit in the wild
  25. B&N just made its Nook tablets much more compelling
  26. How to build bootable Debian installation USB media from Windows
  27. No, investors aren’t ruining the housing market
  28. How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers
  29. The trouble with bringing your own software
  30. These study results on energy savings aren’t surprising
  31. Loading your own stuff onto your e-reader

April 2013

  1. Step 1 to landing a security job: Become conversant in security
  2. Somebody just tried to hack me
  3. 12 PC tasks you should be doing and aren’t
  4. Livingsocial got breached. Change your password, of course
  5. The Card wasn’t real!
  6. Google’s plan for fiber seems to be working
  7. “They were bored and wished they had a job.”
  8. When your CISSP isn’t enough
  9. Value Village and Affton could be very good for one another
  10. PC Magazine’s tips for buying your own cable modem
  11. Lenovo’s phone is ringing again. And it’s IBM. Again.
  12. Questions to ask before taking a job
  13. The ACLU has a point about smartphone security
  14. Linksys isn’t the only company building insecure routers
  15. Don’t read too much into the PC sales drop just yet
  16. A treasure trove of training material
  17. Troubleshooting at all layers of the OSI model
  18. Rob O’Hara on phreaking, Tesla coils and modems
  19. The 1 TB-ish SSD: The Micron M500
  20. Mourning Lucasfilm Games/Lucas Arts
  21. The re-segregation of baseball
  22. Another benefit of not having debt
  23. Collecting parameters
  24. Getting started as a landlord
  25. Exploiting Twitter
  26. A collection of old photographs to help your model-making
  27. Why PC makers love tablets, or should
  28. How to self-finance major purchases
  29. If you use a Linksys router, you need to drop everything now and upgrade it
  30. Putting right E.T. for the Atari 2600
  31. The AMI BIOS breach of 2013
  32. Take a peek at Bill Gates’ pre-Microsoft resume
  33. Although it’s counterintuitive, AT&T’s new password policy makes sense
  34. Firefox 20 is out. I don’t blame you if you wait for 20.1.
  35. How I once took down a network, including a radio station
  36. Scratchbuilding, Marx-style
  37. What I learned about air travel by globetrotting back and forth to Baltimore and D.C.
  38. Shakespearean surprises
  39. My earliest memory of using a computer

March 2013

  1. A quick fix for the Insignia NS20EM50A13 monitor’s biggest annoyance
  2. We need to fix CISPA, not kill it
  3. The ethics of writing nefarious security instructions
  4. The Internet is at war. Please read this if you run a DNS server.
  5. Is this a good computer for the money in 2013?
  6. No, it doesn’t take a “serious hacker” to crack wi-fi through WPS
  7. An inside peek at a newsroom
  8. Mark Hurd doesn’t sound like he’s just what Dell needed
  9. Welcome, Tony’s Kansas City readers
  10. Another take on working from home
  11. Kansas City and Google Fiber
  12. Does your spouse know who your collecting buddies are?
  13. How to check to see if a FedEx or UPS e-mail message is real
  14. New media in Cuba
  15. And the most security-riddled program of 2012 was….
  16. How to find tech talent hiding under your nose
  17. Some computer maintenance for the upcoming family get-togethers
  18. And this is why I’ve been saying to uninstall Java, rather than disable it
  19. Memories of the land of blue shirts
  20. Commodore was more than a stock scam
  21. Bitdefender 60-second virus scan: a review
  22. The men (boys) who spy on women through webcams
  23. Here’s a nice Linux tool: checkrestart
  24. The faceless enemy
  25. The low-cost tablet invasion
  26. I don’t think this basement layout abandoned since 1967 is necessarily a tragedy
  27. Why Intel can’t quit x86
  28. So, would I rather be a full-time author?
  29. A penny-book author’s take on secondhand sales, physical and digital
  30. A not-quite-heir to the Model M
  31. Remember: Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend
  32. My Zinio adventures
  33. How to pick a decent password
  34. My youngest son learns the word “blankie”
  35. Java’s been updated again. For the fifth time this year.
  36. Avoiding Craigslist rental scams
  37. Mimic Systems Spartan: Apple II emulator for the C-64
  38. An SSD data loss issue–and how to prevent it
  39. Avast 8 is out and already well-regarded
  40. Use Secunia PSI to keep all your programs up to date with minimal effort

February 2013

  1. My nocturnal-minded son
  2. Internet Explorer 10 is out for Windows 7
  3. In defense of telework
  4. We don’t need more H1-Bs, we need more immigrants
  5. Barnes & Noble’s fate is just more evidence that being better isn’t enough on its own
  6. Is powerline networking secure?
  7. HP knows Android
  8. I have a new favorite juice for oiling my train cars
  9. How to ditch your landline and your phone bill but still have phones that work
  10. SSD write endurance (aka longevity) vindicated
  11. Firefox 19 is a big security improvement
  12. Another easy Apache tweak
  13. CISPA is trying to solve a legitimate problem
  14. Losing my lunch
  15. How to use price guides
  16. How to customize Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars
  17. Ars Technica looks at asymmetric enryption
  18. Fight voltage drop with copper anti-seize lubricant
  19. CPE opportunity: Exploding the Phone
  20. ARM exec says: $100 tablets are the key to mass adoption
  21. Clean up the white goop on postwar Lionel and American Flyer with a hair dryer
  22. Book scanning on the (relatively) cheap
  23. Use Apachebench to test your webserver optimizations
  24. Home network projects for a budding sysadmin
  25. The LCMS won’t be able to work out its differences in the dark
  26. How to maximize a Computer Science degree
  27. The problem with dictionary passwords
  28. I do not agree with my church president’s forced apology over Newtown, Conn.
  29. Making gradual improvements, starting with whatever bugs you the most
  30. The benefits of doing IT at home, too
  31. Update Flash now
  32. Advice on dealing with ransomware
  33. DROP DATABASE wordpress;
  34. New Raspberry Pi this week
  35. OCZ is in trouble
  36. Beware of unexpected links in e-mail messages
  37. HP Elitebook won’t turn on? Fix it in a minute flat
  38. The Debt Tsunami is a gimmick, but it probably doesn’t matter
  39. Tag your imported WordPress content with Simple Tags
  40. Go-Bots vs Transformers: My small-town perspective
  41. My phone’s micro SD card made Windows Disk Manager hang, but I fixed it
  42. Non-derailing Marx switches
  43. Four simple steps to optimize WordPress

