Autor: Stefan Korte

HeydiHo!

Additionally to the comparison of expectation to reality I would like to reflect on what we have been doing so far and what we plan to do.

So what we did so far…

We have had a general look around in the city to find decent spots. Also we have had looks at a few pubs inside and outside of temple bar as well as the Irish nightlife itself (was a whole lot of fun!). We of course have had a LOT of work and I am doing many phone calls to customers. I have been „on site“ meaning at the place of the customer (a golf club) to set up a new cloud system. Other than that we have have enjoyed the evenings in general and the highlight so far was our visit in Howth.

My greatest accomplishment…

I managed to get used to the bloody Irish keyboard layout! *YAY*. Also I managed to understand the Irish people with the strong accent.

And we still plan to…

As our journey to the west coast failed (more about that next Blog) we will do it on a different approach next weekend. Also we still plan to do the Celtic tour and i personally plan to take at least one day off and do NOTHING at all, did not manage to do that yet.

Well, I will have plenty to write then and for sure tell you about! See you then!

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Hi Dudes! (Would Erik say)

So, as we are through half way, I thinks it is a good idea to compare what I expected to whats reality here.

What we knew was, that I will stay in one accommodation with Erik and two guys who where unknown to us. Of course I expected at least a little bit of trouble, especially about cleaning the apartment, as it would be usually.

Also, I expected to be quite tired after the arrival and I expected a certain amount of chaos on our landing. I didn’t have too much expectations about the apartment, as we have heard as many good as bad things from former years. I didn’t know if I had to share a room or not and I did not care too much.

For the living I wasn’t really able to think of our location, I hoped to be close enough to a supermarket. Also I believed that the supermarkets where about the same (they aren’t!). And I never thought I would have to work a lot here. I thought of short days with plenty time to have a look at the country.

I have been proven wrong in a few cases and correct on others.

Well, I have long working days with little time to have a look at the country. On the other hand I Learn A LOT at work which comes in quite handy.

We haven’t had any trouble with our „apartment mates“ so far, we all eat together and coordinate the cleaning and shopping „expertly“ and we work on it to make it last.

Also I never expected to share a room as small as mine is (with no room between the 2 beds) while having such a great penthouse apartment. The location is just incredible, just 5 minutes foot walk away from the center.

I did expect the prices for food to go up. I recommend anyone to NEVER go into a „spar“, they have German gas-station prices. Just search for Lidl or Aldi, they are decent enough.

And even though we work that long we still manage to use the weekends at best while we have the greatest of all weathers! (God damn I am so lucky!)

Oh, and we had a bit of chaos on our landing as we were picked up buy guys that had written „OSXIMT“ on a piece of paper. Additionally they just dropped us of in front of the hostel and we had NO idea what to do.

Can’t think of anything more right now, just ask in the comments if you have questions!

See you later! (Yay, blogs done for the week already! 😀 )

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Hi Guys,

I somehow feel the urge to tell you about something else I noticed by now – we have WAY too less free time whatsoever to do everything we would like to do. Especially as Erik and I (I don’t know too well about the working times of the others) work from 0930 a.m. to 0600 p.m. We then have to add the way to and off work what makes it effectively from 0845 a.m. to 1900 p.m. These are quite long days, what makes it impossible to do anything them. And no one has enough energy to go through the whole weekend with action and events all the time and stay healthy, what cuts off one day again.

That means we have just 1 day to get a decent view on Ireland which is just way too less to go for longer trips. I guess anyone else will agree on that one.

Luckily we have an extended weekend upcoming so Erik and Nick are making plans for a trip to the west coast of Ireland. That will be exciting!

But I’m drifting off, what I wanted to say is – there is so much what we’d like to do but can’t that it’s getting a bit disappointing.

Opposed to Alex I believe the only solution for that is more free time, which does not account for less working hours, as about no one will use the given time after work. But an additional free day should do plenty for the people that want to do and see interesting stuff here. Of course there will be the ones that won’t use the time but that’s their personal problem.

That’s all I wanted to say, thanks for your attention!

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HeyHey,

as Erik and Alex already wrote we have been in Howth on Saturday to see the cliffs where Lars has been. Sadly we only made it there late as we had to do lots of stuff in the morning.

There is nothing much more I can write as they already pointed out almost everything. It has been great as the weather was incredible and the landscape stunning. We intend to go there one more time, just earlier (and hopefully without that nasty amusement park).

There is something you can be jealous of what i feel like it has to be pointed out a bit more:

Jackpot-living houses like this one!

This is just incredible, I would love to live there!

As Erik and Alex already provided pictures and also the ones I would have posted, I will safe the data-space and just ask you kindly to have a look at their Blog entrys.

I’m looking forward to go there again! Will tell you about it!

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Well, after almost 3 weeks its time to give you an overview about what I do day in day out.

So generally I leave the penthouse at about 0840 a.m. and get to work. There I do a lot of server and firewall administration, calls and whatever else they give me. For example it has been my task to sort the RDP and sonicwall information in almost all client-contact details and later i was to export the sonicwall configuration for backup purposes.

I do a lot of communication with my house-mates about what to eat and who goes shopping. Generally speaking we all go, just to different location for different purposes to feed the group.

At home, mostly between 0630 p.m. to 0730 p.m. It’s just about eating dinner and talking, watching Breaking Bad or Soccer, or even playing games on the laptop.

We try to use the weekends as best as we can, even though a bit time to just relax is somehow mandatory. We still intend to visit the „good“ harbor as well as at least one castle outside of Dublin.

