dwhyte85

How many have you have been asked to interview?

b3ta link is particularly scary. In terms of 'dropping and going', I have one debt and this would be a good opportunity for me to do something new. That said I don't want to be shafted! They're hinting they'll wait for me, by then I'm debt free and with some savings. I'm obviously petrified I'm going to have a terrible experience like the b3ta one. I'm not homosexual, I do have a girlfriend but not married so that might pose an issue if she was to come over - TBH, trying to escape her (only kidding, or am i?). My accommodation isn't going to be too dire, it'll be a studio - I would paste the contract but it's not allowed I don't suppose - I'm responsible for DEWA. It's one of those where as long as i've got savings to get back to the UK, I'll be OK - I'm quite happy to up and go home, a screw you guys I'm coming home type scenario as I'm well aware they might do the same to me. I could give a long sob story with my Mums' situation prior to her death and the last 5 years but, I really would like to travel a bit -but I understand the risks aside. I know about drinking being limited to hotels, being drunk can provoke a beating (heard that first hand) - negatives aside, as long as i'm not living in International City - I'll give it a whirl. Thank you for a level headed post with references. I have effectively 3 months to decide what to do because of my notice period, at the moment I am really excited but reality is slowly sinking in... it may not be all it cracks up to be

I've read from people who've gone over, I know the risks involved but basically doing an IT Technician role isn't too difficult so job security isn't a worry for me, although things do happen (they support fortune 500 companies), I use a a site called cr*p-free.com which i've used as a basis which is pretty good for near estimates. Either way, it looks kind of not happening either way - but the job was to find accommodation, not me

Will it affect exam entry or rollover... I can't do it until the end of August because of stupid planning by SLT.

Thanks, I will apply the update this weekend. I will then do the SQL 2005->2008 upgrade THEN migrate to a new server, it could probably stay on our 2003 box with a bit more RAM but... I have a newer server for it, may as well make use of it.

I would love to do that, but I don't want threatening letters being sent to my Dad - they can be pretty nasty, especially as the LA will be the driving force behind the letters and recouping any costs they deem necessary. Plus, I really would like to use the school as a reference, other than a few niggles (and this) the school has been good to me.

I can't breach contract, I would like to use the school as a reference having worked over a year here. Unfortunately, it is in my contract and I'm obviously pretty dim for not checking my notice. The varying notice period bit, some of it applies to if the company have dismissed you, it's the other way round - i've handed notice in. Fingers crossed they'll say that they'll wait until Nov, ever so slightly annoyed at myself and the school for such an unrealistic notice period for a network manager, even if i was just leaving... i couldnt apply for a job for 2 months :-/

I signed 3 months notice, not 1. I assumed it was 1 from previous jobs... at the time was desperate to work and just signed it, checked the holiday entitlement but assumed 1 month. I can understand why they're fixed on the 3 months because it'd mean I left before new term and before the decision makers are back for a new appointment. I've contacted the company who were to employ me in Dubai, they might be happy to do it but they're going to let me know. School have made it very clear i'll be here until EO October. To make matters worse, if Dubai wont employ me i'll be jobless in 3 months - let that be a lesson to read your contract thoroughly, not skim it like me and end up trapped

The school has just shafted me, or I have with my lack of understand with my contract. Next time I'll read and digest my contract not just sign because I need a job...

Any gamers remember CU@LAN - does that still exist? techtopia, I wouldn't worry about it too much, whoever is doing it has obviously too much time to kill and they should be getting on with some work :-)

It's an IT Consultant but really nothing more than a field engineer. Contract states they pay my way back and if they dont like me i get 2 weeks salary and cant work for any competitor for a year, they pay my accomodation or provide £650.00ish a month - having checked on Dubizzle this isn't that bad and can get a fairly nice place for that but they pay in cheques not monthly. I've been told the gridlock was a bit better from Sharjah to Dubai as they did some road works. Having been on hospital duties for the last 5 years with my Mum who recently passed on.. the plan is to live a little more and see some new things, as well as people. I could always put a bit of the salary towards accomodation - have been told 600dhs is more than enough to live on food and washing up liquids and things like that so potential savings is good. Thanks for the reply :-)

Has anyone had any experience in the middle east? Is this OK: 8500 Dhs basic salary // £1493.00 3500 Dhs towards housing on-top of above // £615.00 Car, laptop, mobile (150 mins local + 150 mins intl + 10gb data) Also another 1000dhs when hit MCSE and another for CCNA. Does this sound 'doable'? My only debts are £65.00 a month for a credit card, well will be end of the month.

