Kategorie: Allgemein

Vistors from Berlin

Yesterday, visitors from Berlin, Mr. Bavar and Mrs. Neumann, came to see Belfast. Kevin Shine, our local advisor from RSM Tennon, arranged for them to visit each of us in our work placements and afterwards to see our apartment, the MEWS house at Hardcastle Street. The apartment is first time part of this training program, so our visitors wanted to receive an impression how the conveniences are. They were impressed and Mr. Bavar said that he would choose this apartment if he had to go to Belfast for two month. They took a few photos and afterwards we went to a pub called “Filthy MacNasty’s”, Mrs. Neumann really liked this location. We had a few nice conversations and a lot of fun, it felt like they brought a piece of home with them.

Visitors at Filthy MacNasty's

But unfortunately we were short of time and the visitors had to drive back to Dublin. René, Tim and me brought them to rail station and there we bid good bye.

Outdoor WLAN

Our IT-Supervisor Damien suggested that we can set up the outdoor WLAN Access Point. So Jannik, Damien and me set up the device, fixed on a mast, for a small approximately 2500 square metre big area in the near of the NIBEC building. At first we tested the strength of the signal with the internal antenna. Which was very sober, because it had a high signal loss after 50 metres. Then we plugged in the antenna from our ZyXEL Repeater and voila the signal was still after 50 metres very good. Even behind a building we have connection to the access point. So we decided to go as far as we have a signal. Result: After 215 metres behind a tree we lost the signal. This suprised not only our IT-Supervisor, Jannik and myself was suprised too how far this small antenna worked.

Maybe this or next week we get the right cable for the outdoor antenna, which is 1,5 metre long. Then we can establish a connection for whole Jordanstown and maybe up to Belfast 😉 Anyhow it’s enough to cover a football pitch. That is the only reason for the huge outdoor antenna.

Also the education coordinator from Germany Mr. Bavar together with Ms. Neumann from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Kevin Shine visited me. They want to know what we’re did at work and if we’re pleased with the work and coworker.

Just a little barbecue on the beach…

Just one post ago, I have told about me and Kevin that we were did something together on the last weekend, so met us near my living place on the Corperated Street and started to go to the Odyssey Cinema, because we wanted to play bowling and some other crazy games. It was really funny and we have so many laughed. We have played bowling and pool billiard with me, Kevin and his brother. After a long time at this place, we went to a little pub and have little small talk. The most of this topics were about movies, games and some other IT-topics like Android Systems and Linux. This encounter was so very funny and I would prefer to do it again. On sunday, me and my roommates have decided to do a little barbecue on the beach. Well, it was a bad idea, because the weather wasn’t the best one and the beach… Let us talk about another topic…^^ The steak what we wanted to grill was good, but the grill was just a little bucket…^^ But my pictures can talk more about them than I can never do it.

„Just a little barbecue on the beach…“ weiterlesen

Project at ECIT

I have a very skill improving Project at ECIT. I have to implement a site to site VPN between a Cisco 2911 router and Ubuntu server. Last week I accomplished the standard router configuration, the VPN-Server configuration on the Cisco router and I installed Ubuntu on the server. I am really looking forward to get the VPN working. It makes a lot of fun to work as CCNA with such nice equipment. Richards calls me “Mr. Cisco” because I am the only person at ECIT who is CCNA and I have to show Jonathan (student, doing his work experience at ECIT) few things about Cisco. I really enjoy work like this.

Wonderful weekend

Thursday my girlfriend came to Belfast to visit me.  I was nervous the whole week before  and I was  really looking forward. Unfortunately I had to work on Thursday and Friday, but we had the whole weekend. She cooked a very tasty chines launch for me and the guys. Afterwards I showed her a peace of the city, after that we had a relaxing night. Next day we visit a few sights and she came with us to see Titanic Belfast. It was so wonderful to have her in Belfast, it was boosting morale and I never will forget these wonderful times we had here in Belfast.

Titanic Belfast

Yesterday we went to Titanic Belfast to see the impressive architecture of this building and the colorful history of Titanic.

Picture of sinking Titanic

Our expectations where unfortunately disappointed. It is a big exhibition with nice replicas of a few cabins, a lot of posters with text on it.They were also exhibited a lot of porcelain which were used on Titanic and also carpets and stuff like that. But no replicas of the ship except models of it and a huge replica of the ships rudder. Impressive was the ship yard ride in gondolas, the tour showed the building process of Titanic and how the labor conditions were.

Cabin 2nd class

 

All in all it was a nice trip but unfortunately it was less than I expected to be.

Sign in front of Titanic Belfast

 

A piece of the building

New Project?

Unfortunately, my current project still isn’t completed due to problems with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 R3. This piece of software is just horrible. Matt wanted to have a look at it last week but he didn’t have any time so I have to wait. With a bit of luck, we can fix the last problems and finish this step today. Last Friday, Matt told me, that we will try to push some BIOS updates with SCCM. The next step of the project will be, to configure some servers and I think SCCM within the NIPACS domain.

Cold finger

Yesterday a few friends and myself went to the National Musuem of Ireland – Archaeology. The admission was free so it was more fun for us to view the jewelry and the old weapons of the vikings. It was pretty warm in the museum and I lost my little group when I went into another wing of the museum. Good to have a mobile phone. All in all a very impressive exhibition.

Outside it was very cold and windy. In the evening I noticed that I might got a little cold. Today I definitly know that it is a cold. Let’s see if I’m fit enough to work tomorrow. Staying the whole day at the apartment is quite boring as I noticed today. I drunk red tea nearly the whole day and my cold won’t get better. Hopefully next week’s weather is getting better.

Getting Started with Microsoft Hyper-V

Translink is about to start a new virtualization project. They decided to use Microsoft Hyper-V as the hypervisor. The virtualization cluster, which is built on HP servers consists of 4 nodes which each have 2 6-core Intel Xeon processors and 96 GB of memory.

The first thing to do was to mount the servers in the rack which was done by my colleague John and me.

John cabling the power supply units

After approximately 90 minutes of work and 2 papercuts from the damn HP packaging (I have never got injuries from Dell packaging) the job was done:

the 4 virtualization nodes

Titanic

I must admit that I’m a real tourist. So I don’t miss the highlight of Belfast: The Titanic museum. I’ve the luck that this exhibition opend this year. Because this is a very famous sight you must book the ticket. Although I’ve made the online reservation I had forget the booking number. So Benny and me went to the Titanic Belfast by cab and hoped that would be OK without any confirmation for the ticket. Actually only my credit card sufficed to get the tickets. Additional we took a audio guide in German to understand the whole exhibition.
The area around the the museum is, only a few exceptions, very dismal. Therefore the building is very impressive. The facility is a mixture from the old (wood and rusty steel) and the new (refined steel and glass). The exhibition by itself is guided and logical structed. They are a lot of interactive display and holographic similarly presentations. I’m pleased with the ride into the artifical and interesting shipyard, which I’ve never expected.
Overall a very watchable sightseeing that must be seen by anybody who is in the near of Belfast and have a little interesting in history or ships.