Whos' panicking?

[Dos_Box]

Judging by the reduced hit count today we are all rushing around trying to get things sorted for when the little darlings (and pupils) return next week, or this week for those less fortunate ones.

[GrumbleDook]

It is amazing the amount of work we are getting done in these last few days.

 

The main problem we have now is that we are waiting for caprenters and electricians to finish their bits ... we can't even get machines unboxed until then.

 

We are loading images onto machines at a rate of 30-60 a day now, with older W2K machines being scrapped and ready to be discarded, whilst saving 50 or so as thin clients (30 for now and 20 as spare and / or additional boxes as needed)

 

Electricians have a list projectors that are still needed to be sorted, and 2 IWBs to mount. Several printers to reconfigure ... local inkjets and scanners to install ...

 

One techie off-sick, placement student dropped out and his replacement doesn't start until Monday ... we have had to get Tina (last year's placement who had just finished) to come back in ...

 

We may even get away without having to work a weekend this time round.

 

Fingers crossed.

[Dos_Box]

Tell me about it. We have taken over half of our new building, yet we still have no benches in the training rooms and I have 80 boxes of new PCs and monitors that can only be unpacked once they have completed the build. Very frustrating.

[Sylv3r]

Same here:

 

One company who were here the very first day of the holidays still to complete 3 IWB installations - due to the fact the guys couldn't solder the cables!!! They are in no hurry what so ever to come back

 

Electricians to kit out the staff room for Machines to be setup in there.

 

Another Company to fit 4 IWB installations

 

Got all other machines in the school reimaged now and ready to go - just a shame its external companies that are holding me up now and nothing I can do about it.

 

I've had 1 half day off up to now as I was planning to take this week off once everything should of been completed!!

[MkII]

I've had 1 half day off up to now as I was planning to take this week off once everything should of been completed!!

It's always fatal to plan to take the last week off - if you do you end up worrying so much you may as well be in work

[malcolm_kapadia]

Done more work today that we have for the past 5 weeks lol!

[webman]

All we have left to do is unpack 30 computers and insert an RM build disk into each one and make that all-important cup of coffee. And re-attach the projector

[GrumbleDook]

A fair chunk of the work done this summer has been 'pick it up and carry it to a new room' stuff.

 

We like to make people happy by giving everyone some sort of improvement, so this means the we shift nearly every box to a different room.

 

We don't have to and it would save us a heap of work, but it is worth it to see the look on ther faces when they come in on the training days ... just like watching little kids at Christmas opening pressies.

[nsherin]

Far too much to do - the late running of finishing a new building, plus the network/electical wiring has put me behind schedule by a week. Now chasing around sorting out PCs for individual offices, plus another small cluster of 4 PCs, software for two SmartBoards, three scanners, a SIMS station to finish rebuilding, plus two NetOp installs.

 

Over the summer, I've built some 3 IT suites of 21 PCs, installed a small cluster of 5 PCs, hauled kit to our storeroom or for disposal, stripped down a room whilst it was recarpeted and then reconected it all again, moved the last two servers from NT 4.0 to 2003 Server. The total order of PCs from our supplier was 102!

 

I had a weeks holiday at the end of July to beginning of August. After being back two days from it, I needed another one!

[john]

Using my crystal ball I fore-see Sat and Sun as a full working days. As for 30 images a day, I hammered my RIS box the other week, 70 images out at once! Those switches sure look pritty all yellow in colour

[sidewinder]

Tell me about it...spent the day doing non-urgent jobs such as tidying cabinets since we cant get on with anything!!

 

IT Suite terrapin got moved 3 weeks ago

- Benching still not done

- Electrics still not done

- No data cabling whatsoever in place

- Fibre still to be pulled to the building

 

And when thats done we've got 40 machines + laptops, printers etc to move 500m across site from a container - which will most likely be Friday afternoon or Monday and thats if we're lucky

 

Languages was being refurbished - all finished apart from desks - so cant put PC's back

 

New languages lab PC's (38 of) yet to arrive, so still need to be imaged, cabling yet to be finished (cablers seem to have no urgency whatsoever)

 

And finally new reception area, builders still not finished so no cabling down there yet and numerous computers to go back there.

 

I love it

[GrumbleDook]

After having a think about it tonight, we are already unboxing the machines for rooms that we cannot get into to make storing them a bit easier ... and since these machines all have a generic image with the remainding apps pushed out GPO ... I'll see if the team will image them before sticking them aware in the strong room ... should save a day or say later on ...

 

I like doing things so it appears that we can work miracles ... but only when we want to, not when it is demanded because of someone else's cock-up.

 

Yet another favourite phrase ... "A cock-up on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine!"

 

Or an army favourite ... "Never forget the 7 Ps ... Prior Planning & Preparation Prevents P!ss Poor Performance"

[ThatBoringBloke]

It's all easy going at my place! :twisted:

 

Only got the new monitors to go on the new PC's, just a shame they havent turned up yet!

 

Projectors aren't being installed until the first week back since 'management' wouldn't let me order them until the last week of term, and then complain when the suppliers have no free slots for during the six weeks!

[Jake]

We felt like we still had alot to do, but looking at our summer work sheet this morning, we in fact dont have alot left to do.

 

All we have left to do now is put in a couple of PCs here and there, cable the new head of year offices (8 offices), terminate those cables and install the network points, put up the server cabinet for that area, patch the panels and put their PCs in. Overall not too bad

[jumpinjamez]

Its almost tidy up time for us but not all the planned work will be complete as we are still waiting for external contractots to finnish in areas we need to be in.

