Don't have fun without me!

I won't be blogging again till next Wednesday [4 Aug] at the earliest dear readers. I hope I don't miss anything exciting!

Finally managed to buy something from Ebay using PayPal. The hoops they ask you to jump through now - I had to set up a Credit Card and a Bank Account before I could pay. It would've taken a week if i'd realised you had to do both, as it was it took two! grrr! Luckily my sellers were patient with me. So now I can spend some vast amout per day. I don't trust PayPal so I think i'll be closing this down straight away anyway.

Broadband was activated on Tuesday, a day ahead of schedule - and so far - so good. The wireless router I chose - a Netgear DG834G has been great. It was £89.99 including a free USB wireless adaptop and delivery from Simply - wouldn't usually use them but this time they were cheapest. It does a lot - firewall, DHCP, site blocking. I've it locked down to the physical addresses of my network equipment - so it's quite secure. I'm pleased with it anyway. There's an updated firmware that i've downloaded but things seem fine so far, and I haven't tried it yet.

Of the packages available to us, PlusNet came out on top - they were a little more expensive than Wanadoo [for the package I wanted - 512k/ 2Gb transfer] [PlusNet are £16.49 a month less discounts for referring people, and Wanadoo are £17.99 a month, but PlusNet (how manty times can I get that in :) ) charge a set-up fee of £60 so it's dearer in the beginning], but support at Wanadoo is weak - they're a stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap company that don't care about service quality. I think you can always tell an ISP's credibility from their home page - i personally don't want my ISP to do anything else but connect me to the internet and then support that service properly. 'nuff said.

thanks and plugs go to... Graeme [tha clock is a bit special I agree], Nikki [I think I need tome time to consider Eudora! :)] and Dionne [ah - if only! :)

Clie-chots

just playing taking screenshots from my clie. [humor me! :)]. Shaddowing my PC, clie's desktop, and all the programs installed [oops! - need a clearout!!]. The clock, a couple (1) (2) of screensavers, and an obligatary game ;). The camera can take stills and movies [sorry about the subject], as well as play them back. Last but not least - surfing the web is amusing to say the least! :)

Keep Off The Grass!

I fought the Lawn and the Lawn won. Nearly beat it this time, just bottled out of emptying the grass collector on the last bit of the back lawn - the front still needs doing. Then there's the Hedge... *screeching violins play that horror flic riff*. They nag at me you know. 10 million leaves in unison "trim us you good for nothing [CENSORED]".

UPDATE :: The four kids that broke into the school the other Sunday were caught - the Police told us. The girl will be coming up to the high school this coming year --- what a great start school life!

thanks awfully: Nikki [We had to use Eudora Express Lite until recently - I'm psychologically damaged I think], Graeme [(nearly did the ea thing again)] & Mari [sorry Mari - copied your link from an old post - just realised midday today - you beat me to it! / but don't you have that with Outlook and seperate accounts? - I do with OE at home and all our Hotmail accounts]

talk tech

Was almost forced into switching to Mozilla Thunderbird today, the companion to Firefox the browser. Our new IMAP email system is set up to work securely, and Outlook Express doesn't support the standard used. Step forward Thunderbird [cool name too!]

I like it so much i'm ditching OE everywhere else I use email. This thing rocks! Configurability is wondefully extensive, plus it's theme-able so you can even make it look pretty.

Our new system is intended to be web based - but it's a pain being restricted by a browser front end like hotmails'. It's slow, lacking in features and configurability, and doesn't automatically check for mail ...you need to refresh the browser window to do that ... not the best for users (like me) that have email open on 1 workstation all day.

I'm trying to do my big summer jobs on the school IT systems. Today a disk went down on the domain controller. This isn't terminal as you'd expect. There are 6 disks in total and the beast carries on regardless of a mere disk failing - it ********** still beeps all the time tho' which is really annoying! I called Dell to sort a swap out, luckily the warranty expires next month - so nice one old guy! No doubt the replacement disk will be substantially larger than the 9Gb one it replaces. :)

sorry for getting all technical today

'twas a commenting bonanza... thanks go to... Graeme [cheers for reminding me :(], Nikki [me want tinted! :)], Dionne [sororiori... pah!], Me [oops! :)], Ghracena [congrats on the nice new doman!], Mari [you too :)] and Liz [mmmm ethernet... ]

See remotely

finally got some new glasses, it's been 2 months - my optitian is fussy - which is good I suppose. Because the manufacturer has sent 2 defective pairs now, they've said that I can keep the second - defective pair as well [there's a tiny fault in the coating on one lens].Coo! - at £250+ per pair that's some bonus! So not a bad experience really!

