Thursday and Friday I was able to proceed with my program quite far. My task was to program a Graphic User Interface, which processes HTTP requests and Database queries. Also, I built a lot of buttons and text fields. In the upper picture you can see my program. For a little explanation, it sends a HTTP request to a webpage (SendGrid). You get information about your email history and the status of your sent mails. These two days were very hard concerning programming, because I had many issues. But at Friday everything worked fine. Richard controlled it and he was very satisfied. So this two days were very nice :D. In the next week I’ll publish my project and connect it with the database.
Today I was with three other colleagues at the Giants Causeway. It was very rainy and I was all wet after this day. I think I will get a strong cold, but the hell! It was worth it. I will not say that much, just look at the pictures and enjoy. Feel free to ask me! And by the way, sorry that there are so many pictures, but I wasn´t able to decide which ones to include and which ones to exclude. Giants Causeway and the Ropebridge where just awesome!!
As I feared, we are not making any real tests with the machine, just some basic testing of the code for the microcontroller. But we try to finish it as soon as possible. As we are making our tests, I am supposed to set up a PHP based Socket Server which should receive the data from the modem we are using inside of the machine.
On Friday we had an appointment with Margaret and Mr Döbler, one of our teachers in Germany. We talked more than one hour with him about nearly everything we are doing here in Ireland and about our apartments and workplaces.
After the meeting with Mr Döbler, some colleagues and I were making a Pub tour. On our way through the Pubs we saw this guy who was painting on some kind of telephone junction box.
ABBA. Seems legit.
Asking a colleague what band this should be (and giving hints like “the guys are called John, Paul, George and Ringo and they had a kind of successful Band in the 60s”), he guessed that this could be… “ABBA”.
After I almost peed myself, I told him that this is a picture of the Beatles. and then he realized why I was laughing that hard and started laughing.
At around 11 p.m. we were leaving the apartment and went to a nice area with some cool clubs. After we couldn’t enter the first club (one of us was under 21) we went to the next club [Copper Face Jacks] and we all had a good time.
After about 30 minutes I lost Nick (one of my colleagues) but we were able to find each other. But after about one or two hours later, I lost him again and this time we were not able to find each other again.
At around 3:30 a.m. I was trying to leave the club. The Club was so full that it was kind of a wonder that I found the exit. About half an hour later I arrived at our apartment without problems but completely drunk.
This was a really good night and I finally went out and was having some fun.
So first I’m nearly healthy again and the weekend can come! 😀 not like last weekend!
The most time in this working week we have cleaned up the „trash corner“! There were many old PCs and old hardware!
So we were testing hardware like old pc’s, power supplie’s, Peripherals devises and so on.
After that we have put new workdesks in that corner!
Furthermore we get a lot of new laptops for the employees and on these laptops we had to installed windows 8 and lots of software we need in the company.
In this way we got new hardware for a desctop pc that I assembled. And NO!!! I did not choose this hardware because ther is a big ASUS mainboard inside for more than 270 Euro and I think a I7-3820 for 250 Euro and believe me they don’t need that! And the best is that the person who orders things forgot to order a CPU cooler! So I hope that the cooler is coming today (Friday) so I can finish the PC and can start to setup the RAID and the OS on this PC!
While I wait for the cooler I have begun to check if Zabbix can send mail notification over a office 365 server. I have not done much more this week with zabbix!
it’s Friday evening and week #six is almost over and as I said before I’m looking forward to be back in Germany.
OK let me tell you about the last few days and I will start, as expected, with Wednesday. Well on Wednesday I took part in the NetRiders CCNA competition and as it turns out it was a typical Cisco Q&A session but still 18th place without any form preparation or motivkation is not that bad, I think but what do I care 😀 a competition doesn’t reflect what I’m capable. Furthermore I took care of user that called us with printer problems and I was tasked with rebuilding a PC that is supposed to replace the lecture PC in the training room, with rebuilding I mean to bring the software up to date and clean it.
On Thursday I had to prepare printers again seeing as they are currently replacing all printers older than 5 years I’m the poor lad tasked with setting up the new ones but work is work and it has to be done.
Today I help a user with installing the latest updates for Java on her Mac and creating a network share for one of her logging pcs. As it was Friday and the weather was really nice I left work a bit earlier and enjoyed the sunshine while sitting on a bench in Botanic Gardens.
