sonofsanta

We launched with Bromcom last Monday, after we asked Bromcom to delay from our original Easter date (in the hopes--haha--that we'd all be back in school for an onsite training day sometime in May. WELP), and like @Timetable it actually turned out to be a blessing in some regards. Although I was still at my PC on Sunday night making sure I had login details out to everyone in time, there was no panic to get stuff done before registers at 9am on Monday. A lot of it now is just getting used to new workflows, but in general it's much easier than CMIS ever was, and possible to just... have a guess at what you need to do. The global search is a godsend, you can guess at what a setup page might be called and find your way pretty easily. There's a lot of little questions coming out of the woodwork as we actually get into the nitty-gritty of using it, but we're able to book a phone call once a week with a transition specialist where we can ask all these little questions and get clarity on the best way to do things, which is massively helpful. The data pulled across was pretty much flawless from a process perspective; it brought up a lot of stuff I needed to neaten up (staff email addresses etc.) but I can hardly blame my crappy data on Bromcom we had no trouble whatsoever with the transition process, and have felt really well supported throughout, so I'm as delighted as @Timetable.

Nnnnnnnecro! I've changed the line in inetpub/wwwroot/HAP/App_Data/hapconfig.xml and it works fine for a while, but then I start seeing insecure LDAP binds on my DC logs again even though the XML file is still correct. It seems to revert to insecure binds every time the server restarts. What am I doing wrong?

Here's a Big Band concert of Mario & Zelda tunes that Nintendo put on nearly twenty years ago: If you listen to nothing else from that video, listen to It's pure joy. Guaranteed to improve your day! Megadeth covered the Duke Nukem 3D theme, and every time I listen to it I feel 13 years old again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb97ml_hzXI&list=PLnVnWr4MqNWcd3lPtRIJOugOhV-OPJrXj That's a playlist of other DN3D tunes, tho the theme is obviously the highlight. If you want something properly backgroundy, someone called AlienHand did a load of EVE Online remixes/inspired-by-tunes that are wonderful ambient stuff. Can't find a channel, but lots on YouTube search.

I went through all of Devs on iPlayer last week. It's very Alex Garland--hypnotic, dreamy, beautiful cinematography, and big ideas... that he only skims the surface of in a way that written science fiction has been doing better for decades. I still watched it all and found it strangely compelling, but as with Ex Machina, Sunshine and Annihilation, I came away slightly unsatisfied that it never really dug into its topic in a new way. It's like a greatest hits album of SF themes done by a really competent covers band. Nick Offerman was surprisingly good in it, too.

We were meant to be launching next Monday, ha ha, but Bromcom worked with us and let us move that back to June 1, in the hopes that we'd be back to school by now and able to have training on-site again; we upgraded to one day of on-site to better support staff on their first exposure to their system, and then all the webinars after that would have been in a shared room so me and mine could support users as they worked through different aspects. That plan is out the window now, though, with the extra three weeks of lockdown, but we need to stick by this new date as our Facility contract runs out at the end of July. Just in the process of trying to arrange all the training and make sure staff have got everything they need--going to get a bunch of long HDMI cables in so they can use their TVs as pseudo-projectors to follow along more easily, cos watching a presenter and trying to follow along all on one small laptop screen will be a nightmare. We did get the test data across before all this kicked off, so we have actually been using Bromcom for sending out parent emails through all this, as it's better at that than our current system (WisePay). I've gotten to the point of looking up staff and student details on it too, even though ePortal is just as easily accessible from home, because it's just... better. Even without any training, it's more intuitive and easier to read information from. And silver linings, all this delay means we've managed to appoint a new data manager in time to take part in the training and be there for launch, so it might work out better in some regards!

I confess I'd not thought about that (the risks of pushing stuff out with minimal testing and planning!)--but that's still less of an issue than a private call, as we as admins could still see the existence of the Team in the admin backend, and if we added ourselves into the Team we'd still see the existence of all the meetings. TBH it's as much about protecting ourselves from accusations under these circumstances--if a parent says someone has been private video calling them, we can point to the measures we've taken to protect the students. I wonder if you can set recordings to happen automatically, actually--I know that O365 global admins can automatically view them even if they weren't a participant. That'd be an extra measure of protection.

Just written up this guide on video calls in Microsoft Teams, if it's useful to anyone else. We've disabled private calls and asked staff to only use Meetings, as it's more accountable and avoids accusations of private phone calls taking place. Video Calls in Microsoft Teams.docx

So long as you bring a Cornetto. Mint choc chip, please!

We're all staying offsite now. Only staff in are 1 SLT, 1 teacher, 1 site, 1 cleaner. We can't change the tapes for the offsite backups, but we can survive that for a few weeks as I doubt many people are uploading back through HAP+ anyway; I've advised people to backup work to OneDrive in the interim. I'm getting some more laptops delivered to my house (only downside: @ICTDirect_Dave now knows where I live) and I'll get them set up, then arrange with one of my techs to take them in* so SLT can hand them out to any other staff who need them. Other than that... gonna be a while before we see each other, I expect. Bright side: I'm expecting my staff to come out of this a little more independent, IT-wise. A man can dream! *I've got a vulnerable adult at home, so minimizing exposure as much as possible

Tesco here--which is not a big Tesco, though it's a proper store and not an Express--is operating a one-in-one-out policy as of today. People in town are finally taking it seriously, though: crossing roads to avoid each other, waiting rather than squeezing through gaps in aisles etc. Though the worst people for ignoring distancing advice and stay at home advice (going out in couples etc.) are the over 70s! The whole country has literally shut down to protect them and they're trying to carry on as normally as possible. I know it's hard on them too, but good grief.

