muppet

I have a sneaky suspicion that this is just a token gesture to enable the powers at be to say hand on heart that they have allocated money for software and hardware development!!! Especially as I am not allowed to combine the funds to get either a half decent NAS or software solution. To be honest I’ve already bought a HP ML110 G5, 2GB RAM, and 2 x 500GB HDD’s out of my normal budget. Might just charge the invoice against the extra funding and keep thinking about the software….it’s a case of use it or lose it and I’m just not prepared to lose any funding I get.

Ok here's the background to the question; I've been allocated up to £250 to purchase a NAS box and £150 to spend on any software I want to help run the network ......don't ask me why they've chosen these 2 things!!! This money is separate to my normal budget and can only be spent on the items it has been allocated for. So….What type of NAS do you think I should be looking for? Any prefered brands / models or more importantly ones to avoid like the plague? Obviously at this price I’m going to be limited on size and RAID type. Now onto the bit that I hope will draw the most recommendations / comments…..What software would you look at getting if you were allocated £150 to spend on anything YOU wanted? I know I should list what I already have, but I would like to know what people think without influencing them! Thanks in advance for your views.

Absolutely brilliant. Had to stop reading it twice as I was laughing so much it was disturbing the class I was meant to be helping!!!! Will pass it onto the Ass.Head as he has this procedure coming up at the end of the month!

Me - 4 clicks ICT Teacher - 5 minutes and counting!! Plus lots of verbal along the lines of "Have you buggers blocked u-tube" or "I think the movie player thingy needs a codecy thing upgraded as it wont play" I thought it was going to be the old joke of: How do you confuse an idiot? Show them 10 shovels and tell them to take their pick! Didn't say it was going to be a good joke!!!!!

example: A person is signed off long term sick. The role can be filled internally on a temporary basis. If that person then retires on ill health grounds and you have been filling the post for 6 months or more you can / will be taken on in that role on a permanent basis without the need to advertise. This of course is down to the discretion of the Head and Governors. I know this to be the case as it happened to me. I wasn't sure of the legality of it so I contacted the County HR department and they confirmed that it was correct.

Over the last half term I was upgrading one of the network rooms with new PC's, TFT monitors and a new desking system (screens inside desk lid type of thing). The teacher who predominantly used the room popped in to see how things were going and just before she left asked if I could give the room a lick of paint as well. As she had a smile on her face I thought she was joking and smiled and laughed as she left.....that was until the new term started and I was told by the head that she had complained to him that I hadn't done what she had asked!!!!!! Thankfully the head put her in her place and explained in no uncertain terms what my job role was, where my position within the school was (answerable only to him) and who she should ask if she wanted jobs like that doing. She was also 'advised' to apologise to me aswell....I'm still waiting for that to happen though!! In my last post I was also asked to fix one of the toilets in the Ladies loo which had become blocked (after use!!!!). I informed that particular member of staff that Satan would have to ice-skate to work before I would fix it.....only to be told that as a member of the support staff it was my job to do things like that for teachers!!!! Needless to say I didn't do it.

I've never come across Mash before, but I'm now an avid reader!! I especially loved The Daily Mash - CHILDREN TOLD TO SIT DOWN AND SHUT THE F*CK UP FOR 18 YEARS and couldn't agree more with it!!!

On my wedding day my old man gave me the best bit advice about marriage that any man could want........ "The best way to remember your wedding anniversary is to forget it once!!" Not put it to the test yet though! I wear the trousers in my house, the wife just tells me which ones to put on.

Hi Tabby, Don't know if the following thread from another forum will be of help, sorry if you've already checked for this...don't want to teach you to suck eggs. running cmd and msconfig cause Windown XP to reboot. Regards, Muppet

That b@st@rd's just drunk half my pint!!!! or If this is the new Trojan Horse threat I don't think it's going to cause too many problems. (Sorry!!!)

Hi Russ, If you've got any left could you send one my way please? Many thanks, Muppet

As a parent, 6 weeks is far too long to try and occupy kids over the summer - at least not without financial ruin!!! As a Tech, 6 weeks is great. I agree with others that a good option would be to reduce the holiday from 6 to 4 weeks and then up some of the other hols to 2 weeks. As for carrying work out during term time, especially at evenings and nights, I think that this is a workable solution, however what has not been taken into account is the fact that there are a lot of us out here who are on our own or have limited support.....what would take priority, support during the day or the upgrade at night? Or, as I suspect would happen, work 18 to 20 hour days until it was finished with, if we were lucky, a flat rate of overtime!!! Before anybody says anything, I know that this is an issue for the school to resolve, but in this time of penny-pinching what is the logical option!?! Just to add another cat to the pigeons, if we were to carry out a lot of the work during term time would we be needed on a fulltime contract? Or would they be reduced to term time plus 2 weeks etc?

