Duranis

Some people drive furiously fast.

Fed Ex loses a load of parcels. One of them eventually gets delivered. Convicted wife murderer spends time in prison, does some work as a librarian and accountant, eventually gets out.

That's what I have been saying all along. Had family members doing stupid stuff because "well your allowed to now". They just don't get that the Government isn't putting down guidelines to keep as many people safe as possible, they are putting down guidelines to keep the economy running with minimal "acceptable losses". Unfortunately I'm not in a position to not be working and I can't afford to pay fines to schools or for my son who is in Year 11 too lose a school place or I would be keeping everyone home. My MIL has really bad COPD, is over 65 and has a number of other health issues. We have gone to see her a few times but she has stood at the door while we stayed at the other end of the drive way. SIL however has gone in her house multiple times, despite that she also goes in other peoples houses and refuses to wear a mask because it makes her "feel panicky". BIL that lives with her is regularly eating out at restaurants and going shopping. It drives me insane but I keep my mouth shut because the Mrs doesn't want to cause an argument.

A galactic civilisations expansion is stopped by lack of adequate antivirus software.

This probably needs its own thread but do you really think so? I agree they were pretty heavy handed on the "drama" side and it probably would have been better without that part, but the documentary side of it seemed pretty much spot on.

Watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix last night. Mixed Drama/Documentary about social media user manipulation, how they keep people hooked and the ways it influences how people think. It's not going to be news to any of us tech people but I honestly think everyone should watch this. Even though it was all old news to me it did make me stop and seriously consider how much time I was giving over to the likes of FB and reddit. Despite knowing how it works I didn't realise quite how much time I'm wasting on it. After looking at my app usage times, notification numbers and unlock numbers (all WAY higher then I thought they would be) I have now actually gone through and disabled notifications for everything except phone calls, direct messaging and work email. Rather then pulling my phone out in them odd 10 minutes I have to kill I'm going to start carrying a small sketch book round with me and just doodle/sketch or think about things I want to do and write notes. I use FB and Reddit for a lot of hobby groups and I think it can still be used to do great things, so I'm not just going to dump them. However I'm going to try and stay very mindful of the fact that I'm being manipulated. I'm also not just going to use it to "kill time" which I think is my biggest problem. It's just so easy to sit and scroll mindlessly through reddit rather then get up and do something productive with my time.

Having done quite a bit of phone repair I can say it is 100% possible that the fault you are experiencing now could be due to the damage you initially caused. You could quite easily have damaged the ribbon cables that are connected to these buttons but not enough to completely break it. Opening up the iPhone again the proper way would still have moved these cables so if they were already damaged just that little movement could have finished them off. These people have probably replaced a few hundred batteries in this model of phone so I would be inclined to believe that it wasn't anything they did. Especially if you used a knife to open it up the first time. I obviously don't know these people but when I was doing this for a short time as a living it was very rare that we would break anything while doing simple things like a battery switch. The only times that things ever really got broken was sometimes trying to remove LCD's from digitizers (it was kind of accepted that its going to break) and when working on brand new devices that didn't have good tear downs available for them. For iPhones it pretty much becomes muscle memory level of work after your first 20 or so.

