It’s pay day! Yay, but I nearly didn’t get any money thanks to my bank’s fraud detection system thinking a £1.70 transaction for a bus ticket was potentially fraud. It’s good to know that the banks take things like this seriously but can be frustrating when all you want to do is ensure you get home.

Still all sorted now, so let’s get on with the End of Day and the HR update from Barbara:

Tonight of course we’re giving Amanda a good send off as she leaves the Plusnet family…cheeky vimto’s will be optional (sorry Amanda’s shouting essential ) and as she is of course a good HR policy maker, who are we to complain! Also:-

We’ve organised travel and hotels for everyone attending the BT tower event
Inserting correct EIN records for Line Managers
Graduation – MDLP – arrangements organised, as well

&

Processing applications for recruitment
Exit Interview on CiphrNet
Next Rally is next Thursday – so been starting the slides

Next is Andy from the Comms Team:

Everyone has disappeared and James is far too busy handing over his work as he’s off on holiday (ed: he’s going to burn… very badly). Pete’s had a busy day too working with me. CParr’s on a half day, Bob’s been busy and angry in equal measures… nothing new there. Although he did make tea today!!

Last today is Adam from the Customer Options Team:

Today has been a busy day here in the Customer Options Team!

We have been blessed with Cadburys chocolate (around a square mile of the stuff) along with a lovely selection of M&S treats so we are all a little larger at the close of play today!

The team are crossing their fingers for a sunny, BBQ filled weekend but taking a peek out of the office window I think they may well be boats required instead!

That’s all for the Customer Options Team this week, we will be back next weekend sporting sun tans and/or Kayaks.

And that’s all for another week, time to head off and have some fun. Catch you all again next week. Have a great weekend.

No Comments »

It’s that time again folks!

This morning we activated another 155Mbps segment of central capacity.

All of the data you send and receive from your broadband connection travels across these segments of central capacity so to put it in simpler terms, we’ve just increased the amount of bandwidth that’s available to you all.

More…

5 Comments »

Editing 2 days in a row, not sure how I got talked into this. Ah well, on we go round the departments. Let’s see what’s behind the blue window with the Comms team:

We came, we saw, we Comms’d.

Bob has been looking at change controls and our forums, a bit like me really, whereas Cparr’s been looking after the announcements about the Business Product Refresh! Andy has been (again) looking at Support Pages.

Back on Friday

Thanks for that, and next up through the oblong door is Paul from Faults:

Hello All!

It’s me again. Probably for the last time though as my faults secondment is drawing to a close with just 1 more day to go before returning to my usual role in the tech team. I have spent my penultimate day on the faults team with a throbbing head ache and tackling logged intermittent faults, not an ideal combo but I battled through like the good secondee I am. Poor Lee however couldn’t quite manage though, after half a day ploughing through Home Phone faults also feeling under the weather, he has had to get off to the doctors. Get well soon matey.

Wrapping up the secondees, Craig is finishing on faults today and has bid his farewell after putting in a hard days work on logged no sync problems. Back to normal tech shifts on Sunday.

Of the core faults staff, today was the turn of Alex, Tom, Keith, Tony, Brad and Munky. Early starter Alex began ploughing through speed faults as he usually does but also handing out the work to the rest of us as and when we started. Tom seems to have taken over the logged Auth faults and seems to be revelling in it now that he has his ways and means to get every auth fault resolved in a short period of time. Covering the remaining logged faults is the big man Tony T who also found himself mopping up the Home Phone faults after Lee’s early departure while at the same time muttering something under his breath, I think I heard the word ‘revenge’.

The non speed CSC faults have been tackled by Keith and the Munky (which sounds like a good name for a sitcom). Masses have been trimmed to just a few so they have clearly been hard at work, which to be honest is pretty much what they do each and every day.

Last but not least Brad has been focussing his mind on our 21CN faults and keeping me company on table 2 between stints of prep work for upcoming training sessions.

The next few days should see the return of Adheel and Rich who are enjoying their “weekend” and fingers crossed Lee may be well enough to make an appearance on the last day of his secondment too.

That’s all from me, so until the next time I have a chance to write one of these, thanks for reading and have a great evening whatever you end up doing!

That’s it for today. Until next time, cya around.

Chris

2 Comments »

We’re delighted to announce a refresh of our business products.

Our new products start at just £10 for the entry level service, perfect for the small/home office in the current climate.

For the first time ever you’ll now be able to add a Business line rental and call plan to your broadband choice from us.

More…

2 Comments »

Let’s see if I can remember how to do this, click, yeah that should do it. Click click, now see what submissions there were for today, click click. Right welcome to the EOD for the *cough* 29th July.