January 2013

  1. Wi-fi wants to be free… except it’s not 1994 anymore
  2. The Internet is a 21st century utility–take it seriously
  3. How to move a train table on an unfinished, concrete basement floor
  4. How to save money on tech
  5. A minor (but vital) Apache performance tweak
  6. How the previous week’s headlines flow together
  7. Windows Medkit cleans up the damage after removing malware infestations
  8. The lines between white hat/gray hat/black hat hacking and moral laws
  9. University computer science programs need to teach security, not demonize it
  10. A good reviewer doesn’t seek out special treatment
  11. Stopping spambots cold with Botblocker
  12. What I did since I (temporarily) need Java
  13. My Stan Musial stories
  14. A cheap kitchen makeover
  15. If you needed another reason not to buy Windows 8….
  16. My Wright City adventure
  17. Follow-up on the Insignia NS20EM50A13 monitor
  18. Up and coming low-end Android chips
  19. Long passwords aren’t necessarily good passwords
  20. How to get your first job in IT
  21. How to calculate what a screen’s specs don’t tell you
  22. Java is patched now, but still not very safe
  23. Asus gets into the sub-$200 tablet fray
  24. I’m not sure if this really big tablet is a really big idea
  25. Giving and receiving criticism in writing
  26. Fixing mashed headings in Word 2010
  27. Oracle (and Java) delenda est
  28. SSDs might be getting less interesting, but that’s not necessarily bad
  29. The fix when Firefox won’t let you cancel a download
  30. Polaroid’s M7 and M10 tablets make me glad I didn’t buy a tablet last month
  31. How to make finicky 32-bit applications install and run in 64-bit Windows
  32. Coming soon to Monoprice: WQHD monitors
  33. A cheap and easy replacement for insulators on American Flyer, Lionel and Marx track
  34. A contrarian (but defendable) view of e-books
  35. Questions from the logs
  36. Cheap cable management
  37. The 4W Lights of America Power LED from Costco: Finally a good LED lamp for bathrooms
  38. Speed up Android with Seeder Entropy Generator
  39. Are 80plus power supplies worth it?
  40. Apply this fix if you aren’t running IE9
  41. That other use of Stability Test that I promised
  42. A cheap Nook Color case from an unexpected place
  43. The best glue for paper models
  44. R.I.P.: Netbooks

2012 365

December 2012

  1. Go Launcher Ex is a nice upgrade for Android
  2. How to burn-in an Android
  3. Model railroading with your Droid: Solving electrical issues
  4. Mobile malware is coming. Get prepared.
  5. An update on the shortcut to wiring a house with Ethernet
  6. Model railroading with your Droid: Color matching
  7. How to be a hero next Christmas (or your next family get-together)
  8. SSD pricing gets media attention
  9. The new Philips 420240 10.5-watt 800-lumen LED bulb
  10. If you need a vector drawing program, Microsoft Expression Design is free now
  11. Where I was when I first heard about the end of the world
  12. How to schedule scans with Avast (even the free version)
  13. Review: Insignia NS20EM50A13 monitor
  14. If you’re wondering where those anti-Google ads came from
  15. A shortcut for wiring your house with Ethernet
  16. Miniature buildings find at Michael’s
  17. What to do when a Lionel train suddenly can’t pull as many cars as it could before
  18. Get defense in depth with antivirus by installing Avast as a secondary scanner
  19. The greatest European tinplate train collection in the United States is on display
  20. 8-character passwords are obsolete
  21. An easy DIY Lionel-compatible high-side gondola
  22. My reaction to the Royals’ trade for James Shields
  23. How to attach trucks to Lionel train cars with screws
  24. A Christmas tree train on a budget
  25. Crucial has a new SSD out, but I don’t think I want it
  26. Linus Torvalds is right about “reasonable resolution”
  27. The trouble with Dell
  28. Fixing correctly “misspelled” words in a Word 2010 document
  29. The Rise of Commodore
  30. Fixing a Word 2010 table of contents that updates with incorrect pages
  31. A fast way to turn lots of images into an Adobe Acrobat PDF file
  32. An Amazon shopping trick
  33. What I know about buying tires

November 2012

  1. Workable two-factor authentication
  2. Cutting Apache preforks seems to help small web servers
  3. Using a Lionel (or other brand) O or O27 transformer with HO or N scale trains
  4. Dvorak: The future of retail is search
  5. Sorry about the downtime
  6. Ars Technica: 64-bit Firefox on Windows needs to be a priority
  7. If you have wooden trains, you need Suretrack
  8. The Insignia Flex’s long-lost brothers
  9. A skeptic looks at Libre Office
  10. Don’t hide your abilities to avoid bullies
  11. Do as we say, not as we did: Microsoft and standards
  12. A reasonable analysis of the current copyright mess (updated)
  13. Cyanogenmod 10 goes gold
  14. Hot-rod Cyanogenmod 7.2
  15. It’s time for the plug-in Prius to prove something
  16. How I turned my Nook Color into a Cyanogenmod 7.2 Android tablet
  17. What to make of this Black Friday’s sub-$200 laptops
  18. How to clean paint from outlet and switch covers
  19. Early impressions of G7’s 900-lumen 9W LED bulb
  20. Reduce your RAID failure rate
  21. Cable connections are the last thing most people check…
  22. How abandonware gets abandoned

