Katy

Should have stuck the apple logo on the background for the iCT joke to work properly, damn.

Has anybody stopped to think what ICT actually stands for? Perhaps it's iChristmasTree?

Huh. What a strange coincidence!

No, Chartwells (part of Compass), and the tills run software I wrote.

Was just in the park and saw this dog that I could have SWORN looked just like Dave! ICT dog-rect?

Ours have their own PC, printer and ADSL (I guess, maybe FTTC) line connecting to their network, but we also provide the kitchen manager with a school PC as he does a lot of work with school functions etc, and it's just easier that way than trying to get remote access to everything working off his catering company PC. All the tills are owned by school too, however all income (from breaktimes or the till in the cafe) from them goes straight to our bank, I guess they just invoice us for the cost of the items and staffing. Lunchtimes the tills just log who has been through and we then work out who to charge via their fees if they aren't on a lunch contract. We're the billed a set amount per person that's been fed.

Not tried anything like this in our sports hall (for exams we have carpet that goes down, but we don't do MFL listening exams in there) - but Manchester Academy is (in terms of construction) basically a sports hall with a massive stage at one end, they have thick black curtains down all the walls and seems to work well with their loud and expensive equipment, would imagine it'd help with a school PA just as well though.

Sorry, really boring. We usually have roast beef for Xmas at mum's. Had turkey with all the trimmings today for school lunch though! Well, I didn't, everyone else did. I picked the bits I like from what was on offer

New staff - HR let me know when they have signed their contract and all the AUP forms. Leaving staff - sometimes get told if I'm lucky. The trust is trying something new now, where the HR system emails us when somebody leaves. It doesn't support emailing when people join but they say the new system we are moving to does.

We have 4 IT rooms (24/25 PCs) and the library (42 PCs), plus a few like Music where they have a room of 12. We are planning to drop one of the IT rooms, and most of the PCs in the library, if we go with a 1:1 device rollout. Will probably need to keep the DT IT room for CAD and the computing IT room for coding etc, plus the music room as they've got Sibelius and USB music keyboards etc.

You seem to have spelt my name wrong? It's a fix I tell you! Grumble grumble....

I won, it hasn't been disputed by anybody and therefore is a legally binding contract for the delivery of my new computer lab! Hurry up, get shipping Dave! (Please don't remove my name from the entries, pretty please)

But on a non-domain laptop they'd be firewalled off by default, and not picking up GPO applied firewall policies to allow them.

Just placed an order with them actually, on my 1Gbps Internet connection tender they came out best price and were the only one that actually provided loads of details in a proper quote (rather than a price dumped in an email). Can't say how good they are yet but looks promising.

25 brand new 8th gen i5/8GB RAM/256GB SSD PCs with 24" monitors! It's amazing! THANKYOU ICT DIRECT!!!!

If you search for chrome enterprise there's a silent install MSI available, and not quite sure how the auto update works but it does, and without admin rights (presumably it's got a service running as system which it uses)

Sorry did nobody post? I won.

Isn't the problem the lack of recovery key? I'd expect if I wipe the TPM or pull the drive out and enter the (correct) recovery key it'll work fine, isn't that the point of the recovery key? As for this problem, don't know if the key has changed since it was encrypted - another reason why it should be domain joined, as they are all stored in AD. Guess it's a "tough you should let it be domain joined, and tough you should back up your data" lesson time for the head.

No - most of the policies apply whether someone is signed into chrome or not. All we did on ours was lock a few of the settings pages off, things like Proxy Settings it just uses the Internet Explorer/Windows built in screen so that was already restricted through group policy anyway.

What's the TTL on your DNS? That'll state how long it takes to propagate. It's usual to set it down to something low like an hour a couple of days before making this kind of change. WHOIS will tell you what the active name servers are for your domain. If Office 365 says the record is there, then it is just being cached in dns for whoever is sending you mail, and you'll just have to wait for whatever your TTL is for it to update.

So we don't trust the Chinese to make tech that we use, but we want them running (well paying for) all the new Nuclear? Mad. (Is that even still happening? Not heard anything about it for a while)

If it isn't written to obey group policies then nothing you can do about it. We don't have it on any machines except ours, but we only hide the C drive to stop people thinking "ooh i can put stuff on there" - staff and students cannot get at anything they shouldn't be able to on the C drive as they have the correct permissions for what they need to do.

On the Odeon website the off peak time slots have a different background colour, it's not that much more for peak showing in the standard cinemas anyway. Don't think I've paid for a peak slot outside the weekend for a long time, helps if you wait a few weeks after release to go see a film.

It is their super premium product though, the Luxe cinemas, you get massive reclining sofa type chairs to yourself with table service on some of the higher priced tickets. In their standard cinemas it's £5 (£10 ish in London) for off peak 2D showings.

Worked on my own for about 6 years, then as part of a team of 4, then down to a team of 2 currently. Much prefer it now - didn't particularly mind being on my own but it was all the jobs that take 10 times longer than if there was somebody helping you.