Day Two Hundred 'n' Fifty

It's all going off.

The Citrix geeks have finished their work. However after they restored 3 virtual machines back on to a freshly rebuilt server yesterday afternoon, I found that when you try and manage this server that NO virtual machines are available. I emailed the geeks and they will have to instruct me how to restore these machines from backup. Rubbish.

The kiddy file server's RAID has lost 700 kids' work. The RAID volume their work was on shows up as a set of spare drives. This will all have to be restored from a backup. Rubbish.

All our 58 G5 Macs are imaged, and The New Guy has (finally) finished setting up a whole room.

Our second server rack arrived today and by some sheer delightful fluke this new version fits through doors and wheels really nicely. It's in the new server room, although this room is missing:

1) a light

2) doors

3) flooring

4) any form of power supply

Space has been cleared in the current server room so that we can push out existing rack, although this is taller than the new one so we might have to de-rack all the servers and tilt this to get it through. Rubbish.

Some data cabling installers came in with a view to cabling our new office. They were concerned that this is an IT office with only 4 data outlets. They were also told to re-use the cables that were in those rooms pre-refurb. The same rooms where I was told to CUT the cables as it was all being stripped out. They also looked at the plans and asked when we were moving our data cabinets to the new server room. Once I got up off the floor, and after a few phone calls, they concluded that they would merge our two data cabinets together in the same room and put it all in a 42u floor standing rack. Just have to get the benching and sink taken out....one day....soon. I have a meeting about this next week.

Picked up 25 new computers and flat screens from the University yesterday which will allow us to upgrade a lot of our 1.7GHz PCs with 3.0GHz machines. Only issue here is storage and the fact we have NONE for the machines which we pull out, added to storage of 22 eMacs and 34 iMacs.

Data cabling was removed from network cabinets today in the old science block which is being demolished, so we have lots of patch panels spare now. I also removed the cabling from the librarian and careers officer's areas as these rooms are being made in to a corridor next week! This all had to be pulled back through the fake ceiling giving me lovely plaster board dandruff.

The fire alarm has stopped going off. Turns out the builders demolished some changing rooms before disconnecting the fire system, which really badly broke it.

Anyway, the new domain works, as does everything that connects to it. AND we can publish apps via the web, which as The Other Tech said is "like proper IT!"

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty Five

Today the fire bell went off, again. It seems to take an entire week to test. This coupled with a big drill/digger thing smashing up foundations of the old building led to an interesting working environment.

The new guy was set the task of adding 35 computers to our DHCP list, inventory and workgroup manager list. Come 4:30 he hadn't completed this task as he said he "had a couple of distractions" which usually means listening to LOUD drum 'n' bass and texting. He also decided to implement his own computer naming convention. We usually use . He had decided to use PowerMac or iMac, or eMac instead of just "mac". Apart from this being completely different to any machine he had ever set up, I explained that we would have to know which machine type we were trying to work on. This temporary loss of sanity was not corrected.

The Other Tech started work on our new image for our G5 macs which is preparing overnight, as well as sorting wireless on the other site for the temporary classrooms.

The Citrix installers didn't turn up - don't know why.

Upgraded our email system to the latest version, which has some handy updated features.

The data wiring people turned up today to cable our old office back up. After we'd been told to strip the old cabling, they'd been told to re-use it! This led on to them planning to re-wire the few rooms in this block from scratch....then they asked when our data cabinets were being moved. I had no idea that this was planned, so they made some phone calls and I panicked a bit (this would involve moving a LOT of fibre cable, and our Internet feed). They concluded that our two wall-mont racks will be merged in to a single 42u floor standing rack in it's current location (semi-phew). I don't know when this work will take place. but for it to start someone else has to remove some built in benching and a sink! The lack of communication is immense.

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty Two

Half an IT room is semi updated - screens are in as are new keys and mice. Some screens still have their packing on as The New Guy didn't seem to get the "unpack everything" command.

Gigabit switches are installed in the other IT room ready for Power Macs tomorrow. iMacs from here are in stores. Screens are being unpacked by The New Guy.