October 2012

  1. A cheap upgrade for obsolete computer cases
  2. Hide and unhide whitespace, headers and footers in Microsoft Word
  3. How to migrate to an SSD
  4. Tweak your PHP memory settings to fix weird WordPress issues
  5. Plain, pure and simple advice from the guy with a credit score of 848
  6. Don’t look for me waiting in line to buy Windows 8 at midnight
  7. How to add a second SSD to a laptop optical bay
  8. Linus Torvalds likes SSDs, too
  9. Is it better to be a consultant or an employee?
  10. Happy 35th birthday, Atari 2600
  11. Dvorak is wrong about the cyber war
  12. Teleworking on the cheap
  13. How to encrypt PDF files for free
  14. How to send banking documents securely over e-mail
  15. Peel and stick wood planks: my experience
  16. How to fix blank table of contents entries in Word
  17. Scratch one fake antivirus vendor
  18. Windows 8 won’t fail just because nobody likes Windows upgrades
  19. CISSP vs. CASP vs. CEH
  20. The phone in the server rack

September 2012

  1. The phone in the fridge, from generation to generation
  2. Barnes & Noble punches back
  3. Certifications are a scam! A rebuttal
  4. The Byte digital archive
  5. LED bulbs and breakability
  6. The lightbulb reinvented
  7. The good (or at least decent) $89 tablet
  8. Yes, SSDs are “finally worth the money.”
  9. Hey! That’s your teammate.
  10. The legendary Margin of Safety
  11. Writing clearly vs. concisely
  12. Fix a dryer that heats but won’t dry
  13. How to block annoying posts on Facebook
  14. An interesting day for tablets and e-readers
  15. How to find all the capitalized words in a Word document
  16. Office 2010, early impressions
  17. Oracle finally does the right thing
  18. If you need a deal on a Nook Simple Touch, they’re on sale
  19. Why your write blocker doesn’t work with the IDE cable backwards

August 2012

  1. How to be an Apple Genius
  2. Stop whatever you’re doing and uninstall Java. I’ll wait for you.
  3. What to do about a router dropping connections
  4. The tradeoffs between AMD’s Phenom and FX CPUs
  5. A TRS-80 retrospective
  6. Ways to keep your password from being guessed–today
  7. Yes, ramdisks still make sense, especially with memory so cheap
  8. Thanks for the misinformation, Disney
  9. Two more questions about wireless security
  10. A tool for learning Windows and Office keyboard shortcuts
  11. Security doesn’t have to be intimidating to be effective
  12. Advice on avoiding college debt–at least for Missouri residents
  13. I may have found a few-compromises 7-inch tablet
  14. Remembering Rossino’s
  15. Here’s why I won’t be buying a first-generation Nook Tablet
  16. If you needed another reminder to secure your wi-fi…
  17. Testing my new Facebook plugin
  18. Windows 8 promises better security–to a point
  19. Busted at the Safeway for phone phreaking
  20. Don’t let what happened to Mat Honan happen to you
  21. Gary Kildall and what might have been
  22. The CP/M-DOS forensics don’t prove much
  23. Somehow I started it
  24. The best free e-book site I’ve found yet
  25. Happy 30th birthday, C-64
  26. Windows 8 comes out later this year, but I won’t be moving just yet

July 2012

  1. Flash memory is cheap, and maybe as cheap as it’s going to be for a while
  2. It’s going to take me some time to catch up
  3. Yes, an e-reader does change how you read
  4. Games would be just what Linux needed
  5. Nook won’t turn on? Try these four things.
  6. There’s plenty of credit for the Internet to go around
  7. Nobody respects craftsmanship anymore
  8. Exceptional–as in exceptions–budgeting
  9. Should you remove all rights from disabled accounts?
  10. Phase-change memory could change everything
  11. Buying that Nook was more work than it needed to be
  12. I’m tempted by this Nook deal
  13. Let’s talk GPSs
  14. It’s 6:21 PM. Do you know what the current version of Firefox is?
  15. Social networks can be good or bad for your career
  16. How to clean your LCD monitor or TV cheaply and safely
  17. Back online
  18. What to do when your COBRA paperwork doesn’t show up
  19. The Nexus 7 looks promising, if slightly flawed
  20. Want to be a landlord? Read this
  21. New digs
  22. A data classification study question
  23. No matter what brand you buy, you’ll have carburetor trouble
  24. Ping sweep from Windows

June 2012

  1. How I bought a battery for my aged laptop
  2. How to give a computer or hard drive away more securely
  3. Amiga on x86
  4. This Linux Mint box looks really nice, except for the price
  5. I hope BYOD 2.0 goes better than BYOD 1.0 did
  6. 89 business clichés and how to avoid their trap
  7. SSDs are below $1 per gigabyte
  8. Conquer a musty basement with ammonia
  9. If there’s an IT skills gap, part of the problem is in HR
  10. Dave vs. Mmm-Bop
  11. How and when to buy quality furniture
  12. E-books have taken over
  13. Did I violate my code of ethics?
  14. It’s not about the money
  15. For 3/8 of a million dollars, I think I’d rather have a replica Apple I instead
  16. Entry-level troubleshooting
  17. Microsoft just priced its Windows 8-based tablets out of the market
  18. Confessions of a hacker for hire
  19. Bacon and ice cream
  20. Some lessons from cracking the compromised Linkedin password database
  21. TCP/IP Manager makes a good companion for DNS Bench for road warriors
  22. One road to the CISSP: Do SSCP first
  23. Things got really weird this week
  24. Bargain potential for AMD Socket FM1s
  25. Change your Linkedin password now
  26. Don’t overthink writing
  27. Short takes, 5 Jun 2012
  28. How to calculate savings from reduced cooling costs when considering energy-saving improvements
  29. And another nail in Crestwood Plaza’s coffin
  30. My favorite Phillipe Kahn story
  31. I’m not sure Google was the good guy, but I’m glad Oracle lost

