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My last blog post isnt my last before xmas, this one is, now only 3 days until the big day, still got all that wrapping up to do ….. Today it snowed, not much but enough to turn the roads around where i live into an ice rink helped along by twats who think they can drive fast in snow and ice, they will learn! From home till the Bath Road i didnt get over 20mph, im certainly not going any faster and wrecking my car, she means too much to me! So to the twats who were close behind me think about to yourself for once :@

At work all things are change again, ive had many IT meetings with XMA now and we are now going to be all AD based, no more Novell … YAY YAY YAY what brilliant news, although my boss dont think so, so we will be Server 2008, Windows 7 Pro, Citrix Thin Clients, IIS, SQL 2008 and other exciting things, plus 1500 netbooks, 150 fixed PC’s and 100 Mac’s, not too much to cope with then.

Im a tad annoyed at the moment, for the past 18 months ive developed a Staff Intranet, Student Intranet, Online Lesson Planner and iTube video player (like youtube) and one of the meetings last week was to replace the staff intranet or build around it a new one from some company called CORE, at first i was ok about it but then when i saw it it was …. Microsoft Sharepoint …………. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO …… more like microsoft failpoint, it runs like an old dog and only one user was on it! My intranet runs very fast on Apache servers and can cope with 200+ simultaneuos connections, sharepoint will probably be on its knees, so not happy about that, have aired my concerns but lets see what happens, plus they expect me to learn a new language and set of web technologies just like that, on explaining that after 8 years experience in PHP you cant go from that to Sharepoint Designer/ASPX.net overnight, its like learning French and speaking Spanish, something wont work!

More meeting scheduled for January so lets see what happens, today was good, doing staff induction for our new recruit, another member to the team who is the helpdesk operator/administrator, so spent today on the tour of the school and showing the plethora of IT systems and functions, i hope he will be okay as hes been employed on the basis i said he was the best out of the bunch and recruitable, ever wish a hole would open up?

Anyhow more blog postings after Xmas ….

Again its been ages since a blog post, the reason for this being simply too busy and ive totally forgotten to write any blog posts, work has been pretty hectic and will get worse over the coming months, with less than 14 weeks to the new £27 million school everything is coming together fast, our new IT supplier has been chosen and this is XMA, we are now confident that in the new school our IT will consist of Windows 7 clients, Windows Server 2008 with HyperV technology, SQL Server 2008, Citrix Thin Clients, eDirectory/Active Directory and many more new toys, this being along with 1500 netbooks, yes one thousand five hundred of them with a team of 5, (well 6 but ill say about that next) so pretty busy times, then after this we get the new ALC built with another hundreds of PC’s and then we have the sports centre with all their PC’s, it will certainly keep the team busy and myself with all these PC’s, certainly busier than any other IT job i know!

Interviews have been taking place this week for Helpdesk Operator/Front Line Support, we had a group of 5 applicants that were singled out and it was my job to run a practical test and a communication test, one at a time, what fun! I had already decided on my two favourites, later on in the day when the interviewees had gone and i delivered my findings the decision was made on my say-so, no pressure there then, if he is useless all my fault, but i think ive made a pretty good decision in more ways than one!

Back at home the same old same old, work for the business is beginning to dry up with a few possible leads coming to fruition in 2010 but nothing of great importance, at the moment im writing my own CMS, alot of people would shout at me why re-invent the wheel? Well thats what i love doing, there is great satisfaction to be had from a blank page to a working system, so far ive only done the template and licence system and secured it all with some functions and cookies, so much more to do and dont know where to start, somehow got to work out templates and how they get included …. headache

This may well be my last blog post of the year, i seem to remember typing this a year ago, ive actually kept my blog running a year! It was around this time i remember some stupid bitch ploughing into the back of my new car, arghhhhhhhh, talking of which hopefully this weekend or next get my spoiler sprayed and fitted, then i need my ultra kind mate at work to speak nicely to his dad and get some more stripes added ….. im also thinking of tinting the rear windows for that ultimate sporty look, hmm have to see what Halfords have got for me.

I think that is about it, Christmas shopping almost done, need to write a list of stuff to do and this post is complete

So today after getting my acer one out for a meeting so that i could make some notes on it, found out it wasnt powering up, what a failboat of a laptop! Prior to this i changed one setting in the BIOS to stop it keep on PXE booting, that wouldnt cause any problems! I then tried all the usual battery out, power cable out, reboot etc etc but was dead, what a load of rubbish, anyway had a quick look on the net and found it is a common problem with the BIOS, so if anyone reading this or has found this with theirs follow these steps:

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Download & Extract AS1_BIOS_3309.zip (from : http://support.acer.com/…
Rename the Bios name from 3309.fd to zg5ia32.fd.
Copy zg5ia32.fd and Flashit.exe to USB flash drive.
Start the restoration process:

A. Plug the AC Adapter into the unit.
B. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port.
C. Press and Hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together.
D. Keep these keys held down and press power.
E. When the unit’s power light comes on release the Fn and Esc keys.
F. After the keys have been released the power light will start to blink.
G. Let the unit run and after approximately 1-7 minutes, the unit should reboot.
H. Video should now be restored

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