Welcome readers! I hope you’re not all too busy watching the tennis (as it appears most of our userbase are, contributing to more than 2Gbps of traffic) and have a moment to catch up on what we’ve been upto today.
More…
It’s been a long day today, been in since 7am for a couple of rollouts, had intended to leave on time… if not early, oh well best laid plans as they say. Good job I hadn’t really planned on doing anything, and the later I leave it the quieter the traffic will be.
I hadn’t actually intended to be editor today, but James seems to have roped me in to doing it. He has though said he’ll be editor tomorrow.
So it’s a good job James has written a contribution, here’s what Comms have been doing today:
ANOTHER sunny day in Sheffield (which also means I may die of heat exhaustion in the bus again). I’ve been working on forums aswell as some project stuff that you’ll hear about before tooooo long.
Matt and Chris have been working on Easy setup again and Matt went into town at lunchtime to buy some Solero’s, which were awesome.
Mand’s off celebrating her birthday today and tomorrow but new and improved Healthy Bob claims to have been busy. We don’t believe him though if for nothing but to make him more angry!
And that’s all for today. Semi-final day at Wimbledon tomorrow and we’re expecting another busy afternoon on the network (which means I can get away with watching the match).
Have fun everyone and look out for James tomorrow…
Wow. Today has been beautiful up in Sheffield. Quite a scorcher! I’m fairly sure that this is going to be mentioned in all the EOD posts today. Lets see shall we?
First up, James from Comms
Wooo! It’s an absolute scorcher here! We keep on looking outside longingly. Amazingly though, for the second day in a row, our air con unit is keeping us lovely and cool as we battle our way through the day.
Matt and Chris have been continuing their work to configure some routers for customers who have opted in to the Easy setup trial. Bob has been looking angry and decidedly sweaty when we got in this morning after yet another of his “Healthy Bob” sessions in the gym. After that, he just looked angry.
Mand’s been working on her usual dose of problems and going to a bunch of meetings. Then there’s me, spending my day pottering about in our forums and handling a couple of complaints. That and watching the amount of iPlayer traffic on our network SOAR as Andy Murray came onto Centre Court. Andy’s (our Andy, not the tennis player) run away on holiday (nice timing Andy!) and Mike’s been hiding somewhere - I think I’ve only seen him once today.
I’m off to find a beer garden. C’mon Murray!
Yeah! Told you so! I bet it continues….
Rys from Development
I’m working on the tail end of some code for our reseller portal, adding a new feature that some recent new customers need. Development has really dragged on after some problems integrating back-end and front-end code (each written by a different team), and it’s not quite finished yet. But, there’s a bright side actually, which I’ve realised as I come to the end of development.
The development experience, while testing from a sanity point of view, has taught me a hell of a lot. The issues encountered doing multi-site development, from the design to the sharp end of getting it delivered, mean the next time I come across a project that smells similar in intent, I’ll be well equipped to help steer it in the proper direction.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Anyway, among all that recently we’ve had a fair bit of action on our alpha and revision control projects, improvements to vISP portals and myriad other things (some really quite exciting, but that I can’t talk about yet I think). Oh, and we had a desk move, so we’re all in new teams and seats again.
Oh. Perhaps the next one…
El Marky from the Web Team
¡Hola! from El Marky, reporting on behalf of the web development team from the air-conditioned bowls of PlusNet’s development hacienda. I’ve been working on problem fixes and tweaking web pages and email templates for a number or projects. I asked the rest of the team what they’d been doing today, here’s what they said -Nick “Well, apart from trying to work out whether one of the voicemail adverts on Spotify is Ali asking for “more Beatles” (I kid you not - listen out for it, dead ringer), I’ve been working on Problems, and mainly sorting out things for the BSP. (Ed. That’s Big Secret Project)”
Phil “You can say I’ve been working on signup improvements”. (Ed. I will Phil.)
Gary “I’ve been building new web template files which will hopefully plug effortlessly into the new code being written by the dev team.”