New Cat 5e cable feeds from our comms room in to our new server room went in today. They need trunking in, and putting through the wall, but it's installed in the main cabinet.

Citrix people seem to be getting on ok, although they found that one of our servers ISN'T 2008 compatible even though they said it was. They have suggested running this machine as a VM on itself, or on one of the new Citrix App servers. Not ideal but it will work.

Took delivery of a new BTO XServe server too. It's staying sealed until we have some space, and a working network! The one it's replacing could host our video streaming but we shall have to see.

The Other Tech worked on installing wireless on the other site for the temporary classrooms. It should broadcast to most of the city!

Day Two Hundred 'n' Forty One

The big fat upgrade started today. We have two new HP DL360 G5 servers with 16GB RAM each. The Ubergeeks are working on this - they work in silence, in power suites.

Screens are in two of the ICT rooms, ready for their G5 towers. 22 eMacs have been put in the scrap heap, and we moved some desks around, and cut some network cables from the building that's going to be demolished. It really doesn't sound like much work, but it really was.

Day 235.5

Epic week ahead - job list:

-Usual day job

-Write up current domain configuration and PDC / BDC config

-Write up new domain plan including hostnames and IPs of new servers

-Collect software to be installed on new domain controller(s)

-Move out of temporary ICT office in to ICT classroom, temporarily

-Move all ICT equipment out of staff room, install in to temporary staff room

-Disconnect all network ports in building to be demolished

-Move all science ICT equipment to old site to store pending room refurb

-Move all english ICT equipment out of rooms pending science refurb, and move to mobile classrooms, pending delivery!

-Remove two plasma screens from staff room / entrance

-Disconnect network points from careers office, move ICT to storage

-Disconnect network points from library office, move ICT to storage

-Move obsolete kit from staff room storage, to somewhere else

-Appraise someone

-Meet with management

-Meet with contractors

-Take delivery of 56 new computers

-Store 56 new computers.....somewhere....

Day Two Hundred 'n' Sixteen

Wireless laptops are being used "in the field" now, and actually work, wirelessly! Hurrah.

Our new student records server has arrived and is being set up this week. The data guy has tested how to transfer the database over to a temporary machine and it seemed to work fine. This could be up and running by the end of the week. Wow. It's a spanky HP DL360 server with the database on a 200GB RAID5 volume and LTO2 tape drive in a rack mount. Managed to splash out on a spare hot swap power supply as we now have about 3 of these machines, this new on, and 2 more to come in a month's time so we should be covered there.

Trying to organise a return for our big LTO3 tape loader which has never worked. Have to ring Germany....joy. Would be nice to get a return on this as we'd get £1700 credit on our budget.

Had a go with VoIP with a view to setting up a test phone network, but I still don't know how you "interface" this with actual phones, so that needs some more research.

Our new IT wing is taking shape. The door from the old server room to the new server room has been knocked through and they have done the first fix for the electrics as well as starting to hang a new false celling.

Wireless - done, new school records server - done (ish). The only big thing left is our new Citrix install with a day's 2008 training. Scary.

Also looking at what licenses we need to be covered for showing music and video such as PRS, or PVS or CLA or EDA etc. Rubbish.

Day Two Hundred

Wow, 200 days of work fun. How did I survive?

Wireless is installed. Seems to work ok. MacBook image is nearly ready to make. Hopefully using portable home folders / mobile accounts won't be too much of an issue over the uber-wireless. We shall see.

We were evicted from our office to have it refurbished, so we've moved all our stuff in to a 1st floor class room. Bit odd being up there, but needs must. Building work on the refurb starts on Tuesday! This leads me on to my next point.....

I have decided, late in the day, to get information on how the server room is getting a new door without causing massive amounts of brick dust and thus trashing out £1000s of serverage. We'll be having a day of downtime so they don't suck dust through their air intakes, and then will be covering them with some £2.79 Homebase dust sheets which I had to go out and buy.

The "big door" between the current and new server rooms is actually going to be a standard door. This means we have to remove all the servers and UPSes from the current rack as we will have to tip it during the move to get it through the door, meaning more downtime. Rubbish.

