Cut to 20 months later and I was being made redundant from my job. It was 2008 and the economy was on its way down. My employer cut me, and everyone else in my office, loose. I took this as a chance to make real change of career, and managed to get a job in IT, an industry I wanted to work in for years, since before Norwich Union. I took a contract job doing installations for the NHS, and did that for 4 months before getting a more permanent job doing desktop support for a private firm. I did that for 2 years, the first 18 months of which were rolling 3 and 6-month contracts. During this time i had pursued other jobs, in case my manager decided I was superflous.

And that takes us to today. Next week I start my last full week of work for this company before I leave to pursue a similar job, in an industry and role that I think could hold a lot for me. I’ll be joining a new company as their first technician, performing Mac desktop, laptop and server installs for their various clients. Needless to say, I’m very excited. I’ve been a Mac user since 2004 (2003 if you count my first iPod) and working mostly with Windows up until now, I see how painful it is to work with, so I’m very excited that my new job is working with and support Macs.

I honestly cannot wait to get started. This is a great chance for me to gain formal training with Apple and experience working with them, as well as having a hand to shape the future of the company, and define my own career path. Not only will I be doing on-site installations for clients, but I’ll be building the backend systems to help improve the workflow, creating predefined images for companies to use, making workflows and scripts to help administer and integrate with existing systems.

All this starts in October. I’m taking some time off between jobs, using up some annual leave, and going to see my folks for my birthday, and just relaxing and unwinding between careers.

I’m really grateful for the chances I’ve been given by the people I’ve worked with, and have learnt a lot from them, and hopefully taught them a few things too.

I’m hoping this will allow me more time to blog here. I’m also working on a new project, which I hope to have launched in the next month or so. It could turn into something, or nothing. But its probably worth the time investment. So stay tuned for more.

1. Follow the instructions here for creating a Windows PE boot disc. You will need a Windows system to create this with. Unfortunately the file resultant ISO file is 180MB, not really suitable to share here.
2. Get your WIM image on a USB drive.
3. Create you VM, selecting the appropriate OS, in my case, XP. Use the ISO image you created in step 1 as the install media.
4. Start up your VM and wait to be presented by a command prompt.
5. Type DISKPART to start the disk partition tool. Type the following commands

list disk
sel dis 0
clean
create part pri size=30000 (for 30GB, change as necessary)
ass letter=c
format fs=ntfs label=XP quick
act
exit

6. Next you need to insert the USB drive with your WIM image on. And we need to go back into DISKPART. You need to assign a letter to your partition on the drive. So do this

list disk
sel dis 1 (confirm disk number from list disk command)
list vol
sel vol 3 (in my case, my partition on the drive was 3)
ass letter=m
exit

7. Back at the command prompt, you can now begin applying the WIM to your VM. Type the following command, inserting your own wim file name where I put in filename.wim
imagex  /apply m:\filename.wim 1 c: /verify

The variables for this are of course your wim file name, the destination drive should usually be C:, and the “1″ is the index number on your wim. This is likely to be 1 but if you are unsure or have issues, refer to the Microsoft Support pages.

Then, give it about 10 minutes to apply your WIM and once done, type “exit” to reboot the system. You will probably need to shutdown the VM when it reboots, to allow you to remove the ISO image which will be attached to the VM as a physical disc. Once that is out, reboot and make sure you’re plugged into your company network if needed, and that the networking mode is Bridged. This will give your VM a physical IP address from the DHCP server, rather than using NAT routing to reuse the IP address of your Mac.

My former employer was a public sector company, and foolishly I expected things to be a bit more secure than they were. And as a result, I’d like to share a few details of what they were going wrong.

1. At least 40% of employees using PC’s used a generic login, really designed for the IT department for debugging.
2. User profiles were locally cached and stored. This meant all your files remain on one PC, provided no means of backing up data, and made PC replacements very difficult.
3. All users had local admin rights. You would be surprised how many PC’s I saw running Firefox, BBC iPlayer, uTorrent. I can say right now that I would never transfer MP3 files or any films downloaded by these tools.
4. Desktops were not locked down. Change your wallpaper, delete or create any files.
5. USB drives, floppy drives and CD drives were all open. So much so that I caught a virus on my USB drive from one PC and spread it around to others before McAfee even detected it!
6. Desktop Support was provided using a tool called PushVNC which is a back-alley way of starting a VNC session with a remote client. Doesn’t provide the user any notification someone is watching or ask for permission. Serious Data Protection Act issues there.