(Ed. I note that Gary’s exceptional cardboard sculpture has been mistaken for a pile of discarded boxes, and has been cleared away. Art will never be the same again, though the office will be a little bit tidier.)
Sam, the team’s bona fide artist, has spent the day drawing. Surprising nobody.
Team leader, Jonny, has been rushing around doing ‘management’. This week he’s introduced a new mantra ‘keep calm and carry on’. Sage words indeed
The web team’s new mascot is Juan-Pablo Wrestito, the renown Mexican silicone rubber wrist rest and web usability expert, he’s been searching the web for interesting news, or in his words ‘Web Noticias Excepcionalas’.
Here’s what he found -
There’s a new version of Firefox, and you can watch its real-time download statsThere’s a new way to ‘google’, using Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Try it here oh erm, I mean here
The Sony Walkman is 30 today. Happy Birthday Mr Walkman
Uh oh.. this is a break from the norm..
Finally, Ian from the Business Support Team
Today has been relatively busy throughout, no major service issues or problems though which is always a good thing. Unfortunately no spare time to sit watching the Wimbledon online as it seems the majority of our customer base have!
Martin and Adam have done a sterling job ensuring all faults are up to date, be they newly raised issues which need initial diagnostics completing, or long standing faults which need discussing with BT Wholesale prior to engineer visits taking place.
Mark and Phil have been dealing primarily with Plusnet Partner accounts ensuring that all queries raised are picked up and dealt with promptly and efficiently (as is the Plusnet way) such that Partners can provide a good service to their own customers. Anyone interested in becoming a Plusnet Partner or reseller might be interested in having a look at http://www.plus.net/partners/
The rest of the team, that’s me, Oliver, John and Joe have been picking up all other issues, ranging from provisioning of new accounts through to account changes and billing issues, along with any technical issues and faults which are thrown our way.
Most of the team have already left for the day or will be leaving shortly, John and myself are the lucky two staying till 8pm tonight to help out any late working business customers who may need to contact us.
1/4 on the weather reports! That wasn’t very good! 
Right, why are you reading this when you could be outside having a BBQ?! Hop to it!
Hello Readers!
I’m posting from home (and a bit later than usual) today, which means I can do something that’s almost unheard of in Plusnet EOD history - yes PRAISE THE AIR CON!
I’ve been at my desk for most of the day (tying up loose ends as I’m off work until a week on monday :D) and even though I’ve been wearing a hoodie all day (hood down or course ;)) I’ve not felt anything like warm, just comfortable.
But then I stepped through the office doors, it was like walking into a wall of fire - yikes! I’m now sat slowly cooking at home… never mind on with the EOD!
First we have Adheel from the Faults team, who is keeping quiet about his beloved Blades for some reason!
Good evening all, here is the faults end of day!
Its been a busy day and although the sun has been hiding , its been swelteringly humid in the office. I also missed the ice cream van as I was in a meeting so I’m not impressed
On a plus note, lots of work has been done today, which should stand us in good stead for what is set to be a busy week. Our 3 secondee’s are on their last shift on the team and are pretty adamant they have learnt plenty in the month they have been on the team.
I’ll be testing them next week so we will see if that’s true or not. My learning stick (a 2×4 under my desk) will be close at hand should they fail to get 100% on al the modules. Just joking lads! :-p
The next batch of secondee’s start tomorrow so I’m sure we will get a end of day from one (if not all) of them to advise on how they are finding it on the faults team some time over the next few weeks.
The team has dealt swiftly with a variety of fault tickets today.
Myself, Alex and Jake have been dealing with new faults. These are the ones that go through manual testing before raising to BT.
Rich (who beat me 3-0 at pool today and I no longer consider a friend) has been dealing with PSTN (voice) faults. This involves running a test on the copper line part of the telephone line to find any specific faults. This can then be raised for further investigation or the customer contacted for further internal checks to be tried just to rule out all equipment.
