Arbeit – Seite 2 – afib@Irland

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.

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 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!

work, work, work…

Hi folks!

On Monday we got a new task at work, we got a list with 300 Bugs for trav.com and we have to test them. We are committed to improve the quality of this website. But that’s a very monotonous job – i think. The worst is, when we checked a bug most of the time we find a new bug and must open a new ticket. There we begin at 9 o’clock and work till 5.30 pm we haven’t lot of freetime. When we come home around 6.15pm we are very hungry and completely buggered.
I hope from today on we may go to the gym and can use the pool, the jacuzzi and the other things we can do to relax a little bit. The weekend can come… this time I haven’t a picture, sry.

Greetz to Germany and Belfast 🙂

cya

and Suddenly! Brasilians everywere!

Moin everyone,

last weekend, Lee and I where invited to a BBQ. Actually Lee knew most of the people because he met them on Friday at a houseparty. Anyways I did’t know what was awaiting me. First of all we had to meet his french coworker at someplace ( I actually forgot the name of the place, but there is a huge metallic needle pointing towards the sky) and we had only twenty minutes to get there by foot, normally its about 30 to 40 minutes. So we were more running instead of walking. We arrived 2 minutes to late and the girl was not there, she came about 10 minutes later(damn it!).

We had to take the bus to get to the BBQ because it was way out of Dublin. Finally at the BBQ we realised that the Grill was a simple hole in the ground with a grillage on it, but Caio (the brasilian guy who was giving the BBQ) had at least half a cow, in the form of brasilian steaks and sausages, in his house (no really it was very very much). He grilles the steaks medium rare and they tasted awsome. Actually it was not like in Germany where everyone gets his own plate. the steaks and sausages where put an a Plate near the Grill and then cut to fine slices. Everyone who was hungy coud get there, take a peace or two, and eat whenever he or she wantet (really fun).

Most of the time we where talking english, even when I talked to lee. I don’t know why but our main topic with most of the people there seemed to be beer 😉 . What Lee and I hat not realized was that about 17 From 20 poeple where from brasil and suddenly everyone was talking potugese (first because it was easyer for them, lates besause of the alcohol I think).

By the way, brasilian girls are getting a bit freaked out (or crazy, like Raoul called it) when they get drunk :).

Finally all the meat was gone and no one wanted to go home, we had to take the next bus to Town. The only Problem with that was that there was only one last bus remaining to bring us into Town and Lee didn’t manage to get the brasilians out of the house. I was waitig at the Bus stop, the secont our Bus arrives Lee and the others ran around the corner, it was so damn close. Otherwise we would have had to walk back, which would have taken us about 3 to 4 hours or even worse (and this after our sprint from the afternoon).

Back into town we first went to a club but we didn’t stay long (don’t ask me why). Raoul brought us to another houseparty where everyone was in a costume. There where Carly Caplin, a boy who was dressed like a girl and actually enjoied it a bit to much and much more. Unfortunatly there was not enough beer so Lee and I decided to get home around 4 o’clock in the morning or 4am.

We where drunk, exousted and tired but very happy (hopefully lee can upload some pictures, I need mz new Handy). Oh fuuu I forgot about my work..hell… next time.

Till then, Tim.

First work day

Hello again everyone,

Yesterday Chris, my roommate at Herberton Apartments and I had our last day off. So we went shopping in the city centre. After three hours of walking (which seemed to be days) and searching we finally turned left into a random street 😉 and found the Ilac Shopping Centre. Inside was a shop in which Chris and Alex, another colleague of us, residing at Lad Lane Apartments, both found what they were looking for. Afterwards Alex left, Chris and I met with Ben and Flo, the rest of our apartment and together we went on to buy some more stuff for our apartment.

Today Chris and I had to be at our company at 9:30 am for our first working day at Web Reservations International. We got shown around first and then we set up our computers and afterwards we got an introduction into the new page that went online this monday. Next we had to test the functions of the site ourselfs and thereafter we had to keep ourselfs busy for quite a while. Possibly we will get our real task tomorrow. (hopefully…)

And that was about it for today, hopefully I can write something more interesting in the upcoming days. (please! please! please!)

Arrival and first day @ work

Moin all together,

we arrived on Monday the 10th of May @ 12:30 o’clock. It was a great flight for me, maybe because it was the first I eveer made 😉 (Videos of flight and landing may be comming soon). Our Appartments are… okay… , our floor was flooded with water the first day and until now we are still walking in muddy carpet. Many things which you need on a daylie basis are’n there, for example Toilet paper or Soap.

My first day @ work has just passed and I have to say, I’m already missing my work in Berlin. I have to work from 9:00 to 18:00 o’clock and need 1 hour from my apartment to work and again 1 hour from work to my apartment. In fact there is no time to by anything on workdays because the stores are mostly closed at 18:00 o’clock. But I don’t want to switch the apartment because I would’t be able wo live with my collegues. By the way, I have to design a Website für BloomBPO (Business Process Outsourcing).

Lets see what kind of freaky surprises the rest of the 8 weeks hold for us.