[dba-Tech] Windows 8 and 8.1

First off, I like Windows 8 and especially 8.1 a lot. I know that lots of
people don't, but I have grown into it. One possible reason is that an
external monitor is connected to my laptop. That allows me to run the Win8
UI on the laptop and the Desktop on the external, and just drag the mouse
from one screen to the other, so I run stuff on both at once. It helps to
have 8GB of RAM; that helps a lot.

But there are a few things that I still can't find. Such as, which version
of Win8.1 am I running? I used to know how to find that in Win7 and cannot
locate this info in Win8.1. I also cannot find, despite the little guide
that came with this Dell laptop, how to switch from cabled to wireless. The
guide says it's F2 but that doesn't seem to work. Maybe I'm supposed to
hold down some additional key as I press F2. Don't know.

I also have a set of Logitcch speakers and I did notice that there are on
the aide of the laptop a pair of jack inputs, one for microphone and the
other for headphones., according to the guide. Do I just plug the speaker
jack into the headphone jack?

Any ideas, anyone? The laptop in question is a Dell Inspiron with 8GB RAM
and 1TB hard disk (and not that it matters, but a couple of TB USB
externals attached).

And before closing this message, I want to praise Dell Canada for their
superb support. The hard disk failed after about 7 months, so the local
dealer said that I had to deal direct with Dell. I ran Diags and obtained
the error number and phoned Dell and quoted chapter and verse; they sent me
a container by Purolator with instructions on how to package it, and a
number to call for pickup. Purolator arrived a day later to pick up the
laptop. Three days later it was delivered back to me, with most of the data
recovered, and a spanking-new hard disk in place/ That round-trip must have
cost them $50, aside from the labour costs. I sparked it up and Presto!
Everthing worrked. They didn't manage to recover all my data, but since I
have several USB externals attached and schedulued backups, it only took me
a few minutes to put everything back in place. This is the first Dell I've
ever owned, but on the strength of their support policy I will recommend
this company to every present and future client, and family member.

One last thing: being a bi-OS-ual, spending half my time in Windows and the
rest in Linux, with 8GB of RAM this works splendidly. So well, in fact,
that I have a couple of different versions of Linux in Virtual Boxes, and
sometimes run them both at once. The only thing I haven't figured out is
how to create an XP Virtual Machine; I have an old client or two that has
not yet moved beyond XP and once in a while I need to do maintenance on
them. In the ideal world, I would have a VM for each client/friend/family
member, so I could just switch from this one to that one, and essentially
be running a duplicate of their system, albeit with outdated data, but the
data doesn't matter, it's the code that matters. So that means that for
client ABC, he's running XP and refuses to migrate, and he has an Access
app against a MySQL back end, and refuses the risks of upgrading. Client
BCD has Win7 Pro and an Access app against an MS-SQL back end, and refuses
to upgrade. Client DEF has an Unbuntu installation running a PHP/Javascript
site with MySQL in the back end.

That will suffice for now. Then there is me, always the experimenter and
explorer, playing with the latest release of Python and whatever else
interests me (I hereby confess that I'm a coding slut, always interested in
every available language, from C++ to assembly to VBA to Eiffel (and kudos
to Bertrand Meyer for showing us the way). I suppose that you could
describe this as my problem. The only language in which I am confident in
declaring my fluency is VBA. In the rest, I am at best conversational.

And just to reveal how out of the current loops I am, last night I re-read
Albert Camus's "The Rebel", for about the fourth time. Tomorrow it's Tom
Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" for the fourth time. But before I leave
Camus, a month or so ago I had a conversation with my friend Audra, and
somehow the topic of Camus and "The Rebel" came up. And I vaguely quoted,
and said "This book is about the relationship between the Master and the
Slave, and it proves that The Slave is always in control, because at some
point he will say, Rather than suffer this abuse, I prefer to die. And at
that point, the Master has lost all his power. That spoke to my soul. That
told me almost everything I needed to know. It didn't teach me how to make
love to a woman and I still don't know that, but it did teach me how to
behave in the public world. I will never forget that: the moment when the
Slave says he would rather die than suffer the crap the Master shovels upon
him, that is the definition of Progress.

-- 
Arthur