Yesterday Lawrence gave me a little task to write a macro for Excel that automatically draws a graph based on a .csv file.
It took me a while to get back into VBA its been a while since I used it the last time. But the macro is nearly done only a few pieces are missing to make it perfect. Today before Lunch I had to do a little Presentation about my Company what I’ve learned so far and what I want to learn in the last 3 Weeks. Samantha ordered Lunch for this ’special‘ occasion so we enjoyed some chicken wings, Sandwiches and mini Pizzas for Lunch.
In the Afternoon I continued to write the Macro for Lawrence and tried to help Hans with his Pivottable in Excel.
Autor: René Kopper
Cisco all day
As the title already states I used the last few days to prepare for the NetRiders competition.
So nothing really eventful happens. I didn’t thought the difference between the CCENT NetRiders and CCNA NetRiders would be that big but yeah the CCNA one is definitely way harder than CCENT. Next Tuesday we will see how bad or good I scored finger crossed that its not the last place.
After I attended the NetRiders my Supervisors were supposed to come to visit me but as Martin told me they didn’t have enough time to do so they didn’t come over. So I spend the rest of the day with John he introduced me to the VOIP services KNI offeres. I was supposed to go with him tomorrow on site but I don’t have the Health and safety training I’m not allowed on a ‚construction‘ site.
Halfway trough
Four weeks are over four to go. Its been a good time so far hopefully it continues.
This weekend wasn’t that eventful besides Toni visiting us for the weekend.
On friday we celebrated the german „Herrentag“ the spanish guys above us celebrated a birthday so it was a rather loud Friday. In the evening we wanted to go to a pub but it was rather late and they didn’t let us in. So we headed back home and I went to bed.
On Saturday we showed Toni a bit around the city. But the weather wasn’t great so we didn’t showed him that much.
Today we spend most of the time at home watching movies. In the evening we went to tesco to get some groceries for the week
Site surveys and In-building wireless
On Thursday a co-worker and I went to Micro Focus to do a site survey to see if its possible to put in our lights without any problems and to see what we have to buy to make it possible.
After that I took a look at our pilot project in the Derry City Council to see if we still have any motion detection at times where no one is in.
On Friday I prepared a bit for the CCNA NetRiders next Wednesday. In the Afternoon I did a bit of research for In-building Wireless for a project that we’re working on.
A long weekend and a lot of blueprints
As the title already states we had a long(er) weekend. Monday was a bank
holiday here in Belfast, so most of us had off. My workday on Tuesday
started with processing the time sheets for our workers so they can get
their paycheck.
Later on I continued to estimate the cable length and data outlets for the
Ulster University building BC. I finished 4 of 15 floors on Tuesday. I
continued the estimating today and finished three more floors. After that
I talked to Lawrence about the rest of the Week. He is sending me on a
site survey tomorrow about a (maybe) future Intelligent Lighting
installation. Afterwards I’m going to take look (remotely) at the pilot
project in the Derry city council to check if there are any lights that go
on at a time were they shouldn’t e.g. midnight. So we can replace or
re-calibrate them.
I’m looking forward to doing that. With a bit of luck he might take me
with him to Dublin on Friday. But it’s not written in stone so that could
change.
three weeks over, five to go
Three weeks out of eight are over, it’s nearly half time.
This weekend was not very eventful due to the awesome weather here.
We stayed in our apartments most of the time.
We’re planing to go to the cinema on tuesday to see Godzilla in 3D again for only 3 Pounds since Tuesday is the cinema day here.
Nearly everyone got off tomorrow since its a Bank Holiday here only a few of us have to go to work tomorrow. Which means we got a long weekend and only a short week
Cables and data outlets everywhere
Yesterday I finished the estimation for the Ulster University Block BD.
After I finished that Mark gave me the blueprints for the next Building (Block BC) which got even more floors to measure but I will get through it.
After a little confusion how to split the data outlets between the three comm rooms on floor 01 I started to get an average for each area so that Mark can do the pricing for this part.
This morning I did a little bit of research for Lawrence about a company called Surface Power that offers a product called HONE that uses Nano technology to turn daylight (not sunlight) into energy.
Afterwards i continued to do my measurement for floor 01 of building BC. Shortly before I ended the day Steven showed me how to process the timesheets for our worker so they get their paycheck, since he is on holiday I have to do that for him on Tuesday.
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.
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.
Guests from Germany, a trip to Derry and a lot of measuring
Yesterday Lawrence introduced me to one of the tasks at KNI, which is essential for structured Cabling.
He showed me the blueprints of three floors in the ‚Castle Court‘ that need to be rewired, but before we can do that we have to estimate the data outlets that are needed and the rough cable length.
Lawrenced showed me how they usually run the cables within a building, which is in the middle of a floor and within a room along the wall. So I started to count the needed data outlets I came up with about 1.600 data outlets for all three floors. Afterwards i did a rough measuring of the cable length but during the measuring I discovered a problem there is no Communication Room on Floor 5, so no place to run the cables to. So we have to go to the Site to see if its possible to run the cables to a comm room a floor below. Later that day two teacher from our OSZ came to visit us and talk to me and Lawrence to see how things are going. In evening we met again in a little bar called ‚The Madison‘ to talk a little bit more about our stay here in Belfast. Today we did a trip to Londonderry/Derry. KNI is currently involved in a pilot project within the Derry city council, they refurbished a test floor where they changed the lighting, to a intelligent lighting thats able to react to certain events (movement, daylight) to either dim the lights or turn them completly off depending on the policies that are applied.
After a little tour through the floor and rooms, they had a little meeting to discuss if the project is still on track and if not why. The meeting went well and the project is still within the schedule and on track. But there is no perfect day so of course something had to happen and one of the redwood engines that powers LED had a failure, at this point the energy manager at the city council told us that the CCTV went out as well so we assume that there was power peak and the engine simply didn’t survived it.
Luckily we had a spare engine in our store in Belfast so one of my co-worker made his way up to Derry to replace the engine so the council employees got light when they come back to work on Monday.