May 2012

  1. How to not let your writing get in the way of your message
  2. Don’t post Facebook photos of yourself with large sums of money
  3. Only eleven percent of used hard drives contain recoverable data?
  4. How to rent a house without getting your identity stolen
  5. Cleaning up a venerable and battle-worn IBM Model M keyboard
  6. The Samsung SSD 830: A user review
  7. The Dell Inspiron E1505 and its maximum memory
  8. There’s no need to apologize for having a Yahoo or Gmail account
  9. Do you think if software cost less, people would pirate less?
  10. Chained-word passwords
  11. Facebook’s IPO doesn’t have to be the end of Silicon Valley
  12. Replacing bad capacitors in failed electronics
  13. 10 worst ways to make extra money
  14. I can save you $99
  15. The real benefits of having a CISSP
  16. Things I wish everyone knew about home Mac security
  17. Is the Windows firewall safe enough?
  18. Things I wish everyone knew about home computer security
  19. 3D printing hits $500
  20. Getting Firefox out of the doldrums
  21. Doc, what security settings are you using on your network?
  22. Remove ghost device drivers from Windows 7
  23. The difference that posting frequency makes when blogging
  24. Let’s import the Dutch Repair cafe idea
  25. How to quickly find the differences between two Word documents
  26. How blogging helps my professional career
  27. Cleaning USB drives with Linux
  28. School administrators need to focus on their hallways, not Facebook
  29. A reasonable explanation for why religious sites are more likely to be infected with malware
  30. Dredging up some old Commodore trivia
  31. Farewell, Crestwood Plaza
  32. Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson needed to explain himself
  33. Speed up Windows XP, Vista, and 7
  34. Income inequality now equals debt inequality
  35. The new Nook partnership is a strange alliance
  36. PC Magazine has its reader’s choice awards for home networking equipment online

April 2012

  1. What to do with an old laptop hard drive
  2. Point of clarification: Links are always welcome
  3. A preliminary review of the Inland warm white A19 LED bulb
  4. How to spot fake online reviews
  5. Why I won’t be using Google Drive
  6. And speaking of SSDs, here’s how Oracle performs on an SSD
  7. SSD pricing may get more aggressive
  8. New Microsoft Security Essentials
  9. The difference between blogging and true journalism
  10. One in five Macs has malware–but read the fine print
  11. Oh nos! The Internet is going to die in July!
  12. The origins of Prince of Persia unearthed
  13. When to upgrade to new LED bulbs
  14. What’s going on with Macintosh security?
  15. Reducing allergies and saving money doing it
  16. RIP Greg Ham, Men at Work
  17. Why I fired my mechanic and how I found a good new one
  18. Fun with multimeters
  19. Sure, it’s OK to leave a tech job at 5 pm, especially if you’re in management
  20. Measuring the voltage and amperage of your train transformer’s output
  21. How I decide whether it’s time to stay or go
  22. Intel enters the budget Sandforce market
  23. Is landlording profitable?
  24. Happy late birthday, OS/2
  25. Let Eric Hosmer hit second
  26. Easier deep Firefox SQL optimization
  27. Security+ test taking tips
  28. Review: First Alert PIR725 motion sensing socket
  29. The web reacts to Jack Tramiel’s death
  30. RIP, Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore
  31. Remember Plextor? Now they’re making SSDs.
  32. Speeding up an Acer Aspire One 722
  33. Bernard the Legend
  34. Acer Aspire One 722 review
  35. Take back some privacy
  36. Firefox disables out-of-date Java plugins
  37. Macintosh malware continues to evolve
  38. Why Google wants to know about your wi-fi networks
  39. Best Buy needs to clone Micro Center, not Radio Shack

March 2012

  1. Don’t call the war on hackers unwinnable
  2. End of the innocence for Mac security
  3. Another questionable SSD bargain
  4. Securing wi-fi isn’t about price gouging
  5. Splurge budgets keep you from overspending on impulse
  6. The legacy lamp
  7. A snafu when installing an SSD in some laptops
  8. Feeling poor on $100,000 a year
  9. Umm, no, that’s not Commodore, and that’s not an Amiga
  10. A bad day to be a duck
  11. Don’t give prospective employers your Facebook password
  12. The best SSD deal I’ve seen yet
  13. Move the print spool directory to your ramdisk
  14. How to move your temporary files to a ramdisk
  15. Control your debt, stay in school, stay employed and out of prison
  16. A Firefox ramdisk profile in Windows
  17. My household’s energy usage dropped 19% in 2011
  18. There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date
  19. There’s room for several to gloat over the Britannica
  20. Are comments worth the trouble or not?
  21. Apply your monthly patches just as soon as you can
  22. Quit sniveling about a tech skills gap and train your workers
  23. The stupid juice–it burns
  24. How to make persistent headers in Excel
  25. Unix-to-Windows copies with PSCP
  26. A free tool keeps Windows from hibernating during long downloads
  27. Marx trains and Lionel 1121 switches
  28. Is TRIM better than Native Command Queuing?
  29. The old days of viruses
  30. I have a server… and about four years’ worth of content
  31. Customize Firefox before it hits the ground on a new PC
  32. How to start over with MySQL in Debian
  33. How computer and energy technology don’t relate
  34. Tips for connecting traditional tubular track
  35. Viewtron and Videotex: Internet-like technology, circa 1983
  36. Don’t use Password1 as your password
  37. Yesterday was Windows 8 day, but I found this e-reader hack more interesting

