Autor: Daniel Hoffmann

Back to Techmatic. Today I created another image for an older Dell-type named GX-260. That means I had to install OS, the needed driver and software.

After that, I updated the OS to the latest version and finally I checked whether the PC works the way it is supposed to work. That was the longer part. The easier and shorter part was to create the image of the whole disk.

Today we did a lot. All in all nineteen computers are rebuilt now and xp and some other software is installed now.  Tomorrow we will only be two persons at work, JJ and I.

Dustin and Philipp will work at the Computer Doctor and they are going to improve the infrastructure of the company. Meanwhile, JJ and I are going to build up the Dells and make them ready for sell.

And another Week is over. The time is passing by so fast.

Today I worked again at Computer Doctor after a long time. Peter wanted to teach us something about troubleshooting of laptops and especially the hardware components.

Of course Peter was not there for us the whole day, because he is the boss and has to do something else, but Mark the hardware specialist taught us about it. It is very interesting and relaxing to listen to Mark, because he is a calm person. I think Mark likes to teach us and to explain everything he’s doing.
Today we got a laptop, which was only four weeks old but it looked like it was 4 years old. The entire keyboard was sticky. We smelled the reason. White Wine!!!

It was so disgusting and sticky. The poor laptop. However, it was a perfect example for using a laptop the way you should not do it.

Techmatic, 9 o’clock, booting all pc’s and servers, work is starting..

You all know that we built up some old Dell-pcs in Techmatic and in Computer Doctor we repaired laptops or deleted viruses.
We expanded the working area to work on multiple pcs at the same time.
Philipp set up a Proxy and DHCP Server, JJ set up some products on ebay and i prepared some computers with the necessary hardware.
We decided that the best way to install all the software and operating software is to create an image of a perfect installed computer and recover this image to all the other computers.
So, we used a live boot cd (Acronis) and set up the pc with the images, which you can find in a shared folder in the network. We also could use a pxe-boot.
But we thought it was an easier and faster way to set up the computer.
Push START! EASY.
Most time is spent on installing all the ram modules and harddrives, because you have to check the computers, if they will boot or not and so on.
That was a day in Techmatic, again.

Friday I visited Phoenix Park with Florian, Kristian, Oliver and Jonas. It is the second-largest urban Park in Europe.

We saw the Wellington monument and the residence of the President of Ireland and the Papal Cross. The Wellington monument is very impressive with its 63 meters tall obelisk and the crooked stairs. On the monument are some ugly paintings, which deface the monument a little. The Phoenix Park is mostly at the same level, so that you can see Wellington Monument very well from the other side of the park.

I had fun with the guys and it was a beautiful day after my illness.

Thursday

Thursday was only day of the week I was able to go to work. I was in “Techmatic” again and something has changed. Now we have a clean work area, desks, the area is brighter (because of the new lights) and internet access per wlan. Moreover Philipp , one guy of the other class, is working with us now. He knows a lot of Server Hardware, because of that he checks all the Servers of function and hardware.

Our task is to rebuild all Dell-PC’s and sell these by ebay.

Joe has a lot of stuff in his big hall and most of this should be sold. Some new WLAN access points, old cisco compact flash, Windows 98 and so on. The rest of the stuff, which doesn’t work anymore, goes to the shredder. That thing is very heavy. The shredder is loud, makes a lot of dust, it smells like something gets burned and sometimes small sparks come out of it. But it is funny how small a hard drive could be crushed.

Monday

On Monday I stood at home, because I suffered from terrible stomach ache and sickness. The whole day I stood in bed and slept. So I actually can’t say something about Monday. I don’t know why I was sick, but it was terrible.

Tuesday

Tuesday was exactly the same like Monday. In these times I thought a lot about my family and once again I was homesick. I think: the larger the distance the greater the homesick.

Wednesday

And the same again.
If you are sick you are doing nothing but sleep and eat.
So I cannot really report something. Pascal was my nurse. He always cooked for me and from time to time looked after me. These three days were so terrible.

Finally I was healthy again and I could go to work on Thursday.

On Friday I also worked at “Computer Doctor”. Dustin and I created a TO-DO-LIST with all these little projects we got from Peter. Meanwhile, JJ worked on the current website of “Computer Doctor”. His task was to create a little flash animation or a slideshow with some pictures of the company.

After we finished the to-do-list, I researched something about the “Da Vinci” program. Everybody knows, that this program financed our Dublin abode. Peter gained experience with the swan institute over the years and he was not always amused. Anyway, we should collect some information about this “Da Vinci” program.

Peter gave a lot of small projects to us.

For example:

–          Create a PDF document in the form of a running sheet

–          Logo design

–          Configure a Cisco router

–          …

And of course repair some laptops.

Thursday I was at “Computer Doctor” again. We had to install Windows XP on 3 desktop-pcs, installing the drivers and updates. “JJ” and Dustin started and everything went fine. I – of cause – got the broken one.

So I got another one to do a little patchwork and who would have thought: didn’t work! So a third and a forth. When we finished the task we sat down with Peter, drank a coffee and talked about some projects. There are too many projects to complete them all but because of this we can decide which one interests us the most and then do it.

The projects are from designing a logo over build up a website to configuring VLANs on a cisco router. The best part is, that Peter gives us the time we need. In the afternoon Mark showed us how to disassemble Laptops and change the displays.

All in all a nice day again.

From Monday to Tuesday I was working for “Tech Matic” again.

https://tech-matic.com/

our task was to disassemble an infinite number of desktop-pcs and sorted the hardware after hard drive, motherboard, power supply, fan and case. At first it was fun, but after you do it over and over again it gets boring. Best thing that

happened there was our Russian coworker. When something wouldn’t come off, he just smashed in there. It was hilarious.

It’s interesting how much a trash-pc is worth. The worth of the single parts doesn’t matter. The mass makes the prize. The gold gets extracted from the cpus and is sold for more than 900 € per kilogram. Furthermore Joe gets a lot of hard drives which have to be destroyed. Many banks want their sensible data made unreadable. The easiest way to accomplish this is to chop them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdjgQSEmEqs&feature=player_embedded

Joe once showed us, how the machine chops the hard disks. Glowing sparks came out of the machine.  The time was okay and you could see what happens to old pcs when we don’t need them anymore.

My first week in Dublin is over. And Yeah – I’m still alive.
All in all the first week was great. The second weekend in Dublin was actually the same like the first. We slept long. Took the breakfast in the afternoon and we also bought new food.
Of course that was not the only thing we have done. On Sunday evenings, we went through the temple-bar.

That’s a street full of pubs and restaurants. We wanted to drink a beer, but all pubs were absolutely full. Because of that, we went back home and watched the movie “Die Rotkäppchen-Verschwörung”. Honestly, I fell asleep. It was not that the movie was boring but I was so tired.

Flo, Kristan, Jonas, Pascal and Me played Dart with our new Dartboard on Saturday. That was very funny, because some of the darts were kind of stubborn. I think, we will have a lot of these “Dart-Evenings” in our apartment.

In the End, we had a lot of fun and the week was extraordinary.