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John_Vella wrote:
oceanicitl wrote:
big_D wrote:
No, just ironic.


Still don't get it. They're two completely different things. Or am I not supposed to mention women's clothing as this is a male dominated forum? :roll:


I'm guessing it would have been more ironic if you'd said that you took your bra off on the train. :| :)


That would be one way of emptying the carriage and getting a seat. Thanks for that. I'll make a mental note the next time they send a 4 carriage train :lol:

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jonbwfc wrote:
Caz is correct though


Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:21 am
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Screens. Window screens.

We don]t have double glazing. It]s a bit of a magnet for the foot warrior with some UPVC to offload. They tend on bang on the door and tell us that our “glazing is incomplete”. We’re maintaining the original Crittal glazing in the house. The frames are narrower, and they look right. The houses were designed with those in mind.

What we also have is secondary glazing - these are extra panes of glass in frames that sit behind the main windows. When they are closed, they really hold in the heat. Nice for the winter. It’s also nice to be able to open them, or even take them out in the summer. A news item this week said that we’d be getting more heatwaves, and that houses need to have more flexible insulation that can cope with hotter summers. Right now, all that cold weather insulation is working against people.

Anyway, my thoughts were that we need to think a bit more about how we handle the glazing here, and my idea is to adopt a more continental approach. We can‘t fit shutters to the house, but what we could do is use the secondary glazing runners to house a shutter-like system inside the window frame. That will let us open windows fully, but have a screen that will block a lot of the sun, as well as stop cats deciding to get out onto first floor window ledges. One of our cars is elderly, and has always been a little clumsy. He’ll fall off. I just know he will.

So my thoughts would be to get some wood, cut to the size of the secondary glazing, make some kind of patterned piercing and install those in place of the secondary glazing for the summer. The outward facing would be a glass white to reflect heat away from the house, inside could be black or a darker colour. They would certainly help in the night when we have windows mostly closed to keep the cats in.

OBVOIUSLY we’d not leave them in place with windows open when we go out, but even closed, the screens would reflect a lot of heat away.

So my idea of screens seems like one that could have wings - we’ll be giving that some thought I think. I’ve not made any yet because the hot weather has been way too much for me - but I’ll be planning ahead.

(Note: we keep the cats in now at night. Out elderly cat has been losing fights, and Easter day 2017 he limped in one morning on three lags. That was an emergency vet visit, then finding out that the emergency vet’s treatment wasn’t that good when I took him to the regular vets . They didn’t seem that impressed with the attention he got. Anyway, he’s OK now, but there are foxes, some brutal bastard feral cats about, and it’s not good that he loses fights like that. So cats are in over night now. They don’t like it, but tough.)

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Fri Jul 27, 2018 9:12 am
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If I had the cash, I'd go for electrochromatic glass - press a switch and the panes go dark, obscuring light transmission but allowing windows to still open in the normal way.

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Fri Jul 27, 2018 9:17 am
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£50 for a cable :roll:

No, I haven't been to Currys for a HDMI lead. ;)

A 2 metre Thunderbolt 3 cable that is still capable of full 40Gbps bandwidth and power delivery. Clearly, it's not yet widespread enough to become cheap. I might have gotten away with a 1m cable, but it wasn't any less expensive. If you go beyond the standard 0.5m length, you need an "active" cable to maintain signal integrity - everything else was rated at 20Gbps, and significantly cheaper.

Still my desk looks tidier now.

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Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:07 pm
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That is one of the problems with my docking station at work. Lenovo supply a half metre cable and it is tight on the desk. A 1M cable would be better, but way more expensive.

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Thu Aug 23, 2018 5:02 am
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cloaked_wolf wrote:
If I had the cash, I'd go for electrochromatic glass - press a switch and the panes go dark, obscuring light transmission but allowing windows to still open in the normal way.


Hmm - but no airflow. That’s the key. Keep air moving through the house, including though windows. Also means the cats (one who is old) won’t fall out of the top storey.

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Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:30 pm
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What's App, and the negative impact it's having on my wife.

Seems that the head & deputy head have wanted everyone on this app. It seems to be being used to niggle, cajole and dump stress on the staff over the holidays. It seems that every week, there's a disguised requirement for staff to go in to the school and do things. The "disguised requirement" is the usual "if you could, can you come in and..." or "I'm in school, can we talk about..." and so on.

The worst seems to be the dumping of stress on the staff. The head, and I expect the new deputy head (who seems to have sub Siri communication skills) run on a "last minute" deadline time scale. So instead of planning and giving staff time to do stuff, it / always a last minute panic, and the panic is passed to the staff. Usually, school holidays have been a break from that, but it seems that What's App has enabled these core dumps through holiday time too.

