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browolf

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Blog Entries posted by browolf

  1. browolf

    Got a new phone

    By browolf,

    It was an impulse buy off ebay, but I've had my eye on this phone for a while and the usual price of them seemed a little too much.
     
    In this instance the seller had bough a bunch for business use & then decided they weren't right and was selling them off practically new at half price. ~ £35!
     
    I give you the BENQ E72
     
    http://www.cellaz.com/photos/news/4443.jpg
     
    as you can see a very stylish slim windows mobile 6 phone. Benq is not a massively well known company, they mostly make projectors and monitors. What they lack in product range they make up in consistently well rated products. In fact their manual for this phone is the most amazingly comprehensive phone manual I've ever seen!
     
    I've always preferred wm for phone os but hate the idea of a 'big phone'. I had previously tried an I-mate SPM which is the physical equivalent of this phone but all the ebay versions with wm6 use a well dodgy cooked rom, mine came with broken T9 and something messed up in power management. After a month it frequently failed to turn on after a reboot.
     
    So the E72 is wm6 from the manufacturer, slim, small and relatively cheap. Win Win.
  2. browolf

    My revolutionary idea

    By browolf,

    was to put a form on the front page of the intranet that allows kids to report problems.
     
    The thinking behind this is that good kids are likely to be more thoughtful than some teachers but also teachers can tell kids to use it without having to send them out of the lesson with a note. Abuse of the form ought to be prevented by the fact it notifies them and us that we know who they are and where they are. Integrated windows authentication on the IIS site allows the script to get their username from server variables. We can also use abtutor to talk to the child if we need to verify anything they've reported. We can reward them with a note in sims for being helpful.
     
    We have an exchange server and a helpdesk admin who manages jobs. I just made the form send email to an an alias of the helpdesk email. An alias so the mail can be filtered in outlook.
  3. browolf

    Absolutely shocking

    By browolf,

    how bad my memory is these days! I dread to think what it'll be like in 10-15 years!
     
    Seriously I just had the best idea ever whilst doing something else and totally forgot what it was 10 mins later. I was sat at my desk thinking what the hell was that awesome idea I just had....fortunately I had mentioned it to the rest of the office at the time.
     
    So then I needed to create an email alias. Clear as day I could remember the dialog box I needed to do it but could I find it?....no I could not.
     
    So I spent 10 mins on google images looking for a picture of the dialog box with the hope it will give some indication of how to get to it. Then some further confusion as to why the tab isn't present on the properties of this user I'm looking at.
     
    Finally to realise all along I'd been looking at the wrong account. Found the account, found the tab, found the dialog box. /sigh
     
    Now I have to remember how to make forms in html, asp & mapi...
  4. browolf

    backup update

    By browolf,

    The less critical backups are writing to a fixed external drive. The weekly backup is writing to a external drive we swap every week and put in the safe. The disk array of the backup server has approx 1TB free. The drive has been thoroughly de-fragmented. I had intended to duplicate the weekly backup to write onto the disk array too but
     
    When I came back from the hols I noticed I'd accidently left a test backup over-writing 30gb every day. Then I discovered this since 30GB file was really badly fragmented.
     
    A quick look on google and I discovered bad fragmentation is a known issue of backup exec 10d. Then I found a patch to enable pre-allocation of files. Yay! The I found the patch required SP1...../sigh
     
    Until recently no one messed with the backup server as it was installed by Zentek and we didn't want to break it. Naturally no one updated it either. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere installing BE SP1 required installing all the agents again. I don't know anything about that and I don't think it would be a good idea to experiment with a major upgrade in the middle of term. Looks like getting out backup strategy sorted out properly is going to have to wait till the summer hols now.
  5. browolf
    Attached a 1GB external usb drive to the backup server to offload some less critical backups to, freeing up space on the server for more, more critical backups.
     
    I wonder how long it will take to write 588GB (c. 650,000 files!) onto a usb2 drive.....?
  6. browolf
    According to a recent study, the likelihood of people misrepresenting themselves online is actually very low although is was noted that women are more likely to fib about their weight and men more likely to fib about other subjects such as how serious they are about finding a long term relationship.
     
