GPO Loopback Processing

group policy object loopback processing(!). That's what i've been looking for these past 18 months! Microsoft / IT folk in general must have made up enough terminology to create a whole new language. It certainly is easy to talk above people if it suited your purpose - not that i'd ever do such a thing! Whats more.... I don't read that well, well not compared to Heather at least, and technical spiel - especially that stuff MS KnowledgeBase articles are written in, feels like having your eyeballs sandpapered after you've been sleep deprived for a week.

So now I can assign Start Menu's to Computers. You knew it must've been something special huh!

Everyone [well the two people I spoke to today] is off to the coast for the extended weekend!. I wanna go too! ...turns out Heather has yet another car boot sale lined up to get rid of our garage full of kids stuff. The kids are only 1 & 3. Imagine what it's going to be like when they're 13!!! We'll have to hire Newtown F.C. Stadium for the event.

Well me peeps are saggin' so it's time to hit the hay. Thanks Nikki [an old BMW it is then!] and Graeme [Dodgy Geezer] Cartmell for er... commenting - that's it! ;)

Until next time....

...and the results...

Letter from Little Chef today ...just a standard letter - promising reprimands and training oportunities for staff - stick and carrot stuff then :) - and enclosed was a voucher for £10 [$18]. I recon if you want the same just write in and complain, they're free for the asking ;).

Exciting day with a consultant on site. Strange he affirmed my thoughts of spreading myself too thinly with all the stuff i'm expected to do. His firm, who are quite specialist anyway, all then take seperate specialisms withing thier discipline, so that they have a stronger team presence. I felt quite happy with my personal knowledge compared with his - it's odd being as isolated as I am, with no reference to people doing the same job. Feel a lot better about myself anyways :P

Shame he's talking about his next car being a bmw... and his working conditions are more laid back than at the school! now that's saying something ;)

Thanks... Dionne [when's your site back up??], Nikki [:)] & Graeme[;)].

nothing ...really!

Heather just checked up on me and let me know I hadn't posted since last Thursday. I just haven't felt I had any news to share that's all. Bin messin' about with lots of palm stuff - I think i'm about burn't out on that front - but the other side of my brain just hasn't accepted the fact yet.

Bin' slogging away at work too trying to get everything ship-shape ready for next Thursday. There have been a few little headaches but I think i've gotten the best of all the problems now. I had a big list of jobs at the start of the summer break, all the important ones are cleared ...just the additional ones aren't done, like a VLE [Virtual Learning Environment] test web server and an ASP[bleh;)] intranet server for kids to publish thier own test sites to.

Time is my enemy - I need loads more of it to do everything I want to. Touble is [and i'm sure it's the same for all school techs] we're asked to do such a wide range of things that your knowledge is widely spread. To then do something specialised takes time to get into, time that'd be saved if you did the thing regularly. Consultant's aren't cheap. It's a bit of a catch 22.

In other news: [;)] I wrote a 'mildly threatening' email to the person at Little Chef who was the only one to reply - and she only mailed to say she forwarded the message[!]. She replied immediately asking for me to wait the full 14 working days before acting - which of course I will. [That's this Friday ]:) *evil grin*]

Well I said more than I would if I felt I did have something to say!!

Thanks kind people... Mari, Dionne, Graeme & Nikki.

Thingamablog v1.0b1

Wow! ... new version of the greatest blogging tool on earth ... Thingamablog!!!! Woohoo!

Thingamablog v1.0b1 RELEASED!!!

The first public beta of v1.0 has finally been released! This version includes a whole kitten-kaboodle of new features and enhancements. It might be a good idea to have a cursory glance at the included User Guide to see what's new. The most notable new feature is the integrated news reader which allows you to subscribe to, and make posts from, the RSS or ATOM feeds of your favorite weblogs/websites.

Wow! ...

TMB is a simple to use and setup, requiring no 3rd party host or database - everything is automated on your local machine - wonderful! Check it out!

Repetitive Tasks

don't know why i'm writing here now - I think i'm developing RSI from all the typing I've been doing today! Not just typing either ... I built a new PC image for all the school PC's - well 75 of them anyway, and ghosted it out to 60 PC's already. Once imaged I have to log on to every PC and give it a unique network name - which requires typing the same user/ password combo - none of which are short, several times for each PC. It's all that repetitiveness which is so bad. That combined with the fact that I often do it standing up [bending my wrists right back] ... coz I don't want to be sitting and waiting for one machine when I could be getting on with others. :grumble: :moan: ;)

And to top it all MS release XP SP2 today! I guess I need to test it first, but all the same - very soon i'll be doing this all over again! Maybe i'll change the passwords to something VERY short temporarily....

Did I say that Google ranks me 2nd and 3rd for "Little Chef: Newtown - poor service" :) hehe ...

And did you know Amazon (US) now sell condoms? ...there's the usual option to "buy used" :)

thankyou guys :: Mari, Graeme & Nikki.

Emily no want it

We tried to get Em to see Shrek again. H hasn't seen it yet, and really wanted to, so she had Ben and I had Em. Em was fine right up to the point where I opened the door into the theatre where it was showing. It was already dark and a little bit noisy... she let go of Bens hand - refusing to budge, and started crying. The guy at the desk gave me my money back, and I took Em shopping while H & Ben watched Shrek... Ben couldn't dance this time - he chose a seat in the middle of a row. He did have to get up at the end tho' and head for the aisle to strut his stuff - such a party animal! We've got to get Em in whilst it's still light and quiet - after all - we can't live without any cinema!

