maniac

We have some things like LAN school where you can set the channel number using a GPO, so we have one GPO for each channel we use - 28 in total just for that, obviously each OU only has one of these applied. We have a seperate GPO for each MSI we deploy, and settings like Wireless and offline files have their own specific policies. All the rest of the settings are defined by a further 6 GPOs - machine policies for staff, students and net admins, and user policies for the same groups. Unfortunitely out main staff and students group policiy has some errors in it now and I can't run resultant set of policy on it in group policy manager, or get a report of all the settings which is a pain, it still seems to apply to the workstations in good time thou - our login time on a cabled workstation is less than 1 minute which is think is acceptable. Wireless can be a lot longer, but this is down to the wireless speed and not the policies. Mike.

I'm guessing HP finally updated their software! The webinterface on procurves has been the same for years and years, so it was well overdue an update. I'll have to have a look at the web interface on our latest HP switch and see if it's any different to what I'm used to - I don't think I've even called it up as I do everything in the console normally. Mike.

They've changed that then as on all my HP switches you can do most things in the web interface, but teaming up ports is one thing that you can't and you have to do it through the console. I use the console to do most of my configuring anyway, as it runs a lot faster than the web interface. Mike.

You have to telnet into the procurves to to port trunking - just goto command prompt and type telnet and hit enter. then type menu at the prompt and you should figure it out from there. No need to edit the config file manually - it does it all for you from the menu. You can select which ports you want to be part of which trunk group, and the type of trunk it is.

We use its learning here as our learning platform. Generally I'm very impressed with it, it is very flexible and allows you to do a lot, It integrates with SIMS, although not single sign on at the moment for us, I understand this is possible. It's also pretty good value for money when compared to other platforms on offer, and although it may lack some of the more advanced features some platforms contain, it does what is needed from a learning platform well. It is a fully hosted solution hosted on the Its learning server farm in Norway, but don't let that put you off as the access is quick and generally speaking very reliable (only 3 or 4 bits of downtime in 2 years, and these were short lived) Their support is OK, although I find you do have to chase them sometimes. Mike.

This is on my home PC and is a very odd problem I've not seen before. The network card is a Realtek PCIe 8168 GBE which is built into a gigabyte mainboard, and the computer is running windows XP. When you first turn the computer on it works fine, then anywhere from 30secs to 5mins later it will suddenly tell you the network cable is disconnected - it isn't (and I've tried a new cable) of course you lose all network connectivity. If you disable the network card then try re-enabling it, it will report as 'connection failed' and not allow me to re-enable the card - never seen this before. Leave it a bit longer and the device will effectivly un-install its self and appear under 'other devices' in control panel as if there's no driver installed for it - which there is. I've tried installing the latest driver for it, but when it's in that state it will not recognise the drivers are for the device and the setup program tells me there is no compatible device in this computer. You have to force them to install through device manager, which I've done and it's made no difference. The really odd thing is if I re-boot the computer, it will work fine for another 5 minutes or so then do the same thing again, so I'm convinced it's a software problem of some sort, I just don't know what might be causing it. I've come across other people mentioning simelar problems when doing a google search for the issue, but no one seems to know precisely what's causing it or how to solve it. Any ideas anyone? Mike.

Or just forget smartphones all together and get yourself a basic phone that just does what it needs to do, i.e make phone calls and send text messages. Mike.

Aye, you can indeed. It's been concreted over, well and truely sealed, you can see where it was. The base is actually in surprisingly good condition considering it's age and the fact it's been buried for god knows how long. It will form part of the base for a shed due to go in that corner at some point.

Pile of crap gone! Ran out of time to paint the walls thou, tooks 6 trips to the tip to get rid of all the rubbish, got fed up waiting for my man with van to be free. http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7907.jpg Uncovered the base of the origenal outside loo in the process, which I was kinda expecting.

Ah what a shame, you would have been welcome to them as well. I hope you've digitised that archive before disposing of it, would be a shame for it to be totally lost. It's as a result of spring cleaning I've unearthed these myself. I'll drop an e-mail to the computer museum at Bletchly as per mattx's suggestion and see if they want them, if they don't then who knows I may lug them all up into the loft and just sit on them for another 10 years.

I haven't even thought about what I might plant as I'm not really into gardening. I'm planning on putting all of it down as lawn and just using it as a social space in the summer, maybe with some wall basket thingys for a bit of colour. I wanted to put decking or paving over the whole thing to save having to mow the grass, but I can't afford that. If I decide to remove it at a later date it won't be hard as the trunk isn't that thick, infact I think if I hung of it it would probably snap. I've no idea how old it might be, the neighbour says it's been there as long as he's lived there and that's 20 years.

Yeah it produced loads last year, but I didn't really use them. There's only so many things you can do with pears and they don't keep very long. I wanted to do some pear cider, but it didn't produce enough to make it worthwhile. Still it's a well established tree even if it is practically growing out of the wall, so I'll probably keep it.

