Since Last I Saw You

Since last I saw you
My heart didn’t beat
My tears kept on running
And my soul did weep

For your beauty is perfect
pure and divine
Oh if I could only
forever sit by your shrine

I would sit there and be
Till the end of all time
For that end would be also
– I’m sure of it – mine

After the weekend in Connemara, I had to call in sick on Monday because I woke up with a headache and nausea that made it hard for me to even write the emails to the different offices that needed to be informed. I lay in bed the whole day drinking tea and water and sleeping in between. I only had to take one Ibuprofen in the morning, though. I consider this good because I don’t really like being on painkillers.

I went to work on Tuesday and had new/further tasks to perform concerning SDs network infrastructure. I’m still tasked with the documentation but my work concerning switch documentation is mostly done and all that’s missing are the desk numbers and respective ports in use. Now I was asked to also create a new diagram showing the network layout. Now, you’ve seen the pictures; it’s a hell of a job, figuring out what goes where and what is what in the first place.

All the while, I’m also still fumbling around with my virtual environment and I want to get the most out of it because I might have to know my way around it later. I actually didn’t do much – if anything – concerning the virtualization today. I was busy making my way through cables and switch configs because another side project of mine, is to teach Eamonn the ways of the force… uhm the cisco switch cli.

I fear I won’t have enough time to finish even one of my main projects before my time here comes to an end. It’s almost mid-term and I’m looking forward to our trip to Derry-to-Galway-to-Derry-to-Dublin this weekend.

Well, good night!
Angelo

Every cloud has a silver lining

Hey everyone,

yesterday I celebrated my birthday with my host familiy.
The bought a little cake with candles on it.
They are so polite and I was very happy that they noticed that.
The weather here in Dublin alternates between sun and rain so fast. The last days were unfortunately rainy and cloudy.
Only on one day the weather was very warm and sunny
so I decided to visit the botanic garden in the west of Dublin.

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Ryan came with me and he showed me also the big graveyard in Glasnevin. It is the biggest graveyard in Ireland and looks so amazing. We seen the grave of Daniel O’Connell. He was an Irish political leader and campaigned for Catholic Emancipation. His grave is beneath a round tower.

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After that we went to the city centre and had a lunch there. Ryan was looking for a tattoo parlor. We strolled through the little side streets and Ryan made an appointment in the tattoo parlor.

Afterwards we took the bus, drove home and enjoyed the cloud-free evening.

Yours George

Ireland Is Ridiculous

…ly beautiful!

Seriously, this country must be photoshopped. I took a lot of pictures this weekend, none of which will actually be able to show any of the beauty of this place. You cannot capture this on film, canvas or keep it in your memory for long. I am very sad because that last part becomes so brutally clear to me now.

My alarm went off at 5am on Saturday. I washed up, put my hiking boots on and started walking towards city center at 5.50am. It was raining that day and I took out my umbrella to try and keep my backpack dry. I wasn’t very successful and in the end, all my stuff was wet – not dripping wet but wet nonetheless.

The bus left Dublin city center around 7.25am and we arrived in Westport just shortly before 11.30am. We had a guided tour through Westport and an hour for lunch afterwards, where we bought food and drinks for the evening. We then left for Croagh Patrick, the mountain that Saint Patrick allegedly sat around on for quite some time, quite a while ago. The hike to the first level already had me completely drenched but not from rain but from sweat. It was very beautiful up there and I would have loved to go all the way to the top but that would’ve taken at least another hour and a half and we didn’t have that much time. When we were back at the bottom and left Croagh Patrick, our goal was to reach Kylemore Abbey at 5.30pm to have a 20min tour through the Abbey. We didn’t quite make it but still had the tour with another guide, after which we visited the garden and the little chapel.

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When we arrived at the Sleepzone hostel, the view was absolutely stunning. The hostel itself is located at the Killary Harbour, a fjord connected to the North Atlantic. And again I’m devastated when I think about how much beauty was simply lost when I look at my pictures now.

