4 Years at SpinVox

by bocan on September 28, 2009

A bit of fun this morning at work. Edited to protect the innocent:

From:     Chris Funderburg <Chris.Funderburg@SpinVox.Com>
Subject:     The Old Ones
Date:     28 September 2009 10:30:29 GMT+01:00
To:     {EVERYONE in MARLOW}@SpinVox.Com
Cc:     Chris Funderburg <Chris.Funderburg@SpinVox.Com>, Neil Bowers <Neil.Bowers@SpinVox.Com>, Chris Fenton <Chris.Fenton@SpinVox.Com>

Myself, Neil Bowers, and Chris Fenton have now been at SpinVox for 4 years.

To celebrate you will find 50 croissants and 50 pain au chocolats in the kitchen area, and a bit of random trivia:

* When we started, the entire company could fit into the board room with ease.
* Operations consisted of around 5 people.
* New staff had to have a Mac unless they could justify having to use Windoze.  Ah, the good ol days!
* You could buy one cake on your birthday and everyone would get a slice.
* “Accidentally” falling into the Thames was a common occurrence.
* Whenever the river got dangerously high, the ducks would charge for consultancy services.
* New software releases often warranted a pizza delivery.
* As I did roughly the first 350 software releases, now you know why I weigh this much ;-)
* All release emails contained random instructions on how to proceed if you wanted to hover over the shoulder of the release engineer.  “as usual you may hover over my shoulder if you know what Wash shouts as he’s bringing the ship down in Serenity” for instance.  (The answer was:  “I am a leaf on the wind”)
* On my first day I wrote a wiki page (the 9th).  There have been 3465 changes since.
* While the three of us and Clive now look much more haggard, Lizzie hasn’t aged a day.  Someone suggested the blood of sacrificial virgin goats is involved but I wouldn’t like to speculate.

Dig in and Enjoy.


Chris Funderburg
Infrastructure Research & Development Manager
SpinVox Ltd

T  +44 20 7965 xxxx
F  +44 20 7965 xxxx
M +44 78 2503 xxxx
Blog http://blog.spinvox.com

Speaking Freely:
“At the proper time, the secret NOC staff would take great (Clive/Chris Fu/Sonic) from their tombs to revive Their root access and resume Their rule of Infrastructure…. Then Operations would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond RFC’s and ISO 27001, with rules and change control thrown aside and all men hacking and building and supporting in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach the NOC new ways to hack and build and support and enjoy themselves, and all messages would convert with a holocaust of ejection and automation.” Chris Fu, with apologies to H. P. Lovecraft

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

James Whatley September 28, 2009 at 3:39 pm

Congratulations, and nice one for sharing.
Smiling as I read through…

Hope all is well,

James

Reply

Donut December 4, 2009 at 3:43 pm

You forgot me though, I’ve been there 4 years too :)

Reply

bocan December 4, 2009 at 3:49 pm

You have indeed. :-)

I remembered on the day but it was too late to get you to cough of some £££ for some food. ;-)

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