The other chaps who came in dribs and drabs throughout the day include Rich U and Jon (who along with Jake bid farewell to our team today), Brad (who has been entertaining us with his anecdotes from over the weekend) and Tony and Keith (who made a killer brew for the team as soon as he came in this morning.) Simon our team leader has been recovering from last nights game of football in which he was on the winning team and I wasn’t.
Ah well, revenge shall be mine next week!
Have a good evening!
Adheel was sat no more than 10m away from me today, strange how he had such a different experience.
Next (and finally) we have Matt B from QA…
And a very good evening from QA. Here we go with a quick run round the team.
Catherine has been working on getting problem fixes rolled out live, interspersed with drinking tea (Lady Grey) and joining in with the usual conversation around the kettle.
Gary has been working on our Partner product and has been relatively quiet all day. I’m assuming this is indicative of some hard work being done…
Gavin has been creating a test plan for the upcoming move to our new datacentre. Yes, it is as fascinating as it sounds!
Paul has been reviewing all open problems to see which can be fixed within future projects. Integrating problem fixes into project work can save a lot of man hours that are then free for more dev work so it’s really useful.
Peter has been testing some work on our usage recording systems and also testing some priority problems.
Nigel has been testing some new marketing promotions as well as planning the testing of some future promotions.
Finally I have been the general dogsbody today. Picking up random testing tasks and making some team scheduling changes, as well as writing this EOD for you lovely people
Thanks Matt!
That’s it from me today - I’ll see you in a week and a bit!
Hello readers!
A short and sweet EOD today, with just the one entry from James who’s a TSM (Technical Shift Manager) in the CSC.
Well within the CSC our TSMs have been pretty much back to normal today.
In recent weeks we have had Simon, our faults manager, along with James K, our business support manager, working with our colleagues in SA so we have had other TSMs such as myself covering for them. So whilst I have been covering the business team in recent weeks Im back to my traditional desk today looking after our CS and Prov teams in Sheffield.
Our Operations manager, Nick, has also returned to the UK too having been in SA for months and months and months. Its good to have him back with us, especially as its another person I can beat at golf as my victory yesterday afternoon proved.
So things here seem a little more normal and Im sure our teams are loving having their normal leaders back too, well grudingly they might admit that.
Cheers James!
Thanks for reading all!
The end of another week at Plusnet and I’m pulling double duty this week.
It’s been a week where a lot has happened, we were saddened last night to learn about the death of Michael Jackson. When news like that starts to break the world increasingly turns towards the Internet. Google initially thought they were under attack from people searching for the same thing, while Twitter and other sites crashed from the volume of hits.
The BBC saw a spike in hits on their news pages and began streaming the BBC News channel direct from the front page. We saw a 50% increase in iPlayer traffic (the live streaming TV is identified as iPlayer as it uses the same technology) at 11pm last night. There’s also been a small increase in YouTube and Streaming traffic today possibly from people watching/listening to Michael Jackson videos and songs.
Our thoughts at this time are with Michael’s family.
On a happier note we would like to welcome two new Plusnetters to the fold with birth of baby Oscar on Wednesday and baby Alexander this morning. Congratulations go out to Luke and Caroline, and Anthony and Helen, both mothers and babies are doing well.
We have only one submission today for the End of Day and it’s from James from the Comms and Training Team:
Today, our recently expanded team have been musing on the meaning of life, along with commenting on the weather and its hourly fluctuations. We also welcomed Mand back after a brief absence, but sadly lost Matt to the [insert name here] illness.
I’ve been looking after our forums and pretending to know how to use telnet. Mike, fortunately has been sat to my right poking me and trying to show me the error of my ways (Bradders says hi too). Mand has been looking after Home Phone and Chris has been sat in his chair looking smug (and decidedly not busy). Andy has been doing “content related stuff” and Bob has looked angry.
And that’s all, time to go home. Take care everyone and be careful, there’s a heatwave coming.
