36Degrees

We have quotas on personal data but not on shared drives so staff just stick their pictures there instead.! I usually resize to 1920 x 1200 as that is the maximum resolution of any monitor we have, the data size is greatly reduced and pictures usually look fine when printed A4. Most usually want to put them on PowerPoints anyway - or as a tiny image on a single page Word document...

Good job OFSTED aren't rating the Government as they probably wouldn't get an "Outstanding" with this policy: Source Document

Same here. Went from middle to upper school and the Maths set was exactly the same as before with one exception - the other 36Degrees was in it! We also have two pupils here in the same year, with the same name, from the same village but different feeder primaries. One is often in trouble but I believe the other is a good student. As far as I am aware our staff ensure they get the right child's details before making any form of contact.

We're in the same boat. Taken me a long time to convince the powers that be that we need new domain controllers (current servers are 9 years old!). I mentioned SIMS support, Office 2010 and Windows 7 as part of the justification and they finally agreed so the order has been placed. However, I think they also heard "all machines will be W7 from September" when I have been repeatedly telling them most of our computers won't run Windows 7 and even sent them a colour coded spreadsheet showing them how old all of our servers, etc. are.

Having spoken to the Services Manager it seems the Capita suspicion was based on using Discover on two different machines - a 5yo laptop and a 6yo PC. I believe that this, along with other ageing hardware such as the DCs, is more likely the issue. Server is a HP Proliant DL380 G7 with a 2.66GHz E5640 Xeon and 12GB RAM running Server 2008 (not R2). Memory useage is static at 11.3GB, CPU useage is mainly between 1% and 15% hasn't gone above 45%. SIMS.mdf is 3.6GB and in theory all teaching and most support staff have access to SIMS, so maximum 115 but more likely maximum 90 concurrently.

I'm after recommendations for server benchmarking tools, specifically those appropriate to a SIMS server. We had a representative from Capita visist yesterday and although I had no contact with him he has told the Services Manager that our it "is blatantly obvious to him is that our SIMS server is really struggling". I personally believe that the issue lies elsewhere but as well as being able to justify my reasoning I'd like some proof if possible.

They've just brightened my afternoon considerably!

We use Each One Counts. They provide the boxes and collect free of charge. We put all our used toner cartridges in the box which aren't originals so just keeps the wheel turning in my view! Any revenue raised goes to charity - you can select from a list when you use the webform to arrange collection. My only issue at the moment is that the last 2 occasions we have requested a collection it has taken a long time for the request to be acknowledged, usually after our preferred collection date! Hopefully it is just a temporary blip though as I have used them for four years previously without any issue.

Perhaps - the interviewees were ex-Home Secratary John Reid and someone else who was heavily involved in UK security strategies from 2000 to 2011 (sorry I can't be more specific, last night's Newsnight isn't on iPlayer as I thought). I don't believe there are "terrorists hiding behind every bush" either and I know the media love to sensationalise, invent facts, print unverified speculation, etc. but I hope that the decision to use COBRA was based on intelligence and not just a knee-jerk reaction.

I watched Newsnight last night and I think it explained why COBRA was involved - 1) They expected these sorts of attacks from extremists during the Olympics 2) Sources telling journalists that one of the suspects had previously tried to join up with terrorist organisations. If the suspects did wait for armed Police, and then rushed them, I believe that they wanted martyrdom. * Edited Link: it was for Tuesday's episode and last night's isn't available at the moment

That sounds right up my Strasse! If you haven't already, this is definitely worth a read Operation Mincemeat My favourite two books ever (so far) are The Count of Monte Cristo and Shogun by James Clavell - I've read both of them many times. I'm trying to read Moby Dick on my Kindle at the moment but I'm finding it very heavy going in places.

(Windows XP) - Added all staff to the Power Users group. Doesn't give them rights to install anything but does give them enough to update SIMS.

Could that be short term pain, long term gain though? I've wanted an extra Tech for I don't know how long and could never get one but we will soon be getting an apprentice. Initially it may be more work for me but hopefully I'll soon see the benefits especially as they will be full time, all year round the same as me and the existing Tech.

In that case I would say it depends on what budget you have - start from there & buy the best you can afford. The NAS we bought last summer was a Dell PowerVault NX3100 with 2 x Intel E5620 Xeons (2.4GHz); 24GB Memory; 2 x 300GB 10K SAS drives for the OS plus 12 x 600GB 15K SAS drives for storage. It came to £6K including an extra 4 port NIC, external SAS controller and a 3Yr NBD warranty.

How much data are you looking to store? How frequently is it accessed? How many concurrent users? Does it need to be rackmounted or free standing? The reason I ask is that in the past I have purchased a nearly new HP server from eBay with 6 SCSI drives for £250 or a brand new NAS with 12 SAS drives for £6000 depending on what I needed ir for.

Very sorry for your loss. As others have said, pets are part of the family.

Off the top of my head I'd say probably the HP 4050 printer in ICT - I was told it was a couple of years old when I started here in 2004!

Balance Urgent v Important - learn how to explain to someone that because they've left it until the last minute it is URGENT to them but not necessarily IMPORTANT to you. Balance priorities - learn how to explain to someone (including SLT) that you will have to resolve the problem with all of the computers in Classroom X not working before you work out why they can't print or why they can't access a particular website to buy a present for their wife, dress, shoes, etc. Balance previous employment messages - learn how to distinguish between "at my last school" being a genuine attempt to help you by suggesting a solution they've seen previously or being another whine about not having something that the last school they worked at had. This latter example is usually a school that a) had much more money than yours or b) had a system that required a lot of technical knowledge or support to make work and you've already determined is not suitable or too expensive (see point a)

The devil is in the detail - what level of outsourcing are they considering? Example: a teacher here worked in a school where support requests had to be submitted on the helpdesk, but the helpdesk staff were not located at the school only the technicians. The toner ran out when printing off course work and even though the technicians (and toner cartridges) were in the office next door he had to submit a helpdesk request and then wait for that to be dealt with, prioritised and allocated to the onsite staff.

Whenever I've listened to Brian Moore or read his comments it is precisely this that he complains about. There are laws about binding on the shirt not the arm, pushing before the ball's in, putting the ball down the centre, ect. that are routinely ignored at the top level. Also, as he did actually play in the front row, not just in the scrum, I believe he at least speaks from experience. As I said, England were awful and although there were some strange decisions at the scrum they did not affect the outcome.

Steve Walsh did make some strange decisions (telling Tom Youngs if he moved again he would penalise him - WTF?) but ultimately Wales played very well and we were awful. They deserved to win and they deserved to win by the margin they did.

Configure Smoothwall and more importantly do so with the correct gateway settings!

OK - we're progressing!! I can now ping the Smoothwall box from the subnet and I can access the Smoothwall box through IE. I can also access our VLE using it's public IP address so if I throw in a little DNS we should be cooking with gas. Huge thanks to everyone for your help.

Main router is LEA controlled so I can't access it. I did a Cisco course through the OU about 8 years ago and on a normal week I would struggle to remember any of it - this week I can just about remember my own name.

I'm not using the actual network addresses in my posts (don't really know why!), but thought using 100 would make it clearer and also decided to specify that subnet is /24 whereas /22 is the main. In all honesty I'm starting to think I am wasting too much time that I don't have trying to resolve a problem that should be way down my priorities.