Let’s start with the Comms team, here’s James to tell the tale:

Comms Wednesday started at a somewhat horrific time of 6:15am for me and CParr ambling down our steps in a sleepy daze to make it to the gym before we started our working day. You can imagine our boundless glee when we found Bob in the gym waiting for us!

Once the working day started, we realised that we were without Mand, who’s away on holiday and Matt who’s still poorly. So we cracked on with a combination of meetings (mainly Chris and Peter), doing as little as possible (mainly Bob) and change controls and forums (mainly me).

Andy’s been looking at support pages again. He does that a lot. He’s also demonstrated his keen hand in preparing Comms Tea which is a sure-fire way of improving the morale on the team!

Time to go into the rain. Again. Might have to make some tea when I get in.

James

Thanks James, now on to the Provisioning team, here’s Mark:

Bonjour et bienvenue au provisioning EoD!

(Or: Hello and welcome to the Provisioning EoD!)

Well, the weather has been rubbish today. Rain, all day, no sign of sun. Although, does look like it might be stopping, here’s hoping.
What happened to our summer? Oh well, soon the weekend (Optimist that I am  )

Today:
Rob has been working in the provisioning pool. He is off on holiday on Friday, not that he keeps rubbing it in at all!
Alice has been working the migrations and order progress pool. She’s just got back from a holiday in Wales, and she loved it.
Andy has been working in the house moves pool. He is aching from the gym!
I have been working in the ceases pool. I am going home and relaxing tonight, it will be bliss!

Malik and Carl are both off poorly…… GET WELL SOON MALIK AND CARL!

Only one song of choice this week, which is I’ve Got A Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas.
TTFN and thanks for reading.

Mark T

That seems to be all we’ve got for today. So I’ll be you a good mor evening.

Chris.

1 Comment »

Howdy Communitadors.  Always best to start off a EOD with a completely made up word.  It’s a fairly quick one from me today because Andy asked me to edit at 5:15pm! (Bad Andy)
More…

No Comments »

Last year we published the distribution of our customers speeds in order to compare what our customers were starting to see on our 21CN network against what they previously had and also to see what speed distributions both 20CN and 21CN were giving. As we have over 800 customers on 21CN now we thought it would be useful to revisit the distribution of speeds as we have a much better sample size now. More…

18 Comments »

I bet you thought I’d forgotten this huh?

I’d actually written everything at 5.30, and then I got logged out of the site and lost the post – most annoying.  So I emailed myself the EOD reports and decided to do this from home.

Then I got distracted by Table Tennis on Wii Sports Resort – tis very good, hence the late posting!

Lets get back on topic, here’s Nick from the CSC – he’s sounding pretty chirpy!

Howdy – the typical sickeningly happy post from the CSC (or maybe it’s just me):

Well, it’s back to work for me today after a nice holiday (or ’staycation’ as the papers seem to insist on saying), and as ever there is no gently working your way back up to speed here – right back into the thick of it today! It’s nice to be busy, and good to be chatting you to you lovely people again

The newest member of our team, Chris, seems to be settling in very well. He’s proving popular with the customers anyway, as I’ve had two callers compliment him to me today. Always good to see – although he stubbornly refuses to have his pool playing skills tested. Maybe I should ask a team leader to add it to his training regime.

From the floor today we kicked off with an email issue which has been affecting a very large number of our customers. So if that was you, I hope it didn’t cause too much inconvenience. I believe we’re back on top of it now. Other than that, the normal sort of thing – giving the initial checks to people with intermittent or dropped connections, chasing ongoing faults, and requesting help with initial setup. Customer Services must be doing a great job because I’ve literally only dealt with pure tech issues today. Good going, I think. Personally, I’ve had a much higher than normal number of people call up with data transfer problems, but a quick poll of the other agents suggests this isn’t a major problem elsewhere.

Sadly, there’s no way to log an official complaint about the weather. Rain should be banned on holidays, especially if it’s every single day of it. Still, it’s nice to be back. So now I’m going to get back to it – over and out!

Sticking with a theme, here’s another Nick with the Web Team update…

Another Monday rolls around and here’s what’s been keeping us busy today:

Gary (Mr. Trickle), Sam and myself have been doing some bugfixing most of the day, with Sam also doing a bit of an update job on some old-style pages.

Duffy has been getting his head round our new versioning control system, plus popping in and out of various meetings.

Sadly, we’ve now lost Phill from our EOD’s…as he’s now moved desk over the other side of the Dev floor. But I’m sure he’s having fun over there in a code-y kind of way. [waves to Phill]

Lastly, I have to mention it as well…what IS with the weather? One minute it’s black as night and hammering down with rain, 10 minutes later it’s blazing sunshine! Crazy.

