Autor: Oliver Gruse

I’ am sitting here in the plain, waiting for takeoff and being happy going home! It was a great time and I will always remember the time I had here in Ireland! Yesterday we packed our bags did the things we had to do before we leave and at night we went to our favorite Pub to say good bye! The Pub was totally crowded so after a short stay we decided to leave. It was a bit annoying me but we had our pint of Guinness so and in the end it was all right! I’m really looking forward to this flight and I know I will be excited when I see the lights of Berlin, see my girlfriend and my family. This day is gonna be legen …wait for it…dary!

Belfast, I leave you! I hope you will miss me. I will and I will always remember the good Times you brought me, the stunning music you played for me and the fantastic places you showed me. Hopefully I never will forget the sounds I heard played by Ken Heddock, thank you Ken! And also the sounds played by Mark Graham at Filthy MacNastys, Thank you very much Mark. It will always be a pleasure to me to watch the videos I made from your gigs and to show the wonderful photos I made from you Belfast. I also will never forget what you taught me and how you changed my view at things. I really enjoyed the stay hopefully I will come back and make again such good experience with you. So good bye and cheers!

Today is my last day at ECIT. I’ am a bit sad about this fact, but I’m really looking forward to go home. Yesterday I brought a few cakes and brought it in. Richard Ruddock (IT-Manager) was very happy about it. We had a few good conversations and we were talking about my future. So Today I finish my projects, got the last signatures for the europass and the last signature for training certificate. I had a really brilliant time here at ECIT Institute and I felt overwhelmed by the hospitality of this Institute. I can’t tell you how often I laugh oneself to tears because Richard was making one of his jokes or told us something about his kids! Everyone had so much patience with me and was so helpful! I learned so much and I could improve myself more as I had expected. At the end of it all the only thing I can say is THANK YOU!

We realized that we eat just a few times at a fast food restaurant or that we bought convenience food. That fact brought us to mind that we eat most of the time together and that is an indicator for a good working community in our apartment. We are happy about that and about the fact that four guys at Ireland are able to cook for their self’s. So I will introduce to you one of our favorite dishes. At this Sunday we decided to cook a homemade lasagna. It is a bit elaborate, but it’s worth it.

It was very tasty and most of my housemates hat to do an afternoon nip after they had finished there potions.

The UEFA Euro 2012 has started and I was going to see the first game of Germany in a Pub called “Stiff Kitten” together with my colleague René Skillen. The pub is just round the corner and we thought it would be okay if we go over a few minutes before the match has started, because we’re at Northern Ireland and we thought just a few people will watch the match. Don’t! The pub was completely full with fans and we were surprised. I was satisfied about the fact that Northern Ireland people are interested about the German team and how they play at this championship, but just for a moment because the fact is that we hadn’t got a chance to stay and see the match. So we had to went back to our apartment. It was annoying me but it was relaxed to see the game at the apartment.

On Thursday and Friday I had to do a lot of paperwork. Richard Ruddock and I filled out the forms for europass. It took much longer as we supposed but at the end of it all we found the right formulations and we were satisfied. Afterwards I began to write my report about the stay here in Belfast. Because Word isn’t the means of choice to write such a report I decided to use LaTeX. It is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TEX typesetting program. It is a much nerdy way to write a report and documents created with LaTeX looks a million times better than Word documents. So I wrote the report and while I wrote I could improve my LaTeX skills a bit. It was fun. The last thing I have to do Is create a presentation about the stay in Belfast. It is also possible to create presentations in LaTeX, but I don’t  know which program I will use to do that.

On Sunday Ken Heddock  was celebrating his 15th stage jubilee at Empire Music Hall. Ken Heddock Singer, songwriter, guitarist and photographer, has been performing at the Empire for nearly 15 years, making him and his band Belfast’s longest running live residency.

With his stunning voice and looming stage presence Ken’s Sunday night performances have become a  Belfast institution and made us to big fans of him and his band! We really enjoy listen to his music and it is always a highlight of every week. whether it’s bringing the weekend to a dignified close or the main event, before a bank holiday Monday.

Ken Haddock@Empire Belfast – Walking in Memphis

The show yesterday was stunning, we really enjoyed his show.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues was celebrating his birthday and all of the employees were making a great shindig for his birthday! They decorated the whole cafeteria and made him a big surprise! They brought sweets and cakes with them. By the way it was the 21^st birthday of one of the colleagues from the IT-support where I have my placement. Kenny brought a big Magnum bottle of champagne with him, but no one drank a glass of it. He was very impressed and he enjoyed it. It was a great time we had good conversations and we all had a lot of fun.

On Monday I had a great breakthrough for my project. As I already posted I had to form a VPN connection between two Cisco devices, but I only got one device allocated. The guys from the research cluster, who wanted to allocate me these devices needed the second one as spare part. So it seems to be the end for my project. But it wasn’t a setback for me I took it as a challenge to learn more as I supposed to be. I had the idea to form a VPN between a Cisco device and a Linux-server  as a site-2- site VPN. I thought it had to work because both devices speak the needed protocols and both can handle the encryption. So after long term of trying to get this thing work I found the right configuration. I had to read a lot of tutorials and I’d realized that the most of them are wrong. So I had to deal with the theory of VPN to find what I need. Also I couldn’t use the installed Ubuntu configuration files I had to wrote my own. But at the end of it all I got this thing work. Afterwards I only had to configure a few additional thing like DHCP, SSH and VLANs.

 

Done…

Yesterday, Rene, Tim, Tobi and I went to Belfast Botanic Garden to enjoy the wonderful weather. Which place except the beach would be better to do that? Accidentally lay on our way the historical buildings of Queens University Belfast. They are very impressive and you are in awe if you stand in front of them.

 

Arrived at Botanic Gardens we were instantly impressed by the beauty of this Garden. It was brilliant to walk through this well designed garden and see some of the most wonderful flowers we ever seen.  My personal high light was the part behind the rosery. It was just a path with patches along of it but it has such a beauty.

And another wonderful thing we were allowed to enjoy was a poem of flowers at one of the greenhouses! Brilliant!