I also discovered that the new server room will have an extractor fan installed, but NO air conditioning. This is a no no, so the business man and builder man have decided to move the current server room air con, in to the new room. Except some bright spark has set the wheels in motion to have this done NEXT WEEK. This means that the current server room, with its heat pumping servers, will be running with no cooling. FAIL. I'm trying to get this stopped as I wasn't consulted before this "lets do it now" email went out, but I don't know if it will be too late as works start Tuesday.

Our new office gets a luxurious 4 data outlets. That's 4 outlets for 3 people, printer, and whatever machines we will be working on. Who on earth spec'd 4!

The old server room gets to be called a 'workroom' and it turns out that it will be given a refurb also! This is news to me, and means we have to clear it out come the start of the summer holidays! It gets a whole 4 data points installed too. Wow. It's like 1996 all over again.

Have had to strip out all the data points in the current office areas so that the builders can pull out all the cabling next week. I've scavenged all the face plates to patch up smashed points elsewhere.

The end result will be better and more workable than previous, but it sounds like it hasn't been properly planned out. I wish whoever was in charge involved me in spec'ing out the area!

I may have mentioned this before, but our Citrix upgrade has been approved and sent off for. Hopefully a project manager should be in touch with me soon with works to commence at the end of July. Scary.

Designed and implemented a database for work's improvement plan. The concept of a database is completely alien to the staff. They seem to like to enter their details in to "find" mode, then complain that they lose their work. Of course, because it isn't MS Word, its "difficult".

Still no news on our 1gbps star network, and no fixed budget set......

Day One Hunded 'n Seventy Eight

Testing of the mock network continues today. So far, we have a "native" Windows 2008 Domain Controller. Connected to this is an eMac running 10.4.11 Server. 2008 box does the authentication, eMac hosts home folders for the pretend users. 10.4 laptop and 10.5 laptop both authenticate and mount a home off the eMac via AFP. Which is good. Forward and reverse DNS lookups work too, which the eMac was whinging about. I believe Folder Redirection for XP machines works too now, so everything works like our current network. Hurrah!

Installed some apps on the 2008 server to mock up what would be on it if it were a Citrix server. Everything appears to work apart from Autograph, a retro maths program which says it's unexpectedly quite when you close it (!).

Bids from the installers have come in today. We have singled out 1 as what we want to go for. Fingers crossed the people what pay will approve such a big spend.

Day One Hundred 'n' Seventy Six

So, tomorrow is Citrix quote day. Before this happens, maybe it's a bit late, but in my mind it is still BEFORE, The Other Tech and I have been having a go at a mini network based on Server 2008. 10.4 Macs and XP PCs authenticate. We've turned down the security so that the Mac can get the SMB shares off it too. So the essentials are working. Next we need to try connecting to Mac OS from 2008 to emulate our real network, as well as 10.5. I've been checking application compatibility with 2008, which has been a blast.

The New Guy Tech is working on creating MSI files so that we can start to automate a lot of our Windows software installs. Seems to be going alright.

Day One Hundred 'n' Sixty Six

So today, I moved our domain controller(s) and terminal servers down to the other end of the server room. We have to move them in a month or so, so rather than having downtime then, and now, I moved the stuff now.....

...becuase a man from the LEA came in to install a big HP switch which as 14x fibre gigabit ports, and 48x cat 5e gigabit ports. It's immense. Everything is up and running again. He will be back to install further gigabit switches in the coming weeks.

Windows update was also done on our domain controller(s), so that's all sorted. They are also set to shut down via the network when the UPS kicks in (after a power cut).

Moved Year 7, 12 and 13 to our new RAID array. Was a piece of cake using the power of the command line! Years 8,9,10 and 11 tomorrow methinks. Then we can redeploy the old drives as a resources area.

Day One Hundred 'n' Sixty Two

Is it only day 162?

