I told you, that a microsoft expert came to us at tuesday. We were able to send out some packages (Service Pack 3 Update) to a few clients.
Unfortunatly there are still some clients who are not configurable by SCCM. Most of them are offline, these are not a problem (just wait). The problem are the clients who are online and still not assigned to the site server.
To find out the reason why, it’s very complicated and it’s like to be looking for a needle in a haystack (only for you Basti ;)).
This weekend is the „girlfriend-weekend“ because Olis and Davids girl will be here and I have to move down to the couch.
Finally the World Cup starts today!! I’am looking forward to see all the matches!
Yeah!
And to everyone who are waiting for another Groundhopping Part:“It’s not over yet!“
The last Wekkend Mr. Bavar and Mrs. Janecke were to visit us! On Friday we met her in a pub at her hotel. We talked and drank. But not to much, because they wanted to get the plane to home, unfortunately they could not so long.
So, then we are went further in the club, called „Fitzsimons“, and since we did party, until we „kicked out“ are… as ever… so 3pm.
On Saturday I was at the Guinness Brewery. It is unfortunately not purely in the right Brewery. For visitors, there is the Guinness Storehouse, where the most important parts of the factory were adjusted. It is seven floors high and when you reach the top, you get a pint (which is 568ml) for free.
There you can see over the city and until the sea. But, like I sad, the weather was not so good this Weekend.
On Sunday, we were initially in the Q-Bar, where we drank a beer and chilled. Then we went into the adjoining club, called „Twenty One“. This is a club, which play R&B and a bit charts, mostly. What we did not know, this evening was a foam party there. Yeah … It was super fun, although I was at the end pretty wet, of course. At this point, greetings to Germany! 😉 And yes, we have long celebrated 🙂 … because we had Monday one holiday. It was a spring holiday.
The beautiful weather we have sent to Germany this weekend! For here it is very rainy. … Ireland, as I imagined!
Since tuesday, Mr. Schlenger is here in Dublin to visit us. And we were tuesday and yesterday with him in a pub, called Porterhouse.
I wanted a few pictures to upload, but there is not enough space and that although the pictures of me are gone. Maybe I can make up for it yet.
Hey again!
Well, last time I said that I would blog something like useful information about Belfast, but I would prefer to do this next time because it happened so much last weekend, especially on Sunday the 30th May… Additionally I hadn’t enough time to finish this (a bit larger) Blog earlier, sorry for that.
Since the very beginning of our staying in Belfast Friedrich, Riccardo and I wanted to see one of the steep coasts here in Northern Ireland. Probably the most famous coast over here is the “Giant’s Causeway”, so we decided to check this out on Sunday.
Therefore we had to search in the Internet for the possibilities to do such a trip – and we found a good offer: The travel organization “McComb’s Executive Travel & Tours” offers a tour across the Antrim Coastal Route to the Giant’s Causeway with a few ‘photo stops’ and other attractions included for 20£ per person.
The tour lasts from 9.20 am to approximately 7.00 pm, thus we had to get up early on Sunday morning. At the McComb’s office we bought the tickets and waited a short time before the travel starts. The bus was totally full and our driver, he calls himself ‘Mr. Sexy’ xD, was really kind and funny. He talked the whole trip about the many sights, points of interest and about the Irish and Northern Irish history.
Our first (and short) stop was in Carrickfergus for taking photos from an old castle. At least we realized that we definitely chose the right day – the weather was awesome! While taking photos and kidding around, we were accosted by two girls from Stuttgart: Anna, who studies since two years in Dublin, and Christine, who visited her. Based on that, we found two nice travel companions… 😉
the upper part of the Shepherd's steps with Christine and Anna
Along the Coastal Route we saw so many beautiful landscapes like hills, cliffs and even beaches. The beaches here looked like the Caribbean ones, which were kind of strange and amazing together, because I never expected that in Northern Ireland. A hundreds of photos later we had another short stop at a small and nice harbor and at a viewpoint where we could see a rope bridge, of which more later…
After a few more driving minutes along the coast and through pretty villages and another three hundreds of photos later we finally reached the Giant’s Causeway. The bus parked besides a restaurant, where you could have a meal if you ordered one at the bus driver before. But we didn’t.
Now you had to choose between 2 paths down to the Giant’s Causeway: An easier, shorter and almost boring one or a longer, more exciting path within a stair part called “Shepherd’s steps”. Well the second path sounds tempting, so the girls and we three followed its call.
the hexagon shaped stones of the Giant's Causeway
The path leads us towards the cliffs with an impressive view of the Causeway below. We reached the “Shepherd’s steps” which have approximately 160 steps, it was quiet cool. On the way down we made several stops and watched at the breathtaking panorama. After the stairs we followed the path straight on, looked around again and continued going down.