Thanks Al--should I point them at any particular email address if they want to request something, or should I liaise directly with my account manager?

Well the Head has said that only the bare minimum of staff will be on site each day--one SLT, one teacher, one cleaner, one site staff--so we're all out the office now for the foreseeable. We're getting texts at home from the NHS for 19yo (Crohn's), so we've now designated one toilet/shower as solely hers, and she's keeping 2m away from me as the only person leaving the house (a shop run each morning, followed by a shower as soon as I get back). MiL has decided she will keep away until the weekend, as she went up town on Saturday, so wants to be sure she's not infected before she passes it on. I'm not sleeping particularly well. Is anyone? In better news, day 1 of full lockdown coinciding with day 1 of Disney+ was brilliant timing.

Zero kids in our school today. A few were scheduled to be in, but all cancelled. IT rota for now is that one person out of our team of four (the one with the least risk in his immediate family) will go in Monday and Thursday morning to deal with anything that's come up, and be on call if anything does come up, and we might even drop that. We'll leave some print cartridges in an accessible place with two lists of printers--for this printer, cartridge X, for that printer, cartridge Y etc.--and send some basic instructions round; thank god the PageWide printers are so easy to change a cartridge on. Other than that, we're all remote. Anyone else already finding it weird to watch films or TV and see people standing too close?

Yup. I was working at home because my daughter gets the flu vaccine and staff in school had shown symptoms, but even though I spent my whole Wednesday off responding to emails (until 8 at night) I still feel bad for leaving the others in my office to the frenzy through the second part of the week, even though I have very good reason to stay away.

Er, just to clarify on this, as it could be ambiguous: That's a compliment! We asked to be pushed back, and they've been very accommodating. We're lucky that our current MIS contract runs to the end of July so we have space to move back (especially without exams). They're not taking any action unilaterally, this is all in discussion, they're being very helpful and flexible indeed

Has anyone got any idea where decent laptops can still be sourced at a reasonable price for home users? I keep getting asked by staff and parents but stock is lower than I've ever seen it. I dunno if @VeryPC, @StoneGroup_JackW, @ICTDirect_Dave or others are doing anything for home users, but eBuyer, Amazon and CurrysPCWorld are all a wash right now--nothing below £500, and those aren't much cop either. It'd be mighty handy if anyone wanted to start offering a decent spec machine (i.e. Core or Ryzen, 8GB, SSD) and not terrible prices for our home users right now!

I wonder how many people will glance at the key workers list, see their category and not make it to the third-from-last paragraph (emphasis mine): If workers think they fall within the critical categories above they should confirm with their employer that, based on their business continuity arrangements, their specific role is necessary for the continuation of this essential public service. You don't need anti-bac soap, is my understanding--the coronavirus has a greasy outer layer that protects it inside the body, so washing with any soap for 20 seconds is enough to destroy it and kill the virus.

Turns out the TidePod challenge was preventative medicine all along!

Shout out to Bromcom, as well: we were meant to have an onsite training day on Wednesday and start ramping up to an April 27th launch, but they've pushed us back to June 1st. Which--as the smallest of silver linings--is actually more convenient for us, now there's no exams to worry about!

In case I haven't said it recently, you're all true mensch

I have never reset so many Kerboodle passwords as I have these last two days. We closed to Yrs7-9 from yesterday and I--supposedly on a day off, using holiday I booked a month ago because I was going to lose it otherwise--ended up sending over 60 emails between 8am and 8pm. It'll all calm down next week once everyone is off, I expect, but right now it's panic stations. HAP+ had a bit of a wobble yesterday morning, but it proved to be one of those "god I love virtualization" moments as we just bumped its processor cores and RAM allocation. Actual bloody magic. Love it. I'm working from home now, anyway (my daughter gets the flu vaccine), and already these two small children are driving me insane. Turns out autistic kids don't appreciate changes to their routine, who'd have known. Tesco at 8am was madness this morning--queues like it was Christmas Eve, at 8:10am on a random Thursday morning--but I did manage to get the last pack of loo roll off the shelf. First I've seen in a week!

That's honestly a better answer than anything I've come up with so far. Evidently I'm giving my users too much credit by thinking they mean what they say!

We just had a teacher ask if she could borrow a monitor for her daughter to do some work at home. The more I think about it as a request the less it makes sense.

I think--from a quick Google, and because I'm sure my PC at home is just Win10 Home, though I can't check right now--that Win10 Home PCs can RDP out, you just can't RDP in. If you can get them on a VPN, they can still open an mstsc session to their work PC.

I was considering this yesterday--do they need to be wiped, or can they just be sprayed and left to air dry? A keyboard will survive a squirt of antibac quite happily, after all. Get round a couple of times a day is all you could hope to do, though.