It was all quiet in Plusnet Towers and the snow was softly falling all around.. Whether you're still at work or already at home relaxing, I do hope you enjoy our special edition EOD (and the very special panto wallpaper* to adorn your festive desktop).. There are quite a few of us in today, finishing off things before the break and getting more things ready for release in the New Year. But the Christmas spirit will prevail and we'll be off a little earlier than usual to make a little merry with our families and friends. Of course the CSC teams (as ever) are here everyday over the holiday period if you need any help - and the forums will be watched over by our ever-present mods. ‘Comms' will never be too far away either, filled with mince-pies and goodness-knows-what, but standing-by if CSC needs any help 
Here's Oliver from the CSC arriving in.. a pumpkin coach drawn by mice? It's Christmas Eve and as expected the CSC had a fairly quiet but steady start this morning, but one with lots of Plusnet buzz and talk of opening those new techy toys in the morning. Over the course of the morning we've seen a steady stream of calls and low call waiting times, many of whom have been setting up their routers in time for the big day and others chasing up on faults prior to the festive holidays. It sounds like everyone is in final preparations for Christmas, are you? For those of you who haven't finished your shopping, you might want to nip down to your local Zavvi who announced some sad news earlier today and currently have a great sale on (our best wishes go to any of our readers who work for Zavvi or Woolworths - Ed). A quick rundown of the top five issues of the day below:
- Router Setups: As expected were seeing a slight increase in router setups for both new provided customers and those simply getting an upgrade for Xmas. Although regular readers will note we have had a few teething issues with the Thomson routers, we have certainly seen a downturn in these difficulties and have quite a few new customers taking their first steps into the realms of high speed Internet.
- Fault Updates: On the last working day before Christmas, a few of our business customers who are having difficulties with their connections have called for an update on the progress of their faults and information on how these will be dealt with over the festive season. A lower than usual amount of similar calls to our residential team have been received, with customers expressing a small amount of anxiety about the progress of faults over the festive period - please rest assured we will be doing everything we can to move these along and help everyone stay connected.
- Provisioning Updates: We have seen a few customers giving us a quick call to check on the progress of their orders, many of which we have been pleased to advise can be set up in time for tomorrow.
- New Faults & Diagnostics: These are the first-time customers giving us a call to advise us they're having issues. These form much of the analysis work we do. Many of these are resolved with a little tweaking of the setup but those we can't resolve we raise for our faults team to perform some additional diagnostics. Where necessary we get these passed to BT.
- Sales & Upgrades : With talk of new toys and lots of festive shows to watch on iPlayer, Sky Player and 4oD a few customers have been looking to setup new connections and get upgraded packages to make the most this years festivities at home. For those requiring new connections we have noted that the festive period has increased the average completion times and we are currently working to the 5th January 2009.
