Chapter 7: Job, different tasks and apartment trouble

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 ^^

Last Monday in Belfast

Hi folks,

thats my last week in Belfast! At work  is nothing special to do anymore. I just have to present the information – pc to my co-workers tomorrow. Furthermore, I prepare myself to leave Belfast and go back to my lovely city Berlin. It’s a shame that we could only take 20 kgs of luggage with us. It’s totally inadequate for a stay of 2 months in a foreign country. Well, let’s see …

By the way, german national team was awesome yesterday!

Daily Mail:

„At least the sun’s still shining! Germany crush England 4-1“

Remaining Days…

Without today there are only three more days left. For me its hard to beliefe, time went by so fast. I’m lucky if I did half of the things I wanted to do the time I’m here. By the way.. our last Weekend was great (Houseparty, Football and Beach.. nothing more to say here 😉 ).
There is not much to tell about my work, website still is ready but not online. I’m running out of work at the moment and there is nothing more to do for me in this company. I’ll try to enjoy the last working days here and hopefully meet a few of my new friends here so I’m able to say goodby to them.

Regards, Tim

beta…

Today, we are finished with our database. Certainly the beta version. This week we have removed errors and created the login option. We give the database Peter, who is testing the database. Then, on Monday he tells us, how good our bad it is. I think, there is still work in the last week.
Furthermore, I have designed a new logo for Computer Doctor, which is still not finished. By the way, Computer Doctor will also change its name.
That’s what I have done.

See you next time!

Requested blog entry

I found a nice offical tool from Microsoft to secure the information – pc.

Windows Steady State 2.5

You can use these tool to configure varied settings for different users (AD user accounts as well). For example you can disable the right-click in Windows Explorer or prevent access to command prompt. I think this program would be a perfect fit for me to solve my task and for everyone who is not confident to edit the registry.

Windows Disk Protection (WDP) is an other part of the tool. WDP helps protect the Windows partition, which contains the Windows operation system and other programs, from being modified without administrator approval.

And its for free!

A good tutorial for Windows Steady State:

Windows Steady State Tutorial Part I

Windows Steady State Tutorial Part II

Stay tuned!

PS: Final Groundhopping Part IV will be released on sunday 27 june!

Mouse on the moon!

To work with SCCM 2007 takes a lot of time. Unfortunatly you have to read reams of log files to know if the installation or package or whatever was successful. Sometimes it is boring, because you just have to wait and push the F5-button every second. We can not interrupt the other employee, therefore it could take hours to push out a simple package and to find out if it works fine.

But I get another small project. To install and manage a information pc for a railwaystation here in N.Ireland. I will use the programm „FLIP PDF“ to convert the pdf files to a flash presentation. The tool is very nice and ease to use.

I just have to wait for the computer. Meanwhile I try to find out how to start the computer via Mouse. Because the information pc has to be secured as much as possible. The only device which the user can use to navigate trough the flash presentation, will be a mouse (and just the left-button).

Its weird, we can fly to the moon but it seems to be unpossible to power on a computer by a mouse. The rest of the computer will be secured by windows group policy.

Thats it so far!

Let’s talk business

A big warm Hello to all my loyal readers (as if I have any 😉 )

On thursday I talked to Chris about how some of us write their blog entries very infrequently. I am one of them too. Sometimes I am not motivated to write something and other times I simply forget that I have to…

But fortunately Mr. Bavar visited us at Web Reservations International on thursday too. We talked for a while then and on friday everyone went for a drink. But after hitting the gym I didn’t feel like going out, so I stayed at home. (had I known that Sebastian would be there, I would probably have overcome myself – you gotta tell me such things buddy 😉 )

Mr. Bavar also reminded us that we agreed to write articles more regularly and more about work-related topics as well. He is right, we are here to improve our English language skills, to learn about work methods in another country and about similarities and differences.

So let’s talk business!

At Web Reservations International Chris and I work in the test department. Currently they have 5 traveling sites online on which you can get information about your preferred travel locations, can buy travel guides and can book hostels, hotels and even tours.

Chris and I check these sites for bugs and after having finished most of that showed some initiative of our own and offered to improve the translations on some of the German language sites. This idea was happily welcome by Philip, our superior in the test department. We finished this task very fast and are back to testing and reporting bugs once again.

In the next article I will tell you more.

