happymeal

What do you do outside of work as a hobby? I currently work with a youth group (Blackburn Sea Cadets) teaching them watersports, the Royal Navy and the work they do, and developing them from being brand new to being able to confidently teach new cadets, take charge of them, etc. It's pretty rewarding and if you're after doing something "useful" (depends how you look at it), developing young people and giving them the skills, knowledge and confidence to make their own mark is worthwhile.

If your looking at doing something else life-changing, what about joining the TA (Or Army Reserve as it'll be called soon)? I signed up in 2006 after hitting a bit of a funk and wanted to do something more challenging and to change up my life a bit, and to be honest I haven't looked back. I need to parade once a week, spend a weekend away per month on exercise, get to do a 2 week annual camp, as well as learn new skill sets in IT, telecommunications, electrician work, whatever you choose to do. Plus at the end of the tax year (providing you pass your "tests" for that year) you get a tax free bonus. Plus, you get to shoot stuff For yourself, you might want to join the TA RMP (Royal Military Police). For example, I signed up to the TA Royal Signals and lost a lot of weight training for it. Once I passed, I then did my Trade Training (I opted to work for the Royal Signals which is the IT/Telecommunications branch) where I was taught a bit more about IT but also about telecommunications (ie radio and antenna propagation, satellite comms, etc). After that I did my DITS which shows you how to teach so that you can then build up your knowledge and deliver training to junior soldiers. Shortly after that in 2009 I went away to Cyprus for a 6 week exercise with the Regulars (Which was a nice break from the office), and returned back to work a little bit more. I'm now working towards my advancement and currently training for another exercise back out in Cyprus for 2 weeks. It gives you a nice balance between work and doing something you might enjoy - deployments pay quite well too, and come around every 6 months so if you fancy going to the Falkland on Penguin Watch... I've managed to change my life from being bored to being paid to be fit, learn, wear the uniform and serve, and made some excellent friends and I'm at a point where I can't imagine life without the TA.

Wow, yeah, just realised your all the way down there!

Well...I'm currently selling mine if your interested? Rover 25, W reg, 1.6, 93k on the clock - had it for around 3 years and responsible for putting 60k on the clock! Used it to drive from Blackburn to Manchester, and off to camp twice a month (so your looking at around 300 mile a week, give or take). The only problem I've had is with it overheating - but I didn't check the car over as much then, now I check it once a month and keep it topped up with water/coolant/oil and I've admittedly had no problems since. PM me if your interested - won't cost you a grand either!

Oooh - think I might try get the day off to attend! It'd be my first

Yar. I tend to download pirated copies when I've lost/damaged my CD/DVD and just want to play it for a bit. But I know some people who are of the mindset of "well I pre-ordered GTA2 back in the day, didn't live up to the hype/my expectations and now I feel like they owe me forever" - which is saddening and tends to dent the industry a bit. Future developers tend to think "I'll make it a masterpiece, but it'll be cracked and on to download for nothing in a day" and then go overkill with the copy-protection. If I like a game, I'll buy it - it's giving back to the guys that spent those long nights coding away for my entertainment. It's an incentive to do better, develop sequels, and so on. It's like having braggers rights to own a quality piece of scripting, coding, and a good game. Plus if the company is a small-ish one, then it's a boost to them.

Which update version are you on (Reader 10.1.xxxx)? could a roll back to a previous version fix it (ie roll back to Reader X 10.1.4 instead of a newer version?)

It depends on how much time you have, and how quickly you want it. There are some Training Centers/boot Camps that will charge you a large sum of money to train you up over 3-7 days and then take an exam (Sometimes included in the cost, sometimes not) to get the qualification. Great if your a quick learner and money to burn - not too great though if you want in-depth learning/training. You can easily get the same course through a local college for a reasonable price, but this will be over a period of time (Did my A+ over 3 months - one night a week for 2-3 hours) - great price-wise but it may take longer to achieve (or not - depending on how quick you learn). I went down the road of doing an A+ with a local college and although it was supposed to take 3 months, I got enough hands-on training time with the equipment and felt fairly happy with what I was taught (Was fairly confident I just needed a tick in the box, but covered a fair bit of networking and a few basic bits I wasn't too familiar with). On the flip side I also did an N+ with a training provider and left there feeling fairly confused and bewildered. Went from learning networking in a Microsoft environment to learning about Ubuntu and networking in Ubuntu, and the course then shifted to networking solely in Ubuntu. I felt there wasn't as much hands-on training and felt it was a case of cramming information down our throats to make sure the boxes were ticked by the end of the week. But that's my experience - am sure others out there would pick training providers or boot-camp style sessions over colleges.

Bah - there was a fair bit when I set off this morning at 5am, but it's piddly here now. It's the joke of the snow world - you hear that snow? Other countries are laughing at you!