February 2012

  1. A cloud computing-related Security+ question
  2. Living with a past-its-prime computer
  3. Kids these days, not knowing the name Grace Hopper
  4. Why can’t St. Louis repurpose buildings like Baltimore does?
  5. How to pass CISSP: Test taking strategies
  6. How to study for CISSP
  7. And on a personal note, I passed the CISSP
  8. The future of flash memory might not be so bleak after all, either
  9. Handling data recovery
  10. Libre Office grows up some more
  11. Quick and dirty OCR, included with Office 2003 and 2007
  12. Review: The Lutron MS-OPS2 occupancy sensor switch
  13. SCO v. IBM winds toward resolution
  14. I’ll miss you, Gary Carter
  15. LED lighting gets cheaper
  16. SSD future isn’t bleak, just flash
  17. HP has a brilliant idea
  18. Fixing track that gets hot at the track joints
  19. New Order, Joy Division, surviving and moving on
  20. How to clean heat sink compound off a CPU
  21. Upgrade update
  22. Model Railroad Hobbyist
  23. Vacuum Firefox automatically
  24. Egg on my face
  25. Lowe’s just doesn’t get hyperlinks
  26. The Observation Car
  27. Why I’m not selling anything on Ebay these days
  28. Socket 775 adventures, Part 2
  29. Redigi gets to live another day
  30. Taking things to the next level
  31. The difference between local and traveling train shows
  32. Studying for a certification?
  33. Lake Forest Pastry Shop, and other old St. Louis bakeries
  34. And now Intel’s teamed up with Sandforce
  35. Proper care of digital flash media
  36. What I would say to someone starting to study journalism today
  37. Open-source licenses, the CISSP, and the real world
  38. Time to make a new rule for work
  39. My first experience with data recovery
  40. How I remembered how to negotiate

January 2012

  1. An ode to Word macros
  2. Don’t write 3D printing’s obit yet
  3. CISSP melted my brain
  4. Micro Center’s 18-minute pickup works spectacularly
  5. My Socket 775 adventures, Chapter 1
  6. Know someone who needs computer skills? Send ’em to the library
  7. I got my new webserver motherboard
  8. How to replace cash envelopes, and when not to
  9. Why do European trains look so much better than U.S. trains?
  10. I knew I should have bought that motherboard…
  11. Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-S3
  12. Apple and China, or Why the U.S. Middle Class is Shrinking
  13. Digital distribution, not SOPA and PIPA, is the best long-term solution for the MPAA
  14. Get Acronis for free
  15. The contractor who built systems via P2P
  16. The difference between how I eat and how Paula Deen cooks
  17. And it seems that today things worked how they’re supposed to
  18. I may have a cure for the slow web browser
  19. The difference between piracy and linking
  20. Don’t reuse your Zappos.com password
  21. The upside of the brave new Windows Server GUI-less world
  22. An excellent story about collectors of old signs
  23. UEFI on ARM illustrates why we still have to watch Microsoft
  24. Disabling WPS by upgrading to DD-WRT
  25. If you don’t know what SOPA and PIPA are
  26. Mozilla goes sane with the corporate ESR version of Firefox
  27. Why computerized information systems frequently fail to meet the needs of users
  28. The future of 3D printing is now. The next industrial revolution comes in a box and costs $1299
  29. If you’re looking for a cheap motherboard
  30. No easy solutions to the .NET Framework
  31. Best Buy has one foot in the grave?
  32. Happy 30th birthday, Commodore 64
  33. Message digests for forensic purposes
  34. The LG 593260 LED bulb from Costco
  35. And now, Excel 2007 has a few nasty surprises
  36. Bruce Sutter vs Lee Smith makes sense to me
  37. What the Founding Fathers intended to be in the public domain today
  38. Do insulated vinyl blinds work?

2011 419

December 2011

  1. Making this WPS vulnerability even worse
  2. Is that file safe?
  3. I’m doing my homework
  4. My buddy Halon-2402
  5. This is why you disable stuff you don’t think you need
  6. Is Anonymous trying to get a CEO jailed or fined?
  7. Recovering files from found.000
  8. Is overclocking over?
  9. Advice for upgrading from a CRT to an LCD
  10. Message says Firefox is already running when it isn’t
  11. And now I think it’s time for a new doctor
  12. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. New Firefox.
  13. There goes the neighborhood
  14. I think this is the secret of Amazon’s success
  15. A simple way to make sure a Christmas-gift train works on Christmas morning
  16. The worst test I ever took
  17. News flash: e-books are overpriced
  18. Fixing my boss’ Outlook
  19. Adblock Plus adds an option for allowable ads
  20. HP open-sourcing Web OS is a gutsy move
  21. Cyanogenmod 7 on a Nook Color
  22. First impressions of a low-tier tablet, plus why I don’t shop at Best Buy
  23. What happened to the Crunden-Martin Manufacturing Co.
  24. Albert Pujols, mercenary
  25. I could ping my router, but not the rest of my network
  26. I need a hair dryer, some nail polish, and two clothespins
  27. 2011 retail tinplate finds, at Big Lots and Shack
  28. No, purchaser reviews on online web sites aren’t worthless
  29. How to wire LEDs and other circuits risk-free
  30. What do you have against Frank White, Mr. Glass?
  31. The end of the hard drive shortage is in sight
  32. Balancing safety and versatility
  33. Don’t write Android’s obit yet

November 2011

  1. Expect your HP printer to get 0wnz0r3d shortly
  2. Smart card problems and other Monday weirdness
  3. Reflections on 10+ years of blogging
  4. Buy toys now, but keep procrastinating on the electronics
  5. Spending money to save money
  6. How to solder
  7. Smart wiring for the gateman, from the January 2012 Classic Toy Trains
  8. The $119 tablet
  9. Tip: Use a TV stand or cart to hold train transformers
  10. Cyber Monday is a myth
  11. I’ve been reading up about tablets
  12. Things to look for when buying a GPS
  13. How I shop on Black Friday
  14. How to make a DMZ with two routers
  15. How to make a Lionel train whistle
  16. Free space in c:\windows\installer
  17. Fixing Lionel locomotives that run erratically and have flickering lights
  18. How to make a single page landscape in Word
  19. Hey, AT&T! Don’t send clumsy oafs to bury my cable!
  20. How to buy a sub-$100 Android tablet and not get burned
  21. How to mount a USB drive in Turnkey Linux
  22. Milestone: Enterprise SSDs are cheaper than enterprise HDDS
  23. Nginx, a leaner, meaner web server
  24. Things I wish I’d known about AT&T U-Verse before I signed up
  25. Review: The Definitive Guide to Marx Trains, by Walt Hiteshew
  26. How I secured my new wireless router
  27. An easy way to change your power plans in Vista and Windows 7
  28. Back in business after a 20-hour hiatus
  29. B&N heats up the midrange Android tablet market
  30. Firefox 8 lands, and there’s still no official Windows 64-bit support
  31. Greenberg’s Marx Trains Pocket Price Guide, 9th edition: A review
  32. Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET
  33. Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios
  34. Microsoft’s leaked roadmap
  35. This hard drive shortage may put a crimp on things
  36. Deep Firefox SQL optimization

