Earthling

Did Officer Dibble not stand for election? That's a shame.

She sounds like a Valleys Girl trying to sound extra-Welsh for the audience.

What. Wait. You mean, we've started already?

I'm never influenced by adverts, I don't have any money, but I have to admit, some ads are cool. Some are way better than the rubbish we get on TV. You're gonna hate me for this, but the one that's really pressed my button lately is the iPad Mini one, don't know if you get it over there, with an iPad and a Mini side-by-side, both displaying a piano keyboard, with some fingers playing a duet on both screens. No voiceover, nothing. just the duet. Slick, slick, so slick advertising. On a sadder note, I also find myself enjoying the BT Infinity three-students-in-a-flat series of ads. You almost definitely DON'T get those. You can probably Youtube them, if you must. But don't blame me if you do.

I took one look at the Beta and realised it wasn't meant for desktops. The only people who are going to buy it on a desktop are private customers buying from wherever they buy from. We 'corporate/education' customers had XP downgrade licenses right through Vista and well into 7. I've no doubt we'll be able to get 7 downgrade licenses too, if we continue to buy desktops. When we buy tablets, if they're not Android or iOS, they'll be Windows 8. Or 9. Or 10 Whichever one they get right.

Same here. No 'if's', no 'but's, hard drive out of the box and onto the Imagemasster. Cup of coffee, 15 minutes, eight pc's done. Rinse and repeat.

Absolutely been there, felt that. Looking back over my 42 years, there's been many times I've felt that way. Moving from one mainframe to another, moving from mainframes to pc networking, starting a new contract was always difficult, not knowing what you're going to find, who you're going to find, and quite frequently in a strange place away from home and family.......and then Microsoft release another new version of Windows and off we go again. Would I have changed any of it? Nope. Would I have done anything else? Probably, if I could have found anything else I was this good at faking.

Did both, read them all, then listened on audio book. Two absolutely top rate readers, George Guidall and Frank Muller. Wolves of The Calla came alive when I listened to it. I've listened to a lot of audio books, but that one stopped me in my tracks. Since I read those, I haven't wanted to read anything else. The whole series sort of fulfilled everything I'd been looking for in Fantasy and Sci-Fi, but, as you say, can't be strictly classified as either. 'Go then, there are other worlds than these'.

No one suggested Stephen King's Dark Tower series? The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Wasted Lands etc. Edit:Oopsie, It's The Waste Lands, not The Wasted Lands.

On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me A solicitor's letter and a divorce decree

When we were together, the ex and I always tried to make Christmas for our kids the same as it was for us when we were kids. I remember a couple of Christmases, when I was very, very young, probably about 7 or 8 that truly seemed to be magical, and if I ever hear Tony Newley's 'Why' played on the radio, I'm instantly transported back to those times, even now. He featured on one of the Xmas shows on TV, singing it.......for indeed, yes, we had TV, even back then. I hope my kids have similar magical memories, when they're my age, but maybe it's just a Generation Thang. Now that we're older, we have the joy of doing it all over again with the grandkids with the added bonus of not having to do anything. Eldest daughter does it all. The thing I miss most about 'modern' Christmases is Nativity Sets. I'm not sure when they started to disappear from shop windows and municipal displays and decorations, but they seem to be very thin on the ground. 'Mary's Boy Child', 'Scarlet Ribbons', 'Fairytale of New York', Morecombe and Wise, jumpers for goalposts.......marvellous. All this and two weeks off work.

1966 Mustang is the only car that could tempt me away from my Z3. Never mind the muscle, feel the Cool.

All our teaching staff and cover supervisors get a laptop, which they use as a classroom computer and take home if they want to. They all sign an AUP, and they all return the laptop when they leave. For the most part, they look after them quite well. One teacher has wrecked her first two, but it's been made crystal clear that if this one gets wrecked, she pays for a replacement. The first batch were purchased March 2008, and we've been topping up with replacements, 10, maybe 15 per year, since 2010. A *lot* of the original Tosh A200's are still going strong today. One thing that threw me when we bought the first 60 was that we'd pay £500-£600 for a laptop, but then the Bursar baulked at paying a tenner each for a bag to carry them round in. When she showed me her alternative choice of bag, I said, 'You know what, don't worry. I'll whizz down Morrison's and get some carrier bags instead.' She got the message, and we got our bags. If I was ever to buy a laptop of my own, I'm sure I'd pay at least 10% of the purchase price for a decent bag to carry it around in.

Same here. I used to have server-this, NT-that, Smoothwall, Win2K box, XP box as soon as it came out, wife's pc, kids' pc's, personal domains and all that good stuff. I ethernet-cabled the whole house almost in 2000. Just don't have the same interest anymore. Well, I do, really, but when I go home, I leave it behind at work these days. Just have a dual-core Intel, 4g of ram for home use, and I take my work laptop back and fore for everything else. The electric bill is very much a factor too.

Same here. Sometimes it gets behind, then one or other of us spends an hour or so updating the asset records. I'm the only person here (I kid you not, honestly) who has ever worked with any form of change-control. I've been trying to introduce it ever since I've been here, but for some reason, the idea of planning a change, formulating backout procedures, testing and then implementing those changes seems to be completely incompatible with IT in this particular bit of the education sector. My first experience of it here (I'd been in post for eight weeks maybe, five of which were the summer holidays): Head of ICT (my LM at the time): has given us two of the servers so we can rebuild the domain from scratch. So, off you go, carry on with that. Me: Ok, cool. Don't you think we should sit down and talk about it for a while? Plan it a bit? HoICT: Why? What's there to plan? Me: Well, what do you want to call this domain, for a start? HoICT: Oh.....I hadn't thought of that. She was a classic. I could tell you stories about her, make your teeth fall out.

Mehhh, I've had it all since I bought it......Hairdresser's Car, Tart's Car, Girl's Car........you name it. Mostly from people who have really off-the-wall, rebellious, hair-raising, edge-of-the-envelope family saloons. I wanted one, I bought the exact year, mileage, colour and interior that I wanted and I'm really happy with it. And you know what they say...................'Sticks and stones can break my bones, but whips and chains excite me'. Or have I got that wrong somewhere?

Oh gosh......you're so funny. I would laugh, but I'm worn out from having laughed the previous 27,658,635,488 times that I heard that.

I've been really tempted on a few fresh, sunny days since I've had it, but I don't have the flying jacket yet, or the Leslie Phillips flat-cap. The roof has always been soaking wet too, and for some reason, I don't want to fold it down and put it away wet. I have this idea it might start to smell, like washing that's been left in the machine for too long before being taken out to dry and air. But rest assured, come the Spring, I'll have it off at every opportunity. Oooo-er, missus, I hear some of you thinking.

As threatened.

I'm gonna stick with David Bowie.

No one suggested David Bowie yet?

What? What?? A 2900 as a museum piece? It can't be, I used to work on them, and it was only......oh.......uhhhh......35 years ago

Sorry to be pedantic, but it's, 'But still they come'.

1 x Head 1 x Deputy Head 4 x Asst Heads 1/2 x Brain 0 x Clues

It was my birthday the end of October. I bought myself a Z3, just like I promised myself. 2001 model, 52,400 + change miles, 1.9 Litre, British Racing Green (BMW call it Forest Green), beige leather interior. If I ever remember to bring my pc cable in, I'll post the photos that I have on my phone. Until then, use your imaginations.