Halfmad

Well I just found out that the guys in central IT have been hit badly too, with some of them it's justified I guess but others it's definately not. Server specialist, bloody good at his job is losing £9,110. What's really mad is that the council probably spent that much last year training him and now he can walk! madness! but it's nice in some way to know I'm not the only one!

Cheers Andie lots of useful info

I won't join a union, they're in the back pocket of the council as far as I'm concerned. Essentially the only way you get anywhere in our council is by being a union rep and doing as you're told. I'll work something out, my boss unlike many values me and wants me to stay. The last two network managers were frankly a joke and they've noticed a huge improvement since I started. If things get iffy I'll call my cousin, she's a lawyer I doubt they will though, too many people watching this for the council to have slipped up legally. There will be appeals but we all know they've timed it so a majority of staff go off on holiday and forget about what's coming.

Mine was at 39 degrees (not a joke) feb/march last year. Asked my boss for an air con unit (I'd only just started) and it arrived the next day. Free standing but connects to a pipe that vents outside. works a treat, room is always around 22-24 degrees now having said that the atmosphere in the room is extremely dry, I'm sure it's why i've gotten so many chest infections over the past year. Hey ho, new school in 2009 If I could control the temperature exactly i'd set it at 20 or 21. any lower and it'd be too cold for sitting working in. I do have to work in the room though - it doubles as my office. i'll post some pictures on monday to show you the hell hole

well as it turns out it seems to be mostly cleaners, technicians, library workers that have been targetted, some have been given small increases but are now at the top of their new grade - meaning they'll never get another pay rise. It's crafty as hell. I'm willing to be the gap between managers and staff has widened rather a lot to I can't believe they've targetted people under £20,000/year. It's sick.

The appeals process is outlined in a letter I've been given with my new contract, along with a statement telling me to either sign and return it by the 22nd or they'll send me a letter in september offering to "let me go". The unions haven't agreed to anything as yet, the council is pushing ahead and using the 4 year protected scheme as an carrot to keep us quiet - as it's better than a 3 year freeze. I'm guessing that a vast majority of people will be at the same wage after 4 years, mine will be close but it depends how much the cost of living rises are. I'll appeal on grounds that not only do I have more duties but I also have no technician, frankly if they gave me a technician I'd be over the moon but looking at it realistically I can't see that happening within 4 years at the speed the council works.

Yeah I wasn't too happy when it happened as I was in the middle of half a dozen other jobs at the time. The activation worked fine the first time, no idea why it wouldn't on the second install I did. Apparently you have to do it once for each tutor PC, it should work through proxy servers fine but doesn't - I've been told they're trying to improve this. Fortunately it doesn't seem to need to you do it each time you use it, although I haven't tried it under a different user. If I have to activate it for each user I'll go mad. NO I'll just ask for my money back Deployment worked great though, NSS9 deployed to XP computers nice and quick without any whinging about admin shares etc.

Problem solved, seems that NSS has problems authenticating behind a proxy and it can be a bit hit or miss. Used the live chat option on their website and got the code I needed from a very helpful lady

I can't get it to activate online, even though I'm connected to the internet! All the detail is in correctly, I've even tried a reboot but I'm being prompted for an activation code after it fails to authenticate online. Any ideas? It's rather bizarre!

that's something he said straight away this morning, he'll push for an upgrade as I do look after our primary schools as well as the high school. Only 1 day a week but it counts as extra duties and responsibility.

That would be a certain Computer components website, with a nice blue background on the discussion forums wouldn't it? Sorry, off topic! Indeed it would! Anyway got my results - pay frozen for 4 years, no cost of living increase, no increment increase. By then it should have caught up with my current pay level. They've rated the top of my job scale as £2200 less than I currently get. I'm right at the top of my grade as well so in effect after the 4 years I'll only ever get cost of living increases. That's the bit that's really annoyed me, I've effectively been told I'll never be worth more regardless of what I learn or the training I go on, it's impossible for me to be more valuable to the council. Headteacher is furious and has asked me to appeal in october, if that fails I think I'll ask him for a training budget that allows me to choose which courses I go on each year. If I knew each year I was going to have something to look forward too I'd probably be happy to stay for a good while. I love my job but in 4 years I will have a family to look after which might well change things! It could have been worse and in effect I don't have a pay cut until next april as I won't get anything then, however I will be furious if I find out those in the central IT department were put in the grade above me - they do 5 fixes a day (adobe reader installs, printer repairs, etc) which is about 2 hours work for most people if they include traveling time!

Out of curiosity is anyone using the "name and connectivity server" ? I'm tempted to use it purely because of the number of clients we'll have, anyone had any problems with it?

We used Virex on our macs although in all honesty I think we had 1 virus in 4 years - that was on 3000 macs.

Sadly it's all legal and above board - apparently. All I can say is I bet the gap between most managers and those they manage widens dramatically, they need large numbers of people to lose money in order to fund the boost they're giving to other staff so it'll be the little people who get it in the neck. Srochford - yeah I should be fine, although they have to put me on the network manager level I do have it in writing about my pay etc from the headteacher as part of my acceptance for the post. Sadly I can see a lot of strike action, 19% of people are facing pay freeze then in 4 years a pay cut (if it hasn't caught up). Everyone else is getting a pay rise of some kind, even if it's only tiny. I'm guessing they'll be trying to make the majority happy to keep the rest quiet, but I doubt the unions will be tricked by it. Narked off as I really like my job and would hate to be forced into leaving because someone else decided to devalue my work. What really gets me is that although we can appeal, everyone in our post in this region has to do it as a group, not on an individual basic. We can't compare our jobs with those in other councils either, essentially they're making it as difficult as possible to cause a fuss. If it's bad I'll simply work to rule, all of the advanced and heavy tech work that I'd got planned will be shelved and I certainly won't be working 10 hour days over the summer as I'd planned. They'll shoot themselves in the foot. Not going to get stressed about it, plenty of jobs out there - shame I like this one so much

Radio 2 or 4 if I don't want music. I can't listen to Radio 1 anymore, does my head in.