Issues like these can be easily solved, and if someone would make the effort, things would be so much more secure. Group Policies could limit files being saved to My Documents only, stop USB drives, CDs, and floppies being used. No local admin rights would save issues with unauthorised software being used. Roaming profiles could be implemented, mapping a drive to a SAN for the My Documents and caching profiles locally. This would also provide a easier method of backing up, and certainly make my old job of replacing PC’s quicker. I can tell you that the data transfer was the most time consuming thing, especially when you have a Dell GX150 with USB 1.1 giving slow data transfer rates.

Anyway, my new job is private sector, and I’m fairly certain their network will be much more secure and easier to manage. But we shall see…

When I first published this post in 2008 (still popular, 3 years later with 6000+ views to date), it seemed like a unknown trick for a small majority of users, usually in the enterprise.
It was written with iOS (formerly iPhone OS) 2.0 which has since been superseded by a few major updates.

If you are running iOS 4.0 or higher (and you really should be) then installing certificates is so much easier now. All you need to do now is put the certificate in an email to yourself or your users, or stick it on the web somewhere. Then either tap to open the certificate in an email, or click the link to open it in MobileSafari and you should be prompted by the OS to install the certificate.

If you’re looking to do this in an enterprise environment, you may still want to use the iPCU, but you really should take a look at Profile Manager, the Mobile Device Management feature in Lion Server (it costs £35.99 from the App Store)

So I now work where they employ the use of certificates for wifi security, and I want to use the wifi on my iPhone since the data connection sucks. But how?

Well with iPhone 2.0 software, there is support for certificates. But how do you get it on your phone?

Well…

1. Go to Apple’s Enterprise Support page and download the iPhone Configuration Tool. Install

2. Open up the Config tool from your Utilities folder.

3. Select Configuration Profiles and click New

4. Fill in the details on the General Tab.

5. Click Credentials. and click the plus sign, and navigate to the Certificate file (in my case a .cer file). Click OK.

6. Check the details look correct, and give it a name.

And thats it! Done.

Well not quite. You need to install it on your iphone. You have two/three options but the third involves Mac OS X Server which many personal users won’t have. So your two options are host a file on a website somewhere, or email it to yourself. If you want to host it, click the Export button, save the file to disk, and then upload it somewhere. Then navigate to that file online and it should ask you to install.

The second easier option is to email it to yourself. So click Share, and wait for Mail.app to open a new mail and punch in an email address you can access on your iPhone. Click send. Wait (or go and check your mail).

Then in the email, click the file, and you will be asked to install the file. Do so and bingo. Success. Now go test it and make sure it works!

Update: I have tested this at work, and it worked perfectly. You have to make sure you enter your username as Domain\username and your password as normal or it won’t authenticate. So now I can use the internet connection at work. Only thing is that IMAP and POP3 ports are blocked so can’t use the Mail.app to check them, but everything else works a treat!

My title is now PC Installations Engineer, although my security badge says ICT Technician, but same difference. So I spend my time installing new PC’s, replacing old ones, and transferring data. Oh and I have spent a lot of time fixing printers.

While it may not be the most exciting or detailed job, its a start in the industry, and its experience for me which is the main thing.

The hope is that while I do this, I can study for my Network+ and by the last quarter of the year, I should be qualified and that should help me get a better job.

What have I learnt so far? Well roaming profiles are VERY important to a network, all users should NOT be given admin priviledges, and internet ports should be closed (iPlayer, Torrents) – basically the network at my work is not great by any means. Data transfer involves, pulling out the old drive, copying user folders to a new folder on the new machine, and leaving a text file on the All Users desktop with instructions, involving logging on and off, using the generic IT logon, and copying files across. Its by no means nice. And of course you have HUGE internet cache’s to deal with too.

So in the mean time, I’ll be hauling Dells. And I must say its really tiring.

