Hi everyone!
Tim managed it for us to get better working conditions. So next week we can finaly start to do some IT work. Our task will be to set up multiple training rooms for the new hired people and we also get to work with Macs and some network related stuff. All in all I am really looking forward to that. Also there is a thing that is constantly bothering me this week. I am so sleepy. Everytime I got home I go to bed. I don’t know why but even after getting up I am still tired. One time I slept like 17 hours. I hope that will change in the next time.
Monat: Mai 2014
Not a smooth start in the week
On Monday I continued to estimate the data outlets and cable length in ‚Castle Court‘, I needed half the Day to finish that task.
After my lunch Mark (another Mark!) gave me a new task, to estimate the data outlets and cable length in the Ulster University on 9 Floors. I also have to estimate the cable length for the CCTV and access control
in the university. On Tuesday I was halfway through the estimation for
the data outlets and the cable length for them.
Later that day we decided to make some burger and suprisingly it worked better than expected. We were a little bit concerned due to our awesome pans that got a nice little dent in the middle therefore are only getting hot in the centre. This morning Mark and I took a look at my measurements and the blueprints for ‚Castle Court‘. As we went through my measurements and the blueprints we realised that we have a little problem the cables are too long (over 90m). And without any additional information or a site visit we’re can’t solve that problem. But we can’t do a site visit so we had to do a lot of assumtions for the pricing of that job. We will see how that goes.
After having lunch and a little chat with my co-workers I continued to do the measurement for the Ulster University. I finished the measurement for the data outlets, tomorrow I’m going to finish the estimating for the CCTV and access control. And hopefully I won’t encounter any problems.
Surprise surprise!
The last days passed very fast. I had to do a lot of work and my boss decided, that my workmate and I must develop a new network infrastructure in the next weeks. The reason is that the location is a new place of the company. The company has a functional network but he needs different subnetwoks for different functions. I also assembled a few PCs for customers with special requirements and wishes. I prefere such tasks, because I love to deal with hardware.
The warehouse is full of hardware and Peter(my boss) told me, that I can use every item that i need for my tasks. I found a lot of Cisco equipment which is in a good condition. I was suprised that I found such devices in a warehouse full of „old“ hardware. It is also a good training for me to configure Cisco routers and switches, because I am looking forward to pass the CCNA exam in a few weeks.
Who knows what I will find in the next days.
Your George.
Getting Ready
Monday was kind of a slow day. I was still stuffed from Sunday evening because Eamonn (my host dad) made potatoes and potatoes and beans and a few more potatoes and fish and soup. He also talked me into having a pint of Guinness with him and later when I complimented him on the food, he slipped me another pint. I had a really bad night that night because my stomach was aching in almost every possible position that I tried to sleep in (and there aren’t really that many sleeping positions). I did have breakfast, although I didn’t think I could fit anything in that morning. Work was good, as I put a couple of cables in place, to replace some of the old patching and worked on the documentation of the whole thing some more. I got offered a server to install a couple of VMs to try whatever I liked and I love the opportunity to try that out some time this week.
Today, I switched some of the ports and so far nobody complained. I guess I will take that as quiet confirmation of my good work because nobody affected was actually aware that I have changed things. I also had to “fix” a printer earlier today. The Lady at the front desk changed the toner and after that the printer got hung up on the idea that it would be cool to process the job using the manual tray. There was no paper in that tray, naturally. So I did what the printer asked me (or anyone who would be willing to listen) to do: push the “OK”-button to use another tray. I did that and the printer was happy to oblige and print to the end of all days or at least till it runs out of toner again.
People here are getting ready for the Dublin Staff Relay on Thursday which I will attend to help with the organization because I can’t really run 5k in much faster than 45 minutes and I believe that’s just not going to cut it. I still like the fact that I’m being invited to all those company events. The staff here tries to maintain an internal social network which is an awesome idea because as I explained some time ago, most of the people working for System Dynamics don’t really get to see each other when they’re on-site with the clients.