Be careful what you wish for. That’s what they say isn’t it? I was hoping for some great, insightful content but thought I had none and was about to sneak off home, but now look.. in the nick of time I have lots to edit. So out with the savage pencil then and let’s see what’s happening around the old place.. More…
Good evening Campers! I hope the day has been productive and entertaining for you all.
First up is Catherine from QA
137 characters, Twitter stylee….
A small team today, with focus on problems and project work. There was joy at lunchtime pizza, and we’ve rolled 8 things to live. Hurrah!
and next is… oh, Catherine again!
or as a haiku…
Gavin, Cat, Nige, Matt
Problems, projects and admin
Joy! Lunchtime pizza!
I like the Haiku 
Next is Jake from the CSC
Hey,
Wednesday afternoon. Ace. And I’m off on Friday too.
The CSC have seen some big spikes in calls today, but as ever have been well on top of everything and have done a sterling job answering calls.I’ve been in meetings and training most of the afternoon and am approaching the end of my faults secondment, which has been invaluable.
Over to Paul C who’s wrote today’s top 5:
- Router Setup – The most popular call with quite a few folks connecting on the default router login. Roll on the new “Easy Setup” routers, which should help with connecting and some fault diagnostics, exciting times!
- Intermittent Faults - Most common fault by far but seem to mainly be noticed when the speeds drop as a result. We’re looking at the way faults are raised and actioned and there’s a few new interactions on the drawing board.
- Speed Queries - Quite a few customers calling experiencing slower browsing and downloads. A fair few seem to be down to some of the maintenance reported last week.
- Fault Updates - Lots of new faults are inevitably leading to more calls for updates. The 2 way sms update system seems to be getting a fair bit of praise though so this is really being pushed.
- Prov Updates/Queries - Always common calls but seems to be a rise today with a number of agents raising this. Generally it’s always a good sign so no complaints.
Bye for now.
and finally, Arun from one of our off shore programming teams out in India
Here we go!
It has been a good and bad day for the remote team in India. The weather has driving us mad today with some really high temperatures. It’s windy and humid too!
The team skipped lunch, but had a fantastic dinner together instead!Anees - digging the deep roots of Plusnet’s Domain System.
Mithun - in rivalry with PHPUnitTests.
Jinesh - started on with an email problem.
Shiraz - back to a Webmail problem, at present chasing the Business Analysts back in the UK for some help.Myself, I was mostly trying to fix my vpn issues. Still not working!! I’ve also spent some time investigating a ticket pool problem with one of our major partners.
Right! That’s it from the good ship Plusnet.
Hmm, I’m not sure who was meant to do the End of Day today but I noticed it’s not been done yet so I’ll be stunt Ed and apologies to whoever was down to do it if you’re in the middle of composing it in notepad and not yet added a draft.
Looks like we have a single submission today so before we get there I think we need a bit of padding, I just said to Liam on MSN that I’d waffle on about my journey to work today.. reason is it put me in a really bad mood for most of the day. My lack of ability to get back to sleep after waking up early in the morning meant I’ve been awake since about 5am so I (foolishly) decided that would give me plenty of time to cycle in to work (I live about 12.5 miles from the office) and be in for 8am.
However, something decided today was meant going to be an easy day for getting to work on time. On a bike journey I’d say it was unlucky to get a puncture, but it happens and doubley unlucky to get two. I had three and carrying only two spare inner tubes (and no bucket of later) had to push the bike the last mile to the office.
Nipped out at lunch and bought two new tyres and inner tubes and the journey home was pretty incident free, but if anyone at work thought I was a bit grumpy today, sorry, but I think I had a good excuse 
Anyway, enough rambling let’s hear from Mark from the Provisioning Team:
Bienvenuto to the prov EoD.
It is lovely and sunny, with blue skies in Sheffield today (Wonder how long it will last this time!) Nearly the weekend too, so not all bad.
Today:
Rob has been working the XML pool. He played football last night, but he didn’t win
Alice has been working in the migrations pool. She had a day of work experience yesterday at a vets and has got scratches from a kitten on her hands
Malik has been working in the provisioning pool. This weekend he bought a lexus!
