sonofsanta

After a few weeks of taking a Shaun of the Dead approach to the whole thing--let's go for a nice pint and wait for it all to blow over--the flurry of announcements and actions by European governments has finally gotten me worried. France and Germany's actions more than anything, tbh--they're level headed, sensible places at the moment, and their reaction is pretty extreme. 19yo at home has got Crohn's and is on immunosuppresant medication, so falls into the "adults who get the flu vaccine" category. I can get a lot of my work done via remote access. Emailed the Head to ask if I can work from home after today. ETA: Head says yes

Knives Out is brilliant and clever and you can tell everyone is having so much fun making it. Rian Johnson is probably a must-watch writer/director for me now after this, Last Jedi and Looper. Daniel Craig's American accent is truly atrocious, though. Finally, revenge for Dick van Dyke! Jojo Rabbit is just as brilliant and clever, although in a different way. Hits some real notes of pathos and tragedy, but maintains its absurdity to the very end (the German Shepherds!)

short distances is a small phrase doing a lot of work right there Ethernet hasn't been at 100mbps as standard for about a decade If they've only just done the proof-of-concept work, it's about 10-15 years away at least, by which time 10Gbps may well be the common standard, and then this is far less impressive In short: tabloid reporting!

I dunno why you don't like Unifi, but I worry you're missing out for reasons even you can't articulate. We've had Unifi in for 5 years now and it's been absolutely solid. We were only deploying to support BYOD--all our own kit is hardwired desktops, no laptops or tablets to speak of--so we didn't want to spend the big money on Ruckus etc. Unifi is the perfect range for being enterprise level without hitting that enterprise pricing. TP-Link etc. are home user stuff, and any money you save on purchasing you're going to lose on time spent supporting them. The obvious answer to your problem is Unifi, and you really need to give them a fair shot. (NB: I don't own shares or get commission! I just like the kit)

I'd agree; the penultimate season was getting into thornier issues around "no ethical consumption under capitalism", which was fantastic to see on a network sitcom of all places, but the last season stepped back from that level of moral philosophy to be about tying up the story instead. The story ended on the second-to-last episode, really, but I can't really begrudge them the last episode given that I cried my way through the entire 54 minutes!

Thanks everyone--we've arranged a visit to @DODICT for Wednesday to have a natter with him and his experience as data boss and person what done the migration, as well as his PowerBI expert, so that's pretty much perfect for our needs. I look forward to paying this favour forward in time, especially as we squeezed extra pricing out of Bromcom in exchange for being a reference site!

That sounds ideal tbh (we're coming from CMIS too, and PowerBI is a big area of interest for us)--I'll ask Paul if he minds the drive or if he'd prefer a phone call at that distance (about 90min up the A1, by the looks of it). We're only a single school so the shorter timeline should be feasible; Bromcom seem to think so! Will talk to my AH and PM you in a bit cheers!

We're looking at moving to Bromcom soon, but wanting to discuss with another school before we send the PO in. I'm a fan of finding my own leads rather than asking the salesperson, as you're more likely to get a representative answer rather than a cherry-picked glowing report. At this point we think it's very unlikely we'll find out anything that will put us off Bromcom, from everything we've seen so far of the system and its competitors, so the conversation we want to have is as much about the migration process and lessons learned as it is about whether we should move in this direction. We have been waiting on someone at a local school to get back to us with a date for three weeks, and they finally did, and their answer was "oh, turns out everything is handled centrally, there's no point in you visiting here". Which is rather inconvenient, as I've been putting off arranging anything with anyone else while we waited on this answer, and so now everything is a rush--we'd originally hoped to have the PO in by tomorrow to make an Easter launch. Anyway, long story short, I (Network Manager) and Paul Smith (Assistant Head wot does data analysis, assessments & timetabling) would very much like to have conversations with our oppos in another school. We're in Grantham, Lincs; is there anyone on Bromcom, ideally who's moved in the last year or two, who's within an hour and could spare the time for a cup of tea either tomorrow or Wednesday to have a chat with us? If no-one is that close then a phone call would suffice at this short notice. Thank you all! --Matt

