End of Day: 3rd October

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So here we are already.. Friday night is already with us and the dark nights are closing in.  Let's take a quick wander across our internal forums and find out what we have to share with you today. Here's Rys from Development who looks to have had a cozy morning: I had the morning working from home today, so I could wait for a lovely UPS man to come and pickup a couple of parcels. Ah, to code in peace by the fire, with a good film on in the background and tea that isn't from the office machine....bliss. Mornings like that remind me why I worked from home for 5 or so years, before joining Plusnet nearly a year ago to the day. I got into the office to find Rupert had been waging war with the alpha database, after he found it in an inconsistent state for the project he's working on (don't you just hate it when that happens? - Ed). After some swearing and shaking of fists in its general direction threatening a refresh, he decided he didn't need one. Then he dropped some data in the tables by mistake, forcing one anyway. There are clumps of hair by his desk where he's ripped it out. Any donations for a wig are gratefully accepted. Otherwise it's been a quiet Friday. Quite a few folks aren't in today, and those that are seem to be wearing headphones and keeping their heads down, working hard. The gentle tap of keys is all I can hear. Oh, and Farhan chatting to Rowan as he gets back into coding again. Mua-ha-ha-ha! Have a good weekend, folks!   Adam greets us from the hubbub of the CSC: Hi there, I been asked to do the end of day again today (probably punishment for missing Wednesday's). So, what have we been doing today? Well, Keith has been doing the oldest tickets which are logged with BT, as well as moving across to help Business support. James has been doing CSC faults again today. We will get him doing other stuff next week. Pete, Rich, Brad and Tony have also been doing the oldest tickets which are logged with BT and are now working on keeping the ticket response times down.. And I've been doing the role known as Faults Other (Home Phone, Escalations, etc.), covering Mission Control amongst many other things. I'm off home now and hope to have got rid of the cold I've got by Monday (and I hope I don't catch it - Ed) Bye for now   Finally here's Matt with the Comms Friday update Thank Crunchie^TM it's Friday, the end of an email- and drama-filled week. I'd tell you about all that, but chances are if you're reading this you also frequent our forums and have either read or taken part in it all, in which case thank you. Well James has been off today and yesterday so not much to report there - I daresay he's been at home living it up with his games consoles. I know I would have been. Chris has been looking at hardware and problems, and has also been on various forums. He's forgone Friday Parr today, not sure why but I think it's because Mand is back on the team and can't be having with any of that. She's quick, is our Mand. Speaking of Mand, she's been looking at problems today and has a new batch queued up for our development team to look at. She's also been clearing out her task list and has dipped into the forum pool too (it's lovely once you're in!) Bob left early today so out of spite I'm not going to say anything about him. Okay, okay, it's out of jealousy, not spite. But still. Finally I've spent most of the day drafting the next issue of the Plusnet newsletter along with picking up sundry tasks and chatting to our development team about how things work from the operational side - you'd be surprised (well maybe not) about how different something looks when you're only seeing the code that makes it go. Right. Beer o'clock has almost been reached, so we are out of here. I shall leave you with a random link. This chap has been keeping us highly amused all day. We hope you like him.   Oh.. here's a latecomer.  Catherine from QA.  Hurry up I'm s'posed to be in the pub! The development department is very quiet today and QA are no (well, not much of an) exception. A quiet day as Nigel is, in his own words, 'experiencing the magic of Alton Towers', Gary is on holiday and Paul (who is, apparently, only tall depending on your perspective) is at home doing some DIY. That leaves Matts 1 and 2, Gavin and me. Matt 1 has been doing some development work and has produced a rather nifty tool to help reduce the amount of time we spend planning rollouts. Matt 2 has been joining Rupert in the hair tearing stakes by trying to juggle the QA schedule to accommodate everyone. Gavin has, according to the board, been doing 'misc'. This means 'test plans, a couple of problems and sorting out QA Wizard for the next two weeks'. Yes, Gavin is actually taking some time off. Finally, I've been working with Marc in the live code support team on a bit of a monster home phone problem, testing some content and preparing for the data centre work next week. Final thought for the evening: Matt 2 actually likes the taste of the pink liquid you get at the dentist's to rinse your mouth with.   A strange thought indeed.  For myself I like the brown liquid that comes out of the tap at the pub and that's where I'm going right now. Have a good weekend everyone. Pete