Funny this just popped up again. A couple of nights ago my 3 (almost 4) year old daughter wakes up in the middle of the night and calls out. Not that unusual, Mummy goes to settle her down again and I'm drowsily listening on the monitor. When Mummy gets in there my daughter is pretty wide awake and asks, "Mummy, Why was my light flashing on and off?" Mummy says "The little red light? That's just the smoke alarm my lovely, it is very bright though isn't it". Daughter "No Mummy, not the smoke alarm. My big light, with the doggy shade on." Mummy "ok........ Well back to sleep then.." A couple of minutes later. Daughter "Mummy, who's on the landing?" Mummy "Nobody lovely, everyone is in bed sleeping". Daughter "But I just saw them looking from behind the door, it was white and poked its head round twice" Mummy "ok.........." Daughter "Can I come and get in with you and Daddy" Mummy "Yes, yes you can, lets go!". I think it's pretty funny and can think of a hundred plausible explanations but my Mrs is convinced the house is haunted now. However there was a slightly stranger incident that happened not long after we moved in. Middle of the night my Mrs wakes me up quite shaken up with part of her face covered in blood. At the time our daughter was sleeping in our room so we step into the hallway and I clean her up and check her over. Despite looking VERY carefully and checking over her head, in her hair, ears, mouth, hands and arms I can't see so much as a scratch on her. There was no blood in or around her nose, mouth or ears so it wasn't coming from there. It was just a big patch on the side of her face. Checking her pillow there was a LARGE patch of wet blood on it, like the size of the palm of my hand and still soaking wet after I had spent about 20 minutes checking my Mrs over. It definitely seems like the blood came from the pillow and my Mrs just laid on it. I checked in the pillow and even checked the ceilings and walls in case there was some kind of odd leak but didn't find anything. It could be possible that maybe she had a small spot in her hair that she had scratched and made bleed that I just missed. For the amount of blood that was there though I would have expected to see some sign of a wound.

It may be worth just taking of a few keys and checking the contacts. It may not be broken so much as the residue buildup from the cleaning liquid in the wipes is stopping the keys from making proper contact. A quick wipe off on the contacts with Isopropanol or acetone might fix it. Maybe a thin smear of dielectric grease over all the contacts will protect them but that is a pain to disassemble and treat multiple keyboards.

Not 40k but maybe close enough to still be of interest For my Birthday in July I picked up a 3D resin printer. Over the last month or so I have really got into 3D modelling and created quite a few bits for Gaslands which uses modded hotwheels/matchbox type toy cars. This might not look like much but it has take over 100 hours to get it to fit perfectly to the original metal hotwheels body. Though a lot of that time was spent learning how to do it. And this was something I made for a competition to create a car with a Steampunk theme (and the original car it was built on).

Thanks that's really useful. This was pretty much how I was feeling about it but didn't know if my lack of experience with O365 was just making bias.

Is there anything specific you can pin down for why you think Gsuite is easier to use/manage? I'm feeling the same way about it but I don't have a lot of experience with O365 and I'm struggling to come up with specifics of why one is better than the other that I can put to SLT. I think generally they seem the same but I'm just a lot more biased to what I already know.

Thanks. Interestingly from my point of view I would have said almost exactly the same about Gsuite (with my limited experience of Teams). Is there anything specific you can say that makes Teams easier? I'm thinking it is very much a case that they are pretty much identical and it's down to personal preference. It would be good to pin down some definite differences between the two though.

Yeah yesterday we got some face shields in. We aren't allowed to wear them in front of the children though.........

I completely agree with you but here support staff are being expected to go wherever they need to do work. I'm not even mentioned separately in the risk assessment. There is not a room in this building I haven't had to go into over the last week. I'm not happy about it but can't afford to not have a job at the moment.

We are a primary school with around 400 pupils and currently using GSuite for staff and it is working just fine. Staff are fairly happy using it but they are only really using email, shared calendars and drive for file storage/sharing. We are quietly preparing for if the schools have to be put into lockdown again and have the opportunity for setting up either GSuite or O365 as our online learning platform. The pretty hazy plan at this stage is to use whichever platform for setting and collecting work. The other schools within the new academy have all switched to O365 so that is something else worth keeping in mind. My personal inclination would be to stick with GSuite but that is only because I have more experience with it and I believe staff will get on better using Google Classroom over Teams for setting and managing online learning. I would be interested to hear anyone's experiences with them both, any pro's or con's I might have missed and any "gotcha's" I should be looking out for by going for one or the other?

We got face shields into school today. Supposed to be worn in all common areas... except not in front of the kids..... Not sure exactly what the point was as there are NO common areas that aren't in front of the kids.