Not much has happened. Wrote off to 4 Citrix installers to get them to quote for our Uber-grade. Had site visits to get a decent Extricom wireless system installed. Plan to move half the place's work on to a new 1.5TB volume over easter. Made a database for senior people (management, not old biddies). Went on to the new site to look at scaffolding and half built walls. Trained a teacher on Final Cut Express.

Day One Hundred 'n' Fifty Three

Big Citrix tender document - written.

Citrix suppliers - listed.

Wireless suppliers - listed and quoting.

New technician - coming back Monday.

LEA network man - installing new topology in 2 weeks for gigabit fun.

Improvement database shown to SMT - done and loving it.

Bosh.

Day One Hundred 'n' Forty Nine

It's all gone wrong 3 times this week. After some log analysis it was tracked down to a problem with DNS. I had to resort to contacting the company that supplied the 3 servers which have a DNS role as, surprise surprise, The Last Guy had not properly documented how these were set up. The theory was that we have 1 server in charge of DNS, a second one to take over if the first one dies, and a 3rd which was retired. In reality we have 1 in charge, a second running, but no computers are set to look to it should the first one break, and a 3rd one that is fully running and not retired at all. So, all our servers and each DNS server itself is now set to look to the main server 1st, then the secondary one second, and the crap 3rd one as a last resort.

The problem seems to get kicked off at around 8:40 ish for no apparent reason. We'll see what happens tomorrow, but it's entirely rubbish when it does go wrong as no one can get on the computers.

Budget concerns seem to be being addressed and it looks like we may have money next year for most of what we want to do.

The New Technician should be returning to work under some strict rules (once bitten, twice shy)

Day One Hundred 'n' Thirty Seven

Minutes after I'd finished the mammoth task of tracing the network last week, and decommissioning surplus network switches, the LEA turned up to install 2 brand new gigabit switches in to the music block extension. That's 72 ports in a block that only has 6 computers. These were removed Monday morning and added to the stock pile which now totals 15x 24 port switches, most with some form of gigabit connectivity.

Got a quote in to upgrade out Citrix servers to the latest XenApp software, 2 new servers, bit of RAM, MS Office and MS Server 2003. The cost for this is £41k. Yes. £41,000. That will sure make next year's budgeting VERY interesting.

Nothing interesting happened so far this week. It's been very mundane (helpdesk, laptop fixing, video on demand authoring, unpacking laptops) :(

Day One Hundred 'n' Thirty Five

Today I concluded my mission to disconnect all network points from the network if the are not used. This means we've reclaimed 10x 24 port network switches, 4 or 5x desktop mini switches, and binned about 5 older rack mount switches. We've now got 4 crates of cat 5 cable in stock. In most of the cabinets I've been to, I've put in red cabling to indicated ports which link to other switches, and marked where they go. I've also logged every single cat5 point in every room as we don't have a list or map of where our points actually are. Can't believe it took a week to sort out, nor how many of our resources were being wasted in terms of "unused" kit, noise and heat. I'm very pleased to announce that we no longer have any 10baseT hubs on our network, hurrah (there were only 2 left anyway...).

The Other Tech got our antivirus updating properly on our Macs, which is good.

How VERY exciting it all is.

Day One Hundred 'n' Thirty One

Today, I did some work on next year's budget. Money is going to be tighter than last year! I then worked on one of the network racks in the technology department - there are many more ports patched than have computers on the other end. To make the network more secure (and prevent anyone making a loop), I've disconnected any ports that aren't being used. Lots of the ports had also been patched with 2m or longer cables, meaning the cabinet was a mess of tangled cables. I stripped it all out and rewired it with short patch leads....this meant I could put the doors back on AND close them. I managed to pull 3x 24 port switches out of the cabinet!

In the adjacent IT room, there are many ports on the wall which are marked as damaged. I've been round and tested them. Many work fine, and the others just needed re-terminating with a new face plate. This means we can get rid of the crappy desktop switches that add another hop on to the network (this is a good thing).

Finally pulled out the 10base2 cabling in this room, with the user ports being blanked off.

