End of Day: 30th July

‎31-07-2008

Good evening one and all. It's Ali here in Development and for your delight and delectation I have the End of Day update. Sorry not to have an update on my tea making performance of late but the statistics are so poor they are not worth publishing. I am burying my bad news. Today for example I didn't even obtain a mug until after lunch and Tony ticked me off for being slow (again) at doing the brew round. I just don't think I am cut out for life as a tea boy. Anyway, here's the update I promised you! First up is Amy from Marketing:

Shailini has been out of the office today in meetings so the team has been free to do as they wish.

Only joking... its been a very busy day. Martyn has been doing more tone of voice training with the guys in the call centre, as well as writing some emails.

Spencer has been busy after his week away catching up and developing a few pages.

Chris has been busy talking with the PR agency about upcoming releases and arranging some interviews, as well as looking into referrals a bit more. He also told me he had a Mars Bar, must be in need of some energy for the afternoon!

Sameer has been looking into our order journey which is exciting stuff whilst I have had had my head in the wonderful world of invoices and a few conference calls.

Phil has been downstairs with the sales team again so we haven't seen much of him, and Gavin? Well apparently he thinks Workplace is cooooool.

Thank you Amy... yep, Workplace is cool! Now next up is Seb in Development:

Right this has been the second crazy day (Ed: only the second?!). That's why I totally forgot about Dev EOD yesterday. I've nearly done that again! So what keeps me so busy? First, still working on a project that is to be released mid next week. We've just passed beta and we're rolling onto gamma tomorrow morning. So rollout preparation, last bug fixes, usual stuff. Second, we had a really useful workshop yesterday. It was all about switching to a new VCS - Version Control System. We are looking forward to upgrading to something even better. Lots of fighting, debating, even shouting. It was fun! When we make a decision, we're gona definitely tell you about it so watch this space! Third, still trying to make some progress with our TDD strategy (Test Driven Development). So I am trying to help people around with unit tests, our build box and so on. And I am nearly there with my first presentation about CruiseControl and PHPUnderControl. Ahh, this week I really want to finish it. And still haven't found time to update my 1-2-1 docs. Helen is gonna kill me! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh. Cheers busy, busy Seb (but some very cool stuff going on there, keep up the good work). Up next it's Duncan in Networks:

Kev's been doing P995 migrations, PAYH and JTN support and Checking through the new JTN pages.
Riz's been working on MAAF spam issues and the related problems.
Rick's been patching more DNS servers, reviewing docs and investigating problems.
Russ's been improving our monitoring and improving upon what we graph.
Sarah's been on monitoring and fixing problems.
Matt's been working on the Phone system and other bits and pieces.
Aaron's been doing It support training.
Neil's been doing MAAF tickets, spending his day in meetings and covering workflow management duties.
Dan's been working Tickets, Abuse and a Bit of Parbin.
John R's been doing "nothing interesting or out of the ordinary", which I think means generally looking after the databases.
I've been working on upgrades to some of our backend systems and auditing documentation.

Have a good evening. Thanks Duncan, here now we've Rami from the CSC: We have had a busy day in the CSC today. The top 5 issues were as follows... 1. Router configuration. Huge amount of calls to setup the router, mostly caused by the LLU outage 2. Fault updates, customers calling regarding their existing broadband fault, mainly no sync 3. Email setup. Customers ringing to confirm email login details and server settings, usually existing customers but new computers. 4. Username / password confirmation: existing customer calling to confirm their login details for portal access. 5. New sales calls: mainly pre-order queries. Thanks Rami for your update... finally, it's Bob in Comms: Ahoy Community denizens!! Today's been a pretty good day and we've been in full force on the Comms desk (excluding of course Mand's extended absence from the team - she is working downstairs at the mo). James hobbled into the office this morning sporting what he describes as a quadruple compound fracture to his thumb (read:sprain) and a double tear in his Anterior Cruciate Ligament (read:stiff leg). These nasty ailments he apparently acquired following a gruelling football session last night. Agonizing pain aside, he's still managed to keep an eye on the forums, attend a few meetings, written some training material and investigated a traffic management enquiry or two. Chris has been rummaging the forums, dealing with the usual problems and trying in earnest to plough through some of his personal tasks/objectives. He also resisted the temptation to sabotage my laptop when I foolishly left it unattended. Expecting the worst, all I came back to was a humble reminder written in Notepad - Link - You sure you're feeling OK Chris?? Matt tells me he's mainly been chasing, validating and co-ordinating problems today. He's also been into the forums when he's had a spare minute or two. Most of my day has been spent keeping up to speed on a few problems that have recently impacted on the Madasafish folk out in South Africa. When not immersed in problems, I've also been reviewing change controls and had time for the odd forum post here and there. Anyway, before I go here's today's random linky. Maybe it'll give you some inspiration for next time Chris? - Link I've looked at Bob's last link... pure evil! That's all for this evening - thank you for reading and have a good one. Ali McGowan