Hello guys,
It’s been a while since my last Blog, I’m apologise for that, but I was kind of busy the last days and additionally I preferred to go outside to enjoy the beautiful weather instead of sitting at home and writing stuff which nobody really reads. Furthermore we have problems to access the internet in our apartment the last days. And it takes a while for me to write my Blogs anyways. Mostly every day a bit because I have other stuff to do at work… yeah, what a bridge…
Well, since my last Blog about my work placement happened a lot at my job. One of my tasks was to do a firmware update on a Dell switch and on a Cisco router (via a tftp-server I set up earlier). After that I had to configure the time zone, the summer-time and SNTP on the Cisco router, not a big challenge but I could lay a hand on Cisco devices at least… xD
Another day I had to completely disassemble a PC and assemble it with brand-new components like a Motherboard, the CPU, RAM, DVD-ROM and a power supply. After that I had to deploy that PC on some desk in the big office.
But a really ‘special’ task was to set up a notebook together with a DVB-T stick for – I bet you anticipate it – watching the Football World Cup. First I tested the functionality and searched for frequencies, after a little while I deployed it together with a beamer upstairs in some kind of meeting room. The original idea was to stream the Football games received via DVB-T to all or many PCs in the office, but any solution (I thought) I’ve found won’t work correctly at last, so it was dropped because other things are more important. Anyways, watching the games via beamer with your workmates together in a meeting room is more fun I think…
My other tasks were for example to install an Exchange Server on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2003 and install a program called Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 for doing some backup compatibility tests with the most recent version of Backup Exec. But the whole procedure was more pain than anything else because nothing worked like expected, so mostly I had to troubleshoot the different issues. However, finally it worked and I could restore a backup from version 12.5 in version 2010 on another tape.
At another time I had to install SQL Server 2005 with SQL Management Studio and programs called McAfee Endpoint Encryption and ePolicy Orchestrator for some tests again, honestly I don’t know what exactly. But same here: it won’t work, one problem after another and all the time boring troubleshooting. A complete reinstall with a new VM solved the problem at last.
Well, enough of the work for now…
We three from the Danesfort apartment had a kind of strange incident on last Monday. Actually it started 2 weeks earlier. At some beautiful morning, I was in my office yet, I got a call from Riccardo, who was still in the apartment. He told me that just a second ago were 4 strangers in our apartment standing right before the bathroom where Riccardo came from. They asked him if they can have a look at the bathroom he said. And Ric, drowsy as he was, forgot to ask who they are and what they want, he only noticed that they weren’t burglars or something like this. So it must be some official visitation…
I was really upset about that and just called the office where Kevin normally works (FGS Partnership) and talked to a secretary first and to Donal, Kevin’s boss, after that. I told them that I’m very unhappy about this incident because we had no time to prepare for the visit, therefore our whole valuables like notebooks, even money and other stuff were ‘spread’ all over the apartment plus we had no time to clean and tidy up our rooms. Honestly, I have no problems if someone wants to visit us, but we have to know that to prepare or better: somebody of us is thereby. Thereupon explained Donal that he feels bad about forgetting to give us a call, but on the other side he mentioned that he had send us a mail, but we never received one… After he had apologized that issue he promised that won’t happen anymore… Not a bit of it!
Two weeks ago on Friday Lucia, Kevin’s substitute, wrote as a mail that there would be another visitation on Tuesday at 5pm. We were happy about that massage because now we had the chance to prepare, so we wanted to clean up our apartment on Monday after work and ‘hide’ our valuables.
BUT, on Monday afternoon approximately at 4pm I got a call from another secretary from FGS: “I just want to let you know that there will be a visitation today at 5pm.” I mean what!? Rate my reaction as typical German, but c’mon give me a break, it has to do with some kind of privacy! It’s not only that they changed the appointment without telling us and that our apartment is still kind of untidy, they gave us a call merely one hour before the visitation starts. The only excuse was (again) that Donal mails us one or two days before, but we doesn’t received a mail again except the one from Lucia I told before and that the visitation can’t be changed because the housekeepers are responsible for that. What the hell is wrong with them? If we had known that a bit earlier one of us were maybe able to go to our apartment and could accompany them. That’s it, enough I thought. I asked my boss John if I could leave recently, so that I am able to catch them up hopefully. He totally gets my point and understands so I could go.
On the way home I randomly met Ric in the bus. He knows already what is going on because I called him before. After we reached our apartment we saw a younger woman and two guys in front of the main door. Certainly I asked them if they are the ones who made the visit in apartment 37 and confronted her with the situation. She explained that they had to change the appointment for some reason and that they mailed FGS about the change on Friday (!) before. That’s why we want to talk to Kevin the next days… Also she apologized for that because she won’t be amused if some strangers would ‘browse’ her apartment and underwear or other stuff, especially without letting her know, too. Besides she let us know that there will be another visitation on Thursday at 2pm with some customers who will buy this apartment maybe after we moved out. But that’s Ok because we finally had the time to prepare and to clean up right before somebody comes.
Well, that’s all for now. Sorry again that it took so long but I hope that I’m able to post another Blog the next days. It will be hard I guess based on the fact that we haven’t internet anymore and I definitely won’t buy new access for just 4 days, if that is the cause… But I can’t imagine that… We’ll see. Otherwise I’ll write the Blog and do the upload when I’m back in Germany.
Bye ^^
