Plusnet has been a hive of activity this week in preparation for our email upgrades (see above).  We’ve also been busy with speed checkers, 21CN, Business Product refresh, Thomson hardware, product tool, TR-69.. the list goes on.
It’s Friday at last of course and better yet, it’s Halloween too.  It’s been good to see the guys and gals in the CSC have been having a bit of fun today. Good effort folks; but a bit of a poor turnout from everyone else. It’s the first time ever that the CSC has ever dressed up more than the rest of the business put together.  So well done Mike Trevor for getting that organised.

Are you going out trick or treating tonight?  No, didn’t think so.  But of course tonight is the night for your local urchins to come a knockin’ so I hope you’ve stocked up on sweets.  So it’s the supermarket for me on the way home.

Anyhow, listen to Plusnet Towers’ floorboards a-creaking as we tread carefully around to see what’s been happening today.

Starting with Chris in Comms:

Boo.

Did I scare you? Didn’t think so.

Boo.

How about that time? Bet you weren’t expecting that one eh?

Batty Bob has spent most of his day cursing at his laptop and eating MY biscuits. How dare he? For the record they were chocolate and caramel covered digestives. As he reached his peak of anger at around 3.30pm I found out that it was actually a blog that he was annoyed at, he’d lost a fair chunk of work because his browser decided to switch to an alternate proxy and ask him to log in again.

Mutilated Matt has been in a couple of meetings as well as bringing back our lunch. He’s also been busy writing a Halloween blog and popped up on a few forums.

Murderous Mand’s made sure that any problems raised today have been verified and passed on in a timely manner. She also helped Mutilated Matt bring our lunch back from KFC. Yum.

Cadaver Chris (me) has been diving in and out of various forums and chasing up a few email queries thrown downstairs from our networks team. I’ve drafted an update to one of our best practices too, which I’ll be putting live on Monday.

STOP THE PRESS, BREAKING NEWS

Boo. Ah I thought that one might scare ya.

Spooky..  We’ve got an update of sorts now from Jen in HR:

Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
(It’s been an interesting week in HR. Diane’s leaving us today, so we’re all sad to see her go.)
Surveys for us to undertake
In the cauldron boil and bake
(Gem’s been producing the Employee Opinion Survey.)
Profiles of roles and reviews to log
Lealta benefits leave us agog
(Diane’s been trying to complete as many role profiles as possible before she goes. Amanda’s been busy doing 360 degree reviews. We’ve finalised the Lealta benefits scheme.)
KPIs and recruiting
Org charts need updating
(Barbs has been busy working out better ways of doing our KPIs with Gemma. We’re recruiting internally. I’ve updated the Organisation Charts.)
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
(We’re about to head off to the pub to say out good-byes to Diane). 

‘Halloween coordinator’ Mike reports in from CSC:

As you can all see from the Halloween 2008 Blog pictures, we have had an extremely spooky Halloween fancy dress day, I am the one in the Skeleton suit. The whole CSC has been decorated with Halloween razzamatazz, cobwebs and skulls (expertly done by myself). We have all been having fun & enjoying Halloween quizzes & games with chocolate and beers for prizes (during our break times of course). The highlight of the day was seeing Carol Axe the director dressed as a witch.

As far as work is concerned however, it has been a busy day for us with lots of calls & tickets throughout the day. Longest wait has slipped just above our target 10% at 11mins 38 at the time of writing this. Without any further ado, here are today’s top 5 issues:

1. Faults – Seems to have been a slightly higher faults report today, no particular patterns more than likely due to the funky weather of late
2. Router Setups – Again in the top 5, we find the majority are either new users or users upgrading for USB modems
3. E-mail Setups – Both new users & those adding new mailboxes
4. General Billing Enquires – Nothing strange here
5. Sales Enquires – Always good when this is in the top 5

Fangs for reading and goodnight (see what I did there).

Groan.  Not much more to go through.  Congrats BTW if you’ve made it this far.. Ssshhhh. James is here now from Web Development to make more bad ghost puns:

Let’s see what the Ghouls and Ghosts have been up to in Web Dev today….

First up we have Andy (Slimer) who has been working on Ironport email updates and support content. Nick (Michael Myers) has been looking problems and has been taking pictures of Halloween-related office craziness, and brought in some sweets to mark the occasion. Mark (Bela Lugosi) has been completing his work on broadband speed checker and editing pages for a Business product refresh. Colin (Dracula) has rolled out some problem fixes and pushed some other problem fixes through testing. Dan (The Exorcist) has been continuing to develop and enhance our internal Workplace system. Gary (Jack Torrance) (that’s the fella from the Shining – Googling Ed) has been working on wireframe models for Business product refresh. Phil (Freddy) has been carrying out some development work on the MAAF version of the broadband speed checker. Sam (Beatlejuice) has also been working on design tasks for the Business product refresh. Finally Pete (Pennywise) has been preparing for an operational review and working on 1-2-1’s.

That’s it for today folks, so I guess the only other thing is to ask that eternal question…..who you gunna call?

“I don’t have to take this abuse from you, I’ve got hundreds of people dying to abuse me.” – Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters

I don’t know about you guys but I’m finding it REALLY hard to picture Colin as Dracula.
So here ends another Plusnet Halloween.. have fun and stay safe.  See you all tomorrow.. maybe  hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha……..

PJ

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This entry was posted by Peter Jackson on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 6:34 pm and is tagged with EOD, Halloween and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.