Day One Hundred 'n' Twenty Nine

It's slowly starting to come together now.....very slowly. Had the first of our wireless quotations in this week, and another company visited to work out how much it will cost to replace our Citrix Metaframe Farm with XenApp. A man from the Local Authority came in to see if we can change our core switch configuration from a ring in to a star, and we can, apart from a part of the other site - which is being bulldozed within 2 years anyway. He also mentioned that other placed where they've had a new switch and topology have noticed good speed improvements.

Other bits and pieces of hardware have been arriving such as battery kits for old UPSes, new gigabit switches, and XServe RAID parts which we'll fit at some point. Finished making a new antivirus server, it works, too. Updating for Macs over http isn't working yet, but Windows side is.

The Other Tech has also fixed folder re-direction on Windows. Windows is rubbish.

Day One Hundred 'n' Twenty Six

Christmas continues. We've ordered a refurbished laser printer (fun) to help our art department. They currently print drafts of Photoshop work to a LaserJet 1320 printer, which takes an age to output pages due to the size of the document. The new printer is going to be pimped with 400MB RAM, vs 16MB, along with a much faster processor.

I sent of a batch of emails for an information access request. Those things take too long to organise.

Our old Intranet server has been retired by default as our anti-virus server packed up last week, so it's taken over that role. I need to get the AV software installed and updating the school as we're going without updates during the transition to the new server.

We received a new laptop to do network monitoring. However the monitor software is now end of life, so the company won't reset our serial key for the new machine. We've moved to a free alternative. Seems nice but is SLOW over VNC.

Upgraded one computer room to run at 1Gb, network wise. All clients connect in to the network at a gig. Hurrah.

Have a company coming in a couple of days to discuss and spec a big Citrix upgrade for our place. Finally.

Day One Hundred 'n' Twenty Three

Christmas has come - the goodies purchased with end of year money are coming in thick and fast. So far on the list we have:

• XServe RAID cache battery modules
• A 7th 750GB XServe RAID drive
• 20x 512MB SODIMMS for laptops
• A network management card for a UPS
• A laptop
• 4x 120GB laptop hard drives

The laptop is a new network monitoring station to replace a 7 year old Dell laptop that crawls. However, after filling out my Windows XP user information, it restarted to a "disk read error", so it's killed itself. It also blue screens when loading off a generic XP install disk. What a load of rubbish.

Cache batteries are so we don't loose a a potential 1GB of staff data if the UPS it's connected to cocks up (why weren't these purchased when the unit was new?!)

Tomorrow, ahead of schedule by about 2 weeks, we'll take delivery of 30 new MacBooks. I have no idea where we're going to store these at all. They will probably come when I'm in 1 of 2 meetings I have tomorrow - one about a core network upgrade to 1Gb switches, one about a wireless install.

Day One Hundred 'n' Eighteen

Newbie is temporarily unavailable at work due to one thing and another. This is RUBBISH as we're very busy. He's going to temporarily be replaced with the IT Assistant (who is getting no admin access unless his life depends on it).

Citrix people coming in Monday. Wireless people coming in Tuesday.

30 MacBooks ordered and ready to clutter up the office.

Day One Hunderd 'n' Sixteen

Today, I traced the networking which feeds the servers / Internet connection so that I could mark it all up, making it easier to fault find when there is a problem. Doing this, I found a problem. Our student file server was set up with an ethernet bond ages ago, to give 2Gbps. This would be fine, except The Last Guy plugged the other end of the bond in to ports that weren't bonded! I've sorted it out now, so network throughput should double, in theory. This may speed up the slow Network Home performance.

I also made some changes to the RAID unit which houses the kid's work. This has two 2Gbps fibre links in to the server - forced at 2Gbps rather than auto negotiating. I've also told it the RAID unit is connected to a server, rather than letting it work that out. This should improve things too.

I've ALSO turned on the drives' cache feature....to increase performance some more.

In other news, I added 6x750GB drives to this RAID. It has taken control of all of them and tells me they are in use, even though I haven't even formatted them yet. This is rubbish.

Beating a couple of companies down on a quote for 30 MacBooks. Nearly ready to purchase with the cheapest price being £535 ish per unit. Bargain.

