indiegirl

It's only the management here that make this job stressful........

Wow, congratulations. Our tests have so far run smoothly and successfully. That reminds me, I really should update the tests on our machines as I expect there'll be more waiting to download. The only problems I've had with these things is that the head of ICT has done nothing but whinge, moan and grumble about the user interface of it so far. We've gone to great pains to explain taht it's nothing to do with us, but we're IT, so it must be... *rolls eyes*

OH = Other Half! My sister's boyf has an RX8, I'm yet to drive it (as is she... so I think I'm way down the list). Being a passenger was fun enough. Heck, I know very little about cars other than what I'd really like to drive. I've so far driven fairly boring cars as I hate paying for insurance.. getting quotes on various cars I was looking at has so far put me off (I'm so boring that if it's over Ins Group 7 I won't look at it!)... That's probably more to do with financial constraints, mind... so new job could sort that in my favour a bit more ;-) Talking of the job, nothing yet from the old school (I think they're having budgetary constraints with regards to my salary! ;-)), and I should hear by next week from the Govt organisation... fingers crossed!

Not yet... have to get a second car first for my OH... I have the car daily at the moment, and we need a smaller city car for roundabout city. I shall have a midlifecrisis at 30 and buy something extreme and silly (or rather, just silly). If money were no object, it'd be a Merc SLK, but until then I shall aspire to an S2000/RX8/MR2. That said, if an Integra, Civic or Accord Type R came up in the meantime, I wouldn't sniff at those either :-D At the moment, insurance is just silly on any of those cars, and I begrudge exorbitant petrol prices and crap MPG due to all of these damn roundabouts.....

Let's just say that me in my very boring Almera were two steps ahead of the silly little boy in his tin can... I've seen him on the same roundabouts before doing the same thing... thought I'd play a little game when he tried it on (very dangerous and silly, I know) I am quite proud of the fact that I don't drive like a girl... and many have commented on that (whilst hanging onto the inside door rail for dear life). I only drive the Almera whilst I'm saving up for something a bit more to my style...

OK, after pondering on why my blog's blocked from some areas, I've moved it to my (new) webspace.. and my signature is updated as a result If it's keyword blocking, then I'll know because you won't be able to hit it from work: http://www.giraffeonastick.com/edublog I take no responsibility for anything you may see, read, or hear from that domain [and NM hasn't got a clue... honestly, he *really* hasn't] You do realise that when I change jobs, my weblogs will return to the monotonous, boring, mundane drivel that I'm so good at

I've just registered with http://www.namesco.co.uk for one of my new sites. That was £15 for 2 years for a .com and includes the domain email address. (admittedly, there's just me on this particular domain, but it's enough to start)

booger. That's my work-related one too... that's the one with the tales-of-NM storyline. There's absolutely nothing related to sexual content whatsoever in there. *goes and looks just in case*

Alright alright... which blog is being blocked? Presumably my Xanga blog?

No, it doesn't work in Firefox - that was the first thing I checked yesterday... I'm absolutely stumped... Am going to try it from home over the weekend.

Popups enabled... ActiveX... hmmm, AFAIK that shouldn't be a problem, as my office PC has the same problem with this site (but runs everything else AX-based fine)

(I couldn't find a suitable place for this - move it if you think necessary) Our Personnel bod has a login to E-Teach for teaching vacancies. However, when she logs in, she goes through the login process, and when going to "My E-Teach", she gets "welcome ," and nothing else on the screen. The site owners say that they can log in successfully and can see "Welcome The Radcliffe School," plus more content. Now, I've put the site in 'trusted zone', have cleared cache, cookies, you name it and nothing's changed. She's got pretty much unrestricted access to the net, so could it be something that our E2BN lot are blocking?? If anyone else uses eteach.com I'd appreciate any thoughts. Cheers

Does it power up when plugged into PC / in it's cradle (if you have one)?

