AshF

Full time, school closes completely for around two weeks at christmas, but some of this is meant to be 'working from home' time. I'm probably one of the few buggers that ends up actually doing that, but mostly it's just remote server tidying. Likewise, most of the work gets done in the summer, with us usually rolling out 200-300 computers (A mixture of new placements and replacements for machines at the end of their 5 year life span) in July/August. Although we've recently started getting a jump start on it, abducting a couple of classrooms as workspace during exam leave, and trying to get all the ghost imaging done on the machines before they go out... then just plugging them in and running through setup in the room. But I digress. Full time, and then some.

Curly Wurly's now have to obey a specific EU guideline regarding the ratio of Curly to Wurly, which whilst creating a more uniform confectionary, does result in a small gross average size. Ok, so i'm making this crap up, but what if i wasn't.

I can't remember what was in them, other than the general consensus was that they weren't as good as they used to be. Also Wagon Wheels used to be bigger, Wotsits used to be cheesier, and we all missed red smarties. Then someone found a copy of Fantasia in the video library, and I listened to Pink Floyd on my iPod whilst it was on, and discovered that whilst it didn't sync in a Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz style, the colour of saxaphone (in shine on you crazy diamond) is green.

The last time I bought a Kinder Egg was during a two week vacation in Amsterdam with a group of friends where we were all staying in a holiday flat. As the one most capable of finding his face I was sent on a late night shopping run for vital supplies. I returned with a massive slab of marble cake, 6 Kinder Eggs, two bottles of diet coke and a couple of large chips that i bought from a kebab shop I accidentally wandered into. I never consumed one of the Kinder Eggs however, as I was too busy with my wonderful discovered combination of Jam sandwiched between two small slices of cake. I couldn't work out why noone had thought of this before. Ah, memories....

Because I'm a Soft Southerner who'd never survive up there in the harsh realms of the North...

Ok, to me, that'd be more likely to get you an interview than MCSE's... But i'mw weird.

all MCSE courses I've been on have been 3-5 days. This is because they fit a hell of a lot of information in those courses. You need that time. Most MCSE books are roughly the size of a Yellow Pages...

This needs to be the status quo*. Prevents too many people info-dumping and knowing answers only, not actually holding knowledge. ... * as opposed to being THE Status Quo. :rock:

Do those two go together? The main reason works been less than fun round here is due to understaffing. Which we're taking care of right now. Hopefully.

Also being able to identify little things like a VGA port, a Serial Port, SATA and so on would be useful... I have seen people with more MCSEs than I can remember sit down and take a 'Identify the component' test and fall on their face. You may have lots of certificates but thats not going to help you replace a HDD... For a while this college used to get it's junior techs as students on a gap year from Uni... My first year had Kev, who was all in all a great technician. His windows knowledge was solid as a rock and he had a fairly good programming base (indeed, he made our current web-based IT support database whilst here for the year). His hardware knowledge wasn't great. But we dealt with that. He learnt quickly and before he left he'd spec'd and built his own PC. Then there was Dan who was the mirror opposite and not only didn't know windows, he also didn't like it, and skulked until i gave him an old compaq to run Linux on. But again, he learnt, and he learnt quickly, and both have taken those skills and used them, and I'd hire the pair of them again in a flash if i had the chance.

I do two and a half of those things... The Job Spec is written with my general eye over things, and the other two steps are done by myself, the MIS manager and then the final all clear by the deputy head... for the most part, this works well.

Grammar police are like the Spanish Inquisition...

My Senior IT Tech has a degree... In Philosophy. He's about to take on a newly created Developer role. Like me he has taken the 'knowledge by experience and experimentation' route. I wish more people valued experience over qualifications. Sadly in the greater world it doesn't seem to be the way of things a lot of the time...

Got my A-Levels, my GCSEs. All through this process I was working part time at a local internet cafe, then a local computer shop, doing repairs, sales, etc. Spent a year at Uni, dropped out for various reasons involving my family. Ended up working for Tiny's helpdesk. Then to a dotcom that sadly went bust (like so many). Moved back to gloucestershire and after a period of part time employment started work in a school as a Junior Technician, a year and a bit later moved back towards London as a Senior Technician, a year after that got the post of network manager. I've gotten where I am mostly by experience and my wits alone. I've completed a number of MCSE courses but not taken the exams. I'm aware I need to change this at some point and get some documented qualifications to my name, but work and life just keep me too damned busy...

Having spent a New Years in New York, and a Christmas in Ohio... that ain't snow... I havn't seen anything over here quite as mad as either of those... not since the late 80s, when I woke up to find my bedroom window covered in 3 inches of snow....

I guess it's relative to where you work and who you're working for...

Well you get all the standard public holidays, and statutory/local days, plus 20 days holiday. To be fair this is the same deal as the last school I worked at which was on the other side of the country (ie, it's a regular full time job with some closure for christmas, you get holiday time as any other job does and take it whenever you want).

Job details can now be seen on the college website, and application forms can also be downloaded from there: http://www.reigate.ac.uk/jobs/jobs.htm

At least according to all major forms of public transport in the area and all the doom'n'gloomers... I can't remember the last time I saw the college so quiet on a 'regular' term day... Anyone elses day made interesting by the white stuff*? (* and by that, i mean snow... not cocaine.)

IIRC, you need to pay two sets of fees per song, performance and composition rights, which go to seperate organizations... I'm hazy on the UK legalities... I'm better at US legalities/DMCA.

Atm, I have Edugeek up on the powerbook, and my IM's, and am talking with a former tech from the college about some work he did here and picking his brains. I'm also sat in a macintosh support channel just monitoring the ebb and flow of general conversation without partaking.On the G5 I'm running iTunes and Server Monitor. On the PC I'm running 3 TS instances into different servers, Outlook, a 12 month game plan that I've been writing, and also researching some Ranger/Profile problems we've been having. And then someone just sticks their head round the door and asks 'are you busy?'

If I'm sat down I usually look like I'm bored, but it usually means i'm doing 300 different things at once on one of the three machines on/around my desk (Wintel box, G5, Powerbook G4 12"). There seems to be a common misconception that if you're sat down you're not doing anything. The G4 is my sanity device, being my main link to the outside world and the object that goes most everywhere with me... I will miss it when I move on and leave it behind... Having said that given the past 3 years of existence it has had, they may just let me keep it... Yeah, right.

You ever heard of a band called Rome Burns? I did their last CD Cover/Booklet/Etc. Not my usual genre, but I did enjoy listening to the tracks whilst I designed it... Hope to do some more work for them as time goes on. Not a lot of money in it, but it was quite satisfying to recieve a CD with my work on it, shrinkwrapped and properly pressed...

Thanks for the info, the reverse DNS may well be key here, and i've printed off the guidelines to go through with a fine tooth comb...

AOL considers us (the college) 'blacklisted' for spam. We've attempted to communicate with them on this issue on a number of occasions and usually end up being diverted to the same help page over and over. Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem with AOL?