Sirbendy

I see a lot of ex-students all over the place..and we often have kids coming back to visit us several years after leaving for a sit down, a cuppa and a chat. The pain of 11-16 is you never see them at their best...hormonal teenagers are a PITA. By year 11, just as they're leaving, they start to chill and become much more personable. Then they go! I want a 6th form. Heh.

Nothing wrong with a bit of grumpy... But yes, don't listen to the teachers spouting their opinionated toss about the kids - meet them with an open mind, form your own opinions. We've got so many kids one of the IT Teachers just rants about, yet...they're just kids! She really rants and raves, makes them out to be hell etc. I think I was as bad as them in school, or worse TBH. Once you get past the "Who the f*ck are you?" barrier, and the initial "I don't know you/you're a teacher so I'll give you hell" hurdle, our kids are nice kids! Reason with them, don't lay down the law without explaining why. Find out their likes/dislikes/hobbies/musical tastes etc, forge some common ground. If you block a game, explain why or blame it on the LEA filtering (always good). Show them what you do, and how..ours quite enjoy seeing how we do things and asking questions. Never sink to their level, but never take their attitude or comments to heart - too many staff take it all personally/far too seriously, when it's just kids lashing out or being idiots/having a laugh. Year 11 that left in 06 put it round the school that I crossdress, and wear pink lacy undies..Y11 07 used to call out of their classrooms as I walked past, and when I looked, they'd say "Yer gay." Once they find out how hard it is to push buttons, they tend to relax and not get uptight, which makes them fun to work with. Make yourself known to the kids - I see all of ours, and make a point of getting the IT staff to introduce me. "This is Mr Rowlands, and he's the man with the answers - if you can't get a PC to work, ask him nicely. He won't bite..he may dribble though." All of our kids are addresses as "Miss", "matey" or by name, depending on how memory is at the point in time..kids address us by first name. I can't be doing with "Mr"..if they ask if they can call me Karl, i say yes. Also tends to drop some barriers there. We're very informal, as we've found long ago it's the best way with our kids. It's not been unknown for an entire class to shout "We're going to batter you, you know" or write "Steve and karl are GAY!" on word in 72pt when we ban a game or remote view te screens, only for us to laugh at them and beyondexec them to pampers.com. They love us really. As has been said - enjoy the experience...there are times you'll want to kill them, and there are times where they will genuinely surprise and impress you. I'm semi-dreading having one with me on work experience.. You might not run across some of the stuff I've described..we're often percieved as a "challenging" school. Bunch of hooey - the kids are ace, but they make you work to earn their respect and trust for a month or 2, as a lot of our new staff will find out. Once you pass that period, you're "cool", and they change accordingly. After 8/9 years, a lot of the kids know me before they even start from siblings, so I'm cool all the time.. I do believe we've even had several mentions in the leavers books as being "ace" and "cool" and "fun"..and I'm 99% sure I even made "ratemyteacher.com"... Karl Rowlands Teacher Ratings - MADELEY COURT SCHOOL - TELFORD, ENGLAND - Student Ratings See? "God." High praise indeed.. EDIT: My gods, there are some AWFUL attempts at staff names on there..heh..and I'm fairly sure we've never had a "Phil MeCrackin" in the staff..

Switch the BIOS to powerup at AC on, set up an autologin if needed for XP, set it for Halt on no errors, or if it MUST have a KB in to boot, strip a dead KB of it's lead and PCB (about the size of a matchbox) and use that, taped up and inside the case. Then put it in a vented cupboard that sits over the mains socket, and plug it up. For "if it does turn off" situations, set the "wake on alarm" in the BIOS for whatever time you'd like it to try. That'd bring it back up at that time if it was powered off. I'll be recycling an old retired PC over the summer with a stack of old hard disks and turning it into a NAS appliance for the IT Tech software...That'll be on from 8-5 on a timer.

I won't hear a word against Women Edugeekers..they do a great job of ironing the wrinkles out of their networks.. I'll get my coat before I get a beating...

I use the second...seems to work fine. As I say - before you sysprep, do the "device manager", "computer", "set to standard PC" bit. Then that line in sysprep and the "sysprep -bmsd" command...and run sysprep to do the job.

an example of...?