Finally on the Giant’s Causeway we made a short stop and had a little lunch. While eating we had a good overview of the countless hexagon shaped stones, it was amazing! After the lunch we were going to discover the area and took thousands of photos. At this point I could get the statement from the Irish: “The Giant’s Causeway is known as the 8th world miracle.”, it was really marvelous and I begun to wonder how all these stones get their hexagonal shape. I remembered the old legend which the bus driver told us before:
„Hundreds of years ago there was a giant called Fionn who builds a bridge to walk to Scotland to fight another giant. But when he saw the Scottish giant he was afraid about his size and fled. The Scottish giant followed him. Fionn’s wife laid a blanket on him in order to cover him from the Scottish giant by pretending that Fionn is her baby. Therefore the Scottish giant was afraid, because he imagined that the father of the baby must be very huge, thus he fled in panic and destroyed the bridge in case that Fionn wants to follow him.“
(Not a real quote, but that’s approximate all as far as I remember…)
In actual fact the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway are originated millions of years ago by volcanic activities, lava flow and some eruptions.
me climbing one of the basalt columns
Some of the stone columns were approximately 8 meters high on one side (on the other side more columns like a hill), so it was a perfect chance for me to climb a bit… 😛 Regrettably the time was really barely and we had to rush with all our doings, although we had 2 hours for discover the Causeway.
Back in the bus we bought some tickets for the rope bridge (4£ per each) and the bus started to move. Our next stop was only a few minutes away in the village Bushmills. There we visited the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery where we could buy and taste some whiskey. Around the distillery was a strange smell in the air, I can’t describe it anymore, but it was kind of funny. ^^
For tasting the Bushmills’ Whiskey normally you had to pay, but lucky as I am (haha) I got a voucher for free Whiskey tasting from the bus driver after a short small talk. We followed him to the bar where I, and even Riccardo without a voucher, drunk a glass of Bushmills’ Whiskey. While this we talked to a trucker from New York who also took part on the trip to the Giant’s Causeway.
After our little Whiskey session we staggered… uhm… walked back to the bus and drove to the last attraction: The rope bridge. On our way to the bridge we had another two short photo stops at an old castle ruin (the bus driver called it one of the most romantic places in Northern Ireland) and at a cliff near a very long and beautiful beach.
I am the posing one in the middle ^^
After we arrived we hiked along the cliffs and I was amazed of the view below: The water was like you would normally expect from the Caribbean – crystal clear and cyan with bright sand below and no seaweed (like almost everywhere today). That fits the nearly cloudless sky and the warm air temperature perfect. Just before the rope bridge was a queue so we had to wait as well, but it wasn’t too long anyways. Finally it’s our turn. We went down a little stair and entered the bridge. The way like the bridge waggled and swung was kind of funny. You had a nice view down between the gaps, by the way… On the other side, there was only a small (but high) island, we enjoyed the nice view and took another 3700 photos. You could see the Scottish coast from there very clear. After a few minutes our time was running out again, so we had to return to the bus.
From now on we drove straight through the country in the direction of Belfast. Time to relax and digest the whole exciting day, but only when you are able to ignore the always-talking Mr. Sexy (headphones are very useful in this case :P)…
We arrived in Belfast shortly after 8 pm, and the bus driver says that this was his longest tour since years. The bus stopped at several points and we had to say goodbye to the girls. We get off at another stop and went home.
Later this evening Friedrich and I went to the Bot in order to relax a bit, but against our expectations it was totally full of people – I’ve never seen such a full pub! No way to relax, but it was fun anyways. All of the girls there were responding well to the Euro vision Song Contest winner Lena, as they heard that we are from Germany. Also we met a crazy English guy, but never mind… xD
Just one more thing: I strongly can recommend this (or a similar) trip to you, it is absolutely a good investment! And prepare to take millions of photos!
Wow, I never thought that I’ll write such a novel… Oo
I hope my grammar is not that bad like Master Yoda’s… xD
Nothing special is happening at work. I am still uploading all the old e-mails to the new mail server and besides I am learning for the CCNA Voice to pass it after our internship.
My girlfriend is feeling better, so hopefully we can start tomorrow to visit places, which we have not seen yet.