Oh yeah - Ben has an unfortunate way of saying Popcorn - he sorta switches the two syllables around to make something quite disgusting sounding! ...shouldn't laugh really :)

Thanks for signing kind people... Mari, Dionne, Graeme & Nikki.

Little Chef - re-visited ...NOT ;)

If you search Google for Little Chef - Newtown [poor sevice ;)] - this site ranks 2nd! [Oops - I - did that again... hehe *struts across floor* :) ]. I've deliberately not been posting just to make sure Google got a good look at it.

Someone emailed saying they'd passed our complaint email on to customer services, but we've heard nothing yet. I'll give them another week before I mention this webshaming. It's a small thing but it irritated the hell out of us so we're doing something about it.

Ranked first is news that they're a WiFi resturaunt! cool! - hope they sort this out so I can go in and pose ;)

Changing subjects... 'Bin enjoying more forum action. On 1src [pda forum] i've been helping thrash out a new status bar gismo. It's funny 'coz I hate all that skin baggage and would die rather than use it on a PC, but this is like taking the mickey so I like! :). The picture is of my clie skinned to the teeth. The icons work much as they do on a pc, the green start button brings up a menu i'm sure windows users would recognise ;).

thankyou kind people :: Mari, Dionne, Graeme & Nikki.

Little Chef - Newtown :: Poor Service

I've not done this before, but what the heck, this can be my first time...

Went to Little Chef - Newtown for sunday lunch. We'd had a good experience a while back in north Wales, so were expecting good things.

We're steak fans and so ordered 2 with mushrooms and pepper sauce as extras. The meal came without either extra, so we waited a while... thinking they were on there way. Nothing appeared. We asked the waitress who said she'd sort it. The chef put on the mushrooms and ONE side order [no - not 2] arrived. We asked after the pepper sauce - again the waitress said she'd sort it out. We ate as slowly as we could, patiently waiting for the sauce to appear, but it didn't. Heather went to pay and was informed by the guy on the till that they were out of pepper sauce. It would have been nice to have been told.

They didn't charge for what wasn't provided. But didn't offer any compensation. Frankly, for me, the meal was ruined. It's they're "couldn't give a damn" attitude which annoys me the most, and it's not like they're cheap at all. I don't think i'll bother darkening their doors again.

I'm going to mail Little Chef customer services and link to this post. Hopefully soon Google will link to this story and LC-Newtown will get the bad publicity they deserve.

*fumes*

Roll Over dude

I've been wasting my time this weekend bodging together some skins for my pda. [gotta do something to take my mind off those HollyOak girls!!! [hehe!]. I can't afford $15 at the moment for the originals, so just cooked up some adaptations of several skins that i lust after ... just so that my desire will be satiated until the feeling blows over you understand :)

All credit must go to the original designer :: mythomania factory :: whose designs truly rock. I haven't seen the real McCoy in the flesh so I just made up my own rollover effects. Hope you don't think i'm too sad! ;)

thankyou kind people :: Mari, Dionne, Graeme & Nikki.

Shrek2

I don't know how, but Heather managed to get Ben to want to go and see Shrek2 this afternoon. Emily made it to the auditorium [is that what it's called!?] but screamed non stop so H took her outside - she never made it back in - Emily's a sensitive soul at times ... too dark, too loud I think.

Ben and I got to see the whole thing. I think it was good - it's difficult to concentrate when you've got the welfare of a 3yr old as your top priority. I did well, the tray of popcorn lasted 'till 3/4 of the way through when it hit the floor. We sat right up front ...I had to tilt my head back to see it all. Ben was funny, when there were songs played he got up and danced out front. The soundtrack was good, 'tho' I was disappointed the original Buzzcocks "ever fallen in love" was replaced with a bland cover.

I'd like to see it when I could give it more of my attention. I enjoyed the choice of cast voices. Jennifer Saunders was perfect. All in all - a good experience!

lazy days, crazy ways

just back from a few days in Leicester with my folks.

It was a kid focussed weekend - my parents hadn't seen the kids since February - Bens birthday, for various reasons. The kids love it there. When we mentioned going they both sat in the car ad refused to budge for an hour - just in case we might forgert them and leave them behind. They live in a bungalow with a decent sized garden, with gates that lock so they're safe to play, under mild supervision of course. They're a bundle of laughs the pair of them. It's amazing what they find so funny but the laughter is very infectious! They get twice the attention than they get normally of course, but they were really good and we all had a good time.

I just got an email from the head in reply to a mail i'd sent her from Carnac in May! - She was surprised I was on holiday again! [she didn't realise it was an old mail!]. Did I say she wasn't too computer literate. Well I hope she didn't have any other important stuff in her inbox unanswered since May! I wouldn't want to force IT use on anyone, but I think it's become an essential tool for work and people need to use it. [suggestions to get people using email welcome!]

Graeme [i don't want to know!!!;)], Nikki [sorta weird but you must have faster access at work too... and if you're gonna be geeky cool into the bargain, then I wanna be with you!]], & Dionne [NO!!! ...not High School!!! Nooooo... :):):)