Spot on... That and running "Sysprep -bmsd" from the command line to prepopulate the sysprep mass storage section. As I say - it's worked on all of our kit. We have everything from P2/350, through P3 400-900, P4, P4HT, Duron, Athlon, X2, C2D, Xeon etc, desktops and laptops, IDE and SATA. I've yet to find a machine it won't run with. It even runs on my home rigs/VAIO/inspiron. I did a "flat" version containing just XP and office for staff machines, to save the headache when they bring in machines and say "it's broken". Boot with ghost, hand it back 20 minutes later, job done. Come to that, I've got a nicely sorted image for my/family PCs in the same vein. Makes repair a doddle.

Several reasons.. Disability affecting balance and walking ability - doesn't take much drink or distance to have a bad effect. Alcohol intolerance - I don't drink as a rule..1 glass of wine is usually enough to cause my legs to go numb (which is a nice change from the continual twinges etc they usually provide), my eves to go blurry, and me to either roll off the sofa giggling, or one christmas after 3 glasses, to table dance at the mother in laws, attempt a "full monty", sit on a gay blokes lap and proposition him, and then attempt to french kiss the cat. It's not often I have to be manacled to the wall until I'm sober..and boy did I feel awful after that..no point in a pub crawl if I have to be on soft drinks all night. Also, I tend to relax...which means my sense of humour comes out fully, and caution goes hiding..I'd either say a lot of things I'd come to regret, do something I'd regret, or just plain lamp few people for past annoyances.. The biggest reason is..we're working tomorrow...WTF is the point of getting slaughtered, then coming into work half cut/hung over? I see too many staff coming in drunk each year as it is..or if not utterly drunk, certainly in what I would deem "unsafe to drive" condition. If I have even half a glass of wine, I hang up my keys for at least the next 6-7 hours, increasing with alcohol intake...it's just not worth the risk. I can't say with 100% certainty that i'm 100% in control, so I'm not about to get behind the wheel. Last year it went on, past my flat...some (inter departmental) idiot who shall not be named made the mistake of standing outside my flat bawling for me to, quote " put your "insert unflattering comment here" missus down and come outside, ya big poof"..".. She was *this* close to beating him with something heavy..in the end she just mailled the head with a complaint about being personally insulted and harrased by a drunk staff member, and got him on a disciplinary. I got my own back by coming in the next day, all bright eyed and bad tempered (seething, in fact), and when the rest of the dept came in groaning and whispering...I fired up the air compressor without filters...and made as much noise as I could with a cheery "GOOD MORNING, YOU BUNCH OF PART TIME DRUNKARDS!!! GOT A HEADACHE, HAVE WE? SERVES YOU RIGHT.."..and by gods, was it satisfying to watch them cringe.. I wouldn't trust myself not to openly state my opinion of people and take a heavy object to a few..I like most people, but I have a rule.."just because I work with you does NOT mean I'd be seen dead in my leisure time with you." Lets just say I move in..different circles. I like heavy metal, I have my long standing friends I know I can trust implicitly, I have a sense of humour and an openmindedness the staff here can't always get their heads round, and...I prefer to keep my work and personal life separate...I don't really like staff knowing much about me out of here. I just want a quiet life with my family, my missus, my cats and my friends..and I'm happy..

reformat it. Whip disk out and slave it to another machine for data recovery and then reformat it. PEBuilder also works nicely for data recovery. There's only a given amount of time it's worth spending on BSOD kit before it's quicker to just nuke the hell out of it and start again..

TT+2 weeks here. They owe me time off big style anyway - overtime every night, in 90% of last summer, will be in at least that next summer with the building move. I'll be in week 1 bringing back new kit, imaging and deploying it. I'll be in exams day as well...anything else is "what I feel like"..

If it's any consolation, next Tuesday will be us running around in a transit collecting 50 new PCs we've been given and getting them back here, imaged, in position and ready to roll again..heh. Should be fun. Then raid the old retired kit for useable parts, and get in the LEA recyc team to remove the carcasses. More machines will be with us as and when they're ready, so thatll go on most of the break I think. We've also got to work around the LEA virtualisation of the servers etc. Shouldn't be too bad really. I've got my new image out and running as well ready for the new kit - nobody's screaming yet.

