Sleep!

Man do I like it. I've been told before I could sleep for Ireland! For the last two weekends, I've got pretty much no sleep. Doing this two weekends in a row has been enough to have me sleep in most mornings. My lastest getting into work last week was 9.45am! Take this morning for instance. I only woke up at about 8.35am, and meant to be in work for 9.00am! I didnt go to volleyball last night because of my injury, so I SHOULD have been in bed early, and have gotten a good night sleep, but I didnt.

Instead, I went to bed at about 12.00am. Still, 8 hours sleep should be more than enough for anyone. But not me! And when I did wake up this morning, it took me about 5-10 minutes to actually get out of bed. In my attempt to get myself up early everyday, I have not one, not two, but three alarms. I have my mobile phone, a little alarm clock and my radio. Still, I managed to turn all these off this morning and go back to sleep.

As it turns out, I made it into work for 9.30am this morning. You see, the place I work at is pretty cool, in that nothing has been said to me about this. Instead, all thats required fo me is to work 37.5 hours a week. Once I do these in a reasonable way, then nothing is said. Today, I can go home at 5.30pm because I only took a 30 minute lunch break. The fact I'm spending the other 30 minutes of my lunch break typing this, and putting it down as actual work is besides the point.

I've managed to save myself from another boring night in an internet cafe. I've started uploading the pictures from the intervarsities at work. I thought it wouldnt work because the internet is so slow, but considering I'm at work for 7.5 hours, even the slowest connection would upload them all. Within an hour or so, all the photographs from the varsities and the rest of the Dirty Weekend, should be online here.

For the observant amongst you, I've finished reading Kilo 17 and have moved onto "Globalization and its discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz It gets 4.3 stars out of 5 on Amazon so hopefully its a good one. It quite long and seems quite intense, but it should be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes.

I added "On This Day" linksat the top of every posting, so you can see what happened on that day according to the BBC, Wikipedia and the History Channel. The instructions for adding this can be found here

Well, duty calls. Better get back to work and actually do some!

I Hate Crap Computers!

Well, I hate crap computers! I was at an internet cafe last night uploading the photographs of the intervarsities and chatting to friends online, and then the god damm computer froze on me! I was in the middle of a posting for this when it died. It was a stupid slow Windows 98 that thought about doing everything. I lost possibly the funniest and best ever blog entry in the world EVER! I feel like just giving up now, but something deep inside me is telling me to go on. So I'll "attempt" to recreate my wonderful entry that got deleted.

My weekend was great! I went sightseeing with my friend that came up for the weekend. For those of you waiting with bated (spelt incorrectly?) breath as to whether or not you should come to visit, here's my in-depth review of Dublin: "Good, but not great" We took the Dublin Bus City Tour which was pretty good. Unfortunately, our bus driver "Failte ar bhord, is mise Declan", without any notice burst out into singing some Irish song and was trying to get the whole bus to sing along. To my groans of displeasure, some random Americans attempted to join in, but didnt have a clue of the words or the tune! He was pretty funny and informative, but there isnt a huge amount to be said about Dublin I reckon.

The first major stop of our tour was the Old Jameson Distillery in Smithfield. The tour opened with the guides introducing themselves in Irish. Their pronunciation was pretty shocking and all they said was hello and welcome in Irish, nothing too taxing for them. I'm assuming they just learned it off and couldnt speak a word of Irish, other than that. What completed my slouch in my chair as I regret coming to this was when they said "For those of you who dont know, that was the native Irish language - Gaelic. I welcomed you and introduced myself [as a twit]" I was thinking of just bolting out the door, as things could only get worse, but the lure of a free whiskey at the end of the tour, kept me in that room.

For those of you who know me, I absolutely hate whiskey (Originally "uisce baithe" in Irish, changed to "fuisce" by the English and later became "whiskey" as the introduction video told me! Which by the way was like a video promotion for Bord Fáilte) So, the only thing keeping me there really, was the shame of leaving the tour. Actually, it was pretty good, and the selling of the Irish language as a souvenir was kept to a bearable level. As it turned out, I actually drank the whiskey, all be it totally watered down, and it still didnt taste nice!

The other major stop of the day was the Guinness Storehouse which was excellent. Its a self guided tour, but its actually really well done. The only thing I have against it, is that it isnt Murphys! Still though, the free pint of Guinness (which was pretty poorly poured, considering it was in the place they train people to pour pints and where its brewed) tasted much better than the whiskey. It was pretty much a propaganda museum where they charged you to wear their merchandise, but none the less, probably one of the best tourist attractions in Dublin.

The rest of my weekend, was spent sleeping and not playing volleyball. I went along to a match with UCD Sunday morning against Cork, but there were too many of us there and there werent enough jersies. As it turns out, I'm gonna take a break from volleyball as I've aggrevated my hamstring (thats my excuse for not being first choice on the team!) I'll probably take the next 2 weeks off as there are no matches in the coming weeks.

The highlight of my evening was the internet cafe where I had to deal with CRAP COMPUTERS! Either the guy working there took into account the computer crashed on me, or else he fancied me. Either way, I got a massive €2 discount, making its a sum total of €10 for 2 hours on the internet! I really need to get the internet at my apartment.

