OutLawTorn

I left the job there ~18 months ago (not to mention leaving the country and moving into the corporate IT world), however still have some old colleagues working there so hear bits and pieces of whats going on...

The TSOs (Technical Support Officers) were employed by the NSW DEC (Department of Education and Communities) and then assigned to the schools, and their role was purely to manage the Student/Staff laptops and associated systems. This was usually more managing the paperwork involved in warranty claims/etc rather than being a technical role. It often came down to the individual how they handled the role - some would do the minimum of their job description and touch no other systems, whereas some were always happy to help in anything IT related (the latter usually didn't last long, as they either moved up to regional teams, or moved onto other roles elsewhere). Each region in NSW has an IT team provided by NSW DEC who assist schools with IT generally, however (while they do a great job) they are often stretched pretty thin as they cover all primary and secondary schools in the regions. Generally most schools are moving towards centralised systems with only some services hosted locally, so less server infrastructure is managed on-site. This means individual schools require less on-site support. More and more schools had their own general support staff contracted separately (which was what I was doing) to manage all of the other IT systems within the school. Some even had a separate arrangement with their TSO where they would pay them to do additional work outside of normal TSO hours ( for example an extra hour or so each day before and after their normal hours). Quite a few schools simply 'hired' their TSO once the agreement ended, and kept them on as a general IT tech.

At least your country is on the wall at all

I tend to keep Facebook/Twitter/G+ as the personal accounts (not discoverable via Google/etc and/or no real names, posts restricted to friends only, etc), and LinkedIn is the "professional" one which is more easily findable and the content is more work appropriate... I couldn't see the point of creating and managing two facebook/twitter accounts, esp since i forget to use them so much of the time anyway

Was nice to drop in and see everyone who was there today (putting some faces to names), as well as seeing BETT generally to get an idea of the sorta things that the educational sector in the UK are looking at (compared to back home in Aus)... i might drop back in on Saturday to see who else is around

Well I've registered to attend, although I'm not in an educational role any more (having only just given it up to move here from Sydney with the missus) it'll be interesting to attend and potentially put some faces to names

Thanks all for the tips its a lot to take in on top of getting used to everything else... been in London for just under a week now, and its been fun finding our way around in a new environment... for now i've just grabbed a prepaid sim until we figure out what i'm doing for work and such (mainly so i had maps working on my phone to find our way around :S)... will look into internet and stuff once we finalise where we're staying The wife has just started work, so i'm on house and job hunting detail now... Depending on where i end up working i'll look into dropping in at BETT and putting some faces to some names

I'll be looking for work once we get there... not sure what and where yet tho... Currently in Aus I work for a small business (~20 staff) which provides different levels of contracted support to approximately 40 schools all over Sydney (and a few small businesses)... I'm in a Network Administrator/Project Management role which is about as high up in the company as i can go without being the boss... I've worked in schools for ~7 years, so i'm tempted to use the relocation as an opportunity to try working in a different IT environment for a while...

I'm not exactly sure where her office is, but after her discussions with some of her friends from work who are out here on secondment we're roughly looking at Brook Green or Canary Wharf as possible places to live once we get settled... she has to start work pretty much straight away, so i'll be doing the unit-hunting job once we get there...

Hi All, My wife has recently received a promotion/transfer at work from Sydney to London, so we will be moving there early in the new year. We're not sure exactly where we will end up living (will figure that out when we get there) but will be renting somewhere within London. I wanted to get some suggestions on internet and mobile providers so i can start looking in to... we'll be there just under 2 years, so would prefer to avoid contracts longer than 12 months if possible... am happy to bundle things together (if its worth it)... we will be bringing our existing mobiles with us, so BYO device plans are fine... I know its a pretty open ended question, but any suggestions welcome

Does the proxy require authentication? Office 2007/2010 will use the default system proxy settings, but doesn't ask for auth (if required) and so things like Exchange over HTTP wouldn't work. We found that if you run a local proxy (eg an application on your computer) which doesn't need auth, you can then forward traffic to your site proxy which does and have it "inject" the authentication. "Proxomitron" is a little free application which worked for us (Proxomitron.Info ...the Webhiker's Guide to Proxomitron.).

Is the Nexus4 available directly through the play store? How much is it in £ (It only shows me the price in AU$ when i try to view the play store...)? I might be in the UK early next year, so i'm trying to decide if i buy it here in Aus before i go, or wait until i get there....