Well that’s it for my everyday routines. I have no idea what the next Blog will be about, but you will definetly find out.

until then – cheers!

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HeyHey, Stefan here.

As Erik already wrote we wanted to go to the harbor on Saturday. Well actually we did go there. Sadly we went to the wrong one, all we could see was walls and fences – there was no way to enter.

The way there itself was incredibly nice (and Erik provided you a great picture). As indicated the harbor itself was a disappiontment. But we will look for the „real thing“ some other weekend of course.

Or way home was decent again, we took our time and sat down next to the river, where we saw a really damn old lift-bridge-thingy.

Next blog I will tell you a bit about me „on site“ at a golf club.

See you then!

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< “Hey everyone, it’s me again” – hell who is “me” supposed to be? I always have to scroll down and look for the name of the blogger, so let me introduce myself properly. >

“Hey everyone, this is Stefan.” – HA! Take that, Blog!

Well, I said before I will tell you a bit about my weekends. Still I believe this one will be a quickie in terms of blog-entry-length-whatever-input-stuff-here.

To the topic: we generally try to go outside and see places we have yet not visited. This of course depends on the weather. As a few colleagues already did point out, it is quite unpredictable. We went around a lot last Sunday and visited temple bar (and of course a pub.). This time we had splendid live-music. Sadly, as it was a Sunday, we weren’t able to stay long.

Even though James (my mentor) advised me not to go drinking in temple bar, as it is far more expensive than elsewhere, there are still a few Pubs I will definitely visit. Other than that, we plan to visit the port (or harbour) and we intend to visit places outside of Dublin; of course including a few castles. Below a few pictures of a quite impressive church we passed by. It’s the christ church.

Well, that’s it for now and I have yet no idea what my next entry will be about. I guess when I don’t know what to write about but i will find something of course. See you then.

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Hi there,

Today’s blog will provide you with a bit more details about my way to work, coming home, and my tasks.

So, as i mentioned before, it is quite the hard task to actually see where we have to hop off the bus. Most bus stations look quite same and most busses have no display. If there is a bus with a display it doesn’t help us at all as we don’t know the names of the stations. We look at the numbers of them, which has been easier so far. Well, for now, we do know when to get off in direction of work, as there is a green gas station on the right hand side and, as i explained earlier, a mix out of fields and garbage on the left hand side.

From here we have to walk only a few minutes to reach our respective workplaces.

On our way home, we just have to look out for the „gigantic needle“. This is rather close to our hostel and near the station we get on the bus (and it can be seen from very far away as this one is really high!). It is actually called „The Spire“

Concerning my tasks at work, this is what I am doing right now:

– Check failed backups, contact clients about it. (Mostly they just forget to put in tapes)

– Monitor my Co-workers. For this one they setup the phones in a way that I can enter their call from my phone and listen to them, while i can’t be heard.

James told me that I will get more tasks in near future. These will include managing the exchange services on server side (also creating and amending E-Mail-Accounts), user management in general for the SBS servers as well as some cloud-services which he still has to explain in detail to me.

That’s it for this Blog, this time a bit more colorful than the last time. Next time I will tell you a bit more about our weekends, so keep on reading!

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Greetings everyone,

today I will tell you a bit about my first workday. Of course this will be split into the parts of the journey to the workplace, the day itself as well as the way home.

The journey towards

Luckily we were given some advice on how to get there by Margaret on our firstmeeting.

We were supposed to go by buslane 4 or 13 which happen to stop at the same busstop near our hostel. Erik and I took the next bus that appeared which has been the lane 13. On the bus we found our seating upstairs just at the backend. We later understood that this was a bad choice. We were not able to see which busstops we were at, so we were getting quite anxious about when to get off the bus. Erik was constantly checking his smartphone so eventually we where able to get off at the correct busstop after we drove about 45 minutes (this was actually a long trip compared to our class-mates). At the busstop we looked around. We where quite confused as this busstop could never be correct even though Eriks phone said so. There was a lot of nothing around, just a lot of space on our side, decorated with a lot of garbage. On the other side of the street we saw a few buildings. This had to be our direction.

We found a few Blocks which had to be our workingplace. The next task would be to find the right ones. Erik had it easy. His company was listed at one of the signs in front of the blocks. My company was not. I had to ask someone who came by and he actually had to go into the same building as I.

DCNetworks

I entered the buerau and was surprised that everyone actually knew that I  would appear. After a nice and warm greeting I got to know my guide or mentor (James). He showed me around and gave me my first task – setting up my workplace. After I did that suprisingly well he showed me how the backups – which they do for their clients – work. He gave me the task to check the backups that failed and told me I will do that now every morning. My second task is to simply monitor my co-workers.

The journey home

After I managed to get the day by I left with my last co-workers and picked up Erik. We headed to the place we got off the bus in the first place and looked for our busstation. The one we found was only for lane 4. This somehow confused us, as both lanes stopped at the same stop when we went towards this place. When the bus arrived and we hopped on we had the same trouble as we had on our way to work. „Were the hell are we supposed to get off this time?“ Of course we saw our busstation too late and looked quite stupid as it passed by. We then got off one busstation later and luckily we found out that our way was not much further than from the correct busstop.

We still got home quite late (about 7 p.m.) and the last things to do were a bit householding and dinner. After that we hang around a bit longer until we finally went to bed to do about the same thing again next day.

THE END

Well thats it for my first working day. Next time will go into a bit more of a detail about our routes from and to work as well as our points of orientation. Additionally I will talk a bit more about my actual tasks at DCNetworks.

See you then!

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