Well tomorrow (Friday1st) I should be finding out what my pay will be under the single status agreement. There's a few things that worry me: 1. the person they spoke to as part of the evaluation had very little knowledge, experience and far less duties and responsibilities compared to the other 9 Network managers in the county. Essentially he's the worst person they could have picked and the lowest paid by quite a bit (rightfully too). 2. The council have as yet never sent me a contract that had the correct wage on it, 4 attempts over 15 months that I've refused to sign. Legally i'm fine as I have moved internally, technically I'm still covered under my previous contract. I can see them, however evaluating me under one of their 4 mysterious wages - all of them at least 5 grand less than I actually get. 3. They say they spoke to 1 in 5 employees. Yet there's 10 network managers, they only spoke to one and they spoke to nobody at all at any of the 8 high schools I've asked (there are only 11 high schools). I'm really annoyed as I LOVE my job and had just compliled a huge list of work to do over the holidays. I've just got engaged and we'll be looking to get a large house and get married in 2009 which means a LOT of saving up. Effectively if they do freeze it and I face a large cut they'll end up losing me even though I want to stay. I've worked so hard over the past 14 months since starting there that I'll be gutted to leave all that hard work for someone else to come into and claim credit for in our review later this year. grr! It'll be interesting to say the least when I get my interview and my payment letter tomorrow from the head teacher. I've been asking around for suggestions of things to do if I get a pay freeze/cut. there include: 1. Stand up and as I slowly unzip my fly say "this is going to hurt you far more than it'll hurt me." 2. Hand over a brown envelope and say "I'm really sorry." then walk out. Of course it's an empty envelope.. 3. Put my bottom lip out and sulk, whenever anyone tries to comfort me "go limp" like a child does. 4. Stand up, walk out but before I close the door mutter under my breath "I'll be back." 5. Smile happily, say I enjoyed the joke and ask for the correct letter.

I give them full staff access if the head of their department asks for them to get network access, not had any problems. I don't bother otherwise, a lot of the time it takes us so long to get email/internet logins back from our central IT department that the students have left.. No idea why they don't let me add them

Ah perhaps that'd be handy although with NSS I can see the labels remotely before I log in anyway. I shall have a think!

I looked at BGinfo, not entirely sure it's useful though. All of the information is easily obtainable and I rarely need to know mac addresses etc. It'd come in hand now and then but I don't want to add fluff

If any? Just curious, I'm looking at making a simple custom one for my school. Probably one for staff, one for pupils and another one for the admin group. Suggestions?

Oops just found this in another thread! Here: http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7391&highlight=wallpaper sub SetWallPaper dim i,j, oShell, oFSO set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell") set oFSO=createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") randomize set oFolder=ofso.getfolder("\\student\repl\bitmaps") redim sFiles(1) i=0 for each ofile in oFolder.files sName=lcase(oFile.name) if right(sName,3)="bmp" then sFiles(i)=oFile.name i=i+1 redim preserve sFiles(i) end if next j=rnd*i ofso.copyfile "\\student\repl\bitmaps\" & sFiles(j),"c:\windows\student.bmp",true sRegPath="HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\" x=oShell.regwrite(sRegPath & "Wallpaper","C:\windows\student.bmp","REG_SZ") x=oShell.regwrite(sRegPath & "WallpaperStyle","2","REG_DWORD") x=oShell.regwrite(sRegPath & "TileWallPaper","0","REG_DWORD") end sub

We have the usual problem of kids changing the desktop backgrounds, rather than just set it to one image that never changes I was hoping to have a few I could alternate between. Is anyone doing something like this at the moment? I want any wallpaper I do set to be forced and unchangable, but will alter it now and then just to spruce things up. There's a few threads around about setting the wallpaper but I couldn't find any about changing it regularly.

I thought about that but I'd rather avoid renaming dozens of PCs. Having said that I'll be doing it during the holidays so it's an ideal time and would encourage me to reimage them all (and hence speed them all up). Hmm now you've got me thinking! It'd certainly sort out a lot of niggly problems I know the staff have been having.

I've got 150 licenses of NSS9 coming before the summer break, finally! What I'm planning to do is: 4 classrooms of 20 PCs + 1 teachers PC Teachers PC controls only the room it's in. rest of the licenses will be on staff PCs, to help me quickly fix any problems they encounter. I was going to set it up with the teachers PC in the suite having a known list of computers to connect to - is this the best way? I've noticed whilst using the trial that it's not always 100% reliable, pretty sure I had a case of the IP of a computer changing and us having to re-add it. My main worry is that if I restrict it using a KEY code then I will have to mess about with my own install in order to see computers in these departments. My PC will have access to all computers. Any suggestions on how best to set it up? use Keys or known list or is there a decent reliable alternative to that?

"The Zapper" gets my vote, he cracks me up. I sense a future "pointless poll" emerging...