blog.bocsite.com

Well I have finally put some more photos of our life on-line. To have a look just go to my site and have a look at the menu.

For a sneak peak here is one of the shots of our apartment.

I went down to the shop the other day to buy some food for dinner and came home with broadband. Well Ireland certainly has changed.

What I got was a little box with a Clearwire wireless modem. You just plug this baby into your computer Ethernet port and away you go. From moment of purchase to surfing the net I’d say there was a very expectant 15 minutes.

The service has been good so far and for the ease of purchase, instant activation and setup I have to say the cost of Euro 30 per month for the first 6 months is fair. It will go up to Euro 40 per month after that. For my money I have an alleged 2MBPS connection and a 20GB download limit per month. This will drop back to 1MBPS and 10GB after the 6 months. I am also hoping that competition might mean that the playing filed might change.

If anyone that knows me is going to get Clearwire please let me know first because I can get a month rental for Euro 1 if I refer anyone

I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes…

Laptop. My super sister donated an old laptop to me and I have wiped it and it is now a dual boot running Win 98SE and the excellent and easy to install for Linux n00bs like me Ubuntu .

I have learned a lot in the last 2 weeks and have most of the programmes, or even better open source or GPL versions, running under Ubuntu. All I’ll say folks is secure and virus free web browsing is at last in my grasp and mostly for free.

We have finally moved into our own apartment in Dublin near where Gwen works and close to the Luas and really close to the Dundrum Town Centre as well, much to Gwen’s delight. It’s a lovely one bedroom apartment fully furnished. We moved in last Thursday and at this stage have moved all our bits in and are loving it. Not living out of a bag is great. So is having your own space

If anyone wants to post us anything just email me and I’ll give you the address.

Well I fooled em!! And I am being teed up for the 2nd interview next week. Now must get back to geeking up

I have been on the move using various computers for about a month. I have had the pleasure of using Portable Firefox, Portable Filezilla, Portable Skype, Portable GAIM and now Portable Thunderbird. All running from my USB drive. It’s great just sit at a machine, plug in your USB drive and you have everything you normally use and you can take it all with you as well. Go Portableapps

Just a quick thanks to Matt for a brilliant spellchecker that works in Wordpress.

To get the info just go to Matt’s excellent blog.

First off, apologies for no recent updates. It has been a hectic time.We have arrived in Ireland. The weather is improving and we have even had a few days of sunshine Gwen has a job at Originate and we have found a place to live in Dublin. As Gwen has been working she hasn’t seen much of the sun…

All is going well I hear you mumble to yourself BUT there is one small part of the near perfect equation missing. I have not secured employment yet. Yes that’s right I am a bum, a lazy good for nothing. Worse than that I am actually a kept man. I send my poor fiancée off to work every morning safe in the knowledge that she will keep the wolf from the door…

Well not quite. I am making a concerted effort to look for work and I have even had a first interview with a large company that you will all know. I will let you know if I fooled them into thinking I was any good or if there is a deafening silence from their head of HR. I suspect the latter might possibly be the case but it is all good experience. I am pursuing other means as well. In Ireland this means getting in touch with everyone you know and asking them if they know anyone looking for an IT whiz. Or something like that.

Later my good buddies…

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know that I have uploaded the photos of our travels to my website.

They are on the main menu so you might need to flush your cache to see the new ones.

There photos there from Oz, Thailand and a few from London as well.

Enjoy

Brendan : See Gwen I told you it wasn’t that cold here.

Gwen : Yeah, I see what you mean. Why are you turning blue Brendan?

Brendan : Hmmm it could be because we have just come from Koh Samui, Thailand to Heathrow, England and it was 34 degrees there but it’s 4 degrees here and I am standing here in shorts and a t-shirt. Hold on (sounds of rucksack being opened and clothes being ruffled noises) That’s better!

Gwen : Yeah but you do look a little silly with ALL your clothes on…

This is basically what happened (with a bit of humour thrown in for those that didn’t spot it) when we arrived. At first I was actually trying to put a brave face on, but it froze like that and when it did eventually melt I covered it up but not after catching a cold first.

Gwen was wise and went out and bought a hat, scarf and gloves immediately and managed to fend off the cold for a week, but the persistent little bugger eventually got her.

Being here is like a double edged sword for me because it is great being this side of the world where my family is but it is bloody cold. Ok I will stop going on about the cold once you get the idea it is really cold here and the wind cuts through you. I had forgotten this…

We made our way to Clapham Junction and made my sister Gillian’s place our home for the next week thankfully.
Gillian and Dave (here Kiwi bloke he he he) and Gwen and I all went out and got nicely pissed on Cuban coctails and then had some lovely Argentinian steak in a Lonon Resteraunt. How cosmopolitan are we?
We did some sight seeing as well notching up The London Eye, Big Ben, Covent Garden, The Houses of Parliment, Dali World, Picadilly Circus, Leiscester Square, Buckingham Palace and I am sure others…

We had a great time and Gillain and her flatmates were very good to us and made us feel welcome. Dave did his bit too and supplied some alternative accomodation for Gillian so we could have her lovely double bed, how nice of them to do that .