Busy busy busy.

Day 114.5

So today I had to go to work to get all the systems back up and running after some builders put power off to the whole site this morning. As I like to do when people aren't using the systems, I had a tidy and sort out of cables and networking......

• Our main domain controller was plugged in to a KVM switch but the keyboard and mouse didn't work (as the last Net Mgr told me). It turns out if you plug them in the right ports, they do work. So that's fixed.
  
• Had a look at one of our 3com switches and looked up the manual. Turns out its 100mb uplink, then 10mb per port. Macs don't like 10mb ethernet as it's ancient! I've replaced this with an Intel 460T switch - another old and previously managed switch, but it should temporarily work.
• Another switch holding up the network was a cheapo 16 port desktop switch. I replaced this with a spare Intel 510T switch. However, this has 3 port lights stuck on....so I'm guessing it's knackered. I'm going to buy 2 or 3 new switches next week so any forthcoming reliability problems go away before they start.
• Our old internal web server was removed from our server rack and put to one side - ready to plug in if need be, but more ready to be retired
• MCX settings stopped working randomly. In the time it took me to panic, check the logs, research the issue, and panic again, it started working. I also did a 10.5.6 update on this server. Seems to be working now.
• Replaced a HUGE UPS with a smaller one to power our core switches so the servers can do network shutdowns when the power goes off. Pulled out a load of power cables that didn't go anywhere, marked up the ones we do use.
• Checked our public server was happy after I pulled out a SAS drive from it. It was.

My coffee is a bit strong. Needs more milk.

Unfortunately, Remote Access seems to be down for web services AGAIN, but apart from that it's all fine.

Day One Hundred 'n' Thirteen

The meltdown has been stopped.

34 machines have been returned to a local home set-up under Mac OS 10.4. I have also prevented the computers from being overly keen and indexing any home folders by nuking Spotlight so that it doesn't even load. This leaves the other 35 new machines running network home folders, and that's fine. I also tried putting a 10.4 image on a 10.5 only-booting iMac. It works, except it doesn't have the right sound drivers, so it won't do sound. Bum.

Anyway, this slow down wasn't down to the server as the network throughput was minimal (did you know that when netbooting a Mac the server will pump out 110MB, not bits, actual BYTES per second over a gigabit connection), RAM was fine, processors were fine. SSHing in to the client, that was fine too. I'm thinking it might be something to do with out network set-up. As a result, I've ordered 2 books on networking to try and learn something!

The Web Tech made Moodle backup to a NAS box. This is the only good thing about Moodle - the fact it backs up.

It's that time of year where we need to spend our remaining budgets. I compared my version of the accounts to The Big Bosses version. He's spent £6,000 of my cash somewhere, so now I only have £15,000 left to play with, £2k of which has gone on some XServe RAID drive modules which are turning in to rocking horse poo to find. After doing some sums and re-jigging our drives we will have 9500GB of storage for staff and students. They don't produce even half that yet, but it's futureproofing. Eventually we will need to up backup space but I don't anticipate that for well over a year.

It's also been decided that we're going to buy 2 laptop trolley things each with 15 MacBooks on on a shoestring budget - 30 laptops and 2 trolleys for £12,000? It's going to be tight if not impossible. I have a consultant working on his most competitive quote for this.....

....which leads me on to my next project of finally implementing some sort of decent wireless networking. I have a guy sending me info on a patented super duper way of doing it, which is installed in a nearby school, so I might go and visit them one day to see how they are getting on. This will cost a fair whack of money - at least £8,000 to get started and around £25,000 to cover the whoooole school.

That's about it for now. Until I start re-doing the Media Studies edit machines to make them actually useable!

Day One Hundred 'n' Ten

Oh Cock.

I experienced the melt down of the IT system courtesy of Microsoft Office on Friday. Machines with network home folders take an age to launch it with most machines hanging on 'configuring Excel'. The other 100 machines with local home folders die when you try and browse files on the server when you do File--> Open. The server wasn't overloaded CPU wise, and network throughput was around 15MB per second, which isn't that high considering its 2x 1Gb ethernet.