We've got (i'd say) 85-90% of the kids out today (trips day). I'd say about the same number of staff. The remainder are playing footie, doing science or art bits, or up here in IT doing their own thing (or coursework, shockingly). We've got internet radio on, and it's lovely...really laid back and pleasant atmosphere. Plus it's non-uniform day for all...so it really is very peaceful indeed. Lots of time to do maintenance and just chill a bit. Staff pub crawl later (not going), and then last day of term tomorrow..a nice gradual wind down.

oh yes...I bought one months ago and did everything in the house. Quite an eye opener. £5 power usage per week or less..love it. Testing CFL lamps are always a fun moment..I've seen some cheap 11w ones that use less than 11w, and some branded Phillips 11w ones that use up to 20-22watts. Obsessive, me? No.. Not bad for about £25 delivered to my door. http://www.electricity-monitor.com/plugin-power-meter-p-36.html - that's mine, complete with programmable 2 band costings based on time, and running totals etc.

I see some like this on occasion...makes me cringe.. I saw one with a HS that was utterly choked and a cooked fan...the woman used "shake 'n' vac" a lot...bloody menace. That and "bedroom" PCs full of talc.. My rig is kept spotless...

I'd echo that. I personally use Ghost and ghostcast with sysprepped images. Drivers, yes. HAL..maybe not so much..HT to 2core might work. What I always do (which is where I differ from our LEA and their builds) is I build on VM, install as usual, then the final pre-sysprep step I take is to go into device manager, right click on "computer" in device manager, and change it from "ACPI" to "Standard PC" and let it reboot and redetect hardware. I added 1 line in sysprep to direct XP to look at the hardware and choose the appropriate HAL on boot, then I run sysprep and ghost the image. I'm on my 6th build now...and it'll run on anything.

My missus got home 2 days back to find my neighbours trimming our mini-conifers in the front garden...I'm guessing they had a lot of barney with the old tenants based on the landlords opinion of them, and their reaction to her getting back... "I was only trimming it! I wasn't doing anything wrong!" etc.. We've both said - "go for your life. If it's overgrowing, let us know". I topped the bloody things last month, and I routinely go bursar with the hedge trimmer on them, so..I don't mind at all. I have a back garden boxed in by the damn things..ugly brown trunks for 3/4 of the length, dense and green at the top, nicking all the sunlight. I said to the neighbours, if I owned the house they'd all be removed. Bless 'em, they're a pair of quiet older folks..very much keeping themselves to themselves. Suits me, as I'm very much in favour of a quiet time. It might explain why the woman on the other side of us won't answer her door to us, speak to us or even acknowledge our existence..even when our tree collapsed and was sat half over her fence, and I went to try and check for any damage.

the older, older boards are serial to serial, with a PS/2 hookup connector for power.

I have to say I haven't run across this issue with my WM6 Ipaq 514...beautifully behaved now the firmware is up to scratch.

We have pods with cages in them, and side desks with the same...we just took one to a local metalworker and said "make us some of these"..I'll try and get some pics tomorrow..

We've got 4 Bloxx boxes..heh..not bad at all, except that our domain (LEA wide) is so big that we've pushed it to breaking point several times and it's been rewritten a few as well. We like volunteering to find bugs... Between Bloxx, PolicyCentral Enterprise and NSS, the kids here have given up trying..

I use truecrypt...but in file container mode. I haven't tried the new one yet with "entire disk" encryption, but I would imagine it'd be quite passable.

Skid Row - "this party's over, so.."

hmm. Plain packing, no markings, secrecy.... I say rampant rabbit...

I did that..our machines all have a scheduled task as part of the image, and a file containing the DEL command to wipe the accounts in the CSV on the first day of each month. I just update the list each new year with Netsupport replace, and job done. Removal at every logoff will slow the machine. Once a month at 4pm does nicely with our profiles now I've beaten Macromedia out of them..bloody space hog that it is. Any machines I run across that are full, I log into as local admin and run a script to add the scheduled task and relevant files, then execute it in the background. Then I log off and leave it to it. Seems spot on so far..I should check the suites now really, as it's day 3 of a new month!

script to kill off media files, .tmps, URLs, SWFs etc etc, the rest off to a USB hard disk or DVD media for archive..my suggestion. Its what we do. We get the LEA to dump the accounts off the server onto a seperate "archive" drive, and keep for 2-3 years. Winzip is your friend there as well. Out and out removal has bitten us in the bum before..