Monat: Mai 2010

My first working week

Hey all,

here some infos about my job in Belfast. I’m working in the Northern Irish Goverment as an IT Assist. At first my tasks were similar to the work at the Charité, I have changed an old switch with a new cisco switch and solve a problem with a printer which wouldn’t get an IP. But I haven’t admin rights, so an employee must help me sometimes 😉 Since last wednesday I have these rights also and I’ve got a new task, I’ve to set up a network with 11 routers and 2 switches. It’s like a challenge because the routing protocol is BGP over MPLS and this is part of the CCNP. So I have to try out on my own and it doesn’t work by now =D I hope that I can solve the problem these week.

cheers, Ric

something about my work…

Moin everyone, this time I’ll start with my work even through there would be enough to tell about my hollydays. The last two weeks I was working on the design of a new website for https://www.bloombpo.com. On Wensday I had to present it to my Chefs so I worked hard and was ready after abount one week. I used the rest of the week to build a backend so the that the people would still be able to modefie the page after I’m gone. At the meeting my Chef then told me that he likes the design but wanted everything compatible with his CMS Joomla. So last thuesday I began to lern how to build templates for joomla. Its reltivley easy and I really don’t know what they are going to do with me when I’m done with the page because there is not much more work to do. As Lionel already wrote mine and his Weekend (and even midweeks) was full of nice people and party. BBQ on a roof, the beach etc. etc. hope we can stay close to this level of entertainment for the remaining weeks.

regards Tim

Nice weekend…

Hi Folks!

After a hard working week, we were allowed to start in our long looked-for weekend.

On Friday we met some peers of the other apartments and some Germans, which make a internship or other things like that in Dublin and went to a bar, directly on a big shopping promenade. There were lots of young people, differently to the „old pubs“. We drank there some beer and listened to the „awesome“ music.

On Saturday I was shopping with some peers and enjoyed the nice weather at 26 degrees. After that we watched the champions league final 2010 between Inter and FC Bayern at our apartment. Bayern have pulled to pieces… The referee blew for full-time and we went by the Luas in the city to go once again in the Tripod – Club. And again the club closed at 3 o’clock sharp.

On Sunday we slept late and made nothing the whole blessed day.

Greetz to Germany…
Chriz

Should I stay or should I go?

Ok one short update before going to bed. This weekend was English only again. We went to a party at Friday and afterwards to some clubs. I had a really great time to meet people and talk to them about so many things. Sadly many people went away this weekend and I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. Anyway on Saturday we had a BBQ on the roof of a friend’s flat. The weather here is just great, my only problem at the moment is that I took everything to Dublin except a short pants. I would really need them. One more reason for shopping the next days.



Today Tim and I went to the beach at Howth. The weather was still pretty good and a lot of people where swimming in the water. Next time I take a towel with me so that I can jump in the sea one time. Here is a picture of a seal we saw at the harbor of Howth.



So that has got to be enough for now, sorry for the short blogs but I am at home very seldom. That is why there is not much time left for the blogs.

Btw the signs on the ground “Look Right” and “Look Left” really helped my through the days until I saw this one.



Would you go?
Greetings,
Lionel

PEC made my day

Yesterday I went to the PEC (the very expensive gym -_-) … I just wanted to run for about 45 minutes, nothing special. I jumped on one of the cross-trainers and were really surprised …. but see for yourselves:

In all of these exercise machine were little embedded tv-station and they show pay-tv. I watched the hole Championship Playoff – Finale between Blackpool – Cardiff City (3:2) with sound. Blackpool – Cardiff City

I like that! 😉

More about the Dublin nightlife

Hello once again 🙂

The last few weekdays my roommate Chris wrote back and forth with some German girls over here in Ireland on the social network StudiVZ. He finally arranged a meeting on friday evening. He asked them if he could bring ’some‘ workmates, in reality meaning a mixed group of Herbertons and Ladlanes of about 8-10 people.

The girl who arranged the meeting was a bit shocked over so many people. She led us into a (SURPRISE!) pub where two other girls waited which she also knew from StudiVZ. We talked, we drank and since Becky(an abbrevation she hates! :P) lives here for a few months now, we got some really good advices. She works in the travel business and travels alot around here. So she could give us especially good advice about quick trips you can make on weekends.

At around 3am or 4am the rest of us left the pub, had a bite and then took off. Ben, Flo and I took a cab and drove home. While driving we made small talk and the taxi driver once again indicated that our district is REALLY dangerous…

Yesterday, perceived a few hours ago ;), we met the girls again at a location called ‚The Academy‘. I liked the location itself a lot. On two of the three floors the main theme was Rock and Indie Rock. The 3rd floor closed when we arrived but on that floor regular live gigs take place. The sofas in the lounge area were godlike… so incredible cOmFoRtAbLe… Furthermore did that floor have a section with a XBox, a football table and an extra room with a big display and two Guitar Hero DJ stands.

The music was very good, very loud and besides getting jostled like hell, dancing in that environment made a lot of fun . At 3am the club closed unfortunately. So we were literal thrown out. 🙁 We said goodbye to the girls, which looked gorgeous by the way and took of, following the Luas lines home.

The girls took pictures, so check back, I’ll try to get them…

*the camera is still on* So lets open up Studi, what was her name again? oh yeah… Isabelle *cencored*… found her, ok lets click here and then… hey… wait a second, is the camera still on… Jesus Christ, I’ll have to remove that later… *camera off*

Happy….