    Source:
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308102204.htm
  7. browolf
    This morning I walked to work, it was lovely, sunny, a slight chill but no breeze. As the weather was all morning.
     
    At 12:20 the other tech comes back from lunch, drenched! The heavens had just opened! The window in our office is mostly covered up so we hadnt noticed the sudden cloudiness!
     
    At 12:30 its snowing with massive flakes
     
    12:40 Sleeting.
     
    13:10 sunny not a cloud in the sky from out window!
  8. browolf

    Ofsted day 1

    By browolf,

    So far so good. We've been instructed not to do anything (at all) that might interfere with smooth running of the computers/network. A couple of easy days for us then! We've had some call-outs for projector issues and computers not logging on but apart from that everything seems to be working as it should.
  9. browolf
    Yes, Ofsted inspection on monday!
     
    I'm not sure how much this will affect us. Either, they'll avoid IT like the plague for more 'reliable' activities or they'll use IT to try and impress inspectors and consequently they'll want everything suddenly fixed.
     
    It occurs to me, that instead of outsourcing IT support, the government could have created a subsection of Ofsted to specifically inspect ICT provision. Seems to me that would have been a better idea.
  10. browolf
    So says a report on Science Daily
     
    Counterfactual thinking is thinking about things that might have happened that didn't. Counter to the facts I suppose.
     
    CF thinking more typically occurs after an event that has a negative result. The "What if" factor.
     
    The researchers discovered that reality has more favourable meanings when students had actively considered alternative possibilities.
     
    Such a trait would be an advantage in our field. Things do go wrong and the ability to consider possible alternative plans and "what if"s is one way to better ones systems.
  12. browolf

    Java updates

    By browolf,

    I hate it when software changes from something relatively straightforward to something a nightmare. It's easier just to stick to r10 we already have deploying. Another piece of non-uptodate software hardly makes a difference in the scheme of underpatched xp and office2k.
  13. browolf

    Setting up Raid

    By browolf,

    It kind of beggars belief in this day and age that setting up raid is still an esoteric process.
     
    Enter one Fujitsu Siemens primergy tx100 si server. Intention to install as a win 2008 server to run new eclipse library software.
     
    First Attempt: 2008 failing to find hard drives... Realise I needed to use Fujitsu serverview suite to get the OS on.
     
    Second Attempt: Start off with serverview. refuses to install the advanced version of the raid manager, have to use the basic one. Get 2008 on. Realise the server only has one drive. The spec was misleading. Buy another drive.
     
    Third attempt: install new drive, attempt to setup raid in the bios. Nothing in there makes any sense, there's no obvious create raid button. Somehow make it work, it seems like it might be functioning. Apparently it's created the raid off the new blank drive and wiped out the other one.
     
    Fourth Attempt: Start again from scratch, forget that serverview automatically reads the previous config file off the usb drive it needs and end up again with the basic raid manager. Somehow it's gotten unraided.
     
    Fifth Attempt: Start again from scratch, wipe the usb drive first. Get everything installed. Run raid manager. despair over the fact that there's nothing in there that tells me a raid exists or doesnt. there's no 'create raid' button. Apparently the only place the word "raid" is used is in the title of the programme!
     
    uncertain whether raid is actually running or not. 2008 server doesn't see the 2nd drive which could be a good sign.
     
    I spent a couple of days last week watching a mac engineer install snow leopard on a new mac server, it struck me how super easy and obvious setting up the raids on there were. The only explanation is apple have copyright on easy raid setups.
     
    Just used fog to take an image of the server and it's somehow broken it. Probably its partition resizing stuff. Anyways found some online instructions for the LSI raid util. Pretty sure its working now. Starting again from scratch. lets hope serverview doesnt mess it up again.
  14. browolf

    stupid exam software

    By browolf,

    OMG, promissor exam software needs to be rebuilt and redeployed again!!!!!
     
    2 days before we've got to run the onscreen tests. Aaargh.
     