Ouch - that's pretty nasty, and I really feel sorry for you right now! I'm guessing you've made the call to your union? I'd start with the pros/cons list right away - as someone mentioned, using an external company can be a nightmare (ie Capita, Natwest, Dell, etc) as they often have their own procedures to follow for a call when it's logged. I've had problems in the past where Dell will just cancel a Work Order I've submitted (Despite a detailed troubleshooting list provided each time) because I've missed a step out on their procedures lists. I'd put together a list of what EXACTLY your school would be missing out on - something along the lines of: 1) No immediate support available 2) Desktop support available by contacting company, but will take a while to get through to the company 3) Company may not be able to assist via Desktop Support if there is a network/hardware problem with the machine. 4) Site may ask end-user to try out several steps by email/call, and may not assist until a details list of what's happened is given (ie Asset number, application they are using, description of the fault, etc - most of the time we get "Computer isn't working when I do xxxx", so when Teachers realise they'll be expected to get the info to them the first time round, correctly, this may shift). 5) May take 3-5 working days for the Company to arrange for hardware replacement/engineer to attend 6) Hardware moves/replacements will be done at scheduled times in advance - no more calls asking for a quick projector install/PC move. Also means when lil Johnny knocks over a vital piece of kit, it may take days for the replacement to arrive instead of getting Tech to come over with a replacement. 7) The costs may only be marginal, and may well not be worth the effort of having staff there raising tickets with information on, waiting days to get something fixed VS having an on-site tech. There may well be other points to raise, but I'm out of ideas at the moment. I'm not saying all external companies are like this (Before anyone who is an outsourced tech takes offence), but I'm trying to paint a bleak picture that you might be able to use and put forward as an argument. It might also be worth taking a look and itemizing what you do on a day-to-day basis, what services you provide, and what you can offer them - it could well be that they're after something in particular, or they'd like you to include something else as part of your day-to-day roles. Have they definitely sat you down and said "We're outsourcing you", or could this be a sneaky/fumbled attempt at trying to see what you do and what they can get out of you?

So - I was bimbling around on Play.com the other night and ended up spending the rest of my wages again on DVD's- curse you and your damn cheap deals being emailed to me!!! One of the beauts I picked up was Californication - how this has escaped my attention for so long, I'll never know! I'm currently on Season 1 at the moment, and think it's great so far (Just got past the one where movie producer turns up at his book signing a little unhappy that he's been his wife through "a hard time". Anyone else enjoying this show? Loving the odd quotes he's coming out with in his "enlightened" inner-monologue moments!

Congratulations! And welcome to the Dark Side! Mwhaa haaaaa haaaaaaaaaar!

Checked - I'll PM you the link (Can't remember if you're allowed to post them on here!).

I *should* have one back in the Lair - give me till tomorrow and I'll dig it out (assuming you still want one).

Would the data be secured/encrypted before firing over to Dropbox? If we need to send something out by Dropbox/Secure FTP, we either zip it and password protect everything (zip and individual items), or encrypt it and fire it over - passwords/keys sent out by phone/email. If it's secured/protected, then you *should* be ok...

Morning/Afternoon/Evening all! I was dealing with an Internal member of Staff this morning who was not to familiar with computers (ie wasn't able to do basic office duties using Office 07, struggled using IE, etc). This got me thinking a little, as a large number of Internal Staff we have at Testing Centers are a little bit elderly (Not wanting to sound insulting to anyone old, and no - I'm DEFINATELY not going to put an age to that!!!!), it might be an idea to knock up a training package that shows them in very slow time how to do basic IT tasks (ie switching default printers, mapping drives, creating folders, etc) and day-to-day Office tasks (downloading/uploading to Sharepoint, sending emails, adding attachments, etc). I'm also looking at an Intro to IT for any new starters to our Support Team here - so this would cover things like basic Windows XP/7 troubleshooting, network connectivity checks, etc. I have a rough idea of what I'd *like* to include, but was curious - what sort of things would other people be tempted to include to make life easier for people who are struggling with using their PC's? Once I've got an idea, I'll start knocking up a basic training package (Presentations, crib sheets, videos, etc) and pop it on here for people to use/hand out/print out and make a fort with. It might save repeat calls/jobs, it might educate people a bit, you never know. *Digs in and waits for incoming*

....I love you.

Ah - the code to turn her "naked".... many hours spent on that...in my room...alone.

Try the Emmit Smith roast - there was someone called Doug Williams who tried to be funny and was just devastated by Jamie Foxx and the others!

Afternoon all! As part of our updating things over here, we've decided to move the VLE/Moodle from CLEO to our servers. I've been tasked with doing this, as it's new to me and a good way of learning how it all works as I've not touched VLE's before this job. Firstly, I need to backup the data that's already on the VLE/Moodle hosted by CLEO - I honestly have no idea how to do this, but would love to learn how to! Has anyone else done this? I've seen a few posts (Moodle migration - MoodleDocs) but I'm having trouble trying to relate to this! Once I have that, we're looking at setting it up on our side. I've had a look in the How-To part, but can't see anything for this - once I've done it I'll pay it back by knocking up a how-to guide!

Is this on one machine, or a few machines? I only ask because I had a PC using Office 2010 that struggled with it's fonts - basically when an error message came up, instead of text I could see boxes and random characters, and the user was unable to open the document. I ended up running repair on Office, which fixed that problem on that PC :os

I've had a similiar problem this week, oddly enough! I'd upgraded from XP to W7, and the Librarian was unable to use Eclipse and had the same problem. Have you tried installing both Silverlight, .Net4, and installing the latest version of Eclipse? Once I'd done those she was able to use Eclipse.

Thanks - I'll give this a try this afternoon once the classroom is free and let you know how I get on.

Hello, I tried them but the problem is still persisting. On top of that, the user has let me know that it's happening with all users that log in, which suggests it's a problem with the install/software. I've tried un/re-installing, but the problem is still happening :s Don't suppose this has happened to any other users?

What's the make/model of the PC? Got a few old ones here and at home, so might be able to find a compatible one? I sympathise - my first job was upgrading old PC's, in paticular HP D530's (Which a slight breeze would blow the PSU's!). The majority of them I took out looked ok until I plugged them in and flipped the mains power back on...