October 2011

  1. Looking back at Achtung Baby, 20 years on
  2. Serious hints for your employee self-evaluation
  3. Making newer versions of Firefox work like a fresh install
  4. HP decides to keep its PC business
  5. The mainstream places a bet on SSDs
  6. Do you need faster Internet, or just TCP Optimizer?
  7. The $199 tablet market gets more crowded
  8. Disable pointless tab-opening animation to speed up Firefox
  9. Disable USB mass storage to solve the USB drive-in-the-parking-lot problem
  10. Google guts.
  11. Pipe output to the clipboard in Windows
  12. Appremover can remove stubborn antivirus software
  13. Quieting a system with more modernized case fans
  14. A source of great inspiration evaporates
  15. Awesome Ads broke my blog
  16. Installing internal media readers in old Compaqs
  17. Don’t let debt cripple you
  18. Advice on scraping by
  19. Use Powercfg to troubleshoot Windows 7 power management
  20. Confessions and rememberances of an Amigaholic
  21. My latest publication tackles the Lionel gateman
  22. RIP, Dennis Ritchie
  23. Review: The Utilitech Pro 430 lumen 7.5 watt LED bulb from Lowe’s
  24. What you should know if you want to write a book
  25. Yesterday was Patch Tuesday again
  26. Is there something better than Robocopy?
  27. Don’t use software firewalls: Good advice or bad?
  28. An old Windows myth looks to (finally) become reality in Windows 8
  29. How to remove paint from a tin litho toy or train
  30. We’re just about ready for an era of 64-bit browsers
  31. Maybe it is (or will become) legal to rip your DVDs
  32. RIP, Steve Jobs
  33. Kindle Fire in perspective
  34. Stop social networking sites from tracking you
  35. Will running Prime95 void my warranty?
  36. Giving Windows 7’s power management more options
  37. Amazon’s new Kindles look like rising stars
  38. Looking back at a year with WordPress

September 2011

  1. Version 7 looks like just what Firefox needed
  2. Was CP/M overrated?
  3. Windows shutdown command
  4. Can you afford that house or apartment?
  5. Oh well, whatever, nevermind. 20 years later
  6. Windows 7 programs quit responding? You have a corrupt user profile. Here’s how to fix it.
  7. Toggle between two registry settings with another simple script
  8. Bargain SSD? Maybe more like hard bargain SSD
  9. Toggle between two hosts files with a simple script
  10. 15 years ago, at the home of the blue shirts
  11. Two commands to fix Internet connectivity
  12. In lieu of a tip jar…
  13. Microsoft: No x86 apps for ARM
  14. SSDs trend closer toward $1 per GB
  15. Is that price a good deal or not?
  16. Good news for Marx train enthusiasts
  17. Beware the Mebromi, my son: BIOS infections
  18. Tips for completing your employee self-evaluation
  19. Intel isn’t interested in buying HP’s PC business
  20. Windows 8 on a VM
  21. Someone needs to make a good $100 tablet
  22. Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011
  23. Rest in pieces, Borders
  24. How to slipstream IE9 and hotfixes into Windows 7, step by step
  25. Remembering 11 September 2001
  26. Moving a users directory, or anything else you want off an SSD to save space
  27. If you’re suddenly seeing obnoxious banner ads on Facebook…
  28. Chasing the ramdisk and slipstreaming rabbits
  29. Attack of the monster 4 TB hard drives
  30. Time for some unexpected updates
  31. Consider disabling the DNS Client service if you have a dodgy Internet connection
  32. Why Amazon can’t make a Kindle in the USA
  33. So Amazon’s tablet is a go
  34. PC Magazine’s sub-$200 PC
  35. Cheap laptops and tablets: September 2011
  36. What to do when you need to clean-install Windows 7 and all you have is a restore disc
  37. If the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is dead, good riddance
  38. I got my new SSD today and can’t play with it
  39. Webserver Wednesday

August 2011

  1. A more likely use of the Medtronic exploit
  2. Fix weird Internet connection problems with ipconfig
  3. Shame on you, Medtronic
  4. A bargain SSD for the masses
  5. My first really bad day in IT
  6. A tip for selling something: Stage another interested buyer
  7. Maybe this is how Apple does it
  8. Watch out for this Apache bug
  9. And now it’s Apple’s turn
  10. Lessons of the HP Touchpad
  11. Oracle’s bombshell: We might buy HP
  12. Should you sell your stock in 2011?
  13. How about hard drives that vary their speed based on workload?
  14. Is your neighbor hungry?
  15. Intel fixes a major issue with its 320-series SSDs
  16. Psst! Want a cheap tablet?
  17. Lenovo and IBM look back at IBM’s PC exit
  18. Bombshell: HP pulls out. Of tablets and desktop PCs.
  19. How to view questionable PDFs safely
  20. Commodore 128, top-12 dud? By what measure?
  21. Firefox 6 is out. Yawn.
  22. Milestone! I’ve been pirated!
  23. Outlook mailbox full but is not? Here’s the fix
  24. Google drops a bombshell, buys Motorola
  25. Why SSL isn’t fooolproof security
  26. 64 bits or bust
  27. DOS war stories
  28. Happy birthday, IBM PC!
  29. Is someone trying to hack Facebook? Maybe.
  30. Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?
  31. And no, don’t bother trying to time the market
  32. I hope this new recordable DVD format catches on
  33. Two reasons you should use something other than your local ISP’s DNS
  34. Oh. And don’t go panic and sell all your stocks.
  35. A simple security enhancement you can and should do now
  36. Maybe this is the sales tactic computer stores use these days
  37. Used dual-cores are coming! Used dual-cores are coming!
  38. Rest in Peace, Mrs. Hill
  39. Why people hack Facebook accounts
  40. Downed by a network cable
  41. How to power your computer up from away from home
  42. Wikipedia’s losing contributors? Dip me in axle grease and call me slick!
  43. Tradeoffs at the low end: Cores or Cache?
  44. What I would do to fix Dr. A’s computer
  45. HP or Dell?
  46. Questions to ask when buying a computer

July 2011

  1. Creative play with boys
  2. Secure that public wi-fi with a low-tier, no-cost home VPN
  3. Why you should align your SSD
  4. How to tame e-books
  5. I’m back.
  6. The amount of system memory has changed – Dell
  7. Be careful when buying previous-generation hardware
  8. Synthetic oil + Marvel Mystery Oil = happy lawn mower
  9. Don’t fall for the new Facebook stalker scam
  10. Approaches for home network storage
  11. Taking a stand: Rupert Murdoch and the Chicago Sun-Times
  12. Android modding gets just a little more mainstream
  13. Another (unwanted) lawnmower adventure
  14. Maybe 64-bit Firefox is on the way?
  15. A year of shopping locally
  16. Don’t take free software from a stranger
  17. Maybe this is the difference between US and UK journalists
  18. Help someone plug a computer into a TV, become a criminal
  19. Microsoft sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses; what does it mean?
  20. Google jumps into the e-reader game
  21. Integrating WordPress 3.2 with Twitter
  22. How to use WordPress’ drafts feature to your advantage
  23. Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario C552US
  24. Is it OK to defragment a laptop?
  25. Should journalists hack?
  26. More help is on the way for high Firefox memory usage
  27. A snapshot in history of Gates and Microsoft, 1992
  28. How to clean an MBR and recover drive partitions
  29. Using ATA Security eXtension BIOS to add hard drive password protection
  30. Don’t follow Dvorak’s password advice

June 2011

  1. Meet the new malcontents. Same as the old malcontents.
  2. What we do with historic buildings in St. Louis
  3. MBR rootkits don’t mean you have to wipe the drive
  4. If you’re concerned that Lulzsec may have leaked data about you…
  5. Slipstream drivers into Windows XP
  6. What a week…
  7. Review: GT Max Playstation-USB converter
  8. Firefox needs to adopt the Ubuntu model
  9. Stress test computer hardware with Prime95
  10. Review: X-Kim GPTL-00A
  11. And that didn’t take long: Firefox 5 is out
  12. First impressions: Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper
  13. Removing the Windows XP Repair scareware
  14. How young is too young for a credit card?
  15. Analysis: Samsung “green” memory
  16. On being a dad
  17. Dark ages of security, or golden age of hacking?
  18. Can’t get system restore to run? Force it.
  19. How to decide if a computer upgrade will pay for itself in power savings
  20. Farquhar discovers power-sipping AMD Fusion motherboards
  21. Mazzarro: A never-give-up story
  22. No, the government isn’t going to come take your trains
  23. How to lower your train accessories into your table
  24. Floppy disks for Commodore and other vintage computers
  25. Putting blog updates on Facebook
  26. How and why to fix your Facebook privacy settings
  27. Our call is very important to us
  28. SSD tweaks and why they sometimes don’t work
  29. The many troubles with e-books
  30. Linguistic analysis isn’t hooey
  31. How to find IDE pin 1 and floppy pin 1
  32. Punishing heat.
  33. In defense of college and 4-year degrees
  34. Boom! Poof! Silence.
  35. I’ve seen the Windows 8 screenshots, and I smell panic
  36. Hybrid drive options roll in

May 2011

  1. If you’ve been delaying upgrading your network, keep delaying
  2. Compress Commodore programs with Exomizer
  3. How to have two hard drives when you only have a single 3.5″ bay
  4. Apple’s first CEO speaks
  5. How not to do business
  6. RIP, Paul Splittorff
  7. What’s wrong with my 6502 machine language article?
  8. Run DD-WRT on an old PC
  9. Writing Tight 6502 Series Machine Code
  10. Windows, ARM, emulation, misconceptions and misremembered history
  11. Disadvantages of Windows 98 and 98SE
  12. How to secure a computer like a spook
  13. Shame on you, Dave, if you run out of money in retirement
  14. Do tablets cut into PC sales?
  15. How Windows knows if your network requires you to visit a web page
  16. LED is the future, but I don’t think it’s here yet
  17. Traditional baseball uniform numbers
  18. How to use Sticky Keys to change/unlock a forgotten password
  19. How to save a fortune on cables
  20. Don’t use gadget buyback programs
  21. Meet Chrysalis, the future of Bit Torrent
  22. Microsoft buyouts that worked
  23. More on the new Intel 320 SSD
  24. Marketing or Engineering?
  25. The Cars got back together?
  26. I have seen the future, and it’s cheap
  27. Apple-Intel ARM partnership makes sense
  28. A firewall to defeat Android location tracking
  29. Quoting famous people accurately
  30. Why would anyone want my e-mail account?
  31. Random thoughts from the day after bin Laden died
  32. How I fixed a lamp

April 2011

  1. Making the ribbon even worse
  2. When Windows gets a file association with .exe files, get a hammer. This one.
  3. So why are Apple and Google (and Microsoft) tracking us?
  4. Disabling Android location tracking
  5. Ye Olde Nintendo 64
  6. Android isn’t completely clean either
  7. iDo track your every move
  8. An easy change to improve your city gas mileage by six percent
  9. Samsung, Samsung, and more Samsung
  10. And then there were three
  11. Be wary of unexpected e-mail attachments
  12. Nonstandard configuration on a vintage PC? Maybe it was gray market
  13. How to disassemble a Lionel 2026 or 2037 locomotive
  14. Find material for a rebuttal assignment
  15. It’s not even out yet and Paul Allen’s book has a mistake
  16. Four ways to save a little money on $4 gas
  17. Android-ified.
  18. Tame your USB multi-card reader
  19. Roll your own Retro-64
  20. If Microsoft goes through with the threat to ribbon-ize Explorer
  21. My proposal to improve Windows 8
  22. Buy online, manufacture at home
  23. Stan Musial and his frozen appendix
  24. How to find out what add-ons are slowing down Firefox
  25. Flaky networking? Suspect cheap NICs
  26. Intel’s and Sandforce’s AES-128 encryption is useful, but not for what you think
  27. Reactions to Allen’s memoir. And my reactions to them.
  28. Paul Allen’s tearing into Gates seems familiar

March 2011

  1. Can you set an HP slimline computer on its side?
  2. Replacing old Lionel DC transformers
  3. SSDs and built-in encryption–and how to enable it
  4. So why didn’t Commodore make the Commodore 128 differently?
  5. My connection to the new center of the U.S. population
  6. Is it OK to paint an AC adapter?
  7. I have a job.
  8. Firefox 4 is out
  9. AT&T buying T-Mobile isn’t good for anyone but AT&T
  10. Upgrade and repair diary: IBM Thinkpad T30
  11. How to make a virtual DOS machine with networking
  12. Thank you and farewell, Dr. Grams
  13. How to open multiple Explorer windows from a batch file
  14. Why you don’t want to be the first to install a Microsoft service pack
  15. Usage caps for solving problems that don’t exist
  16. How to check your downloaded files’ integrity
  17. The IE6 mess is Microsoft’s own doing
  18. How to clean inside Lionel tubular track
  19. How CPU multipliers came to be locked
  20. SSDs and pricing
  21. On 99-cent e-books
  22. Snow. Extreme snow.
  23. They still make hard drives?
  24. Intel and the SSD, 2011
  25. Using s-video gear with Commodore monitors
  26. How to connect an Amiga to a TV
  27. The tyranny of consumerization is real
  28. The decline and fall of system administration
  29. On content farms
  30. Tornadoes, round 2 for 2011

February 2011

  1. Building a Tamiya model kit
  2. Keep paper models from warping
  3. Scripting Windows sysadmin tasks
  4. Windows 7 SP1 is out
  5. Using old transformers with new
  6. Taming Robocopy
  7. Installing trucks on junker train cars
  8. Color laser vs. inkjet: The hidden factor
  9. What you really need to know about net neutrality
  10. How to audit your PC’s software for updates
  11. How to straighten bent prewar/tinplate axles
  12. Using Robocopy to root out PST files
  13. State of the SSD, 1Q 2011
  14. What will you do with your Freedom Box?
  15. Do I believe the Enquirer story about Steve Jobs?
  16. What happens when you put a dipstick, a screwdriver, and a SAN in the same room
  17. Wiring your house without tearing into walls
  18. Depending on how you look at it, a free upgrade. Or bloatware.
  19. Why publish in Classic Toy Trains?
  20. A Syrian-American’s view of current events in the Middle East
  21. On troubleshooting
  22. How I fixed an infuriating printer problem
  23. How I fixed a maddening Code 43 in Windows 7 (no firearms involved)
  24. Contingency. Or how I escaped from Windows 0.7
  25. I sure hope Windows 7 SP1 gets here fast
  26. Yep, I think I’ve just about had it with Intel
  27. Cheap, custom project enclosures
  28. Too much experience with Recovery is Possible
  29. You network guys…
  30. How to use an IT recruiter to get a job
  31. Redemption in Kansas City
  32. Two thoughts on Egypt and Mubarek
  33. Lionel Super O track
  34. The rock, or the hard place?

January 2011

  1. Should the site go dark…
  2. Spinrite 6: An overdue review
  3. A question for you old-timers
  4. Misguided security, episode 14
  5. Spam, spam, spam, spam!
  6. E.R. Johnston, the train dealer, the myth, the legend
  7. What is On30?
  8. Read this if you use ICQ
  9. Glue for plastic models and buildings
  10. Inexpensive flash storage for older PCs
  11. The circulating privacy threat warnings miss the boat
  12. So maybe CFLs burning out a little early isn’t entirely bad?
  13. Contract time
  14. Apple and its controversial pentalobular screws
  15. CFL bulbs and longevity
  16. If I’m making more mistakes lately…
  17. Rogue IT people and how to avoid hiring them
  18. Another way to force Microsoft Security Essentials to update
  19. Just say no to black boxes
  20. Can you use 1:64 vehicles with HO scale trains?
  21. Some security-ish short takes
  22. If I had to buy an off-the-shelf PC, what would it be?
  23. The SSD Decoder Ring
  24. Attempting to tame C:\Windows\Installer
  25. Lionel Fastrack review
  26. How to make HP and Compaq computers boot off USB
  27. Going violent
  28. Ways to speed up an aging laptop
  29. What the 2011 CES may mean
  30. Fred Phelps and the Sermon on the Mount
  31. Defrag scareware
  32. Blasko: Daring to dream in D.C.
  33. Unlocking the Malicious Software Removal Tool
  34. Why total freedom of expression is a reader’s worst nightmare
  35. Christmas Eve, a train that wouldn’t run, and a happy ending
  36. Top posts of 2010: A retrospective
  37. The St. Louis tornadoes of 2010

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