Windows 10? Or Not?

If you're buying a new machine (that isn't an Apple) then it'll almost certainly be coming to you with Windows 10 already installed, although some retailers are still selling hardware with Windows 8.1 or even Windows 7 pre-installed.

On the other hand, you may own an older PC already and be thinking of upgrading from Windows 7 or Vista, or XP .....

Well, firstly take a look at what you'll need in the way of hardware (see ZDNet's take - I would have added Microsoft's recommendations but their links are broken!). For those about to take the upgrade plunge please read this article first, as the rules changed at the end of 2015! You still only have until around July 2016, though, for the freebie!

1. Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster.
2. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
3. Free hard disk space: 16 GB.
4. Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver.
5. A Microsoft account and Internet access.

Now at this point I should 'fess up: I'm running a 2.8 GHz machine with 32 GB or RAM and 2 TB of disc. However, I'm not running Windows on that - I'm only running Windows in a virtual machine from Oracle, called VirtualBox. Here's what Windows 10 thinks about it (right and below).
As you can see, it's not a particularly new cpu (2011), but Windows 10 is getting a pair of threads, 8 GB of RAM, and, in this case, some 45 GB of "disc". Roughly the equivalent of many Windows 7 machines that will be getting upgraded to Windows 10.

Well, the purpose of this post is to walk you through my upgrade experience, so you can have some idea of how yours might go.

1. How I started. 
In this case I started with a totally clean machine and installed a copy of 64-bit Windows 7 Pro onto it. I started with 45 GB of virgin disc and filled a fair amount of it with Windows 7. I installed just one program - the Magic Jelly Bean Finder that you can use to discover the product key of your OS - always a good thing to have if it's worn off the bottom of your laptop!
2. The first problem.
After installing Windows 7 I immediately started the upgrade process and equally quickly got told "You can't upgrade from a copy of Windows that isn't activated"!  Oh well!  So I sat down and wasted a little more time activating my copy of Windows 7 that I was never going to use.
3. Upgrades and Updates
You'd think that a whole new operating system would come with all the latest patches, etc. Well, maybe, but in this case it quietly refused to install until I'd loaded all the Important updates for Windows 7. Just what it needs all those Windows 7 patches for is completely beyond me, but still, it's obviously nice to have them.
4. Starting Over
So, after putting the Windows 7 machine on to take all the necessary patches and updates, I went to bed. There was over two foot of snow outside, and it was still chuckin' it down, so I really wan't up to waiting!
5. Next Morning ... Installing!

Next morning, after digging out a friend, and her neighbour, and my neighour, and my car, and my wife's car, and the car of a random stranger who was making heavy weather of digging hers out, I took the afternoon off and drank hot chocolate (thank you Wegman's for stocking Cadbury's!). I alsos topped by the computer, woke up the Windows 7 VM that I'd made the day before, found it happily updated, and started the upgrade to Windows 10 again. 

There are two ways to get Windows 10 - as an ISO disc image that you burn to a DVD and then use to install from, or you can download the web installer from the same page that you can find the ISO image download in, and choose to upgrade your PC. That's what I did.
For the next five minutes or so I got practice in clicking the Next button, screen after screen, and adding the odd bit of information, like my name and the time zone. Then there was the install, so I waited about an hour for that - if you're doing it on a standard machine it may be quicker - don't forget I was using a virtual machine! It also reboots a number of times, but appears to "know what it's doing, because at the end you can log into the machine you just installed - using your Microsoft account and password!
It is possible to install the upgrade and keep the original machine user name and password - which is what I did.  However, there are some nice features that you don't get unless you're logged in to Windows 10 with a Microsoft  identity.

So that was it - very simple. So you can go and get a legal copy of Windows 7 and put it on your (older) machine and, if it performs satisfactorily, I'd bet that you can just sail into Windows 10.

Fun Surprises

Sometimes an operating system can surprise you! For example, a few days after installing, it was time for Windows 10 to load some patches. I started the machine and it obviously looked out to somewhere in Microsoftland and found things it needed to do. I was left with a blank black screen during the boot process for a couple of minutes, and then this!

before the normal login appeared and I could log in again.

Once it you are normally greeted with a blank screen with whatever icons you may have placed there, and a menu bar. I've mooved mine to the right, as you'll see. Left-clicking on the Windows 10 icon that takes the place of the old Windows Start button gets you this layout, rather similar to Windows 8,

and left-clicking it again will clear off all those flat panes again.  However, right-clicking it gives you the left-hand screengrab - the complete menu with most of the links into the control panel. 

