Tuesday 24th March 2009
Why hello there readers! Today's been a bit of a weird one in Sunny Sheffield:
- It's really been sunny!
- It's blowing a gale outside and therefore it's blummin freezin!
Most confusing as I'm sure you'll agree. To distract my mind from this conundrum I've been bopping in my chair to the Web Team 80's Megamix - if you're a spotify user, click here for a listen I'd tell you about what I've been up to, but Nick can do that later. On with the (bumper edition) EOD! Kevin's been Hanging Tough with the Faults Team
How do, Ok, can't say I have felt like the new kid on the block for a while, however for the month of March I have been seconded to the Faults Team, an interesting and informative visit it's certainly been. Although it has to be said there's been a lot of banter between the Sheffield and Barnsley factions (me) and the rival football teams from each town. Roles wise, well T'old Brad has been leading us and setting the roles and a fine job he's done too. Personally I have been entertaining the CSC pool of faults covering all variants of faults and raising faults forward to BT when comprehensive tests have been completed. So Andy the coffee connoisseur has been dealing with the jeopardy report (elder faults which need urgent attention) with Adam also. It's hard to work next to someone who drinks such fine freshly peculated coffee all the time. In the meantime, Keith has been dealing with the new 21CN trial and its potential faults, then later this afternoon dealing with speed faults. Adheel has mainly been raving over Street Fighter whilst dealing with the logged fault retest pool, I think we're currently favouring Ken, but I got lost a while back. Alex on the late shift of this evening, is dealing with logged faults in general ensuring none get missed working on the pools in an ad-hoc manner. And the main man Brad, has been beavering away at the home phone faults, and getting lines tested and faults raised when a fault can’t be resolved by standard diagnostics (change of handset, disconnecting other equipment etc.) And that’s the lot of us. It’s been a busy start to the week which is good, it's simply now a case of keeping on top of them and striving to deliver the best service.
Thanks Kevin! Next we have Catherine from QA. Sadly there's no opportunity for boyband puns here:
The work never stops in QA - indeed, I'm working as I'm writing this, thanks to Selenium, our handy automation tool which is activating an account for me even now! So what else have my industrious team mates been up to? Gavin's currently frowning at a screen with Karol, one of our live code support team. Clearly it's srs bizness. Next to him, Matt 2 is ploughing through problems, as usual, and doing a fine job of it. Nigel's been working his way through his latest project, due to roll very soon, so he's been very quiet today. On the other side of the desk Stephen has been doing performance reviews, Paul has been celebrating a successful roll of the latest improvements drop for our Partner portal and Matt 1 is sitting with our resident billing expert to create a new testing widget for us, although I've just heard him say 'For once, it's not even PEBKAC!' so I'm not sure it's going too well! Finally, I've been happy as I've been working with one of my favourite developers - Rupert, for value added randomness
Cheers m'dear! Next, coming to you live from across the desk (that'd make more sense if you could see how our desks are laid out) it's Nick from the Web Team.
I've given Andy a rest from gathering up the team's daily news today. So, what's been keeping keeping the boys busy then....? As for myself, I've been working with Networks on some Help Assistant updates, doing some more testing for Duffy even though he's been off ill (what dedication, Duffy!), updating some emails for Dan and reviewing Partner content with Gary. I've hardly seemed to stop all day. Phew. On t'other side of the table, Andy's been problem fixing, doing training stuff and 'Colin bothering' (poor Colin!), oh and listening to the team's 80's Spotify list. It's still a big fave of the team. Retro a go-go! "Supporting testing, Supporting Problem Fixes" has been the order of the day for Colin, James has had a day full of Problems...fixing them, not creating them (hopefully!). Gary has been busy with Partner templates, some stylesheet wizardry, code reviews and munching some rather tasty looking Jammy Dodger type biscuits. I'm more of a ginger snap biscuit bloke myself. Mark's had what he calls a 'relatively calm day'. He's been fixing website and email template problems and also checking Partner content, like myself. He is however a little bemused after reading the story about a group who want to shut down Google Street View.
Ginger snaps - indeed. Ta Nick! Last one! Here's Dan from Networks.
The guys have had another busy one today. The work down in London has been continuing and various project work has been carried out. Operationally, problems, tickets and tasks have been worked on along with the monitoring of all platforms. IT Support have been moving machines over to the Domain and building a monitoring station for the call centre to be able to see our network status. Work also on the IVR call routing system for Sales and CSC calls. Also new starters have all had induction and training.
Many thanks Dan! Right then I reckon that's me done for the day. 'Till the next time!