I'm posting this from my couch! ....just got a wireless router as we're finally getting broadband here at Simpson towers. My PDA has wireless so i'm shaddowing my pc via the router. When broadband is activated i'll be able to surf directly from my PDA without having to have the PC on as well. Such luxury!

Unpleasant content warning!

Well it's been a slow week. Today, as a break from the excitement I helped Mike, one of the caretakers, oik some stuff into the skip - being the only other bloke on site at the time. We were just finished when I stepped in something slippy. Yes it was poo, yes it was large, yes it was human and yes it was gross!

3/4 of an hour later i'd managed to scrub and disinfect the sole of my trainer so that the smell was gone. Mike couldn't be anywhere near me for the duration, I was in parent mode... not breathing in through my nose for the whole time.

thanks... Graeme [haven't heard if anything has been done about the break-in - the perpetrators were clearly identifiable but the police weren't too keen].Mari, Nikki [I answered your question in the comments] and Ghracena [I think kids have no conception of the upset caused to adults - but the school system doesn't help with this]

School Holidays: Day 1

The school was broken into over the weekend. The sixth form block was trashed - just chairs and tables upturned, library books de-shelved and stationary supplies strewn about, and paper thrown everywhere. As far as we can see nothing valuable was taken, but it was all captured on CCTV. Muggins had the job of transferring the video to CD and printing off some stills.

One of the caretakers was telling me that the other year someone wrote naughty words in the grass in very large letters. The head at the time asked him if he could disguise the words somehow, so there he was, heeling in his modifications to eventually spell Poob Opp before anyone saw it. He said for ages afterwards the kids kept shouting to him "Poob Opp"!!! hehe.

plug plug plug... Nikki [no that doesn't count!.... :)] and Graeme [oops!].

home on the range

Played Golf [well - bashed a 100 balls on the range] and got paid for it this morning. It was a voluntary job that I get expenses for - never had one as good as that before though!!

It was a blast! I wasn't as pathetic as I thought i'd be. I last played as a teenager when there used to be a range near me. The strain on my gut was most noticable - we were just smacking balls as hard as we could, and you could feel it at the end! How unfit am I! - even a short stint on a golf course is too much for the old boy!

Next time we intend doing a round - that i've never done before so i'm excited about that.

plug plug... Nikki [you get to that certain age.... :)] and Greame [...and time just flies by! :)].

It's not fair - yeah yeah

last day of school today - we have a tradition of fish and chips or home made ploughmans for the staff lunch - I just love the ploughmans - fish and chips is too much when I always have stuff to do in the afternoons - unlike those lazy teachers ;)

We said our goodbyes to what seemed like half the staff - must be 15 leaving ...got quite emotional at one point - the entire Modern Languages team is going [apart from ms Tully who's a manager now] and they were blubbering like crazy.

I will miss all of them myself. There's only one person I work with that I don't like much ... who i've named before so i'll say no more :x.

The atmosphere of the place seems more tense than when I started three years ago - It was relaxed and happy then. Now it feels pressured. It wasn't good 'coz staff felt unsupported and the kids were out of control to a minor extent. Now there's a lot more control of everything.

Maybe it's just me, but i'm not convinced we've got it 100% right yet. A large proportion of the kids attending the school are your normal state school: "lets wreck everything 'coz school's crap" types, and so you have to weild the cattle prod sometimes.

I was talking with a friend today [an ex pupil too] who said they'd rather send their kid to boarding school so as not to waste time like they did rebelling.

I would really really really like it if kids wanted to learn and respected and looked after school stuff. --- Rich kids go to private schools, get the best of everything - and want to learn. Kids whos parents choose state schools treat it like a punishment.

Some acedemics [I include teachers] foster the divide with thier hateful attitude to kids.

A friend opined: societies are made up of two classes, shamen and warriors. The shamen are clever and control the warrior class and get them to do thier bidding.

plug plug... Nikki [that'd be expensive paint! :)] and Greame [strange - i'll have to walk further too!].

Who want's to be 0.6 of a milionaire?

Hot news from School... we're getting 0.6 million to refurbish the Maths Block!!! The building is a bit oppressive but none more-so than other parts of the school. I shouldn't complain tho' 'coz my room is in the Maths block. I can just imagine deep pile carpet and marble and gold in the toilets!! hehe!

I was due to re-locate to the room next door to mine - the Maths staff room, but they [understandably] want to hold fire now and do it with the rest. That's not going to be in the summer so it'll be at least October before I get to have a new home :(

thanks for the sympathy Nikki .