It also offers you "Search", a way of searching for programs, files, etc. I tried it out after installing SQL Server 2016 and the screengrab on the right was what I got - not bad! In fact, a lot more useful that what you get with a Windows 7 search from the File Explorer.
You can still, of course, return to the command prompt ... there isn't an icon or menu choice for that, but you can create yourself a shortcut to cmd.exe which works very well!
Here's the output from running the command prompt, and searching for the substring "SQL" anywhere - first the command and then the result:

cd \       

      dir *sql*.* /P /S

Windows 10 echoes the command you just ran to the header bar of the window. As you can see, it's finding every file with "sql" in the name. So, many things haven't changed - if you learned to use the command prompt while the engineers at Xerox PARQ were creating the Xerox Alto machine with its graphicl interface that Microsoft and Apple stole and turned into their interfaces, then a little bit of that life survives!

TTFN

Food From Long Ago

Well, not the food itself, but ...
I recently discovered,  during one of out many moves, a book from probably my great grandmother. It sings the praises of a piece of wonderful new kitchen equipment - the gas stove!!! This dates it to around the 1890s. As my mother was born in 1921 and my grandmother in the 1890s, my great-granny takes the blame! It was written by Miss Amy Atkinson and Miss Grace Holroyd.



I also discovered, in the same trove, a copy of The Olio Cookery Book, 14th Edition, from 1922. This is a rather interesting find, although much younger. It offers a lot of recipes, it is true, but also many tips interspersed amongst the recipes. For an example, on page 144 one may find recipes for Sherry Whey, Raw Beef Tea, Quickly-Made Lemon Jelly, Special Suet Pudding, and Invalid Pudding. After that come two Cures For Neuralgia and a Boer Embrocation For Sprains. Page 145 has a variety of remedies - for afflictions as varied as Boils, Rheumatism, Corns, and Chilblains!
This book was written by a Miss L. Sykes.
Both books contain fascinating little insights into the past, and quick simple little recipes very suitable for today.

With a little bit of research you can find both of these books in a database online from the University of California at Davis. Believe it or not, you can obtain copies of both books from Amazon UK !

Anyway, on to the food!!

Sausage and Tomato Pie

Ingredients

1 lb sausages, chopped as shown	2-3 medium onions, sliced
3 plum tomatoes, sliced	Salt and pepper
Half a cup of stock
2 cups Idahoan dried Mashed Potatoes	3 cups of water
1 stick of butter	1 cup of milk

The Chopped Onions. You'll see that at least one had sprouted. This isn't a problem, excepting that most of the bulb was useless - the green part was still good!

The sausage I used was Amylu's fully cooked Chicken Andouille. I got a pack of 8 from CostCo and used four here. For info on the product see here.

Procedure

You will need a container to cook this in: I used a glassware loaf dish, about 26x15x8 cm.

1. Start the oven heating to 350F.
2. Slice up the onions, tomatoes, and sausage. 
3. Fry the onions until well-browned - the picture below is about 2 or 3 minutes from the end.     
4. If you're using raw sausages then prick the skins well and cook them gently in boiling water for 5-10 minutes until pretty well cooked through.
5. Fry the sausage gently until the pieces are reasonably browned. You don't need to totally cook these sausages - they already are cooked! (See the next picture!)
6. Put a pan on to heat with the water, milk, and butter. Let it come to a boil.
7. Add the dried mash to the water mix and whisk to mix it. The dry flakes will rapidly turn back into mashed potatoes!
8. Put the sausage pieces in the bottom of the dish and cover with the onions. 
9. Add the stock and the tomato slices 
10. Slather on the mash. Smooth it down to neatness with a fork.
11. Place in the oven on a baking tray and cook for about 30 minutes, until the tips of the potato turn brown.
12. Serve!

Onions frying!

As you can see, I've been fighting Blogger a bit to get this to post. I hope you enjoy it.

TTFN

More recipes to keep warm with

Cream of Thing Soup
Sounds very much like something from an episode of The Munsters from the late 1950s, but it tastes different from your run-of-the-mill "Cream of ..." soup, which is a major plus when you've been feeding people soup and stews for what probably seems like forever!

Thing
Can be Chicken, Mushroom, or Celery. Substitute whichever you like!