Well that's all of the Christmas Eve gossip from the CSC and nearly time for our afternoon cocoa. Remember it's business as usual for us over the festive season and were only a phone call or ticket away should you need any assistance with setting up those new toys from Santa. Don't forget if you're giving us a call, we would love to hear some of those corny Christmas cracker jokes - you never can have enough can you Jennifer? From myself and all the guys in the CSC, have a great Christmas and I hope everyone enjoys the festive period! Here's Dave from Products/Networks, and he's er.. rubbing a brass lamp? Well it's getting a little lonely on the 2nd floor; first our colleagues in Web Dev have relocated themselves to the basement and secondly, with it being Christmas a lot of people are on holiday. At least we have our fishies to keep us company and they'll be getting their Christmas dinner later this afternoon. Not roast turkey but two fish food balls. Still we have been taking the opportunity to plan what to do with all the space we have and either a water slide or a cricket pitch seem to be the favourites at the moment. Stay tuned to see what the decision will be, or not as the case may be. In case anyone was wondering whether this would entirely be a silly end of day, fret ye not as we now get to a sensible bit. The Products Team have today been working on WLR call processing, a few random reports, adding more data to the churn report, doing a few tickets and a few tasks for the 21CN trial and preparing the traffic management rules for the Christmas period. If last year is anything to go by we are expecting a fairly quiet time on the network over the next few days, although we might see a bit of an increase in iPlayer traffic particularly over the weekend as people catch up on the Christmas shows like Doctor Who, The Royle Family and the soaps. We'll also be looking at the top websites over the Christmas period, last year's list is here will be interesting to see if there's much of a change around maybe with people looking to sell their unwanted Christmas presents on eBay or more people looking for post Christmas bargains online in the sales. And that's about it for today, just time to wish everyone, in the words of Baldrick, a Very Messy Christmas and, in the words of Nenge Mboko, an exchange student from Cameroon, Merry New Year! Here's Jen from H.R. - it's behind you! I've already had two Christmas dinners, so I thought I'd kick off by sharing my Christmas cracker jokes with you. I think it's all in the delivery... The first one was a new one on me: Q: Why is milk so fast? A: Because it's pasteurised before you see it. The second, well, I can only apologise in advance: Q: What do you call a man with a tree on his head? A: Edward. Here's our Christmassy run down of what we've been working on this week in HR: M aking plans for cover over the hols E mployee engagement, preparing for People Place R ecruitment for the QA role R eporting on fixed term end dates and known future leavers Y ielding results from the Employee Opinion Survey C ontinuing with role profile changes H anding over work including HR KPIs R ecruitment admin I ssuing Learning & Development plans S pecsavers vouchers issued to staff T eam 121s that we've had M eeting prep for the Plusnet Board A bsence reports for people who've been off S orting out leavers & saying our goodbyes All that's left is to wish you all a restful break and a wonderful new year! From Amanda, Gemma, Barbara and Jennifer. Ben in Development seems to be in a rhyming mood too.. what is that large plant doing in here? I heard Hallelujah in the car this morning on my way into the office, and when presented with an opportunity to compose some 'light entertainment' (my fault I'm afraid - Ed), I had an idea.. so... and to the tune of this year's Christmas number 2 (note number 2, not number 1!), here are the results of my morning toils. I heard there was some secret code They ran it (it did not explode) But you don't really care for php do you? It goes like this the source, the page the framework and the minimum wage, The baffled devs composing Plusnet's portal... (Plusnet's portal... repeat) Your faith was strong but you needed proof that they don't develop on the hoof but the quality of the codebase overthrew you (background noises of coughing and spluttering) It provided you with great ideas It was developed over years and years and from your lips it drew a hallelujah! (Sing Merry Christmas to the tune of the chorus)... And that's as far as I got. I could have probably managed another verse about a business product refresh, but try as I might, I couldn't think of anything that rhymed. Oh well... there's always next year! Have a great Christmas everyone! Last but not least.. he seems to have mislaid his ‘Sister', but here's Matt with a Comms update for us (brace yourselves): It's just been Mand and I today. There's been some forum action though as expected they are very quiet, some change controls and a bit of taskwork too. To be honest I think we're more gearing up for tomorrow. YAY CHRISTMAS! On the first day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me A big hot mug of tea. On the second day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to Bob, two tins of spam. On the third day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to Chris, three days off. On the fourth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to us, four "Comms is teh r0×0rz" mugs. On the fifth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to you, 5 Comms peeps. On the sixth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to you, the 6th line of this song. On the seventh day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me seven Pac-Man Christmas treeeees. On the eight day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me eight tasty chocs... On the ninth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me... nine random Stumbles. On the tenth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me... ten urban legends. On the eleventh day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me... a disappointed boy on Santa's knee. On the twelfth day of Commsmas the Comms Team gave to me, 12 (months of, well, nearly 12 anyway) random links 
Well now.. that just leaves me to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. We'll wind up the daily end of days for a while until we pick it all back up again in the New Year. So have a good one and we'll see you soon. Peter * Photo by Flickr user Roogi - 'Altered' under Creative Commons licencing,