In my experience it won't make any difference but at least it will look like you are being pro-active. I had a few really common (and very simple) user issues coming up awhile back so I made video guides, posters in all the staff areas and sent out guides via email. I don't think a single member of staff actually paid any attention to any of them. When I mentioned all the things I had put out to try and help them to be able to quickly deal with it I generally got something along the lines of "oh yeah I think I remember seeing that but didn't have time to look at it properly". This was just for some very basic usage, not even troubleshooting/fixing things.

In a local facebook group last night someone was saying how it is all just a hoax and a way for the Government to gain more control. When I pointed out that would take every government on the planet, as well as every medical professional, all working together using the same lie, despite some of the Governments actively trying to destroy each other, they still wouldn't change their mind. The scariest part, they had WAY more people agreeing with them. Honestly before Covid I thought that at least the majority of people where reasonable, decent and at least averagely intelligent. Now it seems like reasonable, averagely intelligent people are definitely in the minority and I have no faith in humanity what so ever. I wish this was just me being sarcastic as well but I do genuinely fear for the world my children are going to grow up in.

It's money over health, pubs and restaurants will be the absolute last things to close due to the massive economic impact they have (literally billions, even with tax cuts). For comparison your looking at a tax income of about 20p per £1 of turnover for a pub vs about 7p per £1 for retail. This isn't even including indirect tax from things like excise duty and from the supply chains. That's why pubs were opened long before a lot of other shops and services.

Yeah not in a union unfortunately, though I really should be. Also while they technically couldn't do anything I have had a formal disciplinary here for not fixing software that was requested (it is over 12 years old and not compatible with modern browsers) and for not getting new equipment in and set up in a timely manner (I had been sending quotes for approval for 3 months). If they can get away with that there isn't much I can do if they decide I'm a pain they don't want to deal with anymore. If the hours weren't super convenient I wouldn't be here.

This place is driving me insane with the Covid 19 "precautions" (or lack thereof). I had to ask for hand sanitizer. It had been given out to all the classrooms but not me. I also haven't been given any kind of cleaning supplies. Year groups are supposed to be isolated from each other but I'm still expect to move between classes. This morning I was expected to go to every class, one after the other, to make sure the group zoom meeting was signed in and working. I'm not allowed to wear masks or gloves. Covid 19 risk assessment makes no mention of me or the roll I play in school, or how IT problems are supposed to be dealt with. People are coming and standing in the door of my 4ftX8ft room (with no windows, less then 1.5m away from me) and telling me their problems despite me saying multiple times to send an email. Children are being sent to me (through the areas used by other year groups) to solve their problems. I got a bollocking for not going round all the classrooms searching for some missing cameras (that are over 10 years old and need replacing anyway). Nobody is observing social distancing. First day back the FLO gave the secretary a big hug.... 5 teachers from different groups where standing side by side sorting through a delivery. There is very little difference here between a normal pre-covid day and now.

Does anyone have a good source for cheapo USB flash drives? Doesn't have to be amazing just 1GB min capacity. I buy in decent quality 16GB sticks for the staff here to use but will often get asked for a drive to just use in the photocopier or put a few songs on to and then I never get it back. Just need a bunch of cheapo throw away drives that I can use for this kind of thing rather than handing out the good ones.

Will dig them out if I get chance over the weekend. If you are on Facebook do a search for UK blacksmithing and knifemaking groups. Loads of super talented folks on there that will do custom builds. If you take a look back over previous posts it's normally pretty easy to find the guys with a good rep that are consistently putting out quality stuff. My dream is to get good enough myself to do this kind of thing for a living (probably unlikely). Spent my whole life working with or on computers or electronics though and want to do something physical and creative for a change.

One of my favourite shows. These are nice looking knives but I have to say they are a little overpriced considering it appears that they are not hand forged and ground out from pre-cut blanks. I'm getting into Blacksmithing and knife making myself and there are a lot of really amazing craftsmen around that are making really awesome knives if you have a little poke around on facebook for Blacksmithing groups. Don't get me wrong, even making a knife from a blank takes a lot of knowledge and skill, how to grind a good edge, heat treating, finish, etc are all an artform in themselves. However I have seen hand forged, patterned steal custom chefs knives done for a similar price.