LeonardTwitty

Not sure if you have got them to read but if you have, I hope you enjoy them.

Oh the joys of external oversight!!

The series is called "The Chronicles of a Secondary School IT Manager" 1st book - Have you tried turning it off and on again. 2nd book - Ctrl, Alt Survive Book 3 being released around November called " Plants don't email"

Haha i love it

Nobody's biting, so here's a better question than the one I asked. What's the oldest thing still in active production on your network? I'll start the bidding. We have a Windows XP machine that runs one piece of software for one department, that has been reformatted twice and came back both times, and that the previous IT manager left a note about rather than an explanation. It's called Derek. Not by me, I should say. It named itself, after a login screen corruption in about 2015, and nobody has had the nerve to correct it since. Go on then. Year and model. I fully expect to be beaten.

Haha yeah days to respond has got to be better than having no support at all though. After 3 years we still have no idea who our support is in the LA.

Well we had a teams call with HWB "experts" and after 25 minutes of questions to them the meeting ended with no answers more questions and them saying we will need to check on that after every question. As you can imagine confidence is not high atm! If you manage to solve the classroom problem please let me know so I have a potential fix in the bag just in case.

I have come across this issue several times over the last few months. We are now cloud based and use SIMS connected and unfortunately our support is with the LA instead of with SIMS directly so support is crap to put it politely. That being said, I have found that by getting affected members to log out of their SIMS accounts and then sign back in is the quickest fix however we also have not been able to find the direct cause.

Ok so we have heard off two people so far about their own "Dereks" lets have some more stories about the difficult systems in your own workplace there must be something that when you hear its name you come out in a cold sweat but also have a weird respect for!!

Their computers are all off network, and the LA had to give them their own isolated VLAN. They were not happy!

Haha yeah been there, our additional learning team use outdated software all the time, not for the kids but because the teachers are useless with new technology!

Haha that's a good one the secretarial email life line.

Haha we have a Biomass system on windows 10 also not our responsibility. However my predecessor did dismantle it for scrap. Luckily they noticed and were able to set it back up......

Reviving this rather than starting another one, since Olliekai's original question from November still hasn't really been answered, and I'm somewhere behind techwizard in the same queue. Powys secondary, plus three primaries I also cover. The LA has told us we're moving to Hwb. No date yet — they're still in operational planning, because there are a lot of schools to move across and we're one of them. So I'm in the slightly odd position of knowing it's coming, not knowing when, and not yet knowing how much of the estate is in scope. Where we're starting from: Proxmox cluster, domain-joined Windows off a local DC with Group Policy, Chromebooks, and Google Workspace through Admin Console. Which brings me to what I actually want to ask, and it's for anyone who's already been through it rather than any one person: What should I be pinning down with the LA now, while they're still planning, that you wish you'd pinned down before it got decided for you? My read is that the window where a school has any influence over how this lands is exactly the window I'm sat in, and that it closes quietly and without anyone mentioning it.

Right. I've spent a fortnight clogging up my own thread with Amazon admin — royalties, ISBNs, whether the paperbacks ought to be colour. Nobody comes to General Chat for that. Back to the point of it. Here's the bit of book one that gets quoted back at me more than anything else. [Derek exchange — "We don't talk about Derek" through "Many things about Derek are not technically possible."] Not one person has ever told me Derek is a good character. What they say is "we've got one of those." Which was rather the point. So — what's yours? Every school I've set foot in has a box that everyone has quietly agreed not to touch, where nobody can tell you what it does any more, only what happened the last time somebody tried to find out. And an actual offer, rather than me pointing at Amazon again. Book three is being written now. Same school, same nonsense. Put your Derek in this thread and I'll use the good ones — anonymized, obviously, the school's invented and every name gets changed, same as the first two. Anyone whose machine makes it in gets their EduGeek name in the acknowledgements if they want it there, or left out entirely if they'd rather. Seems only fair.

So after some lovely help from amazon kdp at 6am this morning the black and white versions are now linked in and the colour versions are out, reviews and sales data is transferred too, also sat working on book 3 this morning so hopefully once the draft is finished and approved by my most critical of fans (my wife) I can have it out by Xmas. Now working on promotion and expanding the reach of the books. All work and no play lol. Thanks again for all the support guys and girls. It means more that you know! The more people my books reach the more it drives me to keep going! Also news from work, we are moving to HWB soon......a forced move by the local authority yay a fun new term to look forward too.

No because once you pick the paper and style, it gets locked to the books ISBN. They won't allow it to be changed.

So after going back and forth with Amazon, they will allow me to publish new black and white versions of the books which will then be linked to the series and then I can remove the colour ones. Apparently its something you have to ask for.......its like working in a school haha getting blood from a stone. Or more appropriately creating miracles with no budget!!

Don't know if its of any interest for you, but I have 2 books out on amazon, they are IT comedy books about life in a secondary school. If that's not your thing then I have just finished reading a good book called "The Vacant" by Lyle Malik. It's a gothic style horror, more about psychological torment that jump scares.

Haha we have 2 of them, one is past retirement age but is proper old school, and the other tries to act tough but it doesn't work lol.

Haha we have a PE teacher just like that. He insists on having the same password for everything. It's a war I gave up on long ago.

Moving a classroom board around because apparently being the last to know is the standard in my school!

I will have to delete the entire series and re create the entire thing to change them so probably will make the last one black and white instead. But will look into it anyway to be sure. Thanks both.

Thank you Martin, I appreciate the help.