End of Day: 8th August

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It's 08/08/08 and the opening day of the Olympic games in Beijing. We're expecting to see lots of iPlayer traffic on the back of this particularly during the week as people watch it at work. Could see a few more records broken, but before then let's see what's been going on around the various departments. First up today is Lee from Networks: This week a lot of the team (myself included) have been working on a number of projects, looking to redesign over half of our systems to use less energy. Basically this is all about doing more with less servers, but utilising some of the faster but very power efficient technologies out there. We've already had a lot of success with some of the virtual server technologies deployed, and this is taking it to the next level. We're in the middle of some proof of concepts, and have been spending a whole bunch of time designing and costing up our options. We're predicting great things for this work, and it's really great to have our energy consumption heading downwards! We've also been continuing the good work to bring some of the Brightview systems we inherited to work on our Plusnet platforms so we can seek the benefits of common technologies and ensure that they are deployed in a more resilient manner on modern hardware. More to come next week! Next on the list is Matt from the Comms Team: Well, what an end to the week (and it isn't over yet, there's still at least an hour for further nefarious activities and schemes to worm their way out of the woodwork and get their greasy mitts into us). At least that's what it feels like sometimes. The great thing is it's so satisfying when something gets done or rolled out and you can poke the sword of task complete into the eye of the inbox... or something. Is it Friday? It must be, I hope someone can make sense of that sentence. What have we been doing? Well I've had my usual wrestling match with home phone, which is getting closer to submission by the day. I've also had a number of change controls and the hopper is performing stunningly (this is where we pass all our problems that don't warrant priority one status but still need to be fixed quick smart). Chris has been singing to us for most of the day, and Friday Parr is quickly becoming the definition for 'that' behaviour (if you don't know what I mean you've never worked in an office on a Friday). He's also picked up networks change controls, been working on customer satisfaction and cleared a lot of his tasks (another one in the eye for the inbox! yay!) Oh he's also announced the reskinning of just-the-name and wanted me to plug it here. Bob has mostly been testing and investigating problems, he's also been looking into the blocking of the CNN spam that's been doing the rounds (apparently I should feel free to drop in here that we'll have a fix for that on Monday - go Bob!) and the odd forum post. James has met our new sales agent and trained him. He's also made tea two days running, which according to Friday Parr means he is some kind of biscuit. I'll sign off there, because this waffle has got to be mentally damaging in some way. I'll round off with the traditional link. It's a classic piece of internet japery. The intro is from an old Mega Drive game called Zero Wing, and if you ever wondered where the phrase came from... well now you know. Poetry time now with Jen from HR... well it reads a bit poetic to me: Amongst other stuff, this week has seen the HR team up to the following: Barbs: Finish KPIs for Plusnet and submission to BT Sorting change forms & letters Sorting leavers and starters including Disclosure Scotland docs Report writng CIPHR & admin updates Amanda: 360 feedback sessions Reviewing the absence workshop material Employee relations matters Sorting job related qualifications Preparing for OR presentation Me: Researching Salary Benchmarking Researching voucher schemes Christmas Party arrangements Updating HR calendar ToV for HR documents Gem: Employee Relations Exit Interviews Employee Handbook And finally for today Chris with the Marketing update: Bacon butties all round this morning as Team Marketing experienced the morning after the night before. We went out for a couple of drinks to welcome Shailini, Sameer and Gavin to the team. Once the grease settled I cracked on with blogging about our 'big cheque moment' with the Sheffield Children's Hospital and I've been busy with PR this afternoon on the back of Dave's blog about the Olympic Games opening ceremony. Most of all the whole team has been getting giddy about the new football season and I'll be hoping for a home win for Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow. Have a good weekend. Well enjoy the weekend everyone whether you watch the Olympics, the football, enjoy the sun or anything else. I've got a few things to do before going home and making plans for the weekend.