I’ve been working in FS for about 5 years now, starting originally at Norwich Union in 2003 and working there until 2006, when I moved up to Birmingham, and then went into FS again just as a temporary job. As often happens I settled and put a new job on the back burner, and then over the past year, I have been slowly working toward my IT qualifications, hoping to move over.

Well that time came upon me quicker than I planned, and I also got a little pay out to go with it. Without mentioning the company name, we have been going through some changes, and found out a few months back our office was going to close. After hearing that it just became an issue of when.

Today on my train journey I was listening to Leo Laporte talk on TWiT about the Yahoo/Microsoft business and in particular, some of the comments about Yahoo sounded all to familiar. Jerry Yang and other Yahoo bods made comments about now that the Microsoft deal deadline passed, they can move on and focus on being  more efficient business. And that is literally what the bosses at my work were saying.

My worry is for the company that they are already too far down that path, and that for years they have been hiding failure behind small successes, and of course that means for the current employees, a tough time, uncertainty and risk of redundancy too.

But I’ve been through it now and have to look foward to a new job. I’m looking at starting off as some sort of technician, doing installation and repairs or hardware and network stuff, hopefully in a full time position, but I’m also looking at contract work so we’ll see how we get on.

Either way, I’ve got some time to myself which I will spend making music, tidying the house and seeing a variety of films, and probably blog a fair bit too!

As I said before, I’m currently impending redundancy, and this week, we reached the end of the consultancy period. What does that mean? Well they are now at free liberty to give us our 30 days notice at any point. There has to be some formal dismissal hearing, and then 48 hours, but basically we’ll be going soon.

What does that mean for me? Well of course I’m looking for a new job. I wanna take this as an opportunity to get out of my industry and into IT. So I’m spending my time looking at IT Technician, Help desk jobs, anything that I can get for a good starting job, where I can do hardware and software repairs, and if possible, some travel.

I think I wanna get into network admin. At least that’s what I feel like I wanna do so I’ll follow that path unless my heart says otherwise.

So if you’re interested in hiring an aspiring IT Technician, who is A+ certified and working on his Network+, then please drop me a note and make me an offer.

Otherwise, I’ll keep trawling those online job search sites, and watching the hours tick away at work, as the share price drops, as well as my level of concentration and focus.

Until then, I’ll be working more on the new site, perfecting the theme for launch. Which hopefully won’t be too many more weeks away.

And speaking of that, is there anyway of getting my posts on the old blog to auto-forward to the new blog? Maybe not but worth asking. I’d just like to drive traffic away from the old, and make sure I’m still getting visitors to the new one for the same searches. Leave me a note in the comments.

For me, this means that I will get my 1 month notice either in March or April. During that time, we’ll have to pass on our group schemes to Manchester as they all get centralised up there. And then we will probably have to clear out the office, so relocate files, remove the literature supplies we have, the desks, computers, switches and servers, phones, chairs, and everything else. Everyone else in the office is in the same boat, so we’ll all be looking for new jobs.

I guess I’m in a slightly better position as I’m already looking for new jobs in IT. But everyone else will have to adjust to the fact that we’re being fired, and then get into job searching mode.

In terms of redundancy pay, since I’ve been there for 19 months, I should get about 5 weeks pay, which isn’t fab, but its better than nothing and it should tide me over till I can get another job.

In the mean time, I’m sure business will dry up, and the attitude in the office will be low. No one is going to have the spirit to work particularly hard, which will make things more difficult.

So over the next few months I’ll be blogging a bit more about my job, and keeping you reader(s) up to date with the comings and goings of my job. And of course my hunt for a new job. For now, I’m just dealing with it, and thinking about my trip to Athens that I will probably never get.

Today is Women’s No Pay Day. Its a day to make people aware that (as you see above) on average 17% of women are paid £4000 less than their male counterparts, thats the same as working for free from October 30th till the end of the year.

So please join in Fawcett and Unison’s campaign to make people aware, and fight the blatent sexism that still happens in some workplaces. If you can, print of flyers from the website, tell people about the day or just be aware of it. And be sure to sign the online petition.

Via Fawcett Society