Pile of crap is due to be removed, along with pile of rubble in opposite corner as soon as my mate gets here with his van - there's faaar too much to take to the tip in a car. I'm not sure how long it is since anyone's done anything with the garden here, but it was in a right old state when I brought the place. Even the before photo doesn't begin to show you, as I'd already done a days work out there when I took that one. The pile of crap is just what I found in the 'lawn' when I cleared it! Why do you always find marbles when you dig over a garden?

I've been busy in my garden today, painting the walls with planet rock on the DAB radio, and yes it was a lovely day, probably a little too warm for painting, but it seems to have gone OK until I ran out of paint. BEFORE http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7661.jpg AFTER (2 days of work to clear it, 1 day to re-point the wall then painted it today) http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7902.jpg Still can't make up my mind whether to keep the pear tree or not.

It's the old street sign for the road my parents live in. I happened to be around when they were changing it for a new one and cheekily asked if I could have the old one, and they said yes! Must have only been about 13 at the time.

I'm with you on that, I could change the head gasket on a metro in about 2 hours flat, it was so damn simple!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot there was a whole box full of 5 1/4 inch floppies - didn't even bother looking through them, as I don't posess a drive to read them with any longer. Next project is to fix the MK1 golf I have in their garage and get that back on the road, then my parents can finally have all their space back (apart from the dozen or so boxes in the loft, but I think my dad has forgotten about those so I'll keep quiet, for now!)

The Haynes book was for an Austin Metro, MG and Vanden Plus version. It was almost a computing museum in its own right that shed, found these while looking through some boxes - 30pin SIMMS, now that's going back a bit, plus 1 72pin for good measure. There were also 2 old DELL computers, 1 old unbranded 486 computer and more old componants than I care to list - most of which has gone to the tip now. I did power up one of the Dell machines for a laugh and it actually still booted into windows 95! http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7882.jpg And spot the old RM monitor . . . http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7885.jpg I've got to stop hoarding stuff!

Been having a clearout recently of an old shed at my parents house which was rammed full of all sorts of my posessions that I couldn't fit in any of the previous houses I've lived in. What do I find at the back completely forgotten about? around 100 issues of PC advisor magazine from about January 1996 (issue 4) to some time in 2004 all in reasonable condition as well considering where they've been stored. I was going to throw them out, but I just can't bring myself to do it as for some reason there's something quite appealing about picking up a 10 year old + PC magazine and having a flick through. However, I've slowly come to realise that I really have not got the room to store them where I am now, so rather than bin them has anyone else got any better suggestions that would make good use of them? Here they all are: http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Image-7883.jpg Mike.

I think this summer at one of the schools I work at will be dead, as we're due to have a new building opening 2012 so there's little to no investment in ICT at the moment, we're at the 'keep it all going another year please' stage. Unfortunitely they'll be lots for me to do as I'm in charge of overseeing the new building ICT, but for the technicians at that school a long summer of cleaning and general maintenance is probably all that's on the cards.

It's nice at the start of the holiday, but by the end I'm always a little bit bored as I do miss the hussle and bussle of a school day and the challenges that come with it.

My mum had her MK2 vauxhall astra stolen in about 2001. Was a sad day really, as before it was my mums car it was the family car, and took us on holidays all over the place throughout my teenage years. How a 1.4 Astra coped with 4 people plus luggage plus trailer tent on some pretty long drives I will never know, but it was a trooper and never let us down. Anyway, it was found abandoned about 10 miles away and recovered by the police, eventually written off by the insurance due to the damage done during the theft. The funny thing is they'd tried to steal the radio, but couldn't get it out - kudos to me for fitting it properly. Shame they saw the need to shove a screw driver through the front of it in their efforts thou, they didn't even have the front panel for it so god knows what they thought they could do with it if they got it out. Also had a very old golf I owned stolen once, for which I was pleased because I was trying to get rid of it. That was also found abandoned several months later.

I encourage projectors to be switched off when rooms aren't in use out of good practise rather than anything else. The affect it has on the bulbs overall life are minimal, we have some teachers who persistantly leave them on and others who religeously turn them off, and bulbs last the same length of time as they all reach the 2000 hours that our projectors recommend the lamp being changed at. Contory to popular practise, we change all our projector bulbs when they report needing it. Even thou they may still work, it can damage a projector if the bulb is used longer than it's design life as the bulbs burn much hotter and with less efficientcy when they get older. The excess heat can damage projector units and cause burns on the optical path amongst other problems. Mike.

Papercut, because it actually saves us money.

That's identical to the box you used to get on the old RM Net LM 2.0 system (running Windows 3.1) I remember it well when I was at school. It had two buttons exactly like that, although the one labelled network also allowed you to change your password. Edit: And reading your post again, I note that you've already said it's like the old RM logoff, but I'll leave this here to show my general ability for not reading posts fully before replying.