excel

Merge CSV files from a command prompt

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

I had a bunch of CSV files I needed to merge. I don’t spend half an hour loading all of them into Excel and doing a bunch of copying and pasting. Here’s how I merge CSV files from a command prompt.

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What to do when the layoff comes

Dave Farquhar Careers , , ,

An IT pro I went to high school with–he was a year or two ahead of me, so we weren’t quite classmates–got a layoff letter this past week, along with the rest of his department. It was a large, successful company making purely a financial decision to offshore a bunch of jobs, and unfortunately he got caught in the crossfire. It reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, so now’s as good of a time as any.

The details about his layoff and my layoffs are unimportant. What’s more important is what to do next. There are definitely things I know now that I wish I’d known years ago, so I’ll share them now.

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Excel won’t scroll down or otherwise? Try this

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,
Excel won’t scroll down or otherwise? Try this

I regularly work with Excel spreadsheets with tens of thousands of rows, correlated. Or hundreds of thousands of rows of raw data. Working with gigabytes of data taught me a lot. Including things it wasn’t supposed to, like what to do when Excel won’t scroll down or otherwise with the keyboard, or Excel mouse scroll isn’t working.

Large, complex Excel sheets are pretty fragile. Among other things, the largest of the sheets will stop scrolling. The scrollbar on the right scrolls, but the display doesn’t move. The mouse wheel scrolls, but again, the screen doesn’t move. And the arrow keys don’t work either. I can’t scroll down, I can’t scroll right, or do anything useful with the data because I can’t see the whole worksheet. In this blog post, I cover two ways to solve the problem when Excel won’t scroll.

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Where Microsoft lost its way

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week.

All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that was what the DOS buried in Windows ME was called. But mentioning it is appropriate, because it shows how DOS faded from center stage to being barely visible in the end, to the point where it was difficult to dig it out, and that it took 15 years for it to happen. He’s completely right, that if Microsoft had pulled the plug on DOS in 1985, Windows would have failed. Read more

How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers

I saw a question on a vintage computing forum this week: How did the IBM PC become the de facto standard for PCs, and the only desktop computer architecture from the 1980s to survive until today?

It’s a very good question, and I think there were several reasons for it. I also think without all of the reasons, the IBM PC wouldn’t have necessarily won. In some regards, of course, it was a hollow victory. IBM has been out of the PC business for a decade now. Its partners Intel and Microsoft, however, reaped the benefits time and again.

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Don’t hide your abilities to avoid bullies

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , ,

There’s a disturbing story on Slashdot today: Kids are playing dumb to avoid being bullied.

I have two things to say. I was bullied when I was a kid. In seventh grade, it was me against the world (or at least the entire school), and the problem followed me, though not as intensely, through two more schools, until sometime in my sophomore year.

But it gets better. Trust me on that. Some of the losers who picked on me never graduated high school. Some spent time in jail. Some couldn’t get a date if their lives depended on it now. Their lives peaked right around age 18. Meanwhile, things are pretty good for me, largely because each time I’ve been told to pass a long test if I want to keep my job, I’ve been able to do it.

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Linus Torvalds likes SSDs, too

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

Linus Torvalds called hard drives evil, nasty platters of spinning rust in an interview this week, while saying he likes SSDs.

I didn’t say it. He said it. Though it’s no secret that I like SSDs too. Read more

Office 2010, early impressions

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

I’ve mentioned several times that I hadn’t seen Office 2010 yet, so I couldn’t comment on it, and would reserve judgment until I’ve seen it. I’ve been working for companies that were a bit behind the times on that.

I’ve been working with it for a week now. I won’t be buying it for my own use at home.

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Confessions of a hacker for hire

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , ,

A story on Slashdot yesterday encouraged IT departments to hire a hacker, in spite of the stigma.

I’ve been that guy, and I suspect I’ll be that guy again. I’ve also had to clean up after that guy, so I may be able to add some perspective.
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Do you think if software cost less, people would pirate less?

Dave Farquhar Software , , , ,

The BSA says 57% of people use pirated software. A big part of the problem is that software is just too expensive. You can buy a decent computer for $300, and the copy of Windows that comes with it accounts for 1/3 of the cost.

Microsoft Office Home and Business, which includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook, retails for another $280. Office Professional, which includes Publisher and Access, retails for $500.

So even if you opt for the cut-down Home and Business version, you’ve already spent more on software than you spent on the hardware it runs on. Read more