CHiLL

I've just started Borderlands 3, just because. I also have Control, Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved from the Master Chief Collection on my list. After that I don't really have any games that interest me at the moment.

I have done more of the Joe Wicks thing this week and I think it's been good. I've found it really tough, my chest is a bit tight though. I can do the cardio stuff, but the things that require muscle work, like press ups, planks, burpees, squats, lunges, etc...I'm really struggling with. So the more I do it, the better I'll get hopefully. I've also dug out my dumbbells, so I'm thinking over the weekend period of rest (as he doesn't do it over the weekend), I might use them to exercise my arms and shoulders. Since most of his exercises are cario and leg based, this should hopefully help when it comes to doing press ups during the exercuses.

Finished We Happy Few - I enjoyed the story for the most part, though it became a chore for me to play after a while. A lot of repetition in terms of types of tasks. It is obvious that the game was extremely rushed, with the most obvious being the massive repetition of NPCs. You can be walking down one street with say 20 people on it and there are only four NPC models, so there's multiple of the same old lady, young lady, young man, etc. It's a bit disappointing. I also played and finished Metro Exodus. I quite liked it, however the story was meh. It's the weakest of the three for me and it didn't suit an open world game - it played much better as a linear game. I have Borderlands 3, Control and The Master Chief Collection (so Halo Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved) on my list as next games to play. Other than that, I don't really have any more games. I did think about Doom Eternal, but I've heard so many bad things about it that I don't know if I can be arsed. Maybe if I've played and watched all the TV I have and I'm still in isolation.

Tiger King - Absolutely nuts and very compelling. Hard to believe that it all actually happened. The Boys - Really enjoyed this. I knew it was meant to be good and very violent with strong language. It didn't disapoint. I have Picard on my list next - however I never watched TNG. I watched all of Voyager when I was a teenager and have watched Discovery...but I can't bring myself to commit all the time required to watch TNG. Is it worth me watching Picard?

Breaking Bad - because I'm that guy who hasn't seen it. Although I'm finding it really difficult watching TV in recent times. My attention span is non-existent and I have the urge to check my phone all the time.

Yeah, especially a team like Williams, who manufacture all their own parts, so are extremely well set up for that process. I did hear that teams were doing this at the start of this whole thing but it kind of went silent. It makes sense for these mutli-million pound state of the art manufacturing facilities to be put to use during the off season.

I have my PC (1080 Ti) hooked up to my TV (LG OLED C8) via a HDMI 4:4:4 certified cable in an effort to play games in HDR (that support it). I understand that the 1080 Ti is limited to HDMI 2.0b and can only support 10-bit 4:2:2 or 8-bit 4:4:4...however I've ran into issues. If I set Windows to HDR and leave the Nvidia control panel to "Use default colour settings", the TV picks up HDR mode fine. However I don't know what it's been set to in terms of 8-bit/10-bit and 4:2:2/4:4:4. When the Nvidia control panel is set the default, the grayed out override settings change to 8-bit RGB. I don't know if that means anything. The Colour Management Control Panel applet doesn't have any profiles assigned and the TV shows as a Generic PnP Monitor. The Advanced tab has the all the settings as default and the device profile selected is "System default (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) If I override the settings in the Nvidia control panel and specify 10-bit 4:2:2, everything goes goes very pink. If I set it as 8-bit 4:4:4, it appears to be fine. Though I'd prefer to use 10-bit if possible. So if I leave it as default Windows settings - what's it being set to? Windows isn't very good at telling me that sort of thing. (That I can find anyway)

Hah. My cat is like that, she doesn't know what to do! Though cats are experts at social distancing, so maybe we can learn something from them!

For the moment, he's leading the government from home, so there shouldn't be much change unless his health seriously deteriorates. I reckon there will be more tests, however it'll start with the government and health workers. I don't think it will change for us normies, not for a while yet anyway.

We've tried it a couple of times over the past couple of years to see if they'd fixed it, but no. At it's worst, about 85% of the computers in an IT suite wouldn't work because they weren't and couldn't be activated. We switched to Office 2019 Professional Plus and have had no issues. The only downside is that 2019 is based on Office 365, so locked to the version of Office 365 that it forked from, so something like 1806. It only receives security updates, not feature updates.

Shared Activation doesn't work with O365 if multiple users use the same workstation. It'll appear to work at the beginning, however once you get to the fourth, fifth, sixth user...you'll start running into activation errors. So it's no use in somewhere like a shared IT room or library.

I've been following The Body Trainer's PE stuff on YouTube this week. I do find him a little annoying, but maybe that's the norther in me. I'm not doing it live because sod doing exercise at 9am, but doing it later in the day. I'm very unfit at the best of times and now I'm even more sedentary whilst not in work. Since my gym is closed, I thought I'd give it a go. It is geared more towards keeping the kids fit while they're at home but it suites me fine due to my lack of fitness. I cast the video from my phone to my TV and do it in my living room. Sadly I only have roller blinds on the window, so pull them down, otherwise I'm on full show to everyone! Not something people want to see, trust me! You don't need that much floor space, I'm doing it all within the confines of my 2x1.5m rug. It's a 5 minute warm up, followed by 10x 30 second exercise/30 second rest. Then a 2 minute rest. Then another 10x 30 second exercise/30 second rest. Generally the exercise revolves around cardio and some muscle work. Cardio involves things such as jumping/hopping around, star jumps, running on the spot and variations on basic things. The muscle work involves squats, lunges, crunches, slow burpees, planks and variations on those. I missed Monday and Tuesday's ones because I forgot about them, so I'm trying to catch up. I did one yesterday and two back to back today. That was a mistake. I'm not so much walking but hobbling around the house because my legs hurt. I'm determined to carry on with it though.

My brother-in-law is a pilot for Ryan Air and they've pretty much all been put on standby, so pretty much grounded. However they only get paid when they fly, so they're getting no income at the moment and aviation industry aren't included in the government aid package. Ryan Air haven't made an official statement for employee yet either, it's pretty rough.

We're working from home too. We have a proviso that one of us needs to come in once a week to ensure the IT services are alright and also come in if something can't be resolved remotely. We haven't heard anything different from management, though Boris' speech yesterday may change that as it's not necessary to go in just to check the systems, since that can all be done remotely.

I've just checked and I have a measly 10 concurrent connections at the moment. I suspect most staff are just treating this as time off at the moment because it's still fresh. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll see more connections when staff are bored out of their minds. I think I mainly followed the 4SysOps one. Coupled with Microsoft#'s official documentation, as well as one from Richard Hicks. My VPN is configured to use certificates and user credentials for authentication. That means the user's machine being used to connect the VPN must be domain joined, in order to have the certificate installed, the VPN profile must be installed and the user must have logged into the device at least once whilst connected to the domain, so a cached profile exists. That way, when off site, they log in with their domain credentials, which initially logs them into their cached profile and the VPN profile will automatically connect as it knows it's not on the corporate network. The VPN connection authenticates using the installed certificate and user credentials (which are obtained silently as the user is already logged in). I hope that makes sense. I don't know if there are other authentication methods for the Always-On VPN, but the certificate route seems to be what was used in the guides I followed.

Oh. Maybe. I can't remember when I heard about that service.

We had 2 of 700 in today and had a rota of 30 staff for each week. Obviously that has been reduced now as that many staff aren't required. I've been told that I can work remotely, visit the site once a week to check the status and also go in if required, which is fine as it's only a 20 min drive away. We all have to remain contactable, so respond to calls, messages and emails in a timely manner.

The new console will have a dynamic download service. At the moment, when you download a game for the Xbox One, you get the same version that the Xbox One X, which has all the textures. However the new download service means that it will only download the assets for the type of console you are on instead of everything for all consoles. On top of that, the dynamic download service will also download the initial playable area of the game first. So say you're downloading Halo Infinite at launch, it'll download say the first hour of game play as a priority, including all assets, menus, etc. As you play, it'll continue to download the rest of the game in the background, reducing the requirement to wait for the download to complete before playing it at all.

Same here. Due to , work is pretty much my only social contact. I am concerned over my mental health in the coming weeks/months. It's something I don't really talk about because I am socially awkward, massively self conscious and it makes me feel worse.

Since there's effectively no curriculum and we're just looking after the kids who remain in schools, all our staff have been put on a three week rota. IT support in week 1 will be covered by my colleague, week 2 it's covered by me and week 3 is covered by my boss. Rinse and repeat until June.

It's pretty much the same here. Meat, especially white meats and beef (except steaks) are hard to come by, as is all forms of pasta, bread, eggs, sauces (pasta and other cooking sauces like curry), pasatta and chopped tomatoes. Also some non-food essentials. Obviously toilet roll, but also nappies, sanitary towels, paracetamol/painkillers, cereals.

Forza Motorsport 7 from 2017 was a 100GB+ game. I'm sure I've heard that the latest CoD game is like ~170GB. Games are getting up there, especially the AAA games that are focused on polished 4K HDR graphics.

Our provisional plan was announced during briefing today. For a full closure, staff are expected to be available via phone or email between 8am and 12pm, whilst students will be given online based work to complete. For a partial closure, the school is open 8am-12pm with Years 7-10 staying at home and completing online work. Year 11 are expected on-site, along with all staff who are not self-isolating. Those who are self isolating are expected to work remotely unless they are actually sick, where normal sick procedure applies. FSM will operate like a take-away service for those who need it. I'm suffering a severe re-occurrence of tonsillitis at the moment and I can't eat/drink properly or speak and in a fair amount of pain. However I've had to come in to finalise some documentation and ensure proof of procedure for the VPN instructions. I've created extensive documentation for my colleagues to follow to enable VPN for staff laptops, which includes scenarios such as out-dated version of Windows 10 that cannot take the VPN configuration, the certificate doesn't install, the VPN fails to connect, how to reinstall it, ensuring SIMS is installed and up to date and other basic configuration. I am currently going through my document now to prove that it is correct and I can hand it over to my colleagues. Then I'm going home to curl up in a small ball and whine for a while.

It is a bit silly that school activities and trips are being cancelled, children can't play football in the park - but sure, cram 30 sweaty kids in a small classroom.

So to expand on that; our stance appears to be: Staff and students who don't have symptoms are expected to be in as normal. If school closures are announced, we will seek clarification as to whether it's an advisory or compulsory. If it's compulsory, then the outcome is obvious - we shut. If it's advisory, then Year 11 are expected in for effective revision sessions, a skeleton staff to look after them and catering staff, with the school being open from 8am-12pm. We would also open the canteen to any student that qualifies for Free School Meals (even if they're Years 7-10 and not in - they would come in for their meal if they want) as "it's often their best meal of the day". Support staff are expected to rota in to cover. Not sure I agree with that to be honest - the head seems hell bent on keeping things running without care for he health of students and employees. We've also heard through the grapevine that those close to maternity leave are being asked to take it early. Presumably because it means they'll come back to work earlier and it saves the school paying both sick/isolation pay and maternity pay.