After work today I went to O’Connell Street to one of the many camping/outdoor shops there and bought a pair of hiking boots, for ~70€, for my tour to Connemara this weekend and also the upcoming company hiking event I will attend in the first week of July. I’m very excited about this weekend and I hope that the weather will turn out nice so I can take lots of pictures of Ireland’s wildest region for you guys… Or no pictures and just enjoy the hell out of it 😉 we’ll see 😛
Take care
Angelo
next week schedule
For the next week my schedule at Speechstorm is going to be to find out how the grammar structure which is already in place could be modified to fit into the other upcoming projects. I already wrote a detailed overview about the differences which are crucial to the development of the project. A good example is that if someone in Spain is telling you to take the bus in southern america this could be understood as humping the bus. Finding such differences is very important as many people could get upset by finding out that a similar but not equal language is used just for the purpose of not doing that extra bit of work. Obviously Speechstorm is taking this effort and I am more than happy to contribute to it.
My work experience: Firday
Hi everybody!
Now I am going to talk about last friday and what we experienced. The thing is that friday nearly half of the building is empty because there aren’t so much people working at friday. Thats means that we also have less to do at work. We had nearly a three hours break because there was nothing to do at that time and when we worked it was just finishing the other tasks from the days before. So yeah we also asked Peter if we could get more IT related tasks to do but he toled us that this is not his desicion and we have to wait another week or two to get better tasks. After work I went to the Victoria Centre tand took a nice view over Belfast even if the weather was not so good.
Two weeks over, six to go
This weekend was a pretty boring weekend we didn’t do that much. We went to the city centre even though everything is opened on saturday and sunday its only till 6pm which was bad for us because we decided to go at 7pm. So we arrived at the city centre everything was closed but before we headed back to our accomendation we decided to walk through the market that they put in front of the city hall. The theme of the market was food from around the world you could find everything from german food to food from africa, we bought some german sausages before we went back home.
Today we went to tesco and iceland to buy food and water for the next days/week.
I’m looking forward to the next 6 weeks.
Friday on Concentrix
On Friday Peter took me over to the Concentrix branch in inner Belfast. We’ve had loads of work
to do there and he arranged a meeting with Marc from the Technology department of the firm,
so that they could get us to know better. We’ve talked about my background and what’s
the stuff I usually work on in Germany. Marc was very kind and told me that he will talk
to David who’s the leader of the helpdesk and development part of the Tech. Dep. so that we
can get some more IT related tasks. When I finished talking to the people Peter took me around the building and we decorated some walls with the firm principles, world maps and clocks.
After a short lunch break which I took in a nice Greece restaurant which offered meals for cheap prices, we had to relocate some lockers into other floors so that people can store their valuables safely. The firm has got a hot desk principle which means that one usually never stays at one desk
for longer then one day, you can log in and start working wherever you are. In the afternoon
we had to clean up a room on the first floor and when we’ve finished Peter took me back to the Lesley Exchange building to meet up with Eric and Max. All in all my first week on Concentrix was okay. We hope to get some different tasks soon, but David will call us back during the next week so lets see what we can expect for the next time.
Nightlife in Dublin
The weekend has been pretty eventful. The evening at the „Karma Stone Bar“ was great and the music was good, but all in all a little too noisy. We stayed until the Bar closed and Ryan drove us home after the night, as we planned.
On Saturday I spent most of the day relaxing and getting some sun since the weather was surprisingly warm and nice for Ireland. In the afternoon I went for a walk and took a look at the stores around my neighborhood. It’s very convenient to have them close by in case I need anything fast. My “Hostdad” and my “Hostbrother”came home really late, it was already 2 am when they arrived. They have been at an event all day and brought friends with them when they came home.
The party went on until 6 am. Today I prepared everything for work, cleaned my room and did my laundry.
First week on Concentrix
Peter who’s still responsible for us and our work in the
company is very busy so he couldn’t observe us the whole time.
So Eric, Max and me were given several tasks to accomplish on our own.
He has (like all local people I’ve met there and here) a strong Belfast dialect
which is at times pretty unique. That and the fact that the people speak very fast
sometimes make it hard to follow conversations, but I slowly adapt to the
normal day english. In the Lesley Exchange building on the 2nd floor was an improvised
storage section which was pretty messy. It seems like all departments of the company
tucks their stuff away there and forget about it, so it was our job to tidy it up
and rearrange all the things neatly and organized. It was very time consuming but
we were able to manage that on Wednesday. After we had finished we were told
to drill brackets off the left side of the desk and drill it again to the right side of it.
Because there were many of them (and still are) this was (besides some smaller ones) our main task for Thursday, too.