Hi Dos_Box, In the past I've used DECAdry PC Papers, bought from Staples. They're really good quality and once printed you simply peel the ID cards / business cards off the backing paper (non-sticky once off). The sizes I have off the contact sheet are: A4 paper - margin top and bottom 13.5mm margin left and right 15mm there are 2 columns of cards 85mm wide and 54 mm high, each column has 5 cards (total 10 per page) with a 10mm gap between the columns. Hope this makes sense. Regards Muppet

My sister passed away last year after a long illness, so she had time to decide on the music she wanted....probably too much time!!! First was "Who wants to live forever" - Queen Next was "The Last Beat of My Heart" - Siouxie and the Banshees Finally she had "We'll Meet Again" - Vera Lynn And at the Wake she had "Wish you were here" - Floyd!! And all other music had to be heavy rock / punk / indie. Needless to say she also expected everyone to drink loads and "pogo / mosh" the night away. Not bad choices for a 32 year old, made us all smile. Although there were some funny looks from the older relatives.

Hi Glenn, Keep us informed of how you get on.....quite frightening that they're letting a 'Muppet' run the network!!! (I'm not being rude..just an in-house ex RAF joke). I'm an ex-Muppet based just up the road from you in Faringdon and working just down the road in Eynsham. This place is great for help and support, plus everyone is friendly and understand that there is a varying degree of experience on the forum. Regards, Muppet

Just started my two weeks off......Got 3 fibre runs and two network suites (including a new desking solution) being replaced over the next 10 days. Then I'm going to try and get a VM server up and running. Oh and I forgot the fact that SMT have booked me in for Lesson Monitor training over the holiday period as well!!!!! Already had a chat with the Head about the fact that I had 19 days leave left as of March 31st and it wasn't likely that I will be able to have time off between then and the Summer hols, his response was "well take all of the Summer off".....thankfully he sent it via email so I've got a copy of it.

Mark me down for two please.....can't leave anything lying around in my office, so I'd better have a spare!!!!

The last 2 batches I bought were Edge-10 and GNR, both of which were hardened glass 17" screens. We have had 2 of the Edge-10 fail (colour cast problems), but they were swapped out within 48hours of reporting the fault. None of the GNR have failed yet, plus they are HDMI and Svga. If memory serves me right I paid sub £100 for both types.

Happy birthday mate, Just remember you're only as old as the woman you feel!! 38 isn't over the hill, but you can see the top of it from there.

Ok, so moving on from the Teachers do /don't deserve more money theme..... Is your school going to open on the 24th for admin staff to carry on with their daily duties? The question has been asked here by the Site Supervisor, but he is still waiting for a definite response!!! If the answer is yes, are all admin staff expected to be in? And if not which ones will be excused (eg Reprographics, Science Techs etc.)

I disagree with what localzuk has said. I joined the military at 16 because the alternative was going on the dole and I didn't have any aspirations towards going to university. A misconception that people have (including the NUT) is that at 16 you will be given a gun and told to kill or be killed...this simply is not the case, you are not allowed into a conflict zone until 18 years of age. My first two years in were spent travelling doing support and aid work. I was in Ethiopia for the second famine relief run and was also involved in natural disaster relief work. I had the option to leave at any point before my 18th birthday, but chose to stay in (15years in total) and although I have been involved in conflict zones, it was my choice to remain in and do so. I agree with the comment that they have been forced into some actions lately that they should not have been, but it must be remembered that this was done by Mr Blairs government and not by the forces. Would I let my kids join now at 16.......not a chance, if they still wanted to at 18 then that is their choice. Basically things within the world have changed a lot since I was that age, as have politics and how much we as a country act as a lapdog to a larger super power!!!!!

My first job was working in a local bakers cleaning the wooden bread trays on a Saturday morning. I started at 5:30 in the morning and had a bass broom head with the bristles cut down to scrub the trays in an old tin bath.......I was only allowed to use 2 kettles worth of hot water in the tub (the rest was straight from the cold tap) as the owner was a tight ar*e and didn't want me wasting his electric. I was outside at all times, even in rain / sleet / hail / snow, and didn't finish until 12:30, if I'd cleaned all the trays, if not then I had to stay on, unpaid!!! I was only allowed 1 break during which time I had to make the brews for all the bakers, but was never allowed to have a freebie cake or bread roll. All of this and I was only 11!!!! Saying that, I was paid £2.00 an hour, and I was introduced to a lot of new words that my mother didn't approve of! By the way this was 26+ years ago, and it didn't do me any harm....infact when I joined the military at 16 I was already well ahead of my peers when it came to swearing and hard work.

How's this for male drivers having a bad day!?! {Attached -ZH}

Thanks for your responses, Unfortunately there's nothing to install so I don't get the option of not connecting to the internet. I didn't really want to do a clean install if I could help it as I wanted to find out what was causing the problem, but I agree with you that it is probably the easiest and best thing to do. I think I'll try and track down a copy of the drivers disk, I'm sure I've got one at work, and see if that resolves the issue before opting for a clean install. I'll let you know if it works. Once again thanks for the input.

Hope someone can help me with this as I'm pulling my hair out trying to overcome it. Basically a friends laptop (HP nx9005) died, I checked it over and found that it was the hard dirve. So I managed to get hold of a new one and installed the OS from the recovery disk, but there was no drivers disk as he had lost it, so I down-loaded the latest ones for this model from the HP website. All going well so far, or so I thought!!! But now when it has booted up the Device Driver Installation Wizard pops up but with no entries in it. If I click ok the popup box closes and the system works fine. There are no errors in device manager and nothing in event logs to show why it has been launched. I,ve rolled back the drivers one by one, but it still keeps opening whenever the laptop is turned on. Anyone got any ideas? I hope so!!!! Thanks in advance for any help you can give.