Month: October 2010

bookmark_borderThe last weekend

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Sunday night will be the last night I spend in the house in Hamilton (trying to get out of the habit of calling it ‘home’). Removal van arrives on Monday morning and, by the afternoon, everything will have been moved into my new home.

So, barring a final visit to give it a quick clean at some point during next week, from Monday I’m officially moved.

Now we just need to finalising the paperwork for the sale of the house and we are done.

It’s still a bit weird at times, and as I’m spending most of my time either working, or making sure I’ve not forgotten to pack something, or complete a form, or make a phone call, I’m bloody knackered and a bit prone to mood swings. So I veer from being hugely tigger-bounce-excited about getting my own place, which I love and will bore you all with photos of at some point, to being a bit maudlin about missing the cat and generally the habits and patterns which we had.

It’s still unsettling for a lot of our friends, and family, that Louise and I are still on good terms and will remain friends, even if we fall out of contact with each other, but I just don’t know how we’d have gotten through the last six months if we’d fallen out and been fighting and horrid and nasty to each other.

The next post on this blog will be from my new home, but that’s dependant on when my broadband installation happens so, until then, be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful!

bookmark_borderWhere are we going?

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As the end of the year starts to draw close, inevitably thoughts turn to 2011 and the challenges that may lie ahead. From a product point of view we are starting to get a feel of how the year will shape up, and so we can start to look at how our team negotiates the (still forming) landscape.

It already looks likely that our aim (alongside keeping pace with product development) will be to get to a point where we can correctly focus our efforts around structure, and ad-hoc document requessts. Given that we have access to outcome codes from the Support team, several of which are specifically around product documentation being either wrong, missing, or not read at all, and we will soon have a full set of analytics from our online product documentation, which should put us in a much better position to correctly prioritise those additional work streams rather than fall into the “whoever shouts loudest” model we are currently prey to.

The analytics are powered by Google Analytics and track visits to each topic of the documentation set. The numbers should help point is to areas of the documentation that, for one reason or another, need some attention. This works both ways of course, a high number of views indicates a lot of people using the information, but where are they going afterwards? If they head to the Support area of the website then can we presume the information isn’t correct? And those topics with little to no views, are they not used because they can’t be found?

I’m a little wary of spending too much time analysing the statistics and initially they will be used purely to direct us to the outliers, those topics that for one reason or another are causing anomalies in the reported numbers. Once we smooth those out then it will require a lot more deep-dive style root cause analysis which, as with everything else, will bring a fresh set of challenges and hopefully some new routes of communication with our customers.

bookmark_borderMiscellany

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Random thoughts of a Sunday morning.

And yes, I’m sitting waiting to get through to buy my ticket for Glastonbury next year. No, the website won’t load, yes the phone line is constantly engaged.

You know you are bad at packing when you have several open ‘I’ll-just-take-them-in-the-car’ boxes.

Anyone else on WordPress seeing a lot more spam in their comments? Thank the lord for Akismet! By the way, does anyone pay for that? Is it like Xmarks, something you’d pay for but don’t?

Speaking of which, if you use Xmarks and want to, maybe, see if you paying for it would keep it going (it’s folding up), then go read this!

Sorting through boxes that have been unopened and in your loft for several years isn’t all that fun. The reality of what is happening is writ large in the memories we will always share.

I need to buy a new kettle. Must remember to write that down somewhere.

Music wise I seem stuck in a bit of a BBC Radio 6 place, all new bands, luscious sounds and the odd blast from the past. Where did all the rock music go?

Quite excited to go to Glastonbury next year though, never been and will need advice on what to take and what NOT to take. Also where the feck to sleep, in a tent? Off-site somewhere? And, of course, there will be endless rounds of “right, I’ll go and see them and then head there to see her, and then I’ll… ohh, wait no. I’ll go and see him, and then her, then I’ll go there to see… no… right. OK, this time… I’ll start here and…”

The cat likes boxes. Specifically, sleeping in them. Specifically, one that almost got taped shut as I presumed from the weight that it was as full as it could be.

You know how I have that other blog, well I wondered why I hadn’t had any comments on it and realised I’d turned them off. Only thing is, I turned them back on but they don’t work. I’ve decided this is for a reason and I’m leaving them off.

It gets really boring sitting watching a website NOT load, hitting F5 over and over and over and over…

Ohhh and applications that popup a dialog and steal focus, with OK set as the default button so, when I’m typing and glance down at the keyboard, the dialog pops up just as I hit the spacebar… in other words, I don’t even see anything except a brief blip on the screen then something starts up, or shuts down. Yeah. I DO NOT LIKE THOSE!

I have a lot patience threshold. 45 minutes sitting waiting and I’m at the “you know, if it’s this bad getting tickets, what is it going to be like at the fucking thing? It’ll probably rain anyway… shall I even bother?”. Then I think of the alternatives… T in the Park, and decide, yeah, I’ll hang in there a bit longer. Note to T in the Park, up your prices! (in the hope of weeding out the dickheads).

Hmmmm yes, yes I am a snob. This fact doesn’t really bother me.

It’s amazing what you can achieve in one room whilst waiting on a website to load. That’s my little office ready to be moved.

And yes, this is what Twitter is like. Except those big long sentences obviously.