People are on holiday, away, and are getting these demands coming through.

It's a horrible way to treat people. I can see it can be a useful tool, but in the hands of idiots, it appears to achieve a lot of negativity.

I've told my wife to delete the app, but she won't. Probably peer pressure, or just the need to feel to be part of the team by being on it.

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Sun Sep 02, 2018 5:14 pm
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Just tell them that since May, it is illegal for businesses and other data handlers to use WhatsApp, as it does not conform to GDPR regulations and the school could find itself open to fines in excess of 25M Sterling.

WhatsApp looks at your address book and loads the whole thing onto their servers in the USA, which is illegal. It then keeps a copy of ALL contact information, which is illegal. If a smartphone has contacts in its Contacts app, who have not given express permission for the school to pass on their information to WhatsApp or third parties in general, and WhatsApp is installed, it could open the school up to prosecution. If it is a private phone with private contact details (i.e. not connected to a corporate / school email and contact database), then only the phone owner will be liable to litigation.

Other apps, like Signal, for example, work differently. They upload a hash of the phone numbers of your contacts and give you a list of other Signal users. It then discards the hashed list. When another user joins Signal, the same process is used and your hash will be found. This is quasi-conform to GDPR, because it only uses the hashes of non-members once and discards them straight away and only gives you information about other Signal users, who have already consented to using the service.

Telegram works similarly.

Threema is the most secure, but is not free. You need to enter the account name (not telephone number) of the other party.

Obviously, going by the behaviour of the Head and Deputy Head, I'd just inform them about the first half of the above post. ;)

Edit: I posted a message similar to what I wrote above in the two major groups I was in, then after a week, I deleted my account and deleted the App - it is important to delete the account, before deleting the app, otherwise it just looks like you are offline; I hadn't noticed, that the account deletion hadn't worked the first time round and had to re-install and do the delete process again. I'm sure, if she posts she is deleting the app, because its use is illegal in the UK and EU, there shouldn't be any problems. The school would have to employ a data protection lawyer and get them to confirm its use is legal - as the EU and many national DPOs have claimed it is illegal, they would be foolhardy to make such a statement.

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Last edited by big_D on Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:44 am, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:39 am
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paulzolo wrote:
What's App, and the negative impact it's having on my wife.

That's really crap. Two things: if she's being sent communications during the "summer holidays" then that would constitute work and I would expect her to be paid during that time; secondly, she needs to make an excuse and get rid of the app, if only for her mental wellbeing. Do it for her if needs be. Once someone does it, others will follow suit.

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Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:43 am
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Yeah - I’ve told her about the potential problems with GDPR (I didn’t know about that today, so thanks for that). I’ve suggested she deletes the app before, but she’s not keen to. I’ve told her to at least turn off notifications, alerts and stuff and only check it during business hours. But, so far no luck with even that.

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your posts are just combo chains of funny win

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Tue Sep 04, 2018 11:49 am
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big_D wrote:
That is one of the problems with my docking station at work. Lenovo supply a half metre cable and it is tight on the desk. A 1M cable would be better, but way more expensive.


We have Lenovos here too

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jonbwfc wrote:
Caz is correct though


Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:30 am
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Date night tonight. It's the first time I've had a request to bring a home made shepherds pie. But whatever - he's worth it :D

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jonbwfc wrote:
Caz is correct though


Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:17 am
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Bastard user from hell! After working for a company for 40 years he's come out of retirement to work again so you can guess he's ancient. He's having lots of computer problems as he's so incompetent. Yesterday we held his hand and sorted out issues and gave him our direct phone numbers should he need any help. I also printed out instructions on how to connect to the VPN so he had a hard copy.

Well this morning he has had problems. Instead of calling us he's emailed one of the top bosses in the company saying how incompetent IT are and how the onboarding process is really bad. I've just called him and he hasn't answered the phone (not sure he knows how to :lol: :lol: )

Give

Me

Strenth!!

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jonbwfc wrote:
Caz is correct though


Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:10 am
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Rule #1: Never P1$$ off the I.T. Department, you never know when you need their help. And I suspect sooner rather than later with him :lol:

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Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:19 pm
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oceanicitl wrote:
Date night tonight. It's the first time I've had a request to bring a home made shepherds pie. But whatever - he's worth it :D

;) is "home made shepherds pie" the new term for Netflix and Chill - its so hard to keep up with the "yuf" these days

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Tue Sep 11, 2018 11:03 am
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