Sleepless and RATTLED!!! :)

It's 1:50am

I couldn't sleep coz they're pickin' on me at school :( - the head wants me to make a list of jobs i've got on in the hols like she doesn't believe i've anything to do - she also asked if I could help test all the schools electrical equipment - FINE! - she can pay £500 a day for some mug to do what I'll be doing for pennies then ... *fumes* :)

Do I really have to say yet again: the independant consultants we hired last year said the school needed two technicians; and Colin Eves said that he would arrange a second technician. Liar!

zzzzzzzzzzz

thanks for braving the distasteful content... Nikki ; Greame and Mari.

vomit enducing fun...

Well Drayton Manor was a blast! I intended taking it easy but tagged along with 6 other members of staff and we did some rides. We queued 1 1/2 hours to get on stormforce 10 - the log flume - with 6 big adults it was heavy - and boy did we get wet! 3 minutes after our dousing my lap still had a puddle of water in it. Next we went on the Hurricane - a stand up roller coaster - huh! - baby stuff! :-) Then the flying pink elephants, then the Maelstrom... a sort of bicycle wheel on an arm ... that was hillarious but a bit vomit enducing - took me 2 1/2 hours before I dared eat anything! The kids weren't so sensible of course, a kid on our coach ate pizza whilst feeling queasy - threw up 3 times on the way home to shouts of encouragement from the rest of the coach - I then sat with the bags of sick next to me all the way home.

thanks for scribbling... Nikki and Greame.

I'm dog tired boss...

This week Sian is on work experience with me. I was really looking forward to it, have been for a long while. I guess it's been difficult what with the audit being pushed forward so that I have to have it finished tomorrow [I had planned to share it between my two work experience helpers over two weeks], and Sian has helped without moaning too much.

I noticed two weeks ago that she was getting quite cheeky with me. Before this she had been brilliant, interested in helping and undestanding how things worked. She's a headstrong person and I've not been able to get her back into her nice state. I agree workplaces shouldn't take advantage, but sometimes at work you have to do dull stuff, or stuff you don't really like doing, that's how it is. I think I'm lucky in that I really love my job.

To be fair, entering information on all the schools IT equipment - some 220 computers and associated hardware into an excel spreadsheet as I called it out was a big job. And boy am I knackered after dealing with that and Sian. I did just work with Sian on this mornings, leaving the afternoons for more varied stuff and jobs I thought she may like to try.

I suppose it could have been a lot worse but I was expecting so much so i'm dissapointed. Sian has said that she doesn't want to work in IT now. I haven't managed to find anything that she's interested in doing, even though she has tried quite a few differnent things. Ah well ...

thanks to visitors leaving their mark: Nikki; Mari and Greame.

job's lot

So to re-cap on last weeks events... H had a sore throat that kept her up 3 nights, Thursday H scalded her hand so that she wasn't able to drive or look after the kids much. Friday H awoke with a migraine, Saturday my back gave up - by Sunday I could manage on painkillers, H had nosebleeds that wouldn't stop and was diagnosed to have a chest infection. Ben fell off a slide and the back of his head is swollen[the doc says it's just a bruise] Emily has a black eye from falling off a chair and pulling it on top of her. We're hoping that that's it for a while now ... please!!!

It's been a lovely [sunny] day here today. This morning I painted the bathroom and this afternoon fitted 8 roller blinds at the Cylch Ti a Fi (toddler group) premises. We were all finished by 7pm - just in time to get the kids to bed. Sheeshk!

Yet again I'm watching Big Brother on channel 4. I'm not a voyeur - I just like to undesrtand people and what makes them tick. It's been interesting this year with a transexual in the mix. I've found it very enlightening and a help to go someway to understanding the unique experiences of such a person.

I'm always glad when it's over though - I have to watch it every night so it does my sleep deprivation no good at all!

Must dash - Emmies' crying...

Loo Read

Ben[age3] today asked for a book to read on the loo so he could be just like daddy ... hehe - Dat's my boy!

I heard a rumour today that a local pocket welsh nationalist was going around setting fire to those[english] flags attatched to car windows! Funniest thing I've heard in ages! --- I'm english but I also really dislike nationalism. I have changed my mind slightly since coming to wales, where it seems ok that people are proud of thier nationality. I suppose it's that british disease where we champion the underdog etc. I hope you know what i'm trying to say! ;-)

interesting thought on a little blog by Reeves who suggests that blogs are just a progression in the life of the internet - the evolving of the personal web page.

thanks to visitors leaving their mark: Nikki; Greame and Reeves [PDA + blog ...hmmmm!].