Yea, but you don't get to laugh manically while you batter the poop out of the hard drive. Certified destruction is obviously better for your records, smashing the poop out of them for self satisfaction.

This is causing major hassle for us... Ideally, we need to migrate to a new server. Do I then run the upgrade or do it prior to migrate? I have to find time to do this between data entry, exam inputting and exporting & roll over. SIMS 'manager' not available Weekends not an option Bullet points 1 & 2 are pretty much easy to do, the problem is getting SLT to see the importance in this! Instead of this, that, the other needs to be done first... I don't know what effect the SIMS upgrade will have on any of bullet point 3... my role defines I don't need to, that the SIMS manager should know. From experience of trying to 'help', i get told to get back to where I belong, in the server room - that's pretty much the attitude with the SIMS manager who is 100% not technical.

It's the way forward in terms of data destruction

MonkeyX - I get what you're saying. However, everything you say/I say/We say effects the reputation of Edugeek, consider they're not a charity, they earn money by I guess advertising on the site and probably getting information from polls or whatnot (I don't know, just a guess). If you say 'BSF SUCKS THE BIG ONE, GOVERNMENT ARE DUMB LOLZ' people wont say AH MonkeyX said it, it'll go back to Edugeek and that's not what they want to happen. I've not had a problem on here, only with people and how I read things they say - then again, it is a professionals forum - people are quite... to the point and have every right to have an opinion, sometimes mine isn't the same!

Never had an e-mail/PM asking to change tone or pull any of my posts, then again... I don't think I'm that bad - if that started happening without good reason I doubt i'd use the forum anymore.

Facebook could be very useful as a VLE in itself. With custom Facebook applications, groups/lists it is just as effective as a VLE in terms of what it offers. Infact, it offers a realtime communications system. Embedding YouTube or other media... it is pretty functional and with the custom apps, let's say quiz's that have been altered... it's not that different. The problem of other people, grooming and timewasting make it very difficult to ever happen. For University & College/VI Form where people are learning for themselves, not because they're forced it would be a good idea - well, I think so, it beats BlackBoard and WEBCT! Of course these are my opinions and experience of an all girls school we see cases daily where someone called someone else something or said teacher was a so and so - they probably wouldn't do it if they had teachers added, then again they probably wouldn't want to add the teachers. On the other hand, VI formers do alot of work for media and business over facebook for the marketing/website parts and they don't mess around.

I think we have to be realistic. SIMS inherited systems like T4 which were not their own, they had to integrate them into the software they had developed. Having spoken to a chap who has used it since it's early beginnings he said it grew far quicker than they could have envisaged and it was hack n slash'd together with school requirements. That's not to say i'm defending them but we all use/have used Windows XP which has had patches & fixes continually released for years, no matter how much QA is given and UAT with the testing groups things slip through the net... that's a given as things crop up. When a change is made that seems blindingly obvious to us but takes months to roll out it's likely they have to test on a bunch of operating systems with different scenarios. However... it doesn't always look that way from experience with some of the patches put on but we have to bear in mind that any changes done affect potentially gigs of data... but of course, we all have robust backup plans. That said, they really need to improve the support site and the errors given - they need to be more verbose as sometimes it might be something fixable by us rather than logging a call with Capita. Just to add... SIMS error 0 for me a few days ago was that the mapped drive had gone funky on the local machine.

I feel your frustration. I bought an egg & cheese pita and find a hand full of shredded lettuce, onion & cabbage underneath the payload - I could have crushed a grape I was so angry.

I like it

Are you directly plugging into a socket or into a 4-way, or a 4-way plugged into a 4-way? I remember back in the day... my machine was lagging really bad (graphically) and finally, just powering down... it had something to do that my Xbox, TV, Room Conditioner & Music Amp were all plugged in , direct connection and it was OK.

I've went off-site to cool down a few times with certain members of SLT who just don't get things, of course, no further than my car. Felt tempted many times but in the current climate everyone is a bit on edge within the school.

Hi RichB, Have you rebooted/restarted the servers/services sequentially? E.g, firstly reboot PDC, DHCP, DNS, Exchange, FS? If you've got no shares is the server service started? We had something similar to this, and I was absolutely certain there was no loopback, it turned out that one cabinet had 1 switch that had not been rebooted and this was causing the issue. We also had an issue with a netgear 5 port that had just died and caused masses of problems. EDIT: But our pings were not instant, sounds like services on the servers - best to check eventlog

ncpa.cpl - one of my favs :-)