Way back in the mists of time (ok, upto 2001) I worked as an IT Contractor.

This meant I spent short periods (3-6 months) working exclusively for a business in an IT role, usually in Desktop Support or a 2nd Line Support capacity.

Being an IT Contractor meant dealing with IT Recruitment agencies - companies who matched your CV and skillset to vacancies for contract jobs available in the market.

Thanks to web-sites like JobServe - your CV gets passed around agencies, and (hopefully) you get regular telephone calls and e-mails asking you if you are interested in work.

That was in 2001.

It's now 2007 and I've been running my own business for over six years. You'd think by that time, anybody still in possession of my CV might realise it's a tad dated and remove it from their databases.

Judging by the number of e-mails I receive from Recruitment Agents though, that doesn't seem to be the case. I put this down to the fact I've got a couple of fairly rare skills listed on my CV that are still of interest to the Agent desperately trying to match his latest vacancy with a CV in his Database.

My quick'n'simple solution to dealing with e-mails asking me if I'm interested in a role is to use Microsoft Outlook's E-Mail Signature feature. The feature is, of course, meant to enable you to quickly append your sig to the end of a message - but it's just as easy to compose an entire e-mail ("Thanks for your e-mail, but I'm now no longer looking for contract or permanent work. Could you please remove my details from your mailing list?") as a Signature, name it as say "Recruiters Response" and insert it as a quick-reply to those messages when they arrive in your inbox.

Responding to request a removal of your details should (in theory!) be a better option than simply deleting the e-mail itself and thus potentially continuing to receive messages asking if you are interested in joining that Windows '95 roll-out in Skegness at £6/hour.

Booting from USB Devices is something that I've never really investigated fully. The idea of being able to boot from a keydisk that you carry with you is a nice one, but the PC you wish to boot from needs to support this in it's BIOS and the reality for me is that many of my customers work with hardware that pre-dates USB Bootable supported BIOS' - so I continue to carry a wallet of CD-ROM's (and Floppy Disks!) with me on site visits.

Whilst going through the process of installing a new server (a Dell PowerEdge 830 - more to come on that soon...) here in the office, I had the need to update the servers BIOS to the latest version. Historically, that would have meant me reaching for a DOS boot disk - but as the server was new enough to support USB Booting in it's existing BIOS, I chose to see how the USB Boot Disk process had matured since I last checked it out.

A quick Google shows that there are many well written documents describing how to create Bootable USB Keydisks - nearly all involving using the command line to create a Master Boot Record on the USB device and copying relevant Operating System or Utility files across.

But during my research I stumbled across a neat utility called Flashboot that simplies the whole process with a nice GUI interface (see below).

Once downloaded and installed, I popped a new Crucial 256MB USB Keydisk I had lying around into my Desktop PC, ran Flashboot, chose to create a Bootable Flash disk with minimal set of DOS system files (using the included FreeDOS) and watched as Flashboot did it's thing for 30 seconds or so. I then ejected the keydisk from my Desktop PC, inserted into the server, made sure USB booting was enabled in the BIOS, rebooted - and voila, minutes later my server BIOS was updated and ready to roll.

The cost of Flashboot (after currency conversion) worked out at just over £12. Now I love resorting to the CLI as much as the next old-school hacker, but this is another one of those times when paying a few quid for a well written bit of software that simplifies what can be a complicated job into a few clicks seems a sensible investment to me!

It's been a while since I've manually activated Windows XP via the Telephone with Microsoft. I've always found the Automated Telephone Service a mild chore, but quite straight forward and easy to use.

At a customer site this afternoon, a re-install of Windows XP refused to activate via the Internet, so off to the telephone I went.

The initial process remains straight forward, call a freefone (or "Toll Free" in American Windows speak) number and you are then prompted to answer a number of other questions including where you've  purchased the software, whether you've significantly changed hardware and so forth. All reasonable questions and easy to answer.

The question that made me laugh out loud at it's bizarreness was...

"How many PC's have you installed this license on? Press 1 for 2 or more PC's, Press 2 for 1 PC".

Got that?

You didn't press 1 thinking it'd mean, you know, you've installed it on just 1 PC?

Thankfully, experience has taught me not to jump ahead in these situations and so I held on to press 2...

... for 1 PC...

I think...

It's been a busy few weeks here at Tubb Towers. In between visiting a number of trade shows, going on training courses, completing project roll-outs for customers, installing a new server here in the office and most recently, some time off for R&R - my blog contributions have unfortunately been few and far between.

It's nice to know that you miss me though - I was genuinely touched at the number of e-mails I received asking if I was still alive and well, as my blog hadn't been updated! Bless you all, dear readers!

During my time off, I took an opportunity to feed my other great geeky love, that of all things Sci-Fi, with a vist to Memorabilia 2007 at the Birmingham N.E.C - you can see some photos of the event on my FlickR account.

Apart from having the opportunity to meet Doctor Who, Cat from Red Dwarf and a host of Aliens, if you were wondering why I've not been blogging lately then the photo opposite should make the actual truth apparant - I was captured by Stormtroopers! 

BT have announced that they are to scrap their consumer ISDN service, reports PC Pro Magazine.

Before ADSL and Cable Broadband connections were prevalant, ISDN (and the "Home Highway" service in particular) was a godsend to those of us lumbered with POTS dial-up connections (which was just about everyone back then!).

Although 64kbps (128kbps "bonded") doesn't sound a lot compared to todays 8mb+ connections, the "instant on" style of ISDN connection and faster-than-dial-up speeds began to open many eyes to what would be possible in the future with an "always on" connection.

With the near blanket broadband coverage now available in the UK, such consumer ISDN services simply aren't needed anymore - although I'm waiting for stories from some rural communities where broadband isn't available and ISDN is still used...

Goodbye "Home Highway", we may not miss you when you go, but we're glad you were around back in the day.