alexknight

Good luck Just hope that there is a training budget for the next person who takes over from you. They are investors in people you know! 8) Alex

Can you please help our school choir? They have entered the search for a choir for Joseph, which is a programme running on BBC at the moment. We are trying to get as many votes as possible. To vote you need to go to this link and register: http://www.josephchoirsearch.co.uk/ Once registered you need to click on the link that is sent to your e-mail address. Then go to the All Choirs link. Our Choir is Danesfield C of E School and last time I looked we were on page 15 – 17. Then just click on the right hand cot ( you will see what I mean when you get to the page). That is it, you will then have voted. As an incentive I can assure you that the higher I the rankings the Choir gets the bigger the smiles on the children’s faces :-) Go on, do it for the children. Thanks Alex

I would like to be a....... Custom made bra fitter for Marks and Spencers! Its a hands on job but someone has to do it!

I was just thinkng. 8O Would it be useful to share the helpfiles, as I imagine most schools would have the same problems. What I am thinking is if one school has set up a list of help files, say to do with outlook/word etc those files would be of use to other schools. Not only that it would help me in setting help files in my school. My work load does not allow much spare time to concentrate on compiling my own. So would any of the posters be prepared to let me see some samples of their helpfiles :?: Alex

I used to love spangles. Also why did they change the name from M A R A T H O N to snickers? Alex

Hi Looks like it is now fixed, I have just been able to log in. Alex

The final one might not actually be the strongest. If M&M:1 went through 20 other M&M's it might get beaten by M&M:22, which may have been weaker than all of the previous M&Ms but took advantage of the wear and tear M&M:1 took from M&M's:2-21 - or does being a lucky M&M consitute having good characteristics to carry forth in to the next generation. Out of interest, do you use the choc M&Ms or the peanut M&M's? Which is stronger? We all know from the ad's that the red choc one is the cleaverest.... is this taken in to account in your study (perhaps being cleaver enough to avoid being picked until last and getting a cheap shot against the bigger badder M&M) it's the whole Lennie and George thing really...... now where's that alphalpha for the wabbits. You do have a point and one that I have thought about long and hard. That is the reason i sent the strongest/last one back. If we all did that then we would be able to run an ongoing test to see if the MM's indeed did become stronger. I of course use the peanut MM's as you do have to have some sense of proportion, this is the real world of course and there is an abundance of nuts about. I will have to try and use just one colour agianst all the other colours and go from there. Alex

I am a little concerned as summer is coming and it may effect my experiment. I am not quite sure what temperature to cool them too for optimum strength? Any ideas would be appreciated. Alex

Sorry I had sticky fingers.

Whenever I get a packet of M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the sweet as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels. Taking two sweets between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round. I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesised that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theatre of competition that is the modern sweet and snack-food world. Occasionally I will get a mutation, a sweet that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the sweet extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment. When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes." This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of M&Ms. I consider this "grant/research money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion. There can be only one!! What worries me is i'm wondering if there is a preferred ambient temperature to conduct these experiments? Alex

Whenever I get a packet of M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the sweet as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels. Taking two sweets between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round. I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesised that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theatre of competition that is the modern sweet and snack-food world. Occasionally I will get a mutation, a sweet that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the sweet extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment. When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes." This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion. There can be only one!! What worries me is i'm wondering if there is a preferred ambient temperature to conduct these experiments? Alex

If you are having problems at work that can really get you down. So much so that it can pervade your whole life. When you have an illness, disability or impairment you have to try ten times as hard to motivate yourself, especially if you are having a bad time. You deserve credit for as you say 'getting of your arse', as I imagine that some days it would be a lot easier not to. The problem is that it is very hard for the ordinary person to understand what it is like to have a long term illness, disability or impairment. Just because you deal with it and adapt does not mean it is no longer there. All you need is a little understanding and support, which you should get from this forum. Hope you are getting good advise and support from the unions as well, as some times you need to have someone with clout behind you. Hope you sort it all out. Alex

I tried re-installing the Toshiba hotkeys, but without success. Then I took of all graphic drivers and then re-installed the latest drivers from the Toshiba site. This worked as per; Generally if it's an intel graphics card on the board you can right click on the desktop go to graphics options> output to> dual display clone > notebook + monitor However the hotkeys still do not work, but the above is a workaround for the time being. Thanks Alex

Hi I have a Toshiba laptop that will not allow the FN+F5 softkey combination. When the laptop is connected to a projector I want it to display on the projector and laptop. When I start the laptop a signal reaches the projector as i can see the boot up screen and XP start up sequence. But once it has gone through that sequence it will only display on the laptop and the FN+F5 function keys does nothing. I have also tried another Toshiba laptop on the projector and it works fine so projector and cabling is OK. Any suggestions?? The laptop in question is a Toshina Satellite Pro L10 Thanks Alex

I would be interested in any technical courses. Count me in. Alex

I am term time plus inset days plus an extra two weeks. Pay is obviously pro-rata. Personally I like the holidays off.

