Half Term

[Gatt]

Can see me losing my rag with the teachers over SIMS

We have an Ofsted visit coming up, the teachers all have to use SIMS for their registers, but they dont want to so make excuses about SIMS not working, etc..

 

Problem is they dont come to be - but to the Attendance officer or the Head.

[Andrew_C]

This half term? Kicking back and relaxing. Only a short hol for me, back in on Thursday.

[Ric_]

I thought I had 4 days so arranged for nearly 100 packages to be delivered on the tuesday... I kindly notified the caretaker who informed me that the school would be shut for a 'priviledge day'!!! Why does it surprise me that I wasn't told about this?

 

Anyway... rearranged the delivery and will have 3 days to remove all the existing kit from a room and replace it with 30 new thin client terminals, a single XP box and 31 TFT monitors. I will also be replacing the remaining 15 CRT monitors in another suite with TFTs. That will hopefully leave a little time for juggling machines about too.

[pete]

I'm just in for one (maybe 2 - we'll see) days.

 

Site manager has rented a Hilti (sp?) gun that can fire steel bolts into reinforced concrete (and steel girders) so I'm going to be installing eye bolts along the cable runs to suspend cable looms.

 

I just hope it makes a loud bang.

[Andrew_C]

Yep, It's a Hilti. Just mind your fingers & wear the goggles!

[GrumbleDook]

Off today and tomorrow ...

 

Most of my holidays will be working on SIMS, getting some more reporting stuff sorted (the KS3 TAs ... we will use this as our trial of getting staff used to reporting using SIMS.net)

 

Stephen (bless his socks) will be returning from a week of holiday and he will be setting up (with the help of our able placement student) 37 new laptops.

 

And then the obligatory running around after forgetting software packages x, y & z needed to be put on this half-term ... the new Firebox is in and needs configuring to use with EMBC and lets not forget getting the paperwork sorted for this year's LfS scheme.

 

Actually ... I might take the rest of the week off and leave them to it ... If it wasn't for the fact that the missus is off to and wants me out of the house so she can get on with her work too.

[Dos_Box]

Is half term this week?!!!!

 

[DMcCoy]

Network Manager is back now, and on our CC3 network we have 4 days to:

 

* Upgrade Symantec Antivirus 9 => 10

* Install RM Service Release 5

* Install XP SP2

* Rebuild every workstation in the school (~200)

* Test applications to see if they work

* Install stand alone software manually (ACTIVstudio et al)

* Build new software packages

 

If we had a budget, we would have had new hard disks and memory sticks for 30 of our oldest machines, but as it happens - we don't.

 

Should be fun. Good luck to the rest of you with a lot on your plate this week as well

 

 

Two little things: 10.0 or 10.1? and see this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/26/symantec_av_flaw/ (I'm still on 9 for clients)

[webman]

@DMcCoy: 10.1. I heard a bit about about problems with 10.0 but wasn't aware of an exploit as big as that. Maybe we won't in that case, thanks

[DMcCoy]

10 is better as it has increased detection and options for spyware, not tried 10.1 yet. You could either take the chance and install it and then patch when one is release or you could wait for the patch first.

[DMcCoy]

Infact there is a patch already. I'll probably update my server to 10.1 this week and get a new image ready for deployment in the summer.

 

http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/enterprise/products/sav_ce/sav_ce_10.1/files.html

[webman]

Hmm.. maybe that's the patch we were given with the disc by LEA support - but I thought it was for RM compatability. It won't be the first time I've assumed incorrectly

[Gatt]

We use McAfee 8 - though could do with ePolicy Orchestrator to push out the updates to the clients

[jumpinjamez]

I am in over half term and taking deleivery of 64 new computers and have to visit every classroom to make sure they have network, power and a suitable desk.

 

But i do love the peace and quite the phone has no rang yet which is so nice.

[john]

Went in today (not due in till tomorrow) to check e-mail and spent 45 mins there, the UPS had died and I had no phone or e-mail

[john]

Site manager has rented a Hilti (sp?) gun that can fire steel bolts into reinforced concrete (and steel girders) so I'm going to be installing eye bolts along the cable runs to suspend cable looms.

 

I thought you had to have a licence to use that gun? I a mate of mine that wanted to use something that did the same job and he had to do a course and get a licence to use it as it uses small explosive charges to fire them in so its classed as a leathal weapon so needed training and a licence. Yet another bit of paper needed.

[pete]

I thought you had to have a licence to use that gun?

 

I was wondering the same myself TBH. It's rented from $reasonably_responsible_vendor and site manager has used it in his previous job, so he may indeed have the bit of paper needed - if so, I'll point and he can shoot . Will ask him.

 

Didn't get to play with it today - decided to risk updating controller firmware, bios and drivers on the dell servers. There's nothing quite like the queasy feeling in your stomach while you wait to see if you've bricked the raid controller on your main fileserver. (all went well, so I may spend tomorrow in bed in case Karma decides to rebalance itself).

[webman]

Some electricians were in on Saturday (which we didn't know about) and as it happens, our servers were on a distribution board that they just happened to be working on. Workmen mustn't check these sort of things these days. So, this morning we walked into an eerily quiet server room. Luckily no damange to disks were done and all servers booted up OK.

[GrumbleDook]

We have a gentlepersons' agreement with our residents Sparks ... if they are changing anything with electrics they give us the nod first ...

 

If nothing else we can give them a rough idea of what is likely to go wrong and they can work out which boards to replace next (pleasures of working in a building with aging electrics ... sometimes bits go down for no reason!)

[KarlGoddard]

Some electricians were in on Saturday (which we didn't know about) and as it happens, our servers were on a distribution board that they just happened to be working on. Workmen mustn't check these sort of things these days. So, this morning we walked into an eerily quiet server room. Luckily no damange to disks were done and all servers booted up OK.

 

It should have been a pretty quiet week for me - about 16 admin machines to install, upgrade of ActivBoard software, some tweaking of login scripts etc but got into work on Tues to find there had been a power cut over the weekend (holiday monday I think) which knocked everything over.

 

UPS kicked in to keep the servers running but power cut killed the air con resulting in an ambient temp of 39 degrees in server room - needless to say servers had pink fit!

 

1 server (print / file server) refused to see the network - two reboots sorted that. Spent all morning restarting services and checking rest of network etc

 

After that I found out that half of the rooms I need access to are being re-floored (knew nothing about this before half term) so I can't get into them!

 

So now I've resigned myself to play with Virtual Server 2005 R2 for the rest of this morning until the flooring guys have buggered off!

 

ahhh half term.... don't you love it

[Andrew_C]

Workmen mustn't check these sort of things these days.

Get the label printer out, and sick "The Payroll Server is fed from this board, Contact Webman on 1234-5678 prior to any work!" That should sort it!

[webman]

Hehe, nice idea Andrew_C... might just work

 

I remember a while ago someone put up a "Danger 415v" sticker to keep the kids out of a cupboard or something, but had to be removed as there wasn't actually any electrical danger at all :|