Anyway, today, I set the kiddy file server up with 6GB RAM instead of 2GB. Set it to tame it's logs, allegedly disabled creation of .DS_Store files on clients and server shares, and completely disabled Spotlight (which is an arse but we'll get to that shortly). Things didn't improve noticeably. I did spot some kids trying to do iMovie over the network, so I rang up their teacher and moaned that they can't do this.

Next thing I looked in to was the fact a corrupt Microsoft User Data folder in a user's home space could cause issues with Office 2004. So, I made a script to find and delete this folder. HOWEVER, it didn't work. It found them, just didn't delete them. So I had to search manually....except searching ie, Spotlight, was full-on disabled. So I had to delete them manually. Some kids had links to /tmp for this folder, some had complete folders, and some had folders that were incomplete. They've all gone now, so we shall see how this affects things tomorrow.

The Other Tech finished off a new version of 10.4 for Intel Macs with local homes set up on it, so we can install that on half of the offending Macs as soon as we can, theoretically.

Also updated our XServe RAID's firmware so it can see drives over 500GB. I'd love to crank the storage up on this. We have about 180GB free for half the kids, and 140GB for the other half. I'm worried that we'll run low at a time that isn't convenient....such as just before the exams. It'd be nice to make a couple of volumes with some 1TB drives at some point.

Also, I'm due to get started on an extra curricular project soon for year 8. Did it last year and it was good fun!

Day One Hundred 'n' Five

The new guy has not resigned yet. This breaks with tradition. He also said today that he looks forward to coming to work. How marvelous.

MS Office seemed to break on Friday when I was off. The Other Tech thinks he's fixed it with a .plist. We've tested it out today simulating loads of people logging on, but the real test will come when a class arrives (when it is all likely to cock up).

Backed up a teacher's work on to an external hard drive. It broke. She lost some videos. She will not be happy and will probably gallop off in a mood. Crap

I have to design and make a religious calendar for our digital signage and website. There are SO many religious events its silly! I've also found out I have to improve kiddy communication, with some staff or something. I'm off now!

Day One Hundred 'n' One

New guy started yesterday. Due to a power cut and general confusion, the system was "down" as everyone calls it for most of the morning. So, showing him round was a bit pressured! The Fat Man came to recycle our old computers, so we have marginally more storage space now.

The new software image roll-out seems to work well. No staff or students have called IT support with any major problems so far. There are still a few quirks to sort out like some machines missing printers, and one or two machines not having a serial code for random bits of software, but on the whole it's fine.

Quite a few staff dislike the new Moodle skin the web guy has put on. It does look better but I think many staff just oppose change. A lot have complained that it doesn't have a link to Google on it...even though they have a google search box in their browser (!)

Anyway, new guy seems alright. The learning curve is going to be steep but as much as I can talk at him he won't learn unless he does stuff. He hasn't resigned yet, which is a good sign.

Rang an IT company today to get them to visit me to discuss our major server upgrade in the summer. They will meet me in 10 days so I can explain what I want doing.

After talking to The Big Boss about my job, it seems that no one thinks I'm rubbish at my job. Reading between the lines, he doesn't know what's going on, so I have to keep him updated with what I'm doing so he can relay how good his department is to the Head.

Day Ninety Nine

We've netbooted the entire world.

Ok, not quite, but there are only a handful of machines left to do! This includes a few iMac G4 machines which do not boot from the network without dying. They share the same GeForce 2MX video chipsets as the G4 towers which would not boot either. I aim to get the new IT technician to install these via CD when he joins us next week. Everything seems to work properly, connect to home folders, authenticate against Active Directory and get managed preferences. Good times.

The digital signage systems have also been reinstalled. I have the school logos running on them with transitions to help stop burn in. I wish someone would give us some content for the damn screens!

Ran out of time to get any Video on Demand up. I'm going to try and do a load on Monday in between going to a 2 hour training talk on fire safety, and, training the new IT technician.

Still need to find out who thinks I'm rubbish at my job...