Personally and as a taxpayer I am in favour of investment into childrens education. So yes shiney new things are seen as a positive thing. BUT, what we are talking about here is, in my opnion, an expensive and convoluted way of producing excellent ICT 'support' services. That is to say that the same goal could be achived without any major changes. i.e spend the money on new equipment, training and support for the existing and well able IT support staff and introcuce a system where LA's can monitor and record the level of support provided. Everyone would be happy.

The list does go on and on...... CSA, Air Traffic Control, Immigration Control etc etc. It seems that sometimes it is change for change sakes and most of the time it has to be a radical change and not a evolutionary change. Any more additions to the initiatives and failures of this present governnment?? Or we could add the successes such as the speed camera stealth tax, now that IS a success. Alex

Sounds pefectly reasonable to me! On the money they pay me this would not be an option, remember, outside industry is profit led, getting someone in with a higher wage bill would be frowned upon, unless!!!!!! you live in an area, say wales and get an enormous government grant to do it??? What would the taxpayer say if the government swapped 'X' employee at £17,000 a year for 'Y' employee at £30,000, got less for their money and could get the same or better level of service by keeping 'X' employee by just giving them the support, encouragement and recognition that they deserve?? Oh, to answer the question........Go on strike :twisted:

Another way companies who run managed services make a profit, (and hence more expense to the school) is to have a Service Level Agreement that omits any remedial work for situations such as staff/teachers etc causing a breakdown such as fiddling with equipment that they are not trained to fiddle with. Such call outs for this type of remedial work will be charged at an exhorbarent rate and which will be a nice litle earner for the company that wins the contract. How do we know this will happen? Well who is going to admit that they either fiddle with equipment rendering it useless or don't have the savvy to be able to operate said equipment. So when the clause is presented in the original contract no one is going to admit that this may cost the school a lot of money. An example will be a call out fee of say £50 plus time charged on site for ANY callout not attributed to hardware failure. i.e human error. Over the course of time this figure can build up to a tidy sum. Any guesses as to how many times a technician will be called out to your school due to 'human error' in respect t IT equipment being fiddled with??

I try to never burn my bridges and I have given myself 12 months to see if things turn around. During those 12 months I will try and educate one or two people on what the ICT support team (i.e me) does. Alex

I explained and produced evidence such as the Becta recommendations and received a dissmisive reponse concerning recommendations from these 'organisations'. In fact they made me feel quite inadequate and unappreciated adding a sense of 'what do you do'. I sensed that they felt I did nothing which made me question their understanding of what ICT support actually involves. 8O 8O 8O

Alex, I would say you are vastly underpaid if you are the sole person there. Although i'm not sure what the cost of living is there, i doubt it's mega cheap. You're further south than me. They've got a really cushy deal, if you left they would need to replace you with at least 2 people who wont know the school, the staff, their quirks, etc. If you have a good relationship with the head or somebody else in authority I would suggest you hint (or be downright blunt) and tell them you're (thinking of) looking for another job as you feel under valued for the responsibility you have. If they value at all they'll try and sort something out for you. Rant/ I have indicated that I feel undervalued. To make matters worse in the last three years I have been given no 'real' training on the extra aspects that have grown over the years. i.e no CPD. I have asked on several occasions if they would consider me taking a relvant traing course to help me do my job better, such as the MSCE qualification, but it falls on deaf ears. I would have thought that a decent employer would be knocking on MY door and sending me on relevant qualifications and courses. Having reviewed my situation I am taking it upon myself to take the qualification and at my expense. Then I will see what my position is at the end of the year and if it is still the same then THEY will have to find some other person (idiot) to do what I do on my salary. Funny thing is that I used to love working at the school (stiil do to some extent) and wasn't that concerned about my pay, BUT when I then being crticicised over petty things, such as being a little 'offish' at times, etc etc etc, (becuase of the stress levels and lack of support, not to mention network users trying to offload their inadequacies onto to me) then i think hey wait a minute, this is not wortth the £980 a month that I take home?? /Rant over

500 students 50 staff 3x2003 servers 150+ Desktops 50 laptops IWB & Projectors in every classroom CCTV system SIMS Website – in house Content Filtering - in house All our own installations of cabling, AV Whiteboards and projectors Responsible for all I.T budgets and bids Responsible for all I.T equipment procurement Soon to include Video conferencing and multi media provision Just me on about 17K. Question, should 'I' have more help and an increase in salary?

Dear Technical Support Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowing down in the overall performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as Football 5.0, Rugby 4.3 and Cricket 3.0. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs; it simply crashes the system. I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, to no avail. What can I do? Signed: Desperate Dear Desperate First keep in mind Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Try entering the command: - C:/I-THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME to download Tears 6.2, which should automatically install Guilt 3.0. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. Remember though, overuse of the above applications can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. WARNING: Beer 6.1 is a very nasty program that will create Snoring Loudly. CAUTION: Whatever you do not install Mother in Law. This is not a supported application and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary Husband 1.0 is a great program but it does have a limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory or performance. I personally recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7. Good Luck. Signed: Technical Support