The exchange server is outside the school network and from a home internet connection we can connect fine so its working at the exchange end. The issue is that most of the sites we work at are government schools which have an http proxy (with authentication) in place, which doesn't allow the exchange/outlook traffic through... ~~Edit~~ I've tried using TORBrowser to setup a tunneled connection, set IE to use that for its proxy and then tried outlook (which presumably would use the system settings) and it doesn't establish a connection that way....

SBS 2011 (Exchange 2010) and Outlook 2010...

Hi All, We're trying to connect an Outlook client to an exchange server via an RPC over HTTP connection, however it fails due to the HTTP proxy needing authentication (which Outlook and Office in general doesn't let you enter)... One of my colleagues managed to get it working, but it required adding the http proxy authentication at a packet level (which isn't really practical). Has anyone else come across this, and have a solution? We also are going to try running a local proxy and trying to tunnel through the http proxy (depending how user-friendly that solution can be).... Cheers

We found we had to do was in the Moodle > LDAP config, we had to add data mappings for all of the required fields (eg Firstname, Lastname, Mail, Location) and have that information up to date in AD so that when it creates the accounts, it can have the email address already established. We have a batch script that runs the following: C:\php\php -d memory_limit=512M -d log_errors=1 -d error_reporting=E_ALL -d display_errors=0 -d html_errors=0 -d error_log=C:\scripts\syncfile-errors.log -f D:\web\applications\moodle\auth\ldap\cli\sync_users.php > c:\scripts\MoodleUserSync.log Its been a while since it was set up, but it seems to mostly do the trick. It calls php.exe then runs the moodle\auth\ldap\cli\sync_users.php, and then logs the details to C:\scripts\moodleusersync.log. It actually logs a lot of detail about the syncing process (eg users created, users suspended, users restored) but its not great for troubleshooting when some users don't sync properly. For sites > 1000 users, you may need to increase the "MaxPageSize" in AD so that it returns more than 1000 users (info: http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/LDAP_authentication#Setting_up_regular_automatic_synchronisation_using_cron)

One of my mates had worked at a call centre for a pizza chain when he was at uni... when he got one of the scam Microsoft calls, he just reverted to the old pizza outlet script (he had used it enough that he still remembered most of it)... He had the scammer on the phone convinced they were ordering 2 large pizzas, a coke and garlic bread... better yet he almost had the scammer volunteer their address so the pizzas could be delivered Would've been an interesting call to the cops... "i just got called by a scammer, i pretended to be from and they gave me this address for delivery"

I've got some sites set as intranet and trusted via a Site to Zone Assignment policy, and we're finding that this automatically blocks all users adding any other sites to trusted/intranet on their own. Does anyone know of any settings within these policies that allow both setting sites globally and users setting their own? Cheers ~~Edit~~ Would changing the policy that sets the trusted/intranet sites so that it applies as a machine-based policy then allow users to set policies manually?

Updated URL that worked as of today (31/1/2012)

Has anyone had any success at getting connectivity between Office 2010 and Skydrive when behind a HTTP proxy? Proxy settings are correct in IE, and have previously opened a webpage to authenticate, however Office doesn't have anywhere to enter details specifically and it doesn't seem to use system proxy settings...

Syncing between Office Applications and Skydrive doesn't work through a proxy though, which makes it severely limited in a school environment (especially when you have no control over the proxy)... especially since they have updated the iOS and Windows Phone versions of the mobile app...

Deal Extreme have a whole heap random "stuff" that could suit, depending on how soon you need it... Decepticon/Autobot cufflinks, assorted techie tools and cables...

Saw this on howtogeek.com http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image60.png

Hi everyone... Have seen this issue on a few different server builds... basically when trying to change settings (share details, permissions) on individual printers within the Print Management console, it gives "access denied" errors. When changing sharing settings, it then completely unshares the printer. Making the changes using a domain admin account, also tried using the local admin account... tried both running as administrator, and disabling UAC. Other than deleting the printer and reinstalling it from scratch each time a setting needs to be changed, does anyone have any suggestions?

One year when i had some kids come to the door, i asked them three questions: 1) When is Anzac day, and what does the day acknowledge? 2) When is Remembrance day, and what does it acknowledge? 3) When is Australia day, and what does it acknowledge? If they fail any of the three questions, they get reminded that (in my case) we live in Australia, not America and to bugger off