maniac

Total ban on any hot drinks outside of the cafe area or staffroom in our school. It's actually helpful because it forces me to have a proper break, although I usually take my laptop with me and catch up on edugeek while I'm drinking it.

Congratulations mr kmount sir! This reminds me, did we ever start an archive of all the edugeek logos we've had, I think it was mentioned once?

Any other schools using this rewards scheme? If so, how heavily are you involved in the running and support of this system, and how much of your time does it occupy on a weekly basis? Reading through the way it works, I can see it being an administrative headache and I'm keen to distance myself from it as much as I realistically can. I can't get through to people that just because the system uses ICT does not mean I have to be the person running it!! Mike.

I've used this before. PC Inspector FILE RECOVERY I believe it will re-instate deleted partitions, if not it will certainly recover the data. Mike.

Well it's working for me, my orange phone now has a T-Mobile signal in this building as that is stronger than the normal orange signal round here. I'm happy with that!

sounds like a DNS type problem to me. Have you got more than one DNS server? If so, check that both of them have the correct records in for the server and are both returning the correct values by querying them using nslookup.

Call me cynical, but isn't this just wasting yet more tax payers money that could be put to good use somewhere else. If they win and the government are forced into spending that money then it just means they'll have to make cuts elsewhere. If they can't cut it from the schools budgets, then you can guess which one will be next.

Ahhh yes I knew this was on the cards as we've had major network outages locally that apparently were to do with Orange updating their technology and making the necessary changes for this to happen.

Give it a go and see what happens. The only danger is if you sell your time to set them up, you'll also be expected to provide support for said boxes which can then start to eat into your time, so make sure you price your time sensibly. I charge businesses a minimum of £40 per hour for my time, some of that is account for the fact that I know I usually end up making at least 1 non-chargeable return visit to fix those last few problems or issues.

Didn't take me long to find it anyway, I've printed it off and pinned it to my noticeboard because of the length of time it took me to find in the firstplace!

I'll run through dept by dept what my school has. Enterprise: 1 x room of 46 PC's 1 x Room of 8 PCs 1 x Room of 16 PCs 1 x cabinet of 30 laptops LRC 10 x Desktop PCs Food tech 1 x cabinet of 30 Laptops M.F.L 1 x cabinet of 30 Laptops Humanities 1 x cabinets of 30 Laptops 1 x cabinet of 30 Netbooks Maths 4 x rooms with 16 Desktops in 1 x cabinet of 30 Laptops English 3 x cabinets of 30 Laptops Science 2 x labs with 15 Desktops 2 x cabinets of 30 Laptops Art 1 x room of 10 Apple macs 1 x cabinet of 30 Laptops Performing Arts 1 x cabinet of 30 Netbooks 1 x room with 12 Macs in Student Support 12 x Desktops Cafe Area 6 x Desktops 70x teacher laptops 20 x Staff desktops Plus other odd ones around the school. Mike.

1. connect the power cord but don't turn the projector on. 2. Press and hold down the + and Auto Sync buttons on the projector 3. while you continue to hold these buttons, press the Power on button and the - key together as well. Projector should turn on and display LAMP 0000H Silly projectors these are, it took me a while to find an on-line manual for them when I needed to do the same thing a few months back. Mike

Yes you must, when you install it you input the address of the fog server and this little service then communicates with the fog server every few minutes and checks if there's any tasks for that client, be it renaming, adding to domain, installing printers etc. It's the Fog Service which actually does all the work and without it your clients will not be communicating with the fog server which means they'll do absolutely nothing after imaging.

If you don't have a c:\fog.log file, you probably haven't got the fogservice installed on your machines. The fog client is available from your fog server by visiting http://[[servername]]/fog/client/ Mike.

Look in the file c:\fog.log and it will tell you what the problem is. Fog changes the host name after imaging, I have my sysprep file set to make up a random name initially which is changed by FOG on its first startup. The only file you actually need from the supoort tools is the NETDOM untility. The support tools for windows XP are a seperate installation, not included in any of the standard updates - available from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=49AE8576-9BB9-4126-9761-BA8011FABF38&displaylang=en Mike.

