Reply to post: When was the last time you sexed up a CV?

When was the last time you sexed up a CV?

Yesterday. I was (physically) looking around computer labs for the computer that hosted a hidden but public FTP server which is used by the lecturers (supposedly unbeknownst to us mortal students) to store software ... the machine in question used to have a Windows 8.1 ISO, but somehow, someone replaced it with a Windows 8.0.

Eventually found the server, and found something else. A whole lab was being prepared for a reformat and reinstallation of the OS, yet the lab's folks (all female) were initially planning to use USB drives to format each and every machine by hand. A (male) lecturer was there, and as he had happened to have heard the word "PXE" somewhere, he was throwing it around the place. One older lab tech disagreed ("Nobody does this anymore! We used to do this stuff on the IBMs!", "What IBMs, 386s?" "Dunno, long time ago, but IBMs!")

The lecturer happened to hear me talking about FTP and Windows 8.1 and stuff to the lab tech, so he took me aside, and asked me about my skills. Told him that I knew a thing or two about network administration, OSes, programming, and the like. Then he asked me, "Ever heard of PXE netboot?" I replied in the affirmative, having planned to start experimenting with it on VMs after the term finishes a few weeks later, my IT self-education being lacking in that area. I told him that I was a second-year medical student, not IT, I do this as a hobby, so nothing is guaranteed, and he agreed ... Stupid Me thought it's basically running a PXE server and booting the machines, innit?

Nope.

I sat on his desk, then, he pointed me at a five-minute YouTube tutorial, and told me he was trying to apply that, yet it wasn't working. Of course it wasn't ... it was using an obscure Windows PXE server and an even more obscure tool (with a GUI that defaulted to Vietnamese or something) to shoot stuff at the PXE server involved ... For some awful reason, the tool *required* a USB drive to which it extracted some stuff. Heck! We're trying to netboot here, aren't we! USBs?

Anyhow, tried my luck with another server ... cue 30 minutes of failed attempts. But I impressed the lecturer with my over-overuse of the keyboard, which looked to him like key dancing (I rarely if ever use the plastic rodent, even on Windows)

At least I scored the old 2 GB USB thumb drive we used for the PXE server tool as a token reward for the two hours wasted running between labs ... any suggestions about what to do with it, aside from the usual stuff online?

EDIT: Before you ask, the SOP is to have a standard image from which the machines are restored via something like Ghost or Acronis, yet this particular lab, for some reason, didn't.