Ingredients

Half a medium onion, chopped	2 heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic
Heaped tsp Summer Savoury	Heaped tsp Nutmeg
1 Tsp Pepper	2 litres of Milk
Half stick of butter	2 cans of condensed Thing soup (e.g. Campbells)
Two or three slices of brown bread

You can use Herbes de Provence instead of Savoury.
You can use soy milk instead of cow's milk.

Method

1. Melt the butter in a pot that will comfortably hold all the milk.
2. Add the onions and garlic and gently fry until the onions are beginning to become soft and translucent.
3. Add the pepper and herbs, mix, and let cook in for maybe five minutes.
4. Add the soup and the milk and raise the heat to medium.
5. Use a whisk to stir up the mixture so that the soup completely dissolves in the milk.
6. Break up the bread into smallish pieces and add it to the soup.
7. Keep whisking gently to aerate the soup as it warms. 
8. When the soup is hot enough you'll see tiny bubbles around the edge of the pot - they're the hottest places and are beginning to boil.

This should provide a good portion of soup for four. Enjoy!!

TTFN

Global Warming? Maybe Not, But .....

For any Global Warming enthusiasts out there in the US Northeast this winter must seem like almost the ultimate in opportunities to say "I Told You So" to all the Climate Change Deniers! Just look at the temperatures! In the Philadelphia area it almost reached 70F last weekend - a temperature that, in the 1960s, would have had pin-striped Londoners looking seriously at the time-tables for the next train down to Brighton and the beach!

In mid-December???

That's the weird piece that's got the Global Warming crowd crowing, but it isn't. Really. What we have, instead, is a phenomenon called the Polar Vortex - a circulating pattern of cold air centered over the Arctic - being very strong this year, so all the cold air is held over far northern Canada.

At the same time, El Nino is happening strongly, so the west coasts of north and south Americas are getting lots of moisture. Storm Echo is a good example - look here at all the snow it's dropping!

This means that the north-east of the US just isn't getting any cold air! Yet! Although the coming week may well be very different as Echo finally arrives!

Tech
As you may have read, I've been popping up at SQL Saturdays all over, and even managed one in Montreal on the weekend before Thanksgiving!

This is one of the roads near Montreal.

This SQL Saturday was special, because it was the very first that the user group in Montreal has put on, and, while very small, was definitely well worth the long drive up - which was itself a lot of fun. Montreal is just a great place, and I'm really looking forward to doing it again next year.

No food this time - wait for a really easy and tasty Onion Soup next time.

TTFN

A Soup for Winter

Welcome to the home of the hungry programmer! After a long day of fighting my way through undocumented SSIS jobs to try to get them ready for a looming release I'm home to find the horror that that there are no leftovers left!!

Ok - what's in the fridge? a bag of carrots, celery, leek, and a red bell pepper. There's onions and dry lentils in the pantry, and half a dozen or so smoked sausages (kielbasa style). So there's hope, and I'll be fed for the next couple of lunches too!


Ingredients

2 litres Chicken Broth	Red Bell Pepper, chopped	500g dried lentils
20 baby carrots, chopped	6 sticks of celery, chopped	6-8 straight kielbasa, sliced
2 leeks, chopped	1 and a half onions, chopped	Salt, Papper, Basil

Method

• Put about a litre of chicken broth in a (very) large pot and add an onion (and another half, as I had a half waiting) and maybe half a kilo or so of bacon, chopped into little squares. Set it to boil for maybe 15 mins. 
• Add the lentils and simmer for about another 20-30 minutes. 
• The lentils should be swelling nicely by now, so add all the veg and mix it all well together.
• Add about a teaspoonful of basil, and salt and pepper to taste.
• Keep simmering for another 20 minutes.
• Add the kielbasa smoked sausage (sliced into coins) and mix well in. 
• Keep cooking for about another 20 minutes, so all is well boiled. 
• Serve with bread and enjoy the inner warmth!

So here's a close-up so you can see that it's quite a busy-looking soup - plenty of visual interest with the colours and textures.

TTFN

More Food, More SQL Saturdays!

Well, time has run me over like a dump truck again - 4 months since I got to write anything here!

Upcoming SQL Saturdays are now:
Pittsburgh October 3rd #440
Montreal November 21st #466
Washington, DC December 5th #470

Providence, RI December 12th #465

They're all looking like good events, so if you work with SQL Server, or if you're into IS in any way and are near an event, you should come along and take part - they're tremendous fun!