Maybe you heard about the Cisco NetRiders Germany 2010 contest from Mr. Henze. I decided yesterday at 11pm to create an account for the competition, deadline was 12pm, and to participate in it today. I did so and do not feel very well with my result, but finally it was enough to achieve the third place of all who participated.
That means I won a place to compete in the International NetRiders 2010 contest against my peers in more than 40 countries to win a trip to the USA in January 2011 on 7 July.
I also won a CCNA voucher. Now I can do my CCNA exam, which I already passed, for free. 😀 Maybe I can transfer it to a CCNA Voice voucher. 😛
I really do not know if I start learning to maybe (…) have a chance to go to Cisco in the USA for a week or do it just for fun.
I finally could upload some pictures of my work today. I will try to describe my journey and my workplace, so let’s start with the journey to Antrim.
Roadmap (Jouney to Antrim)
This is a map where you can see where Antrim is. I have to travel by bus and by train. Most of the time I am traveling by train. The red line on the map indicates my route to Antrim.
Lanscape of Ireland
I also added a picture that I took out of the train because you can see the great landscape when the weather is good.
At Antrim’s railwaystation someone’s picking me up every day. We are driving by car for about 15 minutes. I’m glad to be picked up because otherwise I would have to walk for 40 minutes. Antrim is a nice and small town in the middle of Ireland. I really like to see the small houses and towers of the different churches there.
Technology Park View from outside
Nitec is located in a so called „Technology Park“.
I attached a picture of that park, too.
Sry, but I’m not aware of uploading pictures in my articles. That’s the reason for them being so unorganised. The following pictures were made at Nitec. Espescially in the workshop which is the place where I spend the most time at work.
I think that is all I can tell you about my work for now. I mean until there is interesting work coming in. I didn’t upload pictures from my collegues because they did not want to (the internet never forgets). Traveling to Antrim everyday can be very exhausting. I have to leave my house in Belfast at about 8am and I come back at about 7pm. You see that there is not much free time for me from Monday to Friday.
I heard that some of our instructors complained about the blog and that we write 80% about fun and 20% about work. Actually, there is not much time to meet people or improve my english or „social skills“. All our companies expect us to gain experiences about culture and language but we do not learn this at work. If you want us to improve our social skills and our language you have to understand that we have to go out and meet people. I can understand that the purpose of our internship in ireland is the work. But i think that I don’t have to go to Ireland if I just want to work. I can do that in Germany as well. The most important thing here is, that we meet different cultures, go out and meet people. And that is only possible on the weekends. So please do not complain about us writing the most about our weekend activities. Work is work, even in Ireland…..
I did not want to be impolite but I think living in foreign countries is more than just „working“.
Hi folks!
The whole last week, we have to test 2 more websites (hostelworld.com and bedandbreakfastworld.com).
Now I explain, how we proceed:
– We get a Excel table with a lot of listed bugs (about 200-400 bugs) for a specific website.
– Leo an I split the list, we organise our own workload.
– The list contains the bug ID, the reporter, a short summary of the bug, the priority and the status.
e.g.
ID
Sev
Pri
Reporter
Status
Resolution
Summary
Retest Status
5277
blo
P1
Kristen Bourrillion
NEW
No availability showing
when there is availability
– We use a tool, it is called Bugzilla to create bugs and retest bugs.
– We enter the ID at Bugzilla and get the complete information of the bug.
– Now we check, if the issue is still remains.
– As a last resort, we give a retest status for the bug.
My girlfriend and me left the visitation of our instructor very early, because we had a trip to the Cliffs of Moher from Saturday to Sunday.
We set the alarm to half past 5am to get started for our visit. We left the apartment at half past 7am and took the LUAS to Abbey Street to take the GoBus directly to Galway.
These Buses are very cool, because they are clean, fast and have WLan on board, which we didn’t use, but it’s a nice feature. Instead of surfing the internet, we used the bus journey to see beautiful landscapes of Ireland from Dublin to Galway.
By all appearances Ireland isn’t the country of sheep. On our journey we saw much more cows than sheep. I don’t know, perhaps the sheep are only in special regions.
The bus journey to Galway took 2 hours 30 minutes. We arrived at Galway unknowingly when the bus to Doolin starts, because the information we found is from 2009. Fortunately, we only had to wait 45 minutes.
We utilized the free time to have breakfast and to purchase some medication for my girlfriend, because she felt getting sick. Safety first!
The bus from Galway to Doolin wasn’t as good as the GoBus, but the bus driver was awesome. At beautiful places he drove slowly and he organized a transport to our accommodation, because the bus stop is 4km away. This bus journey took 1 hour and 35 minutes, all in all we spent 6 hours to get from our apartment to our accommodation for the night.
