It just gets better!

OK... when I just think I'm starting to make some inroads into my HUGE workload, the next problem crops up. The stoopid standalone licenses for Sibelius were registered by phone on Friday and I today enterred the magic numebrs into the machines... first machine i get to says "invalid registration code" - I tried every possible permeatation of spaces to no avail! The idiots at Sibelius have given me the wrong code!

Next up... the 30 wireless laptops have stopped talking to the network. I take all 28 out of the trolley (2 are dumped elsewhere at the moment) and find that the WPA authentication on ALL of them is buggered! I restarted the Bluesocket controller to see in a vain attempt to get it working again... fat chance! I knew that these things were going to make my life hell!

Then... the deputy head announces the latest SIMS upgrade. Of course I have to install this since the stoopid county support team installed SIMS on a partition that is too small. This upgrade should have been a simple 5-10 minute job. I was quite impressed that I got it installed in under 1 hour and I only had to run SOLUS 5 times and DBUPGRADE 3 times (with the /nobackup switch)!!!

Anyway... tomorrow is another day and I'll have to see what I can think of with the wireless. Here's hoping that it all magically starts working ;-)

Those Bloody Macs

OK... after weeks of trying to sort out the 11 new iMacs for the Music Department, I finally got them into a state where I was pretty much happy with them.

I have an image with the basic software on (albeit with incorrect permissions on ONE file for some dodgy old piece of software). The macs are connected to an OS X server for locking them down with Open Directory and they authenticate against my Active Directory network. Not bad considering I'd never really touched a Mac a couple of months ago.

Anyway... back to these iMacs... I decided to take the plunge this afternoon and take them over to the room where they are to live. This would also entail moving some PCs out the way... into the room next door.

I slowly went around the room unplugging and removing the PCs and pulling the iMacs out of their boxes and associated swathes of packaging! After plugging the things in I set off NetRestore loading the image onto them and when this was finished I renamed them and sorted out the OD and AD authentication.

So from 2pm I plodded through this and by 5.10pm I had fully installed 7 iMacs and the eighth was still loading the image. In the meantime, the two music teachers had been wandering back and forth through the room... . Obviously it's my fault that it's taken me 8 weeks to get these things into a workable state without their stoopid Sibelius software which I haven't had time to sort out the new network licenses for after they puchased a load of dumb-ass standalone ones... each requiring an activation key that you have to telephone for.

So tomorrow I will have to install the remaining three Macs (which are already built and what-have-you) plus plug in all the PCs which I have abandoned in the other Music room. These will also need to be rebuilt because the music-types aren't happy with what software is installed! Then of course there is the other work for me to fit in around them!