Food  --  Scallops and Ravioli

As those of you who've seen this blog before are, I'm sure, aware, I love food. In fact, I eat nothing else!!
So, the AG was hungry this afternoon - and so was i, as a matter of fact, and there was a pack of Cheese-filled mini-raviolis from Trader Joe's sitting in the pantry whimpering that it was being ignored.

In the fridge I found some baby spinach, some chopped garlic, and some little baby tomatoes. The pantry yielded some parmesan cheese, and the fridge door some Almond Milk and some butter.
Out of the freezer came some little bay scallops, and from the spice racks came Chives and Herbes de Provence, along with some black pepper.
Finally you'll need some thickener - I used some Bisto (Turkey, not trad.) that you can get at English shops.

1. Firstly, start the water heating for the ravioli (5 minutes or so to get hot, and then about 12-15 to cook). 
2. Put the scallops in some water to make sure that they're thawed.
3. Next, you melt the butter and add in all the herbs (chopped garlic, chives and herbes de Provence, and some good sprinkles of fresh black pepper.
4. Once that's started cooking so that the flavours are coming out (2 minutes or so), add the scallops and let them simmer in too. This will take about another 2-3 minutes.
5. Now add in about half a cup of Almond milk per person you'll be serving, turn up the heat somewhat to get it almost boiling, and then stuff in pretty much as much of the spinach leaves as you can, and cover. 
6. Cook for five minutes, mashing down the leaves every minute or so, so that they get good and wilted, and then add some more almond milk and a teaspoon or two of Bisto. Stir all very well and the liquid should soon start to thicken as it all heats up.
7. Now add the tomatoes - I slice mine once lengthways - and turn down the heat some.
8. Decant the pasta into bowls, cover generously with cheese, garnish with more (fresh) spinach leaves, and pour on the scallop mixture. 

Enjoy!

TTFN

SQL Saturdays

At the beginning of April I started moving - because a 90+ minute commute each way is just too much! Home is still in the hands of horizontal storage and looks likely to stay that way for another few weeks at least, which means that there's another few weeks of having thin trails and paths through mountains of tubs, boxes, and bags of "stuff", and the perpetual danger of being hit by falling debris dislodged by a careless cat!

So two weeks ago we loaded the cat trays with food, super-cleaned the litter, and escaped on Friday night to drive to Rochester, NY. Five and a half hours later we arrives at the hotel ... how come the weather forecast never said anything about the rainstorm between Syracuse and Rochester? Right next to a Red Lobster - convenient!

Next morning I check out and drive to the RIT for the event. Tola takes off for yarn raiding!
Courses on PowerShell, Extended Events, the Apply statement, Wait Stats, and a double period of Kathi Kellenberger's Window Functions. Great information, leavened with helping of chat with the vendors and some nice lunch left everyone somewhat brain-dead by the final gathering at 5:15 and, after raffles were drawn, we staggered out to find cars. I found a lot of yarn to drive with - !

So another five hours drive home .... again, nobody warned us of the horrendous rainstorm coming out of Pennsylvania into New York state. Thunder, lightning, and heaps of rain! We get home around midnight. Feed the cats and straight to bed because on Sunday I get  to drive again! This time to South Plainfield in NJ for a Linux Admin course! Just two hours each way and five hours of course. I manage to get home around nine pm. Eat and crash. Monday morning I'm wondering if there actually was a weekend!

A week goes by. Tola's birthday caused some celebration. She got a little Acer Switch 10 ... After charging it up it appears to be a very nice little machine - has Windows 8.1 pre-installed but nothing's perfect, and its going to be used almost exclusively for iTunes. Take off the demo version of MS Office and the McAfee anti-virus unpaid system with all their prompts for money and install Avast or suchlike and it's usable.

Another week and I'm back on the SQL Saturday trail - I'm writing this in New York. This one's popular enough to have crashed the SQL Saturday web site! I don't know how many people are here - three hundred or more, compared to the two hundred in Rochester. So the nice things are not just the learning, which is fun, but also meeting up with the people I've met at other SQL Saturday events and the people I used to work with. This time I met some people who took the same courses last September with Brent Ozar in Philadelphia, some guys I used to work with, and a whole heap of speakers who I've seen several times - we all get to know each other and it's nice to see familiar friendly faces.

Coming up soon are Philadelphia on June 6th and Albany on July 25th. #411 is in Cambridge on September 12th, #440 is Pittsburgh on October 3rd, and #446 in Portland, OR, on October 24th. Cambridge would be nice; Protland is almost a requirement as my wife's family lives in the area.

Next time I'll start doing a series of SSIS Tips!

TTFN