    Finally, on my 4th attempt, found a computer suitable to make an MSI on.
     
    Using wininstall LE. I ♥ that little program.
     
    think i've got it right and sorted out now.
  15. browolf

    Greeeeeaaaatttttt :-S

    By browolf,

    Installing ruby on rails on portable ubuntu on my work pc with the exact same instructions as I used at home. but for some reason I can't start the webserver.
    it says
     
    rails requires rubygems >= 1.3.2
     
    Gems tells me there's no updates to be had. There's a solution on the ubuntu instruction page.
     
    sudo gem install rubygems-update
    sudo update_rubygems.
     
    unfortunately after successful completion of the first line, it has no idea who or what update_rubygems is.
     
    WAIT
     
    this time I used gems instead of apt-get. trying to do it the 'proper' way. hhmph.
  16. browolf
    it's one of those days....my head is mashed and i've only been here like 3.5 hours.
     
    down to 2 staff. our full complement is bare minimum at best
     
    the less technical manager is off for the day finding out about blade servers
    our volunteer helpdesk mom (used be an oracle sysadmin) has gone from 5 days to 2 days a week and not today
    our 3rd tech who works primaries in mornings and here in afternoons has been at the same primary all day all week cos their being ofsted inspected. (the same primary thats has loads of pcs and laptops and no server :-S )
     
    I'm supposed to be installing a new isa2006 cos our aging isa2004/bespoke internet management system on a p3 workstation is actually fine but we have no backup device. run into a problem with sata drivers yesterday trying to install 2k3.
     
    the deployment server has stopped working
     
    got about 5 laptops in the office that are misbehaving
     
    ignoring the helpdesk unless I need to put jobs on it.
     
    <some time later>
     
    taken evasive action. shut the door, covered up the window, letting the phone go to voicemail so i can have lunch and put some more stuff on the helpdesk. On the upside i finally found the correct sata drivers to install 2k3 on this fujitsu pc.
  17. browolf

    days off

    By browolf,

    it's always nice to have a day off, (in lieu) although It was cos I was going to the dentist. I've picked up an extra passenger, although it was a bit hairy at the time as he wasnt sure if he'd be able to fill it. Generally I find the dentist pretty relaxing. I mean it just lying there with your mouth open although I could have done without him mentioning the dreaded R-word.
     
    p.s. my new favourite song of the moment is Indalo by Lesiem
  18. browolf
    windows xp/2003: barely need to think about it
    vista: if i click enough buttons I'm sure i'll find something that looks like xp config
    linux shell:if i read enough sets of instructions hopefully it'll make sense
    linux gui: there's probably an application for it, it's probably fairly obvious what's what in it, hopefully it'll just work
    mac: when i find the control panel equivalent, I expect it'll be in there and be even easier than xp
  19. browolf

    Priorities

    By browolf,

    Sometimes I feel like Im the scientist creating the first nuclear bomb but at the same time I've been tasked with running the nuclear bomb facility helpdesk. It's true I'm the person that probably has the most answers but equally, get distracted at the wrong time and we'll all be blown to smithereens lol:eek:
  20. browolf

    my desk

    By browolf,

    my desk doesnt entirely have a beginning or and end. the worktop starts at one end of the room and goes all the way round to the otherside. I have a section which is mostly my stuff, and is also a dumping ground for stuff people want me to notice. for instance I came in this morning to find a new lenovo desktop plonked squarely in the space between the edge of the desk and the keyboard. as if i wouldnt notice it 2 feet away or something. fortunately the joy of lenovo today is that it deploys from microsoft deployment toolkit unlike the fujitsu's i've been trying the rest of the week. We were pretty much set to tell the NM, yay go with the lenovo's for the next room upgrade but at the last minute fujitsu have pulled out of their .... a deal of the day, offering more ram and bigger monitor for £20 more than the lenovo system. did i mention we have to remove the drives from the fujitsu machines to ghost image them via e-sata.
    its a connundrum to be sure - easier maintenance or better spec. I better try some more to deploy fujitsus
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