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!