Crazy indeed, I walked to work in a monsoon (ok so I exaggerate a little) and by the time I’d walked home I had sunstroke!

I’d love to finish the post with a Hat Trick of Nicks, but sadly there aren’t any Nicks on Comms, never mind though -  Mand will more than make up for it…

It’s Monday, and I thought I’d write an EOD since I’m enjoying a 2 day working week this week.

OK, so on with the business of the day.

I’ve asked the guys what they’ve been upto, as I’ve been away from my desk most of the day.

James: ‘learning how to use Paint, and forum stuffs’.
Chris: ‘magic stuff’. When pressed for a more serious answer I got ‘router stuff, blog and looking after the CSC’. Nothin’ magic about that as far as I can see.
Bob: change control approval, usenet/twitter coverage mainly and some Giganews contract detail
Matt: He’s not here so I can’t ask him, I’m going to assume forum, change controls and rubbing cream on his poor sunburnt head.
Me: meeting-tastic day for me today, along with a whole load of sekrit projekt work (not secret for much longer though ), and recovering from a pretty hectic weekend .

Anyway, enjoy your Monday, and we’ll see you same time, same place tomorrow.

Thanks to todays contributers and to YOU for reading!

I’m out, see ya.

4 Comments »

Hello again, it’s been a while. Since I last blogged, I have got married and been on honeymoon, and bought a Wii. I know, I’m weak, but it was for the little one, and it means my Xbox pads are no longer getting battered due to the frustrations of a 6 year old, just the frustrations of a 29 year old. More…

1 Comment »

Welcome to the last end of day of another week, apologies for the lateness but important things like the biggest football game of the season thus far have taken priority (Chesterfield beat Matlock Town 5-2).

Today was a big day for Plusnet with the debut of our ITV Weather sponsorship, sadly we didn’t break the ITV Player record but it was pretty short notice when we posted but there was certainly a small spike in traffic around 11:26am this morning.

But now on with the end of day and first today is an end of week for HR with Jen:

So, it’s been Therese’ first week properly on Plusnet turf and she’s been taking the opportunity to get to meet the team here and get to grips with what we’re all about. Meanwhile Amanda’s been finalising the stuff she’s been working on to hand over before she leaves to take up her new post.

We have all had a busy week with resourcing and recruitment. Lots going on at the moment internally in this respect, doing interviews, adverts and liasing with managers. We’ve also been chasing role profiles. There’s been various employee relations stuff going on as well. It’s been payroll cut off so we’ve liaised with Finance on getting sure people get paid right.

Amongst other things, we’ve been sorting out our Best Companies application online ahead of this year’s competition and making arrangements for the levelling process for performance review ratings.

Finally, Gemma went off on holiday as it’s her birthday this weekend. So, Happy Birthday Gem, we hope you have fun!

Secondly today is Bob from the Comms Team:

Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of writing the Comms EOD summary! That’s because I’m an early bird you see, and I’ve normally left the office by now.

Alas, today I have been coerced by my team mates into accompanying them to the local ale house. This isn’t without it’s problems though as spending money on alcohol does not fit well with my recent drive to become ‘fit, healthy and wealthy’ (I’ve just about stopped smoking and have been frequenting the gym over recent weeks) – An apt solution I think would be for my work colleagues to foot the bill and pay for all of my drinks but something tells me that’s not going to happen!

Anyways, less of that and more about what we’ve been doing today…

The almighty PJ has been enjoying some well-earned time outside of the office but for the rest of is it’s pretty much been business as usual. Mand’s been doing some project work from home, Matt’s been concentrating on the imminent launch of our Easy Setup Routers (and helping the Faults Team out) and Andy’s been concentrating on our very special, much coveted, and recently launched Support Library.

I have mainly been laughing at James’ pitful attempts at using image authoring software! If anybody wants to write us a Community Library support on how to use Microsoft Paint then please do because I think we might have a use for it!

When he hasn’t been lending his artistic flair to the Support Library James has been looking after the forums, dealing with customer complaints, and writing up the minutes from a conference call we had with our friendly forum moderators last night.

When I haven’t been mocking James, I’ve found the time to answer a few posts on Usenet and oversee network change control approval. I’ve also written some documentation and cleared a few of my outstanding tasks from earlier on in the week.

Apparently Chris has been ‘being a legend’ – Hmmmm.

Right that’s your lot because it’s now 5.30 and I’m getting shouted at to get the first round in (hang on a minute!!).

Oh before I forget, here’s some pictures of rodents playing musical instruments.

Have a pleasant weekend.

And that’s it… Take care everyone and we’ll be back again next week.

No Comments »