I did find some of them in my search... about £12 a go though and that was for the dummy ones... (that was via Google)

We've tried everything... although on our (expensive) HPdc7600s we mount them on a workstand, with a cable cover that's locked in with a Kensington Lock. Not one HP keyboard or mouse has been removed or damaged in this room so far this year (touch wood). However, our office door opens into said room so that might be why. I've just ordered a £3.50 dummy camera (eBay!) with motion sensor and flashing LED to put in one of the other rooms. If they think they're being watched... they might not do it.... we'll see....

Our attendance officer spends more time dealing with Bromcom than we do - from a systems point of view I don't recollect there having been too many problems. The only classic one being that running Bromcom can cause large logfiles in Sims (an earlier, panicking post from around the 10th March would confirm that!). Other than that, apart from Winfolder installations, it's barely any time from our point of view. One thing I will add is that for those who are running Bromcom now, over the summer some of the codes are changing, and this will require a reinstallation of Winfolder onto every machine (from what I understand)... that'll create some overhead for us.

The NM's chickened out of joining me (he says it's because he isn't in a Union), but is happy to tell everyone about my move... he's run around this morning shouting "Citizen J****" (his surname) and asking people to "support our cause". Hmmm. He's making a bigger thing of it than I am... To be perfectly honest, I'd not mind being Dilbert-ised like you are Craig, anything to get out of the cupboard!

It's showing in 'Fun Stuff - Other Stuff'... You can leave it wherever (I decided that a 'general chat' was worthy of it as it's work-related but not really helpful!) Although I could post the Working Regs that it contravenes to help others.. ;-) We have fans blasting, air con on full... still 31 at the mo and rising.. they will learn the hard way....

Whichever one trumps which doesn't bother me...!! I guess it might make the powers that be move quicker... the fact is that H&S trumps DPA means that I can't go back in the office... and the DPA means that I can't stay in the classroom. Dear oh dear... they'll have to find me somewhere and quick then, won't they?! ;-) (I am an awkward one, sometimes)

... and exercised my Union's advice to refuse to work in my office. I have moved my PC out of the office (31 degrees atm) into the classroom next to the office door. I have then sent an email to my Personnel Officer, stating why I have moved (politely) and outlining the contraventions of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. I got an almost instant reply, stating that she understood (yes, we know she understands, let's see something done about it) and that our line manager has had to meet with the assistant head to discuss office shuffles. I doubt we'll move at all, but it's raised the issue properly and without doing anything untoward...

*has an inkling of which concerts are on in Manchester on Friday night* ;-) We weren't bothered in the slightest when Ofsted/HMI (or however they're known now) came in.. or maybe that's because they wanted to keep them away from the NM... or possibly from me *evil grin*

I'm also considering these as a cheaper version of the small form factor DX7600s we have here at the school. I can only speak from experience of the 7600s, but they aren't noisy in the slightest (the noisy ones I have had were reported to HP and new fans sent out). They are going to be difficult to maintain once the HP warranty's up - also consider that you may well need a 'riser card' for the PCI slots to take full size PCI cards. Personally, I haven't been that impressed with HP generally. We have a suite of Dells, which are two years old and I've had to make one callout this year about one machine. The HPs were installed in August, I've had 5 HDD failures and two fans go wrong. Also, with HP, it's a case of "we'll send you the part, you replace it and send the faulty one back to us". With Dell, as you will know, it's an on-the-spot engineer the next day. At one point in September HP couldn't even supply SATA HDDs - I had a 6 week wait for one!!! As I say, I'm considering them, but only as a 'rival' to the NECs I'm looking at. The only good thing about the SFF HPs is that they will (probably) fit on the desktop workstation, allowing the machine to be mounted behind the monitor.

Is it me, or does the new start menu (or whatever it's been renamed to these days) have the icon / font look of anything KDE based? If anything, my theory (if I'm right about the above) is that it'll make Linux much more approachable to novice users as a result..

Haven't heard of the guesthouse either, but there are a lot of them down in W-o-t-G. A quick scoot on MKWeb.co.uk brought up This B&B, which gets some very good reviews here. For locality to the OU, you could also look at The Caldecotte Arms Premier Travel Inn. I used to live over the road in Caldecotte and it's literally around the corner from the OU.

There's a business venture to be sold to many an IT technician there...