I won't be back this year I don't think. Doesn't bother me much if I'm honest as I was WFH before, albeit with odd office trips now and again. My company's approach though is that people should only go into the office if they have problems working from home (kids, lack of space, that kind of thing). Given I've got a dedicated man-cave with three monitors, I don't think that'll apply to me :)

We're under a fair bit of pressure to get everyone* back in the office ASAP. We're resisting and currently am doing 2 days in, 3 days at home. 

The 2 days in the office is really weird, but definitely helpful for mental health if nothing else. Now the kids are back at school it's really odd being in the house alone all day. 

my boss wan'ts to 'promote' me but he's since revealed there's essentially zero budget for pay raise or whatever (unsurprising seeing as we've been making a loss for years and are permanently on the verge of going under...), so might push for an official WFH half the week as a compromise. I have better IT facilties and a much  nicer working environment at home than at work, and the saving on fuel would effectively be a pay raise in itself. We'll see though!

Sort of expecting a second lockdown in Scotland in about a month anyway, case numbers are going up fast and suspect the local lockdowns are going to start merging into one soon.

Decided I'm gonna go back in next Thursday to get my office sorted. Then likely each Wednesday after that. Going to be in a different office to when I started WFH in March, which is a good thing, actually my office before we did a big office move late last year. Less people around and less distractions.

I'm still working from home, recording lectures, delivering shiz remotely. Don't think that will change too soon.

Hello Greg.

How's this work for freshers?
Are many starting uni from home? Or moving into halls/wherever and attending minimal lectures?

It differs a bit depending upon what type of students they are, but there is a general expectation that students will move into halls and have some face-to-face teaching during the first term. Face-to-face teaching is obviously a headache now, as big lectures are a no-no. For intro week, we're having 25% of the cohort in on each of 4 days. Rooms that would previously hold 18 students for group work now hold 4. So sessions are going to be repeated multiple times. Teaching will be done pretty safely, I reckon, and I suspect that the risks arise more from just having the students on campus/in halls.

The MASSIVE ELEPHANT in the room is that I think we all know what the outcomes of this will be. We can pretend that freshers will socially distance and be 'responsible' within various bubbles, but I think that reality will hit home at some point. My real concern isn't so much for the freshers, the majority of whom will probably not suffer dramatic consequences. My concern is about what happens when we reach the point in the first term where everyone decides to go home for the weekend (usually around week 5, I reckon). Coinciding with declining temperatures and the predicted start of a real second wave.

Because of who I teach (med students), there are particular reasons to maintain 'business as usual' where possible, so I can understand why my department is taking its approach. Other departments, I'm not sure that the justifications are quite the same.    

I do feel sorry for the freshers missing out on starting first year, freshers week etc. Just absolutely not the same. Though I imagine they'll all go for it with double intensity next September if things are back to normal.

Reading week when everyone heads home asymptomatic and the spread happens. Students blamed for big local Covid spikes, looking forward to the headlines.

I agree. There was a lot of emphasis post-results of 'we look forward to welcoming you to campus', but the campus experience will not be the same. (I also don't think they get the same experience educationally, either, but that's another matter...) If I were a student, and I had something vaguely decent to do for a year and had the resources to do so, I'd have deferred. 

Hello.

I got an odd reminder that I'm listed as the domain owner of this forum (although I don't have it in my 123reg so presume I gave it to someone) so I thought I'd pop in and say hi.

Good to see people still posting after all these years!

As seems to have always been the way, my life has taken many turns, but I think / hope I'm relatively stable now (considering)

I'm now working for burberry as retail IT Service manager, which means I'm service owner of all the sales technologies in the stores. Until this year, it meant I was able to travel, now I'm working in my home office.

I travelled a lot before January, lived in China for a few years, met my now wife and now we're living in sunny Leeds.

Hope everyone is well!

LP! My goodness. How nice to see you again. Sounds like you've been through some stuff! Glad you're sounding happy enough now at least. How does your wife like the Leeds lifestyle?

Hey! Yeah, good to see you too! 
Life is good, for sure. In spite of the macro factors. 

She likes the UK when it's not being a dick

Nb. The rest of my post vanished. Maybe cos I put brackets on? 

Hope you're doing well! 

When there's an intermission in the apocalypse we should meet up for a refreshing beverage, lp.

LP! \o/

> I got an odd reminder that I'm listed as the domain owner of this forum (although I don't have it in my 123reg so presume I gave it to someone) so I thought I'd pop in and say hi.

Yep, that someone was me, but I didn't get any reminders from the useless bastards, and apparently it expired yesterday.

Anyhow, I've just renewed it, so hopefully that goes through before any caches expire, and I'll look into moving it to a better registrar next year.

Did you try updating the contact email?

No, I didn't try to update the contact email that hasn't changed since 2006 when LP transferred the domain to my account and worked just fine when I requested the password reset.

Checking emails, I got multiple renewal notifications in 2008, 2010, 2012.
For 2014 I manually renewed it in June when I was doing another domain.
For 2016 it was auto-renewed. (I don't remember if I asked for that or not.)
2018 was probably auto-renewed, but the email doesn't clarify.

I'm guessing it tried to auto-renew this year, but that failed (since they had an old card saved), and rather than actually notify me about it they decided to tell the person who had it 14 years ago instead.

Had planned to move away from 123-reg after they tried charging every UK domain owner an additional £6 a year per domain for "ownership protection", but I'd forgotten about that. I'll wait a few weeks to make sure the renewal goes through fully and then transfer it to my enom account instead.

Good reminder that I need to move some domains from 123reg. They're so expensive and I always forget after they've autorenewed 

Ay'up LP, good to see you around again. Sounds like you've had an interesting good few years anyway!

D'you need any top-up dosh BP?

*shrug*

I have enough savings to get me comfortably through the pandemic and beyond without needing to worry about it, but if anyone really wants to throw money at me I wont complain.

Defo!