PHP Rules

I was originally an ASP programmer but always lamented it was difficult to make well organized code in ASP, it always looked like a dog's breakfast. ASP.NET has come along now and it is difficult to do any ASP programming with the current Visual Studio tool set. We are supposed to use ASP.NET now but unless you are making a major client/server solution ASP.NET is overkill.
Also I most clients I deal with now are using Unix/Linux hosts. I decided to look at PHP and am delighted that it reminds me a lot of ASP and it is easy to make the transition. It is perfect for doing the minor jobs that most customer's require, although I am using it for an invoicing system that I am developing so I can invoice when I am on the job.

Remote XP Installation

I have a laptop that had gotten wet. The hard-drive was corrupted and also the DVD driver was not working and it couldn't boot from a USB drive (or the ports weren't working).
I tried to install XP on a new drive by putting it into a USB harness on one of my desktops. I found that this didn't work (For some reason it works but it puts the boot information on the 'C' drive of my desktop not the USB drive.
I finally settled on using PXE. This is a system that allows allows the operating system to be installed over the network. It took awhile to get setup. The best source is was using TFTPD32. this site has a good document on how to set-up a remote XP install. It has also good information around how to make an install.