Day Sixty Eight

I sorted the school data backup system today. Everyone's work now backs up to a stack of shiny new 1500GB hard drives at a rate of 1GB per minute, instead of 63MB / min, which is what the crappy old system ran at with its rubbish NAS boxes.

Tried to fathom out a login script with The Other Tech - it refuses to do what we want even though it contains the simplest of commands :(

Chased a few quotes for new ICT hardware (laser printers) and did the usual array of random "can you help me just...." requests.

Finished off a 4th video editing Mac for the second Media room.

Oh and ordered 2 more NEW iMacs for an ICT room. We can get them for £600! BARGAIN

Day Sixty Five

I've been a bit slack and not blogged.

Been working a bit on our kiddy proxy server. It seems to block "useful" things like playing back video off websites. I've tamed it slightly now. Carried on updating Video on Demand pages for loads of departments. Nearly relinked ALL old videos to their Flash versions, with plenty more new ones to go up once that task is done.

Started working on our staff and pupil backup server today. Need to clone the operating system from a hot plug drive to a NHP drive, but it's being a bit of an arse about that.

Met with Senior Management today to talk about designing a database for school improvement plans. Sounds fairly simple to do. The lady is going to get back to me with some rough layout designs.

One thing that made me worry today. We have this rubbish learning platform thing called 'Moodle'. You upload things to it, and follow them, which is better than having a teacher tell you what to do, or using a worksheet. However, some staff aren't putting any content in their courses apart from a Word document, which they get the kids to download, containing the instructions. WHY don't they just put the content of this document straight on to Moodle? That's the WHOLE point of it! More to the point, why isn't The New Guy (the training guy) actually training anyone? It seems all he does is test out a GIS package called GRASS for the Geography department. 

The Other Tech is continually doing crappy helpdesk tasks. I'm surprised he hasn't lost his mind yet.

Still no sign of a 3rd technician......

Starting to have problems with Photoshop Elements in one of the IT rooms. It quits on saving, corrupting the file it's trying to save, meaning kids loose their work. It's affected a couple of a-level students. Maybe the machines are running out of RAM?

One of the IT teachers claimed that the computers in the new ICT room are "taking 50 minutes to load Word". We both think she's having us on slightly. Grr.

Day Sixty Two

This blogging thing is getting a bit tedious now....

Did more work for Media - installing 2 new machines, and unblocking their QuickTime viewing via our Internet filter. Also helped them with video compression settings so a 1 min clip isn't 10000MB.

Moved a lot of obsolete equipment in to storage ready for collection by a recycling firm.

Did a bit of video streaming work, too. Still lots to do, not that it technically streams...Oh and Flash encoding on an Intel Mac versus a G5 Mac is SO much faster!

Day Sixty One

Started the move-over of the second media studies room today. The room's always in use so its 1 old machine out, one new one in when I can get a moment.

Took delivery of some 1.5TB hard drives for the staff and student backup system, and some 19" flat screens.

Helped various departments prepare things for an open evening and for a school inspection tomorrow - wasn't much time for anything else!

The Big Boss was away, so that was a relief to everyone.

Day Sixty

Re-wrote the job advert and specification for the web technician's job today. We're going for just 'technician' now, and I've dropped the education level to A-level with a graduate preferred. See if that works.

Tested out a video over cat5 kit today - works perfectly. Sorted out some orders for some SATA drives, as well as for some extra curricular production work. Also had a look at Livid's Union again as it's been a while since I last used it.

Implemented a new system where any member of IT staff can now reset a user's password. Pretty nifty. Documented it too.

I think the press are coming tomorrow for some reason - have to set up DVD/PowerPoint playing facilities in the main hall at 8am. Blimey.

Day Fifty Nine

Today was a busy day - in the way of lots of interruptions and general randomness. 

Installed some geography software on a computer room today, then found out it was a slightly different version to what was expected, so had to re do it.

What's the deal with "Microsoft Imaging Document" as a graphics format?! What's the point! No bugger can read them - had to convert a load of images for a study skills presentation, while it was taking place.

The New Guy hadn't been told to set up a video recorder and projector for a history teacher's presentation, so had to go sort that out with minutes to spare (the Big Boss didn't pass on the info).

Have to meet with SMT about designing a database (I hate databases) soon, so that might be interesting, or a nightmare.

Met with the Head - the clerical error has been resolved and my pay is now correct as advertised, although this will be interesting when my contract expires...

Photoshopped some photos for the school production - thew want them projected as part of the show.

Picked up a projector and NAS box from the other site, and found a network cabinet which is buzzing away like a swarm of stoned wasps. I think there could be a problem about to happen.

Tired now. Bye!

Day Fifty Eight

Worked on our student proxy today as it was in the wrong network mode. Indeed, it should be, and now is in Bridge mode, rather than Router mode, and is used for "ALL" requests. This has made the media studies department very happy, as access to their blogging site now works.

Worked on the backup system to incorperate the new music department iMacs. Then went and set them up with said iMacs and chucked all their rubbish PCs in a pile.

Set up another G4 tower for basic media work, and a G5 tower (wow, things are on the up).

Oh, and it turns out I evidently have the wrong end of the stick after my meeting with The Big Boss yesterday - The New Guy is not to be used to go in to classrooms and help if the other New Guy is busy or double booked. That must have been a decision made in the last 24 hours. Silly me.

Day Fifty Seven

Just me today.

Second Power Mac for extra media room - check

Meeting with The Big Boss, discuss staffing - check

Sort out recent orders / budget - check

Start organising software in Server Room - check

Block Internet games - check

Tell Big Boss his browser and multimedia software is out of date - check

Work on crappy local account for Art Tech - check

Find out music room networking is fubar - check

Day Fifty Six

First thing this morning, the kiddy file server stopped authenticating against our Active Directory server. This had to be unbound and rebound to the directory, so that was 20 mins of disruption. Then, during that 20 mins, the staff server did a similar thing. Except it was running really really slowly, then locked up whenever you tried to open an app. There were errors in the logs about file tables full. The Other Tech found that this sort of thing is allocated during start up depending on the amount of RAM the server detects, so that, added to the freezing, led us to remove 1GB of RAM which we now thing is faulty. It's FBDIMMs, so we don't have any spare and have had to order some in to replace it. That was about an hour to fix while we waited for the crashing to stop/start and work out what was going on. Fun? No.

Ordered 6TB of storage for our kiddy file backup, and chased an order for two full sets of Nintendo Wii for our sports department (it's educational, apparently).

Worked on the school iPhoto server - seems at least 2 people are using this!

Finally, tried to cobble together a 'high performance' G4 tower to replace an array of crappy eMacs for our media department's second room.

Day Fifty Five

"The others" were back today. There was a brief authentication problem with printing, but The Other Tech sorted it with a restart.

I updated the documentation areas in the staff rooms. Printed out copies of a couple of how-to guides that I'd written over the weekend.

Replaced the G4 in The Big Bosses office with an iMac. The original G4 was never used since it was installed.

Worked on a big problem with Adobe InDesign and network home folders - basically, the two don't work together.

Still not heard back about my pay!