I had a couple of beers after dinner and went to bed at 3am in the morning. My alarm woke me up at 7am and I washed up and went to see if the sunrise looked as amazing as the sunset of the day before. My expectations were greatly outdone by what I saw and I was certain that my eyes weren’t worthy of the sight that sat before me. I’m not ashamed to say that it brought tears to my eyes and I will always remember this moment though the images will fade from my mind eventually.

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Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. ~Edgar Allan Poe

Detailed look at my data center visit

Last week on Monday Amit and I had to deploy a new Hyper-V server in our rented space in a data center in the industrial district of Dublin. It was a Dell Power edge we configured the week earlier. So Amit came to my desk and said we have to go, so we head over to our small server room in the office and get our server. We went down stairs and to my astonishment we went to the street and waited there. I looked over to him doubtful and he said he called a taxi. I was really surprised. So when the taxi finally came we deployed the server in the trunk and got in. Unfortunately Amit forgot to take the mount rails with him so we had to turn after a quarter of the route and Amit ran up the stairs and packed the rails. The ride was nice i got a good look on the south west of Ireland. So we arrived at the data center that looked more like a garage from the outside but with high tech in the inside. Inside was a security guard at the reception that had a look at his face that said „I want to quit my job“. We had to give him our ID cards and got access cards for the doors. We had to go through a big tube that „Scanned“ us. I don’t know how and what it scanned because it could not be metal since i got the hole server in my hands. After that we got into the server room. We have 2 rented racks in it and Amit showed me both. Then we deployed the rack and asked a coworker that does home office if everything is OK with the connection. After that we we got in the lounge and drank a coffee. Then we wanted to go home and quit a bit early, unfortunately Amit got a mail on his phone that one of our clients domains went down. After plenty of calls at domain hosters we found out that they contract just expired and they didn’t renew it. So we decided to went home. Of cause we got back to the city center with a Taxi and Amit got out earlier at the rail station and gave me the money for the taxi driver. And after that i enjoyed my end of the day.

A new week

Im looking forward to the new week. My co-worker said there some projects we have to do this week. So im really looking forward to this since there wasn’t that much to do in the last weeks. It’s hard to get much work or problems (that get work) in a company with ~20 employees. Most are server projects but i can’t go on my own since the company got strict security guidelines. So i hope there is plenty of work this week.

Clontarf and Fairview

The weather was really nice today so i decided to walk to the city centre. On my way i got to the Clontarf Road, a long road that goes among Clontarf.2014-05-25 12.38.182014-05-25 12.39.05

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Really nice to walk there and a beautiful view. Later on my walk I came across Fairview, its the district under Clontarf. There is the Fairview park thats probably the biggest part of Fairview.

 

A caring weekend

Hey everyone,

yesterday we had a few problems with the network in our company. Jonas and I tried to fixed it, but after some troubleshooting we expected that the issue is out of the „Computer Factory“. In the evening Jonas, Toni and I walked to „The Stages Head“ pub and enjoyed the Irish live music. The atmosphere was awesome because after a few hours the pub was full of people and everyone talked to each other, sung and laughed. We stayed there until the pub closed and took a taxi to get home dry. Today Paul and I bought some beans, eggs, bacon, bread and sausages for a typical Irish breakfast. It tasted awesome. Paul invited four of his friends for the breakfast and after that we had a nice and funny conversation. I relaxed the rest of the day and spent some time on the Internet to talk with my family and friends.

Yours George

Dublin Staff Relay and Where To Find Me

Thursday was a very nice day. I’ve started playing around with one of the servers here that is not in the productive environment of SD and set up a couple of virtual machines. It’s nice to see, that I haven’t forgotten everything that I’ve learned in the Windows seminar in my first year. I was able to set up an active directory, DHCP and DNS and was fumbling around with users, groups and respective policies.

