Wednesday 12th March

Before I came in this morning I had an informal interview with a lady called Jo from John Lewis. I received a called last night asking me when I would like to go for an interview; this interview would be for the work experience with the computer systems support team there. I had already been offered it before I had actually done the interview. In this interview she went through everything like what I would be doing and what I need to wear whilst I am there. I start next Friday the 21^st of March 2014. Hopefully this will lead to good thing and I’m hoping I will either be offer an apprenticeship or a job later one. I am hoping either of the two will happen because John Lewis seems to pay well and seem like they look after their employees.

When I came in around lunch time I was told that I missed a task that the extended level 3’s had to do. This task involved splitting into two groups and writing down all possible problems that could occur with a system from hardware to software related issues.

After lunch I was with Lewis, Dan and Matt and watching what they were doing in the new unit, to be honest neither of them seemed too confident when installing or diagnosing what the problem was with their systems as I had to help them.  Whilst I was over there John was going through the slots in the motherboard and where the LED lights, USB, Power button etc. goes. He also went through the health and safety issues as Matt was irritating him a lot and told us that we would know about an electric shock as our ‘area’ would be tingling.

Tuesday 11th March

Once again it was time for one lucky person to obtain the two screens package and this week it was Dan’s turn to present us with a TED Test. His video was about project Christine which is a new concept design created by Razor for the future of gaming PC's. This is something I am very excited about and I hope to hear more about the development of project Christine as it comes out of concept and become a reality. Today wasn't my day but I wasn't too bothered as I don’t really want dual monitors, anyway Mitchel who turned down the opportunity to have dual screens last week, won this week instead with Aaron and Lewis coming in as runner ups. So next week its Martins turn once again to do a test. I expect his test to be absolutely ridiculous just like other times.

Before I began working today John went through what the unit would involve. I thought the first task was very lengthy but not as bad as Matthew had previously stated; the part which I thought would be challenging but not too difficult was the second assignment. In this assignment we must locate errors in a computer system and then talk John through how to fix it. We were also informed today that the vending machine will be arriving in the next month or so which is great for most people as they won’t have to walk to Morrison’s just to get things like chocolate, crisps etc. I was working on outstanding working so I was going back and forth. I also did a little bit of the last task of web animation that needs completing.

Monday 10th March

Today we went straight into work which is surprising as we usually have some sort of introduction with a video or mini task that will relate to our current work but this time it was just going into work.

Today I updated a couple of pieces and sent a new piece to John, which was controlling system assignment 4 task 1 and task 2. In this task I had to write about my robot. I had to include what went well and not so well. I also included improvements and what could do differently next time. Tomorrow I will update any work that needs updating, I will try and complete either this unit (controlling systems) or the web animation unit. As the web animation unit needs to be completed I shall make sure I do that first.

Thursday 6th March 2014

This was a similar day to yesterday as I was mainly improving work and continuing with task that I had outstanding in control systems. I managed to get a couple of pieces done and was half through the other task I started. John had sent me back the work I had completed yesterday. The majority of the first drafts were fine and there were a few with some small mistake that I need to update. I updated those pieces of work and sent them back to john which he responded with ‘Good’, which mean I don’t need to do any more of those tasks and was able to concentrate on other pieces.

I enjoyed today because I carried on from where I left off yesterday and got a lot done and hope to continue this throughout the rest of the year. This isn't a very long blog as It is only a half day but I also decided to stay and hour and half longer to get more work completed and so I can writes these blogs.

Wednesday 5th March 2014

To start the day off John introduced a section of the new unit (trouble shooting type unit). The introduction was more of a task because John wanted to make sure that we all knew in advance what the next unit was and how to deal with it and what was involved in this unit. He introduced this because most of us extended 3's are somewhat "afraid" if you will to take a system apart and fix it, this was not the case for as I like to get stuck in and find the problem out. Last year Myself and Jack took a computer completely apart and put it back together again and the end result was it worked perfectly fine.  For the majority of the day I worked on improving work and doing a lot of the controlling systems unit in total I sent 7 new pieces of work to john which I hope to get back shortly and update 1 piece of work.

I think I should send work to be proof read more often as it does help identify mistakes (whether they be grammatical or spelling related) which I probably wouldn't have noticed myself. Overall I found today rather good as I was able to get one with work and listen to music, I managed to get more work done than I usual do as I blocked out the environment around me and cracked on with my work.

Tuesday 4th March 2014

Today was the day when one lucky student will win the second monitor to make his PC setup better than everyone else’s….I Think. The quiz was created by Harry (the original owner of the dual monitors) who’s quiz was about gaming. As the quiz was about gaming I thought I was going to do pretty good, I managed to get 8 and half all together which meant I was in 4th place. Today’s looser was Dan, which means he will have to find a video for next and won’t be able to win the monitor as it is his own quiz.

After this I was working on a lot of controlling systems all day and would be able to hand a few pieces of that in tomorrow. I also updated installing systems A2 T2 which john sent back and thought I should update it straight away so it is over and done with.

Overall today was quite slow in comparison to yesterday but I think that I got more work done as I have nearly completed a long piece of work and updated a few pieces as well.

Monday 3rd March 2014

Today it was the first day back from our study week. Just before we got into work, John announced to everyone that there would be new prizes for the winners of the tech Tuesday quizzes; the prizes included:

• First place: dual monitors
• Second place: a mouse mat & choice of chocolate bar
• Third place: a chocolate bar

So the prize that everyone was most interested in was obviously the dual monitors, as we all only had one, to be quite honest with you I’m not bothered whether I get a the dual monitor or not, simply because I am fine working with one monitor. Today I was working on the current unit which was installing and upgrading software. Myself and Shane had to install new software on to ‘Jeffery’s’ computer and upgrade some current software. This was very easy as we are always doing this ourselves at home. We each had our own computer, ones I had everything booted up I installed Google chrome and installed Avast internet security as well as updating the software and virus definitions. Once I had done this I installed Google Earth which was up until loading the program as DirectX wasn't supported, so I tried it in OpenGL mode and got it to work but the graphics were appalling. Whilst I was doing all of that, I was taking pictures at each important stage. Once everything was done I put the images into a document and annotated them. When I finished that piece of work I sent it off to john to be marked

So overall I had a good day; I managed to complete that whole task in a quick amount of time whilst Shane hadn’t even started it. Now that I have done that, I can move onto the next task and hopefully I should be able to complete this unit by Monday at the latest.