Andy has been working in the house moves pool. He’s not looking forward to decorating his new house.
I have been working in the ADSL cease pool. I have been suffering with hayfever all day. It’s not fun
Songs of the week are When Love Takes Over by David Guetta and 15 Minutes by The Yeah You’s.
Seems short this week. Oh well.
Thanks for reading.
Mark T
Thanks Mark, and that’s it for today… tomorrow we are planning something, can’t say yet, although not sure it will make it up here tomorrow or not. But stay tuned anyway…
Hello readers!
A bit of a late one this, had a bit of a password mishap meaning that I couldn’t get to our internal forums (I’m posting this from home) but Tommo has saved the day by emailing me the EOD submissions - woo hoo!
So on with the (late) show… Here’s Mand with todays Comms update - what day is it again Mand?
I don’t know why I always end up doing the EOD on Mondays, cos I’m not keen on the Mondayness of it all and they tend to be short and not very cheery.
But anyway, on with the show.
Chris did some forum work and he and Matt continued work on the sekrit projekt. It’s shaping up very well, and we’ll hopefully be able to fill you in very soon.
Bob has been testing some hardware, and reviewing some customer mails, as well as some forum work.
I’ve been experiencing the joys of Excel, and my day has been taken up with some data analysis, and fixing of broken/missing components.
James skived after moving house this weekend.
All in all a not very exciting Monday.
Mention to Tommo’s latest blog, where we broke the record for iPlayer usage last night - We don’t think it’s the real Stig either.
Have a good one.
Moving swiftly on, it’s Nick from the Web Team…
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of warm weather, but it’s muggy, sticky days like this when I’m glad of our office’s cool air con. The temperature’s nicely chilled. Just like the Web Team guys have been…
…that was until Gary’s shocking admission earlier that he apparently models himself on the character ‘Cole Trickle’ (Tom Cruise) from the 1990 racing film Days of Thunder!!
Wow. Quite a thing to spill out. Actually, the rest of us can see the similarity. (I’m not chuckling as I type this, honestly Gary
Anyway, onto what we’ve all been busy with today…
Gary (or simply ‘Trickle’ as he’ll now be known) has been doing some design work on new pages, reviewing James’ code, preparing for the next seasons racing, and “dropping the hammer”.
I think this Days of Thunder/Gary thing has got some mileage (no pun intended).
Phil says he’s “been mercilessly teasing Trickle” about his racing idol. Phil’s also been ‘coding it up’ with plenty of code reviews and writing code too. He’s lived and breathed the stuff today. And drunk Diet Coke, as always. Bless.
Jonny and Duffy have been doing the meeting ‘hokey cokey’ so we’ve not seen a great deal of them of any length of time today.
On to Mark…”I’ve been working on project updates; tweaking and changing bits and pieces, here and there. I’ve received feedback from Nick, whose trusty word scalpel is always ready to trim flabby words. I’ve copiously drunk tea and eaten one biscuit. Typical Monday”
And lastly myself, (I don’t really have a word scalpel, honestly). I’ve had a couple of meetings, two biscuits with my tea, been working with Marketing on some nice new pages, plus I’ve also been helping James with some rollouts and general bug fixing.
All in all a humid and humourous Monday. Toodle pip people!
I haven’t seen Days of Thunder for many a year, but I remember it being a poor mans version of Top Gun with cars instead of planes.. Am I correct?
Finally here’s Neil from Networks
Contrary to what others think I don’t think the weather is anything near humid. It’s not even that warm… just dull and miserable up North today (if you want humid I recommend Atlanta, GA). Anyway the weather aside, the heat is on as always in Networks as we battle against evil spammers and ensure our mail platform does not suffer. There has been the working of regular problems and escalated customer tickets. Aside from that the data centre move project which is ongoing continues to be a main focus with lots of people working on this. Here is hoping for some sun tomorrow!
And that’s a wrap, see you soon!
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