Hi,

Today is the last day of the working week. I should be very happy that weekend’s gonna be starting soon, but indeed, I am really enjoying the time that I’ve been working at Nitec. Today all the employees organized a BBQ for everyone. There were plenty Burgers and HotDogs for all of us (hm..delicious^^).

After the first working week I got used to the system that’s organising all the different tasks inside the different working groups. I even got several jobs finished all allone. During next week I may be able to do phone calls and support issues on my own as well.

Jonny’s gonna taking me to the railstation again today and I’ll be at home as usual (at about 7pm). Sebastian and I want to work out at the gim first and then get going to one of the wonderful pubs in Belfast meeting the other german guys again.

Cheers

Chapter 4: Work, a lot of new and a bloody afternoon

Hey guys!
Today I’ll tell you something about my work. The company I work for from now on is called ‘Lagan Technologies Ltd.’, or just ‘Lagan’, which supports hardware, maintains server and develops software solutions for the British and the American government.

the Lagan building

Before I get there on my first day at Monday I met Kevin at his office, together with Oliver who works in another division at Lagan, because he wanted to drive us to the company and to introduce us to our future bosses.
Finally at Lagan, which lies in the north of Belfast nearby the airport, we stepped in the foyer and waited a minute before Oliver and I were introduced to Oliver’s boss, which name I already forgot. He shows us the office area, the kitchen and introduced us to some of the employees.
After that he brought me to my boss John and to Gary, very kind persons by the way. Then John showed me my workplace and the server room and explained me a lot for this purpose.

my workplace

My first task was to set up two ESX-Servers running on Linux and to configure them with another server remotely (with ‘vSphere’) for the purpose of creating virtual machines on the ESX-Servers. Than I had to make many ISO-Files from different operating systems like ‘Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise x64’ or ‘CentOS 5.5 x64’. After that I virtualized these operating systems and did many, many updates, configured for example the ‘Microsoft Internet Explorer Enhanced Security’ and the ‘Shutdown Event Tracker’. I did this to create from the fully updated and operational VM’s templates. I’m still working on this task.
Besides I changed the IP address of each ESX-Server in Linux and I upgraded one of these with memory up to 24GB RAM, that was the first time ever I touched server hardware on my own and it is – what a miracle – not broken or exploded (Leo!). xD …never mind…

Normally I would end this Blog for now, but today something horrible happened. After work I met with Friedrich in front of the City Centre because we wanted to drive with one of his workmates, Matt, to a huge TESCO for some daily shopping. Along the way to Matt’s car we passed a bus stop where an older lady was waiting on a bench. Nearby was standing a man with a Bullterrier on a leash. All around also were many people. So far to the initial situation.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Bullterrier was attacking the older lady, bit her above the knee and don’t let go! The owner of the dog swooped down on it without hesitation and tried to get his dog off from the woman. All people around looked shocked to the incident and nobody had the guts to interfere. The older lady stops to scream early, maybe the shock, so that the only thing you could hear were things like “Oh my god!” from the people around. Very creepy moment!
With bad feelings Friedrich and I were walking towards the woman to help her somehow, but before we reached her, the owner of the Bullterrier finally made it to open the dog’s mouth and pull him back.
Somebody of the people around already called an ambulance and a fierce discussion starts with the owner of the dog. At this point Friedrich, Matt and I were leaving this place – aghast at this shocking 10 minutes…

Well, so far, stay tuned and a last hint: Beware of Bullterriers (or other dogs), especially without a muzzle!

Differences between Berlin and Dublin

Hello,

It’s been some days since my last entry. That is probably because nothing REALLY interesting has happened the last few days.

We finally got access to the VIP AREA… WHAT THE?… no, I mean we finally got access to the gym here at Herbertons… yeah, that is what I wanted to say. 😉 Yesterday I went to the gym, today I went to the gym, guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow? YEAH I will go to the gym. Partly because I want to be in (very) good shape when I come back and partly because Ben, a (now) good friend of mine wants to get in good shape too. He is also living with me at Herbertons. Check out his blog here.

Well but let’s get to the topic of the title. What is different between Berlin and Dublin? I’ll summarize the things that stroke me the most so far.

  1. Dublin is not as big as Berlin. In Dublin you can basically reach everything in the city area by foot in less than an hour.
  2. Surprise, surprise, they drive on the left side. 😉
  3. Our caretaker told us that it is normal that they don’t have power plugs in the bathroom, one plug is rare.
  4. The fare for the Luas (Tram) is a little less expensive than in Berlin but the fine for not having a valid ticket is as high as 1000€!
  5. The security personal in the Luas is wearing bullet proof vests, tasers and walkie-talkies, very impressive.
  6. The driving folk is much more relaxed, car drivers often excuse themselfs to the pedestrians!!!
  7. There were many more differences, so this list will probably be updated.

Thats it for today. (epic quote: ‚Thats it at first‘ ;))

work’s fine

Hi,

Today it was my first day at the technical support side of Nitec. I assisted „Chris“ checking the network of all the supported customer sites. We did also have a job to do that was „on site“ (@ the customer’s site). We had to investigate the causes of an IP address conflict and optimise the network cabling of a famous Hotel in Belfast. Thanks to Cisco, I could understand and even help to find the reason for the occured problems.

Later on, back at Nitec’s, we did some troubleshooting using the remote connections to several customer’s servers. I’m really glad that things went so well at work today.

Now we’re sitting @ home with the spanish guys listening to music and drinking beer. Tomorrow we’re gonna go to the pubs in Belfast again^^.

David out……