At around half past four in the afternoon I set out with Linda and Genevieve towards Phoenix Park and the Dublin Staff Relay. The drive there was crazy because the traffic was unbelievably bad and there was one particular funny/exciting moment, when Linda drove up the bus lane all the way to the next intersection and when we were waiting there to cross the road, sirens came out of nowhere. We both thought that we were busted but when an ambulance came around the corner, we laughed delightedly at the daring maneuver and that we got away with it. However, we were still pretty short on time so Genevieve jumped out of the car and ran for our tent with the runner’s numbers and we tried to find a parking spot somewhere. After a couple back-and-forths, Linda found a spot on an adjacent field that was accessible from the road. We carried drinks and food towards the tents, looked for ours for about 10 minutes and set everything up, when we finally arrived. We were surprised to see, that we were actually sharing a tent with quite a lot of other companies like Mitsubishi and Europcar.

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I didn’t really see a lot of the running but that was fine as I got to talk to the people instead. We had a couple of beers in the tent and most of us went to the pub afterwards. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones to have that idea and the pub was crowded, so we had to stand around with drinks in hands. It was a very nice evening and I talked to pretty much everybody that came to the run. I have to remember to buy the next round when we go out again because I was freeloading 3 drinks and I don’t want that to pop into people’s minds when they think about me. 😉

I was given a ride home by another colleague and went to bed at around 12 o’clock. Needless to say, this morning was far from being a good morning. I stayed in bed as long as I could and actually even longer than I should have, had breakfast, filled my water bottle and left after already having missed the first bus. Fortunately, I was still quite early and the office stayed quiet till well after 9am.

I’m also going to go home early today because I have to wash my clothes for next week as I will leave Dublin tomorrow morning for Connemara. I’m very excited about that as you must know! J

Seeing as I will get a visit next month, I will follow end this post with a short description of where to find System Dynamics.

The River Liffey cuts Dublin into 2 parts. Close to the harbor mouth, the „recently“ built Samuel Beckett Bridge spans from Sir John Rogerson’s Quay over to the North Wall Quay. The first thing you notice about the bridge is the shape it has. The Beckett Bridge looks like a harp and is easily distinguishable from any other bridge in Dublin.

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When you get closer to it, no matter on which side of the Liffey, you will see that O2 has an office building right next to the bridge. On the bottom right of that building, there is a passage that leads you to Whitacker Court and if you turn left the door into the building will be on your left hand side. It’s of no use to describe the rest because you won’t get past that door unless the woman down there buzzes you in. I found out that she is not really the door opener for the building but belongs to another company in the building and she also seems to leave that front desk fairly often.

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Cheers,
Angelo

One is not enough

Hey everyone,

the third week is nearly over and it doesn’t get boring. In the last two days I organized a lot of stuff for the stockholder, the PXE-Server and WSUS.

I cleaned the whole office and built a nice bench for our WSUS and PXE project.
A workmate and I installed all cable in the office so that it is easier to test the incoming hardware and to operate on the desks. We also repaired an old printer. The printer is now working on both workplaces and the Cisco switch is also connected to our servers and works fine.
We are looking forward to create a domain and test a very nice tool for the pxe installation.
I examined our network „rack“ and was horrified. It does not look as bad as the racks in Angelo’s company but now i understand a little how he felt while he tried to took apart the mesh.
Beastly job..

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We also finished the „6-monitor-build“ for the stockholder and gave him a little
presentation how it looks like.
The PC works nearly noiseless and don’t need too much space.

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The next project will be a little PCs which support between 10 and 12 monitors.
I am glad that I have the opportunity to pursue my interests.

 Yours George

Hyper-V „Server“

Doe to the fact that we use Hyper-V as virtualization solution, I build a Hyper-V „server“ myself today. And i say server in quotes because we only had a Dell Core 2 Duo PC left for testing. I was lucky that it got 4 GB RAM and it ran surprisingly well. But i had some problems that the system center that is used to manage the VMs only works in a domain with a domain admin and I can’t add the V-server to the company domain. So i build my own. And like I said it ran astonishing good.