And that’s pretty much it nothing much to report today 😀 I hope tell you something more interesting on Saturday.
On a short note I would like to tell you something about a certificate we might do. It is called ICCSC as the headline says, I’ll hide the full name somewhere in the text to force you to read it if you want to know. So as most of us already told you, no walker really cares about the traffic lights. We just pass the street when they are clear, some people who obviously graduated already just cross at any time. They seem to feel stronger than buses I guess. Additionally we sometimes have bus drivers who seem to have been playing too many racing games. There are bumps on our way to work and they just try to jump over them so we get shaken through quite well. The Taxis turn around on a full street whenever they see fit. When any driver approaches a red traffic light they just ignore holding lines. So the traffic is just a mess. And the shopping streets where, no cars are allowed, are a mess as well. Ireland City Center Survival Certificate. They are just overloaded with people any time of the day, while those people don’t seem to be able to walk in a straight line. This forces everyone to circle through the street somehow, what than again will make you take 3x the time you would actually need. They really have no idea how to make any room when its narrow and you try to pass them. When I would not ALWAYS turn my shoulder back I would ALWAYS run them over. Especially the old people are great at requiring more space then they can possibly need. I thought the Berlin people are bad about letting someone off a train or bus, but the Irish people just top this. They make no room AT ALL. And again it’s particularly the old ones being in the way. Still we manage to get to our destinations somehow and by now we manage to pass anyone swiftly.
Actually this is just some blabbering as there is not much to talk about beside work and nice quite evenings.
it’s Friday again. On Monday I told my colleagues in the apartment, that the time isn’t running anymore. But now we have just two weeks left… what the…!? Yesterday we watched the „Euro League“ final in Irish TV but only the last 10-20 minutes. I can’t be precise about that fact because our TV is so old that it didn’t show the minutes in the upper left corner.
The next big final between Munich and Dortmund will be watched in a pub or something like that. But our TV is still bigger than the screen of the apartment from Erkan & Stefan. You can watch a film or something like that on a mobile phone and it’s still bigger than this TV screen 😀
Today is also the meeting with Magaret but I need to work so I unfortunately can’t join.
you may ask what I am doing the whole week. Yeah, what shall I say. Usually I am working and when my work-hours are over I stay there for some more hours. I don´t know what to do at „home“ and to visit some things in Dublin I am to exhausted. So I am the first one from the IT who arrives and the last one from the IT who leaves. I usually work 10 or 11 hours. No, it´s not illegal. Everything what I am doing I am doing on my own. They are telling me „Lars, go home!“. But I can´t. I don´t want to. There is enough work to do.
A colleague of mine told me, that all the users are respecting me. Sometimes they only write me, if they have a problem and not my boss. Thats very funny. 😀 Maybe not for him, but for me. 🙂
Small Update: Our Wifi seems to work now! Let´s see for how long.
And Alex, if you read this: Haha, fail. 😀 I have every password, and I can access everything without asking someone. It´s very nice to be able to do whatever I want. 😀
At Saturday some colleagues and I want to go to Giants Causeway. This will be fun, but maybe I write one more entry tomorrow.
As said before I’ll tell you a little bit about the Celtic tour we did on Sunday. This tour was very nice even though the weather was not as well. We actually got soaked at one point but later more of that.
So our tour guide was very nice and funny and incredibly well prepared. He started to talk about the sights we were going to see 10 minutes before we arrived there, so we could then have just a look around without having to stand there in a circle and listen to him. Also he was very considerate about the rain and he was very impressed as the complete group did not seem to care about getting wet. He told a few jokes and a bit about the Irish history itself, what was very interesting.
For the sights I actually forgot most of the names but I remember a very impressive tomb where we had to climb up a hill to reach it. It started to rain while we were up there and it got very windy on our way down, which got us very wet at this place. The tomb itself was quite interesting but smaller than I first imagined. But he told us that there have been many of these in ancient times, which would have been a very incredible view.
Also very interesting was the big Castle we visited. A few parts of the walls were missing and we couldn’t have a look in the castle itself (there are tours for that also) but it was nice enough.
Other than that we visited abbeys and graveyards with gigantic Celtic crosses.
All in all it was a tour very much worth it and I recommend everyone to do both tours i now brought to you!
For anyone that wants more detailed information about the Celtic tour here is a link to it:
