I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to update the Blog until now and with this entry I will summarize my last week in Belfast.
Well to be fair most of the week I was lying in bed because I had a terrible cold, which I still haven’t fully recovered from. 🙁 It all started on Monday evening and things got worse on Tuesday, it was a good thing that the other guys went on their tour to Giant’s Causeway so I could at least get some rest. But before I got into bet to get the needed sleep I went to the city center to buy souvenirs for my family and friends, which made my cold only worse I think but still, I didn’t want to go back to Germany empty handed.
The next day I felt a little better and luckily the fever went down a bit so I was able to go to Cultra to say my final goodbyes to everyone at work and to return the stuff we borrowed. I arrived at Cultra around noon and I was able to eat a last lunch with Graham, ok it was only soup so no real lunch but better than nothing. I took pictures with me and my colleagues and thank everyone for their hospitality, we said our farewells and I went back to Belfast. The rest of the day I spend packing my stuff and sleeping.
On Thursday morning we left for Dublin to spend at least one day in the capital of the republic of Ireland, our bus left at 10 and we arrived in Dublin at around 12:30. We where invited to store our stuff at the apartment of Erik and Stefan and they gave us a warm welcome, their apartment was just awesome and we all got a little jealous. We spend the rest of the day wandering around Dublin and where amazed how different it from Belfast, we sat in a park and enjoyed the sun, went to a tea house where I had one of the best chai teas ever, ate a burrito and spend another few hours at Erik and Stefan’s apartment. At around 11pm our Taxi arrived to take us to the to Dublin airport, our driver was a little overwhelmed by the amount of luggage we had, so we had to take most of our belonging onto our laps. Our flight left at 7:35 so we had to kill more than 8 hours, a few of us slept on the floor, other spent the time watching videos, reading or exploring the terminal.
After the check in we where reunited with our classmates and we left Ireland for Germany.
The flight was more like a torture for me, because of my cold I couldn’t adjust to the pressure changes in the cabin which lead to painful ear pressure and inflammation of the middle ear. After we landed I got my suitcase a fast as possible and got picked by my dad at the airport.
I was glad to be back home but I couldn’t really enjoy it because of the pain in my ears, so I had to go to a first aid ward to get medication and just went to sleep.
Well that’s it my last entry, again I’m sorry it’s a bit short and all but I’m still sick ;), I hope you enjoyed reading my entries and got a, more or less, good impression of how my life in Belfast was like.
it is my last weekend in Belfast and the weather couldn’t be better I hope it stays this way for our last few days and continues this way in Germany.
My last few days at work where pretty quiet, on Wednesday my colleague left an ECR(electronic cash register) PC on my desk and asked to reinstall the operating system and install all the necessary updates, needed software and disable all unnecessary features and services for the standard user account. It wasn’t much of a challenge but still it took most of my time this day.
On Thursday Graham asked me if I could test the network equipment for an event this weekend he supported. I needed to test the functionality of the access points and the cables, I actually had to reattach the RJ45 at one of the cables because it was in an unusable shape.
Friday was my last working day and the IP camera we ordered for the Hill Climp race on 1st of June to observe the start line; for the announcer and stuff. My colleagues left me with configuring the IP camera and the needed access point for the day. After I was finished with this I left work a bit earlier.
I will be going to Cultra an on Wednesday to say my final farewells and to return the things I borrowed for our apartment, like network cables and speakers.
Today we went on a tour through Belfast to take a better look at things we haven’t been able to see or visit until now, and me being an idiot, again, forgot my SD card for the camera in my laptop :/ so I will do another round on Tuesday while the rest of the guys is on the tour to Giant’s Causeway.
I will leave you with this and a picture of a bird.
my last week of work has started and I’m having mixed feelings about my leave. On one hand I will be glad to be back in Germany seeing family and friends again and grateful to sleep in my own bed again. On the other hand I’m a little sad to leave my work placement especially since I started to look into different projects I won’t be able to see completion.
The last two days, that’s Monday and Tuesday, I spent at our Warehouse at Heron Road where we had to supervise the installation of the new hardware from the ISP because Heron Road recently got an upgrade in the line speeds which made other hardware a necessity. Furthermore Graham and I were asked to exchange the existing small cabinet for a bigger one, which meant to move all hardware, active and passive, from one cabinet to the other.
The first problem we encountered were the two Ethernet patch panels because the cables were wired in a way which made it impossible to take out without cutting the attached network cables and that meant we had to rewire the panels again. And of course we managed to, accidentally, destroy half of the fiber connections while taking out the fiber patch panel, which meant we had to get a contractor to splice the connections anew.
After we had everything out of the cabinet we wanted to switch the small cabinet with the bigger one, which was about 3x times the size of the old one. I should mention that the cabinet is standing under a stair and we had maybe 2.10m of max. height while the new cabinet is 2m high and on the edge of the stairs was a small bar, which supported the stairs, under which the cabinet had to go through with maybe 1cm of air.
Well we got the cabinet in without any problems after the fits attempt facing the same direction the old cabinet did and realized, as it is deeper, we couldn’t open the door properly, so we decided to turn the cabinet by 90°. As we were turning the cabinet the cabinet got stuck on the bars and refused to move even one inch and it took us around 30 minutes and a lot of physical violence, which was my part, to get free again and into the correct situation, we even had to involve the poor fellow from the ISPs subcontractor.
Once the Cabinet was in place the ISP subcontractor installed the new hardware, tested the internet connection and left. Graham and I still had to rewire the Ethernet patch panels and to install the hardware again.
Patch panel progressfinished Patch panel
After we were done the day was over.
On Tuesday had to go back to back to Heron Road to supervise the contractors tasked with repairing the fiber connections and we had to find out why the IP telephones didn’t get an IP address over DHCP, which turned out to be a small misconfiguration on the ISP router. This again took most of our day and we only got up to Cultra to report on the situation.
It was a produktoive start into the last week and I will report on the rest of this week later. Have a nice week!
Yours sincerely,
Tobias
P.S
Kinda scary/exciting scientific „news“ of the day:
this week is almost and over and my last week at work is about to begin. I know officially our last day at work is the 30th of May but my colleagues said it’s alright if I take the week of to do stuff I haven’t been able to, e.g go on a photo tour through Belfast.
But for now let me tell you about my weekend, OK there isn’t much to tell but still not much is better than nothing 😀
On Saturday I went shopping which was a big mistake because it was pouring the whole day and I was literally soaked from head to toe but nothing a nice hot shower can’t cure. I got myself a pair of nice beef steak and they were delicious, the meat on this island is really on of its plus points.
In the evening our Spanish neighbors held a farewell party for themselves because most of them will be leaving for Spain at the end of this week. I stayed till 2am, seeing as it was pretty boring I didn’t stay long, but a few stayed awake like 7am.
Today the weather was better and with better I mean it wasn’t raining. My flatmates took the opportunity to went shopping for themselves and to get our lunch. Furthermore for the first time since we are here we had to top off our gas card, which is kinda like a prepaid card, since we arrived in Belfast, in comparison our neighbors had to top off their gas like 3 or 4 times already and they started with the same amount.
We just finished eating diner, delicious self prepared burritos with more cheese than a doctor would call healthy.
Well that’s it for the moment, I hope you had a nice weekend and happy holiday.
Yours sincerely,
Tobias
Useless information of the day:
Titin is the larges known protein (C169723H270464N45688O52243S912). It has the longest IUPAC name at 189.891 letters.
It takes approximately 3,5 hours to read it in its entirety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titin
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.
it’s the start into the sixth week and only two and a half weeks are left, to be honest I’m looking forward to be back in Germany especially to sleep alone in my own room and in my own bed.
Well on Monday I started testing Hardware that was lying around the office with the new benchtable and as it turned out most of the hardware was broken.
On Tuesday I started working on the new thin clients we got for testing purposes and I had to install the newest firmware which was a pain in the ass, because it is not possible to install the newest firmware over USB. No that would have too easy you have to do it over a special Webshare or FTP. After trying it over a web share we set up a makeshift FPT server and hey that worked, but you couldn’t just install the newest firmware, no you had to install the firmware in the order it was released, e.g. if the newest firmware is 1.3.3 and the installed firmware is 1.1.4 you have install all version between these two in the order they where released before installing the newest.
But as it was Tuesday, which meant it was crazy Tuesday at the cinemas, I went to watch the new Star Trek movie together with Robert. And the movie was good and I can say with confidence that if J.J Abrahams does as well with Star Wars as he does with Star Trek there will be awesome movies ahead 😀
well the weekend is over and it’s time to write about it, if you read it or not is entirely up to you.
As I wrote in my previous entry I went on a bus tour to the Giant’s Causeway with the guys from apartment nbr. 2. We met at 8:45 outside of our apartments and headed to the office of Allen’s Tours where our bus was supposed to leave at 9:30. We where advised to arrive 20 min. prior to the time of departure and we did but as it turned out we could have easily turned up at 9:45 as bus left at 10 because we had to wait for stragglers.
After we picked up a few other passengers at their hotels our driver introduced himself as Ian and told us he will be talking most of time while we are our way to the destination.
I was thinking „Yeah you will probably just point out points of interest along the way“ but I was wrong, he literally talked the whole time, told us about the history of the towns and places we passed and gave anecdotes to noteworthy sites, like the haunted hotel or the dead mans hole. The craziest thing was that it never got boring he did it in way that kept it interesting the whole time. I was surprised to hear how many Germans where involved in the history of Northern Ireland with building a castle here and a village there.
Only on the way back from Giant’s Causeway Ian kept quiet because we took the motorway back to Belfast, not the coastal road we took before, and there wasn’t much to tell but still he was a great tour guide and I think everyone on the bus agreed with me.
OK enough of our bus driver and more about the tour itself!
As I already mentioned the tour took the scenic coastal road to Giant’s Causeway with a few stops in between and a visit to the Bushmills distillery on the way back.
The first stop was shortly after leaving Belfast we stopped at Carrickfergus Castle, which was build by a German-ish guy in twelfth century. After 20 minutes of looking around and taking photos we journeyed on.
Carrickfergus Castle
After an hour we stopped at Carnlough harbor for a quick breather.
Carnlough harbor
Another hour later we arrived at Carrick-a-Rede and its famous rope bridge that I, obviously, crossed but I admit was a little frightened because we had very strong wind, something around 40 miles per hour,but still it’s a beautiful area and truly worth seeing, especially with good weather.
a view at the coast at Carrick-a-Rede with Rathlin Island in the backgroundthe famous rope bridge
While we are at the topic, our weather this day was kinda mixed, on one hand we had sunshine and , kinda, blue skies on the other hand it rained alot. We were lucky in the beginning as it only started raining when we boarded the bus again but once we arrived at the Giant’s Causeway the weather took a turn for the worse and it got much better shortly after we left Bushmills for Belfast.
A mere 15 minutes after we left Carrick-a-Rede we arrived at the Giant’s Causeway, we had to walk a little because we didn’t pay the „entrance fee“ (it was optional) and weren’t allowed to take the bus but it’s only a short walk, like 15 minutes or something.
the even more famous Giant's Causeway
I confess I was a little disappointed by the Giant’s Causeway, but this could be because the weather wasn’t exactly the best or the fact that the place was swarming with so many tourist that you had to look out where you put your feet. Don’t get me wrong it’s a beautiful place and worth seeing but I think it’s a bit oversold.
Oh and shortly after we left the Causeway my camera battery died and me, being stupid, forgot to pack my spare battery, so I wasn’t able to take pictures of out last stop at the Bushmills distillery. At the distillery we had the opportunity to take a look around at the visitors premises but couldn’t take a tour through the distillery. I bought myself a good whiskey which I will bring home as little souvenir for myself 😀
We arrived in Belfast at around 7:00 pm and after we said our goodbyes and thanks to Ian we went for something to eat and back to the apartment.
On Sunday I basically didn’t do anything except for relax, going through the photos I took on the tour and watch anime on my laptop 😀
I hope all of you enjoyed your weekend as much as I did.
it is Saturday morning and I’m preparing and my stuff for the tour to Giant’s Causeway, that’s right I’m finally going! 😛 I’ll report my experiences, supported by pictures on Sunday evening, because this entry is for the last 2 1/2 days 😀
Lets start with Wednesday afternoon, well after I got off work I went shopping in the city centre and slightly underestimated the weight of the stuff I bought with result that it took my the double amount of time to get home than it took me to get there and a stiff neck next morning.
Thursday was, aside from the stiff neck, a pretty quit day. We got our delivery from Amazon including the new bench table I was telling you about in one of my last entries. So I had the pleasure of assembling the case and putting the hardware into/onto it and installing the operating system. But the operating system turned out is confused, because it detects 2 displays where is only one 😀 quit a mystery and I haven’t figured out yet what is causing this problem.
This brings me to Friday. Robin picked me up at 9 and we went to Armagh to visit the Armagh County Museum. Of course we didn’t went there for pleasure there was work to be done. This work included installing a new HDD and restoring the data from the old HDD onto it, replacing an old printer with the printer I prepared last week and last but not least to install the new DrayTek router and establish the VPN connection to Cultra Manor…oh and we had to install a wireless access point because they had no wireless access until now.
At the end of the day we accomplished all of our tasks except for installing the DrayTek. The Problem is that the current router is using an option to tunnel the public IP-Address of the firewall to the Internet, or something like this we are still figuring out what the company responsible for the firewall and internet setup did. And because there is no visible option on the DrayTek to achieve a similar function we couldn’t install the router without everyone behind the firewall to lose their internet connectivity.
We left the current setup in place for now and starting on Monday I’ll try to find out how to get the DrayTek working or to implement a secure VPN connection between Cultra and Armagh with the micro server as a client, instead of a Site-to-Site VPN we would have an Server-Client setup.
I wanted to take some picture of Armagh as it is a beautiful town but the weather was terrible just like the last days we had rain most the day and I wasn’t able to take pictures without risking my camera. I just hope that the weather will be better for the tour today so that I can take pictures for me to share.
On Monday I had a day of peace and quiet to myself because the guys went up Cave Hill, the same thing I did two days before. (remember the long blog entry on Monday, I bet you don’t :D)
I took the opportunity to clean the apartment and baked a bread, yummy gray bread, it turned out quit nicely. Furthermore I went for a littel stroll through the Queens Quarter but I forgot to bring my camera.
The next day was Tuesday, as many of you will probably have guessed, and the first day at work after the long weekend. I prepared three new laser printers that will be installed in Omagh today by Gordon and build myself a new Windows 7 image for future use.
On Friday I will go up to Armagh with Robin to install a new printer and setup the VPN between Armagh and Cultra Manor, I’m curious how the Armagh Country Museum looks like.
first of I’m sorry that I couldn’t update the update the Blog as planned on Friday & yesterday, Sunday, evening. The reason for that is our network, somehow every weekend or network begins to act up and then it’s no longer possible to access the Internet, well at least not entirely because sometimes its possible to access websites saved in your DNS cache but even that is rare. The main problem is that some idiot changes the configuration of the gateway for the whole network, mind you all apartments are going through the same gateway, and resets the changes we made last weekend to get it running again and we are not able to access the gateway at the moment. As a result we have DHCP leases with the duration of „forever“ and duplicated addresses, I’m only able to write this blog entry because there is no one on the network so early in the morning (most people are sleeping till noon).
To come to the point, this point entry will sum up my experiences for the rest of the last week and I will continue my normal blogging cycle.
Alright lets get started!
On Wednesday I was visited by Mrs. Neumann, my supervisor at the Max-Planck Institution, and Mr. Bavar, the supervisor for the AFIB, to check how I’m doing.
We had a little chat and I showed them my workplace, told them about the work I do at the museum and they got to meet my colleagues. As they had a tight schedule they couldn’t stay long and left after 20 minutes to visit my classmate Henrik and our accommodation.
Groupshot of Mrs. Neumann, Mr. Flanagan and me
The rest of the day I spent with writing the documentation for the DrayTek routers I’m installing and started to clean up my desk in preparation for the arrival of the bench table we ordered.
And for the people who don’t know what bench table is I’ll give a short explanation, the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph.
A bench table is basically a computer case for testing purposes, it allows the user to access and exchange parts easily without taking out other parts. They decided to buy one after I pointed out that it would be easier to test hardware for defects at a bench table then assembling a new test PC every time they want to test a graphics card.
On Thursday I was tasked with the problem to find out how to install the Microsoft System Center Client software on a Mac client. Well I found out what the necessary requirements are but I will have to work my way through the necessary deployment of certificates and distribution points, I think it could take a while till I fully understand how to get things running.
The next day I went to work at Ulster Museum again where I helped Graham and Robin to take down the screen in the lecture hall, after the screen was down we had to calibrate the colors for the projector, because now it’s projecting right at the wall, and adjust the spotlights for the stage so that they don’t throw shadows. It was quit fun because we got to toy around with the new A/V (audio & video) rack the installed, which meant we inserted a Blu-ray disk and watched videos on YouTube, but all in the name of calibration of course 😛
On Friday evening we had a LAN Party again but I went to bed early because we planed to hike up to Belfast Castle and from there up Cave Hill.
The next day I knew the plans have been cancelled because most of them went to bed between 2 or 3 and they wouldn’t be up till noon.
But after I got up at 8 and saw that the weather looked really nice I decided to go alone and started my hike at 9:30 after I packed my bag with water, cereal bars and of course my camera.
I walked past City Hall, of which I took pictures but they were deleted because of foobar (unknown reason), through the city centre, took a left at St. Annes’s Cathedral, took a right at Carlisle Circus and walked straight down Antrim Road until I reached the entrance to Cave Hill Park after a 90 minutes walk.
Halfway there
Entrance gate Cave Hill park
From there I took the path that lead me to Belfast Castle, a truly wonderful building with a neat little park/garden and an incredible view over Belfast.
Backside of Belfast Castle
At the castle I took my first break and ate breakfast, sandwiches bought at Tesco on my way through city centre, and enjoyed the view over Belfast from a bench in the park. Shortly after that I started my ascension to the peak of Cave Hill.
At first I walked through the forest surrounding the foot of Cave Hill and followed the Cave Hill trail marked by stones along the way.
Helpful little helpers
Path trough the woods
When I broke through the forest line and looked up the step face of Cave Hill it was truly breathtaking. I took a short break to enjoy the view and to eat a cereal bar.
Indescribable with words
Along the way I found out why Cave Hill is called Cave Hill, because of the caves, big surprise I know :D, there are five caves of unnatural origin in Cave Hill, that’s what Wikipedia says but I only found one.
Entrance to one the name giving caves
Anyway following the path leading to the top I enjoyed a growing panorama spanning all of Belfast, Belfast’s surroundings and even a glimpse of Scotland beyond the sea in the distance.
great view isn't it?
After around 90 minutes of hiking I arrived at the top of Cave Hill and was almost blown away the strong winds, that suddenly appeared because the step side of the mountain shielded me all the way up.
Arriving at the top I made my way to McArts Fort, the point on Cave Hill with probably the best view, there I met Andrea and Joanna, two really nice girls from Switzerland.
View at McArts Fort
Me at McArts Fort
We made our way back down on the other side of Cave Hill, going around the old quarry and arriving back at Belfast Castle. On our way down I was attacked by an angry bush with thorns, I its possible that I walked into it, and almost slipped on one of the steeper parts on the way. At the castle we went into the cafe in the cellar of the castle and had a tea and sandwiches and talked about our experiences in UK and Ireland. I was telling them about Belfast, Joanna told me about her stay in Scotland and Andrea about her stay in Galway. After that we took the bus back to the city centre and parted ways.
I was home around 4:30pm and went straight into the shower to relax and clean up and went to Lavery’s Bar in the evening to get a pint of Guinness and enjoy the atmosphere.
Yesterday I woke up with aching leg muscles and a stiff back, the former is a result of the hike the latter is caused by a to soft mattress.
After breakfast I waited for the rest to get up and we didn’t leave the apartment after that, with the exception of going to a shop to get whipped cream for the cheese noodles we had, they were yummy I tell you 😀
We mostly played old video games against each other, e.g. Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, CS 1.5, but the setup and configuration for everyone took longer than we hoped for.
Alright I think that’s enough for the moment and I thank everyone who has read up to this point. I hope all of you had a nice weekend.
