How we learn

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

An article on Lifehacker this week explained a lot about how I initially became a computer professional. Its advice was to fly by the seat of your pants, try things without guidance or manuals, not be afraid to fail occasionally, and learn before you go to sleep.

So when I spent many nights in my late teens disassembling and reassembling obsolete IBM PC/XT clones to learn how they worked, I was unwittingly doing all of it right.

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Windows NT turns 20

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , ,

The first version of Windows NT, version 3.1 (to coincide with the then-current 16-bit version of Windows) was released 20 years ago today. It was an insanely ambitious effort for Microsoft that took a while to pay off, though it eventually did in spades. Windows NT was what killed off Novell and OS/2 and turned the proprietary operating system market into a duopoly. Although a user running it wouldn’t see much difference between Windows NT and regular Windows except that it didn’t crash nearly as much, it was the first version of Windows that qualifies as a modern operating system, with pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory.

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Libre Office and Open Office both grow up a bit–together

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , ,

Both Libre Office and Open Office released new versions this week, and the changelog indicates a good amount of shared code between the two, at least in this go-round. The animosity between the two—Libre Office is a fork of Open Office, dating to before the time Oracle spun the project off to Apache—may thus be overstated. Read more

Have a busload of servers? Need to know what version of Windows they’re all running?

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

Every once in a great while, I have to answer a question like what version of Windows a range of servers is running. If the number of servers is very small, you can just connect to them with a Terminal Services client and note what comes up. But sometimes that’s impractical. Right now I’m working someplace that has 8,000 servers, more or less. I’m not going to check 8,000 servers manually. I’m just not.

Here’s a more elegant, much faster way to go about getting that information.

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Hisense pushes out a Sero 7 Pro update

Dave Farquhar Android

My Hisense Sero 7 Pro asked to update itself this morning. The update billed itself as a stability update. Indeed, afterward, it still reports itself as running Android 4.2.1.

That said, I’m all for a stability update. My Sero 7 Pro sometimes has issues coming out of sleep mode, so I let it update. Whether it makes a difference will take a while to figure out–I tended to have the issue once or twice a week. A day is too little for anything but a first impression, and my first impression is that this was a very low-profile update. But mainly I’m happy to see that Hisense seems to be supporting the tablet with updates. Not every update needs to make a big splash.

Wookie suits at work

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

I have a coworker who owns a Darth Vader costume. If you ask him really nicely, he might dress up as Darth Vader to scare your kids. He’s proud enough to own that costume that he keeps a picture of himself in it on his desk.

Someone–I forget who–had the idea this past week that his cubicle neighbor ought to get a Chewbacca the Wookie suit. Because nothing goes with Darth Vader like Chewbacca, right? Several of us even reached for our wallets in anticipation of taking up a collection to fund this Chewbacca suit, and then someone threw out a stipulation–that the two of them need to wear their costumes to work.

For some reason, I still have my copy of the corporate dress code, so I got it out to see if it would be legal to wear Chewbacca and Darth Vader costumes to work. Read more