Can you tell me how to get...how to get to.....

Welcome to Jacki's Jabberings online!!!! And welcome to the future. I know I've been a little slack with the newsletters lately for one reason or another. To be honest, it was getting to be a bit of a drag and I was very close to canning the whole idea. The dealine thing was always a bit tough to manage, everyone trying to weasel their way out of being guest writers, and having to come up with articles at the last minute because I've forgotten or been too busy to prepare (can you tell which ones they were?). So instead of just getting a bit like our friend here on the right, I decided to do something new and exciting with my regular update, get with the program, and start a blog.

I'm not quite sure how it's all going to work just yet, but I have visions of some sort of award-winning, captivating site gaining the adulation of millions around the world as they marvel at my brilliance, my unrivalled prose, and my fascinating life. Clearly that's not going to happen. So in an effort at being realistic, I'm just going to stick to basically the same old formula and hang onto all of those things we know and love (well, I can live with just know) from the newsletter.

There will still be guest writers. There will still be a regular update of what I've been up to at work. In fact I may even be more regular with this (bet you can't wait for the excitement of that! Well, at least you might get it in small snapshots, not a whole article). There will still definitely be themes (can you and dodgy photos shamelessly stolen from Google's image gallery.

I may even get a little reinspired and come up with some new ideas.

Anyway, welcome.

So, what have I been up to in the last couple of weeks? Well, here you go....

• Plan, plan and more plan. We have finally settled on plan (ie budget) FTE numbers from our WFM tool for the quarter and have released them to the network. This is the first time this has been done and far more complicated than it sounds. There were a number of late nights at the office getting that one done!
• Pushing a couple of forecasts out into the network - just a couple of tweaks including increases and decreases to forecasts for days before and days after puclic holidays.
• Analysing New Account transactions. We had a change in our data collection method earlier in the year, and I have been working on finding out what sort of difference that has made.
• Doing post-analysis on 2 branches that have had another branch merge into them since Team Builder was implemented. Now we have some data about what actually happened we can start using that knowledge to plan and model for future occurrences. I'll be doing a bit more of this going forward as we had another merger happen at the end of April and will get data starting to come in from next month.
• Working on refining our seasonal forecasting even further. I could tell you all about this as I find it quite exciting, but as I seriously doubt anyone else will, I'll spare you the details.
• Sitting across a little bit of the training for our army of Time Studies observers who are currently loitering in 18 branches across the country over three weeks (they started Monday and do a week each then head to a new branch). These fabulous people are hanging around in branches with PDAs and some tricky counting and timing software, observing how many transactions, what type of transactions and how long they take for each of these branches. All this data is collected, collated, and correllated with a whole heap of branch attributes to be used in forecasting. This is the first review we've done of the time studies since before implementation so the nerds in the Forecasting team can't wait to see all the nice new data, results and to start testing corellation coefficients (I did warn you I was a nerd!).
• Sorting out public holidays for 2007.l Yay. this would have to be my least-favourite job, but unfortunately something we can't live without. Anyone want to know what day of the week Christmas falls on in 2007? No? Well, if you change your mind I'm your girl.
• Having a tour of the very shiny new appropriately-named building, (what about the bit in the naming competition that said it could have the name of the company in it? I'm sure I didn't make that up.) We're making the big move on the 11th of August to level 31 so I'm expecting one hell of a view. There are a few pros and cons to the move so I'm having mixed feelings so far. In case you were interested I've listed them. The pros are in green and the cons are in red. shiny new building, it's a bit trickier for me to get to on public transport than the current location, I tried out the new chairs and they are seriously comfortable, I have no idea how I'm going to condense all my manuals and various other detritus into the size of the storage we're provided with, there are coffee shops and cafes everywhere, there's not quite the same variety of lunch options, Moreton's pub next door to the new building is a pretty cool pub, there's not quite the same variety of pub options. and it's quite possible it will be entirely overrun with nothing but my company's staff, Level 31 (out of 32 floors) that's pretty cool!, Hmmm, run out of cons. The building has 4 ATMS, lifts that work really well and go quick, a pharmacy and a newsagency. still no cons, the floor plans are awesome, still nothing, well it's clear the pros are winning. Guess I must be looking forward to the move.

Well, for a first post (see, I've got the lingo happening already!) , that hasn't been particularly painful.

Now will somebody please tell me how to get to Sesame Street? I've been wondering for about 25 years now, give or take, and still don't know. Things on that account are far from A-OK!!!

J. ;-)

would you believe I actually had this album on tape when i was a kid?!?!