Sirbendy

To be fair, it is the norm. And I stick 2 fingers up to it and plumb the damn machine into a hot line.

I have an Indesit WIB111 washer that's survived 2.5 years of DD1 and real nappies, and is about to be walloped good and proper by the arrival of child #2, backed up by a basic white knight vented dryer. Simple, boring, bombproof. The dryer is small enough to stand on a shelf over the washer. The Shelf WAS originally a big built in cupboard in the kitchen I ripped out. Kept the frame, washer in the bottom half. Also have an older white knight auto-reverse tumbler in pieces awaiting a new belt. That's my fallback unit. Stuff an all-in-one machine, far too complex and fault probable. Plus, lose 1 bit, lose the lot. Major inconvenience. Have to say I do like my cheapie indesit. Doesn't get an easy life at all, refuses to cry about it. It's faulted once, and that was a digested hair clip jamming the pump impeller, not really the machine's fault.

Ofsted have never bothered me. They have their job to do, I have mine. If they walk in and I'm repairing a downed PC, they get a nod and a "good morning, can I assist you?", and I'm back to the job in hand. If things are down, staff need to work round it - ours do well. We will get it running as soon as we can, but until that time inventiveness rules. What I found funny last time was there was a person here, who used to be my old maths teacher...saw her in the canteen, so we were having a catchup and dinner, after 15 years. "What brings you to our humble establishment then?"..."I work for OFSTED now.". "Ah! I see. Got out of maths teaching then eh? Good for you." and so on. OFSTED are human, just like everyone else.

Quote from Missus: Yes, but they need to be running WordPress Multisite. If the current school site is running under WordPress they should be able to make the necessary changes to turn that WP install into multisite by following: Create A Network « WordPress Codex I can't emphasise "back up files! back up databases! back up everything!" enough. WP Multisite is a beast to work with if you're only used to the single install jobby.

I shall try to ask my missus (Webdev) - she's done a few now...

Actually, thinking on...several years ago, Year 11 boys christened me "Big Gay Karl"...sigh, boys will be boys..bless 'em, they were a year I actually was sad to see leave. I did have one misguided kiddie refer to me as "Forrest Gump" once, due to my disability...I'd taken about 6 steps when I heard a smack and found another kiddie "correcting" them, with "You DON'T EVER do that, they're cool in IT."

Ginseng, methinks...heh.

It doesn't differentiate between "falling asleep on the sofa accidentally" and "dragging my backside upstairs to the real bed" sleep times...

Aw, go on! Workplace humour is the key to successful coolness! Heh.

I get "Karl" (name), or "Ben" (as in Bill &)..NM is Bill I'm guessing. We've also been referred to as "Gods", "geek squad", "Nerve Centre" (by the head!)..the list goes on. Our Radio call-signs are "big boy" (6ft+ NM), and "Rubber Duck" (Me, because..why not.). Such lines as "Come in big boy, come in big boy, it's rubber duck. we have a situation down here." always make people smile..

Torque interests me, but in the absence of an android tablet I'll stick to my OPCOM/VAGCOM for the family vehicles...not quite as swish, but more useful with more functions. Agreed though, you do need a way of looking at the actual data flows to see anomalies. I often leave the netbook running a log when I take the Astra out so that I can review readings in excel later on. Things such as knock sensor retard values, cylinder timing changes and sensor/shift/pressure readouts are quite revealing.

Ours is adjoined by the server room, with double glazed doors between. It does cut out a fair amount, but the drone is there, the white noise of the big aircon units, and the whine from the UPS inverter..to be fair it just becomes part of the background.

That'll t-cut out...

To be fair, the only definitive way of telling would be to take before/after output readings and monitor it...

Carb cleaner is quite vicious..I bought a can last wekeend to blast out the Astra's throttle body, and I'll probably do the Skoda while I'm at it..heh. Trying to start the Astra afterwards is always fun...clouds of smoke as it all burns off.

Agreed. Nowt complex about a MAF sensor..

Some we did on our old site were dropped from the 3rd floor, down the middle of the stairwell onto concrete. That was quite fun. Mind you, I accidentally booted an entire tower down the stairs too..such is the PITA of my mobility issues. That made some interesting noises on the way down. Nasty little cut-price beige box it was..serves it ruddy well right,too. Live drives, I software nuke. Dead/ancient/unknown drives either get the DT pillar drill, a lump hammer, or a vice and wrecker bar for leverage, depending on how annoyed I am.

We use TopDesk here...again, no complaints.

I need more water butts...my little 100l one is full, and the thought of not being able to harvest this is quite irritating! Lights-wise, yes. I had mine on full. So many people didn't. Came to the conclusion my £40 tyres with alloys deal rubber is OK, but in the wet can be a bit chancy. I hit the mini-roundabout on the deserted industrial estate on the way to take daughter to nursery, at my customary rate (WHY must Astra's handle so damn well..), and whee..back end went, fronts were scrabbling. I got a "Steady on, dad" from the copilot. Not like I can complain though, for what they cost..heh..

How so? Don't get me wrong, I think it's mostly shot-off...all departments/teachers ordering things, all from different suppliers...it can be very messy. Nobody except IT Services have thought "now, hang on. If we all put our heads together and used our collective IQ's, we could bulk order from a couple of suppliers for everything we need, and negotiate a far better price." But then I find that applies from schools, to councils, to most companies/organisations to some level...little collective sense, no thought to combining and leveraging buying power. We've hammered the bills down here quite significantly by applying some thought to the process. Most satisfactory.

I have a friend there working for the Red Bull team (Her dad is something high up in it), doing the timings...fingers crossed it goes off without problems..

Erm, For externals, we do the order via phone/fax, using a PO template (Excel based). Save it in an exclusive "IT Services/Accounts/FYxx/PO" folder, named uniquely by PO ref code, generated by ourselves. Then once done we take it to finance and give it to finance. For internal transfers (paper for depts, toners, printers, leads, misc), we do the same thing using a different excel sheet, stating who's budget the money is coming from, to where, how much, type, code and quantity of goods ordered, date etc. Then we take the sheet with the goods, and no sign the sheet, no get your goods. Simples. Save a unique copy in the "Internal" folder, stack up the printed signed copies, take them in batches to finance. Works very nicely. Simple, straightforward and no dodging of payments. We decided 5-6 years ago that IT Services being used as a charity and having our budget raided by all and sundry for new kit without recompense was not the way to go. We both came from Industry, and to be fair, it's rare we get any complaints about the system now they're all used to it. Makes them think a bit about usage when they get the bill, as they KNOW they've paid for it, and how much. Heh.

Was fair hammering in Telford most of the afternoon/evening...went to pick littly up from Nursery at 5.20pm, and it was heavy then. Coming back with her in the car - mental. SO much surface water, people were aquaplaning. Even my autobox was spinning the wheels up on junctions. Low speed driving, lights, wipers, demisters on, and water spraying over the bonnet when turning so the wheels were pointing out of the shell slightly..interesting!

Yep, I run Openelec on my Athlon x2 as a dualboot for Win7, as it's main "non-geek" task is DVD/FTA/WEBTV, since we binned our license and went TV free. Got the plugins for 4od and 5od too, although they're buggy at the mo. Lovely little setup, booting/running happily off an old 1gb USB stick. Lets hear it for all the programs I want to watch of a tech nature with none of the junk..heh..

Google "IT Idiots"..I rather like their videos...not sure if it's still going mind, but it was good..