We moved into our room and slept for an hour, because we were so tired.
We tumbled up and decided to hike to the Cliffs of Moher to see the landscape instead of calling a taxi. Unfortunately the way to the Cliffs is longer as we expected.
After 2 hours hiking we needed a break and something to eat. We found a bar and it was really delicious.
We were prepared for the next 2 hours, which we had to hike to reach the Cliffs.
Finally, we reached our arrival point, after hiking 3-4 hours on normal streets in towns, farm tracks and country roads, which was sometimes very dangerous, because some roads are very curvy, so some car drivers didn’t see us walking.
The Cliffs of Moher are very impressive. So massive and beautiful. Have a look to the pictures.
We wanted to see the sunset, sadly we had to leave. I mentioned before, that my girlfriend felt getting sick and the hike finished her off. It wasn’t so bad, because the weather was very cloudy and it wasn’t possible to see a lovely sunset.
We were very surprised that the taxi back to our accommodation only cost 20 €. Afterwards it was nevertheless a nice hike for such a long time without seeing any other people on few ways.
The next morning my girlfriend had 38°C, therefor we did nothing except sleeping and waiting for our bus back to Dublin. Nothing special more happened on Sunday.
So see you soon and take care!
PS: Have a lot more pictures, on request, don’t want to spam^^
After a very interesting weekend (Pary in our house again), I started another week at Nitec. Things haven’t changed yet, so I’m doing the same tasks as usual. Installing PC’s, waiting on more interesting jobs to come in. I would prefer to tell you something interesting but there is simply nothing to tell about. So don’t be confused about me writing more about my weekends and fun stuff. It is just no use to keep telling about my work if nothing happens. I tried to upload some photos of my workplace and the journey, but the Internet at our house was too slow, so I stopped the upload process. Maybe this evening it will be more successful. But please do not think that I am not happy to work here. All the employees are very friendly and treat me like an equal. I feel very comfortable here and I am pleased to be here. Every day someone’s picking me up at the railwaystation by car, that I do not have to go by feet. It’s just unfortunate that no interesting jobs are coming in.
Now, I am just waiting for this working week to end because on Friday my girlfriend’s going to visit Belfast for the first time. It’s going to be a good weekend because of Mr. Schlenger coming to Befast as well and the Fifa World Cup’s begin on Friday. So let’s see if the weather keeps being great like in the past.
My work is…let’s call it tiring. (skip it if you don’t like those boring stuff)
I often got nothing or not a hell of a lot to do, except click-copy-paste-click-click-copy-paste…
The main problem is that this company is primary telephone-supporting. I talked a few times with my adviser (which is really the only unsympathetic guy in here) about joining a technician while visiting customers. He always told me stupid explanations why I couldn’t join one , such as „you need a CMI-shirt and blablabla“. Don’t get me wrong, CMI is really a nice small company but not a great option for trainees.
I fairly often try to talk with my co-workers to improve my listening and speaking skills.
Think they really like me and they enjoy learning simple german interjections. Except of this I really feel bored and take the free time for selfstudying like reading a book for CCSP (- Security Professional) or learn a few more things about SQL.
Let’s talk about really annoying things.
Wake up toys! The exhausting work-story is finished…for the moment.
So what about my great living community…
I’m the only one who’s cleaning the floors or something else, I’m the only person who cares about the dish washing and I don’t understand those guys!
One of them is sitting the whole day in his room, goes to bed at 9-10pm and stand up around 7:30am. This stupid tard placed one of his empty cornflake packages filled with wa**ing stuff right behind the kitchen garbage (THERE IS A TRASH BARREL just 5meters away outside the door!). I was nearly going enrage, after i’ve had to put the garbage out!
The other one is always going out to partys and discos but also crying about a lot of debits. Think he’s never heard of shaving too.
Finally my third great flatmate: Yesterday he was told to put a chicken kiev into the oven, a few minutes later he’ve told me about a „finished“ meal.
I were really wondering about that and went down the stairs, saw the chicken at the table, the oven where already turned off and he told me „enjoy your meal!“ and started eating.
Yes, listen: the complete chicken kiev where raw. Sometimes I’m wondering how people like this one are able to survive, I really don’t know.
Without Oliver’s support I’m going crazy in this „living community“/house.
If this post is to offensive, delete it! But sometimes there are things which really have to be pointed out!
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.
Yeah!