Not sure about sims, as we have a SIMS administrator who deals with that, but we did supply our inspectors with a couple of laptops in the room they were in which were logged on with generic staff accounts so they could use the internet etc. if needs be. They did get used as well.

I thought there was a tick box already hidden inside one of the options menus?? This drives me nuts as well thou, as it even over rides it when you logon as admin which is a bit irritating. One of those things I live with thou, as Lanschool is a brilliant program. Mike. EDIT: OK had a look, there is a tick box that says limit task manager/activity monitor but it doesn't actually seem to do anything to the client.

Legacy compatibility. Most shops adopted EPOS systems 15-20 years ago or more when it was the only standard, hence existing equipment in shops uses these standards and EPOS manufacturers remain loyal to them so retailers don't have to change their cash draws, printers, barcode scanners etc. if they have a technology upgrade, or if a componant breaks on an existing system they still have spare parts that are compatible, so they just stick with the old standards for everything. Mike.

I may well be wrong, it is just an educated guess.

I'll place money it's an RS422 adapter, which is a less-commonly used serial standard, commonly used to connect POS receipt printers up to a terminal. This caught me out a few years back when I brought a receipt printer from e-bay with the intention of getting our helpdesk to print out little tickets we could stick on machines in the workshop, so we know why they're there etc. Of course, I couldn't get it to work because it's a different serial standard, although at the time I didn't realise that - it was only a few years later when I found it in a box and had another go I realised why it didn't work. Doh!

Yes you will get paid, don't worry you won't end up out of pocket. Even if your employer doesn't pay you, you can claim loss of earnings from the court by getting your employer to fill out a form. They pay you very quickly. You can also claim travelling expenses and a food allowance. There are limits on the loss of earnings, but I think they're quite high and are unlikely to affect anyone in a averagely paid job. My recommendation - enjoy it, if you can of course as some cases can be pretty grim. It's a priveledge to do in my opinion, and the one time you have a direct say in the legal proceedings of this country, however small it may be, so make the most of it! Mike.

You shouldn't let the currently available technology dictate and limit your ideas, you can put it in a proposal regardless. If the technology limitations of the Grid your connected to mean it later turns out not to be possible, then the school can evaluate whether it wants to drop the proposal or make changes to make it happen - it all depends how much they like the idea. If I were writing a plan like that, presumably for an interview, it wouldn't necessarily contain specifics, it would use phrases like "Investigate whether webmail could be accessed from off the school site" Instead of a fully written plan, it would be a series of steps I would take to construct the full plan, if you like the blueprint for writing it showing the areas I would look at. Mike.

Note to self: read post first!

I quite like the Techconnect Modular faceplates from Vision - sold here by lambda tech, but plenty of other places stock them. They do most of the modules you want, and they're usually reasonably priced. Areial connection TC2 RF VISION TECHCONNECT V2 MODULE RF AERIAL With integrated female to female barrel. RF connectors are used for aerials, and are commonly found on the rear of VCRs. Satellite 'F' type connections TC2 F VISION TECHCONNECT V2 MODULE F - REQUIRES AN "F" CONNECTOR OR BARREL Blank module with a hole in it ready to receive an F connector. F connectors have a pin and are commonly found on Sky receivers. Speaker connections TC2 SPEAKER VISION TECHCONNECT V2 MODULE 4-BARE WIRE TERMINAL Used for speaker cable, these spring terminals are quick and secure. Double faceplate for above modules TC SURRUK2 VISION TECHCONNECTV2 WHITE SURROUND DOUBLE GANG *UK* Frame which can attach to any standard UK backbox (pattress), into which you can mount 5 modules. New version with bezeled corners. Single faceplate for above modules TC SURRUKSG2 VISION TECHCONNECT V2 WHITE SURROUND SINGLE GANG *UK* Frame which can attach to any standard UK backbox (pattress), into which you can mount 2 modules. New version with bezeled corners. The only one they don't appear to make is the telehpone jack. Only drawback is they can be a bit flimsy as they're only made from relatively thin plastic, so if they're going to be un-plugged and plugged in a lot, you might be best off buying something more durable. Mike

I think it might be I'm getting the same (on Sky broadband by the way) http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/fbfail.jpg