Welcome to my home page. Like most home pages, this page is a permanent work in progress. Let me know if you find anything broken, or if you'd like to see other stuff on this site.
I am a self employed computer consultant specialising in Windows, PowerShell and Office Communications Server. An eclectic mix of technologies to be sure, but they are exciting and pretty cool too. I teach these subjects as well as others around the world, as well as writing about them.
With economic downturn hitting companies of all sizes, Global Knowledge downsized further in October 2009, and my position was made redundant. Although this was quite a shock, returning to being self-employed and running PS Partnership seemed the obvious thing to do. So I am now a consultant for hire.
In September 2006 I moved to Global Knowledge as Chief Architect for our European Microsoft practice. A fantastic job and one I'm loving: the company, its people and my job are all excellent! In the two or so years I've been here I've traveled extensively and have enjoyed most of it. 2003-2006 were interesting as I got into the QA culture. Sadly, early in 2006, QA was the target of a successful take-over by Interquad. Leaving became the only sane reaction. At the start of 2003, I accepted a full time position as Chief Technologist at QA, a large IT training and consulting firm in the UK. My job was a mixture of some consulting, some training, some writing and presenting and some marketing. Plus lots of talking and listening to customers. In May of that year, I was lucky enough to get to meet Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's president. I'd met Steve before in London in September 2002, and it was nice to keep in contact. Steve's a marvellous man, polite, charming and a great listener. And he's a man who gets things done.
In October 2003, I went to New Orleans representing QA to pick up two prestigious awards. First, we were awarded the Western European CTEC Solution of the year (Lutz Ziob gave the awards). We also won the global award, which I was lucky enough to collect on behalf of everyone at QA. To top it all off, I got the change to have a great chat with Lori Moore, who runs PSS worldwide (and owns the MVP program). It was as great week. One of the cooler accolades of 2003 was being named as a Microsoft Regional Director for Europe! See www.microsoft.com/rd for more information about the Regional Director Programme.
The latest edition of our Windows TCP/IP book, Windows 2003 TCP/IP Protocols and Services was published by Microsoft Press in the spring of 2006 and sold well. Over at Amazon, we have 5 stars, and we're 7th in the list of TCP/IP books while the Windows 2000 edition is at 22. We're still not ahead of Richard Steven's book despite the fact that his book is several years old (and he is dead). Rich would find that funny, I suspect.
2002 was a (relatively) quiet year - a mixture of training, consulting and writing. But not so much travelling! In early May, I gave two talks at a neat conference for MCT trainers, MCTCon. The summer was spent writing my chapters of the Windows 2003 TCP/IP book. Over the summer I got approached by QA with the opportunity to become their Chief Technologist - and I started working for them in the autumn, initially as a contractor and then as a full time employee.
2001 was spent doing a variety of cool things, including travelling throughout the world working as a consultant, a trainer and as a writer. My training and consulting work concentrated on high end Windows 2000, Windows XP and Microsoft ISA server courses, mainly for Microsoft. My writing included my regular column for ESM Magazine, where I am the Windows Editor and a significant amount of time spent Redmond working on the .NET Server Resource Kit. As the DNS writer, I developed 3 DNS related chapters for the .NET Server Resource kit's TCP/IP guide as well as contributing to many more.
My home is in the UK, in the village of Cookham. I used to own and operate PS Partnership, a small Windows Consultancy in the Thames Valley but more recently have taken a full time job. PS Partnership is effectively dormant, although is still exists, and may one day blossom again. My home life consists of a cottage in Berkshire, and it's inhabitants: my wonderful wife Susan and our darling five year old daughter Rebecca. Yeah, I know that the pictures need up dating. One of my many things to do to this site. One benefit of the cottage is that it has a great wine cellar. I have three pictures: here, here, and here showing part of it.
This is a link to full CV I'm also an MCT and MCSE and an MVP, so you may see a lot of me on the various Windows 200/XP/.NET Server and other Microsoft related newsgroups.
I've been lucky enough to get involved in a few publishing projects. Here are the books I've worked on:-
Additionally, I am Windows Editor for Server Management magazine where I write a regular column (Inside Windows).
If you know me, you'll know that I like sharing my knowledge and am a heavy contributor to a variety of Internet news groups. Here are some Technical Tips - just some guidance on a few technical matters. I hope this information helps. Please let me know what else I can offer here!
I often find some well written stuff or other references out on the Net, and elsewhere. Here are some links to useful things other folks have written. Thus far, there are links to more information on TCP/IP and Winsock. I hope to get more stuff up there in due course.
To be fun - here's a page of fun links I've found over the months. Enjoy!
Like most web sites, these pages are under more or less constant revision - although this is an informal process. I update this when I can, which recently has not been often! I'm doing what I can to add stuff here, so feel free to visit again. And, of course, if there's anything you disagree with or want more detail on, or if you have any suggestions, then why not mail me??
PGP Key
I have published my PGP Key on every PGP key server I can find in the world, as well as here on my PGP Key page.
My Blogs
Web logs, or 'blogs', are a sort of online diary cum private newpaper. I currently keep two blogs:
Under The Stairs (http://tfl09.blogspot.com) - this is a technical blog, heavily focused on PowerShell, and OCS. This blog is targeted at IT Pros, and others, interested in Windows systems as well as PowerShell and OCS.
PSH Scripts (http://pshscripts.blogspot.com) - this blog is for PowerShell scripts. I try to publish new scripts every week (the target is 1 per day, but that is a little hard to achieve most of the time). The idea of this blog is to help folks using Google/Bing/Yahoo to find useful scripts.
Last Updated: 11/01/2009