So stay tuned…

SMS to SCCM 2007 Migration

Finally, last week the new server arrived and I could start my work. I will work together with my co-worker Owen (a United supporter 🙂 ). We installed Windows Server 2008 (64b-bit) and SCCM 2007 on the HP – Server.(Intel Xeon – 8 processors, 12 Gb memory)

On Tuesday and Wednesday a Microsoft – Expert visited and helped us with the installation and migration from the old system (SMS). He was an italian therefore I had no problem to understand him. Because he spokes really slow and „basic“.

He showed us what we had to install to use SCCM 2007 (ASP, SQL-Server etc.) and the first moves with SCCM 2007. Furthermore, we could start to migrate from the old system to the new one. All clients (about 900) from the different locations of Translink must be assigned to the new site server (called CMS).

To accomplish this, we had to move the different boundaries (about 80 subnets) from SMS to SCCM. The german word „Fleißarbeit“ hits the nail on the head to describe this task. After it, the SCCM – Server knew all clients and we were able to perform the client installation (to manage the clients via SCCM 2007). We decided to perfom the installation piecemeal, because we don’t want to overcharge the network.

The clients installation takes a lot of time, but we migrated 500 computers so far. Hopefully we can complete this task today, because tomorrow the italian – expert will visit us again.

from morning to night

Hi folks!

At Monday it was back to the rat race. This work week wasn’t very varied. Up at 7.30 am and sometimes I get up on the wrong side of bed… At 9 o’clock I start with work. But with an empty bag cannot stand upright. So we go at the break to „Laundis“ and buy the „Weekly Madness“(sandwich) for only 2€ at 1 o’clock pm. At work we’re looking for bugs and test them (every day) and translate some English strings into German or bad German into understandable German. After work we go to our apartment and eat something again (6.15 pm). Afterwards we do a lot of sport at gym or do nothing and watch a movie… However I think the weekend will be better…

See you later…
Greetz Chriz

Chapter 5: Prohibition, visitors from far away and perfect weather

Hi everybody!
Sorry for being late this time. I simply can’t imagine that already another week has passed… Also I had to apologize if my sentences are sporadically a little bit weird because yesterday I forgot to do some push-ups, so I’ll do it while blogging. ^^

Well, some bad news at first: Actually we are supposed to write about our work placements, but on Friday last week I had to sign a written agreement about preserving the company secret. Nevertheless I’ll post something on my own risk – no risk, no fun! *lol* No, actually I think it is ok as long as it relates to my blog. 😉

Among others my tasks last week were to update a Dell switch and a Cisco router with the latest firmware and to configure SNTP, the time zone and the summer-time on the Cisco router. And in order to update the router I had to create a TFTP-Server (with some Freeware program) so that I was able to upload the new Cisco IOS. Furthermore I copied 2 Backup-files, created VMs of them and integrated them into a Test-Network, also I upgraded another ESX-Server with 4GB RAM.
Today I started to reinstall a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. In the process of that several (annoying) problems and errors occurred – I’ll don’t want to list them all, but it took way longer than normal to start the installation process at last (after installing ‚.Net Framework‘, ‚MSPowerShell‘ and a BIOS update for example). Tomorrow I have to finish the installation and configure the Exchange Server…

the Botanic Garden

Now for something completely different. On Sunday, where the weather was really beautiful warm and sunny, I received lady visitors from Germany: A former female superior from the German armed forces (Sandy) with another girl which I don’t know before (Mary). Mainly they came in order to visit a Rihanna concert in the ‘Odyssey Arena Belfast’ and to see me. 😛

They also took a flight from Berlin to Dublin and a bus to Belfast like we did by the way. So I went into the city to pick them up, but they’d left the bus somewhere else than us so it was hard to find them… After a short walk through the city I led them to their hotel and went to the ‘Botanic Garden’ to meet Riccardo and Friedrich in order to relax a bit in the sun. On Monday night I met with the two girls, after they were back from the concert, at the Botanic Inn to drink some beer and talk with Sandy about the good old times at the armed forces. We had a lot of fun at that, oh yeah… xD They left Belfast yet this night with the bus to Dublin because their flight to Berlin was about 7 or 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning.

Well, I’m a bit exhausted now and I’m getting very tired too. I think I’ll post something like general facts (good-to-know-stuff, you know) about Belfast next time… maybe…, we’ll see… 😉

Catch ya later!