We have a separate VLAN set up that's connected to its own port on the Smoothwall. Sixth Form and Staff authenticate through RADIUS (Unifi APs, bouncing to the Smoothwall) using AD credentials. Do you guys have supported devices are students allowed to use anything? Whatever they like. How do students submit work? Email, OneDrive, Teams, HAP+--basically anything they could use to do it from home. Can staff monitor their screens? No, but it's only sixth form, and they only really use devices in frees--as far as I'm aware no teaching staff rely on students having BYOD devices to replace using an IT suite. What do you do about printing and applications please? They can get Office 365 through the EES, other stuff we sometimes recommend they get a trial but no software license I've seen allows for installation on BYOD. We don't allow for printing from BYOD as PCounter doesn't have the capability; we tell them to email it/upload it to their own account then print from a domain machine. Not ideal, but it comes up surprisingly rarely tbh.

By exam regs they have to be able to work it out themselves. I coded up a JavaScript clock similar to that ExamInvigilator software someone linked above that gave you a countdown of how long was left, and within months the exam boards put out guidance that we weren't allowed to provide this information, only start time, end time and a clock for the current time. Which, really, is the exams system in a nutshell: here is an arbitrary hoop to jump through that has no relevance on your expertise in the subject examined but exists only to create unnecessary stress and pressure, in particular for those already less academically inclined. Our exams take place in a big hall that already has a projector, so at the start of the season we log on a laptop, load up a simple webpage with a digital clock, and just show the invigilators how to turn the projector on and off. We've got wall clocks as well but if you're sat in the middle of the hall they're difficult to see.

I'd be fine accepting that if we'd had a decent straight adaptation first for this to be the alternative to, but they've never done the Watch stuff before, and Vimes is my favourite

It feels redundant installing a second printer in her office alongside her existing printer though, which I'd upgrade if it weren't locked in that contract. I suspect such MFDs are the only game in town now though

So we have had, for god-even-knows-how-long-but-at-least-a-decade, a Canon FC220 photocopier or two lurking around site. They're small, they're slow, but they suit the purposes of the attendance officer who wants to quickly copy sick notes etc. in her cramped office. Sadly, the one she has is falling apart bit by bit. I'd upgrade her HP x451dw to an MFD but the printer is on contract and it's impossible to change devices mid-contract thanks to the rules brought in to prevent scam artists and their terrible laptop leasing. We've offered a desktop scanner but a change in work practice is too much for some people, it seems, and she absolutely wants to continue having a physical copy (to the point of struggling along with this half-broken Canon rather than getting a scanner in). So we need a new small copier. Footprint is the most important thing, but I'm struggling to find anything even remotely equivalent. Anyone got any ideas?

The biggest concern for me is the revelation that Sybil will be some kind of kick-ass night-time vigilante. The casting of her was already wildly off-mark from the books--recasting the one fat, older woman for a young hot thing is rather telling--but "the formidable Lady Sybil Ramkin, last scion of Ankh-Morpork’s nobility, who’s trying to fix the city’s wrongs with her chaotic vigilantism" is the complete flipping opposite of the kind, motherly Lady Sybil in the books, who rounds off Sam's sharp edges and kicks ass through empathy and understanding, who has a dragon sanctuary in her manor not a bloody bat cave. The looks is all weird and wrong, too. With GoT and Witcher etc. there's no shame in high fantasy on screen at the moment, so why are they going for this weird cybersteampunk look? I dunno. I had been optimistic, but I'm getting veeeery wary now.

I've done exactly the same! Was on hold for 90 minutes one afternoon, gave up when I had to clock out; phoned up again in the morning, put it on speaker assuming I'd be on hold forever again, panicked completely when they answered straight away and spilt tea all over my desk. Says something about their support when "reasonable response" results in so much shock and panic.