 

I dont panic anymore its always like this every year, i just forget.

[Ric_]

I've resigned myself to not getting all the work done

 

My struggling with the new Mac suite for music caused me to lose quite a bit of time and I still haven't sussed out the OD lockdown. As soon as this is sussed, the machines can be installed, moving the existing PCs to the room next door, and the image that I have built can be loaded onto them. Realistically this should only take a couple of days tops (there's only me remember). They will have to put up with PCs until then

 

A couple of other minor jobs have been put on hold too but they aren't critical and by the end of September all should be well. If anyone complains I'll politely inform them that they can come in over the holidays in the future to help

 

Anyway, better get back to tidying. Need to allow time to replace at least one of the two remaining cabs tomorrow (bloody HP and their huge switches). INSET on Friday - a man handling course for me with a cooked breakfast provided for brunch

[Teth]

I have built 2 new domain controlers a WSUS/Symantec AV/Printman + server and a Filebox. Unboxed and installed 60 New mahcines in 2 IT suites and my own office. 28/29/3 respectively. Stripped and refurbed 28 machines in another room using the ram from the machines to be dumped from the previously mentioned rooms. These have been added to the new network and they're old DC retired. Stripped and refurbed 44 machines in 2 media rooms and added them to the new network thus turning 3 Isolated NT4 doamins into 1. Packaged and deployed Office, Delphi, VIsual studio, Photoshop and Macromedia studio to these machines. Numerous other other apps like interactive CDROMS, ASM tutor, Logo etc running from the network server. All by myself and I managed to get a weeks holiday in there too.

 

And yet I'm still panicing because the timetabler still hasn't provided me with pupil and staff lists to make accounts on this network... pupils arrive friday

[RoyG]

Not so much panicking as getting p*ssed off!

 

For the 3rd year in a row our ISP (E2BN/Seimens/Uncle Tom Cobbly...) have managed to lose our broadband connection in the last week of the hols (it went down last Friday!). Even more of a pain this year as we host Moodle on-site & loads of teachers want to upload stuff for the beginning of term.

 

"We'll phone back when we've investigated." Yeah, right - still waiting, despite reminders.

 

Hi ho!!

 

RoyG

[DMcCoy]

I've had a rather crappy day, spent the whole thing getting an image ready - one image for the whole site.

 

It was going really well until I hit the sis chipset machine, imaged it ok with the master sysprep'd one, I was installing drivers and testing them before adding them to the custom drivers in the sysprep folder.

 

Everytime I tried to add the sis onboard vga it rebooted, no BSOD - just a reboot. After trying for over two hours I got it to work in vga mode - NOT safemode, that rebooted too!

 

So I (eventually - after missing out a script on one image) now have an image that should work on 3 different machine types, installs the correct drivers, asks for a computer name, joins the domain and removes the reg keys for all those nasty tray icons that come back when drivers are reinstalled. One image to rule them all

 

The steps are now:

 

1) Boot machine from network (PXE)

2) Ghost loads (Modified the default RIS file)

3) Connect to session

4) Image

5) Reboot

6) Drivers are installed with sysprep

7) Type machine name, press enter

8) Machine joins domain and reboots

9) If the computer was in the right place in AD, its ready to use, if not, move it and reboot.

 

Should be able to do a room in 20 mins, then apps will be deployed from wininstall (got that going this year too!)

[Norphy]

Well, today everything was going fine until about 11:00pm when the power came back on after a power cut.

 

We rushed back over to the server room to make sure all the servers start up in the right order. Upon doing that, I notice that the Exchange server isn't talking to the network. After much farting around, we decide it has a faulty NIC (Netgear GA302T, avoid at all costs) and replace it with a 64bit D-link jobbie we had sitting in an old server. Of course, Windows doesn't have a driver for this 64 bit Dlink jobbie and what with this thing refusing to authenticate without a connection to the network we find a 3C905 to stick in there. That 3C905 turns out to be faulty as well so we replace it. On the third time of trying, we finally manage to log the Exchange server on and get the Dlink driver installed. Everything is back as it should be.

 

Then I go to my experimental Zimbra machine which, should it prove satisfactory, we will use as the student email server until we can afford Exchange licences for the whole school (probably april). I start it up, it boots into X but Zimbra doesn't work. When you try to start the service it says "Unspecified Error (1)" and terminates. The Zimbra log file is helpfully empty and the Zimbra forums have no information. There was one possible lead but it applied to an older version of the Linux kernel than I have and no longer applied. Eventually I found out that doing a "zmcontrol stop" and then "zmcontrol startup" from a command line sorted that out.

 

I received an email from the ex-ICT Co-ordinator. We have a new Data Manager starting tomorrow. He wants a new PC for him, a new user set up and a network connection into his office. All this on 24 hours notice. Considering we've been busy this entire summer holiday period flood wiring the entire bloody school I'm rather upset he didn't mention this at the beginning of the holidays. I've got a user set up for the new guy but thats all he's getting for the time being.

 

After all this, I've just found out that our Sharepoint installation seems to have gone tits up and our website publishing rules in ISA appear to be broken, I can't get onto Webmail or Sharepoint from the outside.

 

Aside from all of this, everything is going well. We've wired all but one of the blocks (The science block will have to wait til half term) and installed a wireless link to the sports hall today. Everything seems to be going to plan more or less and I'm quite pleased.