I'm in a quandary here, because I know that saying "they don't make them like that anymore!" and "we'll never see its like again..." makes me a crotchety old man, but... they don't make them like that anymore, and we'll never see its like again. The time on Windows 7 was the most stable time I've known as a sysadmin. Partly that's because the upgrade from XP allowed me to shape the network and the GPOs the way I wanted them, rather than the way I'd inherited them, but overnight it honestly made one of the tech posts here redundant (not in a literal employment sense!) because there was so much less firefighting needed than on XP. It was just stable, and freed us up to do more interesting project work and push things forward rather than scrabbling to keep them from backsliding as with XP. And it was so easy to configure as a sysadmin! I like Win10 as a consumer, but as a sysadmin the stuff I need to make it work across a network is either half-baked and incomplete (U-EV) or unnecessarily complicated compared to previous (Start Menu layouts) or just bloody impossible because Microsoft think they know better (anyone managed to remove the Mixed Reality Centre yet? No? Me either). Microsoft are so concerned with getting the new features out of the door on their 6 month cycle now that they just about get it working for the user-facing aspect but run out of time to provide any decent configuration or documentation for us sysadmins. Goodnight, sweet prince. You were the best they ever made.

No complaints here as yet (Win10 1803 x64, Outlook 16.0.4927.1000 x86)

My kids' primary went without inspection for a decade or so because it was outstanding, and lo and behold, turns out it slipped to Requires Improvement. (Change in leadership is what caused it, IMHO.) I don't have a problem with the idea of inspection per se, more with the daft things Ofsted prioritise that seem completely unrelated to how teachers actually go about their jobs. If the only time formal lesson plans are produced are when we're expecting Ofsted, what's the point of judging by them?

Without exaggeration, I learnt how to do my job from EduGeek. I'd have sunk completely in my first year in this role without this place to beg, borrow and learn from.

Given that not all of my EduGeek time in work is strictly professional, then no, I don't. Though I confess I only really check out of hours if there's been an interesting conversation that day; if it's about work related stuff then I'm better off checking in the morning when I can do something about it, otherwise I'll forget without the "new posts" notification!

I've needed to chase them a lot recently as well, sometimes going weeks without a response. I've found phoning in the morning to be more successful than phoning in the afternoon, and chasing them via email does get you there. I did just get a good contact before Christmas, and then I emailed him about something ongoing and got an autoreply that he'd left, so never mind!

I dunno how you're getting that SIMS pricing then, as their quote is about 25% more than Bromcom straight out of the gate, even before any discussions on price. (Not that I disbelieve you! Just frustrated at the obfuscation and varying levels of pricing across schools...)

So far Bromcom have not been particularly hard to push down on price, though--they know they're effectively the scrappy young startup here, and need to grow fast and win schools to get word of mouth out. Of the options we have prices for at the moment (current FacilityCMIS, SIMS and Bromcom), Bromcom are the cheapest. If anyone else comes in cheaper on the quotes I'm waiting on, they've hinted very strongly that they'll price match.

It's back in the car now! Just with one little internal cable disconnected I don't think I do, but honestly I can live with it--it's an exciting race each morning to see if the CD PLAYER ERROR or OIL CHANGE NEXT SERVICE warning comes up first! (I have checked my oil, it is fine, the service is due in the next month anyway, I promise I'm not ignoring the important message...)

Update! Spent a bit of time over the holidays trying different things. Untwisting and reseating the cables didn't make any difference, nor did disconnecting the aerial cable. But! The stereo box itself is pretty easy to get into (once you make the effort to go and buy the correct size Torx screwdriver, anyway) and then the CD player is connected via a simple ribbon cable that you can just tease out, not even any clips involved or anything. Since then I've gone 5 consecutive commutes without any weird noises at all--it still says CD PLAYER ERROR when I turn the car on, but I'd expect that now as I've deliberately broken it--so I'm feeling pretty optimistic at this point that it's sorted. I've not yet been brave enough to screw the dashboard back together completely, mind you--my god, getting that plastic fascia off is a nightmare... I only ever managed 4 of the 6 clips and just lived with having to squeeze my screwdriver into the gap! Cheers all