Anywho, I better get back and do some work. I must also update my template, as I think the black is a little dull for my loud, bubbly and in your face personality!

Its the weekend!

Well, I've reached the end of my first week as a blogger. Man it was tough. Things are getting better though. I've got the template all sorted so I'm ready to go. I haven't decided what the topic of my blog is yet, but when I do, it'll be fantastic. I may just continue to ramble on and on, but I doubt I'm going to get many hits with that. This would have been great when I was travelling. I've done a load of travelling over the past few years. I was in Boston in the summer of 2002 and travelled all over the States. Last summer I was in New York for 6 months and I was in London this past summer. If I had my blog while I was there I wouldnt have been obliged to send the "once-a-month" group e-mails that everyone hates! Instead, if people cared how I was getting on, they could just log on to this and find out if I was alive or not!

If anyone out there has any suggestions as to what I can have as my main theme of my blog, feel free to let me know. So far I'm thinking of just continuing with my random thoughts with the odd intelligent post. And WHEN (not IF) I go travelling again (which will be really soon!!) I can use this to do what I just mentioned above.

I'm finally going to get to do some sightseeing around Dublin this weekend. I have a friend coming up from Cork to see Dublin, so I'll tag along and get to see Dublin. There's another friend coming in 2 weeks (you know who you are....although I haven't told her the URL of this yet! hehe) so I'm going to do all those cool things again. There should be a load of things to do in Dublin. If you're ever thinking of coming to Dublin for a weekend, dont book the tickets just yet. Wait until Monday when I'll tell you how sightseeing around Dublin is.

One final thing I must do before my blog is complete is to set up photo galleries so you can all see the photos that have been buried on my laptop for the last few years! If you cant wait until then, browse the UCC Volleyball Club Gallery. There are loads of photos of me knocking about there.

Well, I'm meeting my friend in 10 minutes outside Trinity College Dublin so I best be off!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not that I really care or anything, but I suppose I should wish ALL the American people that read my blog a Happy Thanksgiving. I've actually had my most "Thanksgivingish" 4th Thursday of November ever! I went upstairs to the company canteen to see that the entire place was decked out in American flags and bunting. We had the traditional turkey with all the trappings. Even the chefs were wearing American bandanas! The only problem I had with it was it cost €3.25 instead of the usual €2.75. Man that was a bitter pill to swallow. Something that would cost at least €10 anywhere else in Dublin was still a disgusting €3.25 in the company canteen!

Other than that, I love Thanksgiving. I mean it means so much to me! The only background I have to it was told to me last night. Seemingly it was the first dinner the "newbies" in America had with the Indians. And all this happened after some massacre of Indians. (For all of you Americans reading this, feel free to correct my historical summary of Thanksgiving!)

For ALL of you (I say that a lot, don't I?) reading my blog, you'll notice the new and improved blog of mine. I said before that I was looking for a blog that allowed me include what I'm reading, listening to and some links, but I couldnt find anything. Therefore, as a computer genius, I just tinkered with the HTML code and hey presto, I now have a cool section down the right hand side of my page so I can tell the world what I'm reading, listening to or linking to!

Ok, ok. I'm rambling and this is my 2nd post of the day. So, with that, I'm signing off. While millions in America are probably just about to tuck into turkey, I'm heading home from work after a hard day at the office! I really earned my thousands of €uro today I think.

Adios

Ciaran

Another Day In The Office

I went to a Snow Patrol concert last night which was pretty damm good. But the drama that preceeded it was something fantastic. I could be here all day explaining it, so I'll just give the summary!

I was sent four tickets by my sister's boyfriend's friend. However they were sent to Apartment 11 as I think I said yesterday, instead of 111. I called over to apartment 11 and met an old lady who got it on Tuesday, but because I didnt live with her she had it returned to sender! I was like "oh for f*ck sake" I then went back to my apartment and was just about to ring my sister and my friends who were going with me, when the old lady came back and rang my apartment. It turned out that she never posted my letter. She had a bunch of letters that she had meant to send, but she missed out on my one. So I had went from complete despair to ecstacy in the space of two minutes.

So, here I am, in the office again, not exactly busting a gut or anything, but tipping along nicely. I've spent most of my time fixing errors that I didnt create, so its kinda frustrating making little or no progress. Actually, I havent actually progressed anything since last Wednesday. I was flying along doing work until Wednesday, and then I took Thursday and Friday off for the intervarsities. Came back monday and just spent most of my time fixing errors.

I've actually spent quite a bit of time searching around the internet for other blog websites. I've found Typepad.com that looks very good, but you have to pay for it. As I'm still a student at heart, I'm looking for a good free one that allows you do things like "What Am I Reading" or "What Am I Listening To"

If anyone is actually reading this and knows of a good free blog, then let me know. I'm off to go do some work, but hopefully I'll keep up my 2 posts a day record which I so amazingly kept up yesterday!

Blogs

So here I am making my second post of the day, and my second ever post EVER! I think I'm getting ahead of myself with all these posts, but as I've said in my other post, it will probably fall to pieces soon when I get bored.

But for the meantime, I'm enjoying it. Its actually cool having an online journal and people the other side of the world could be getting to know your inner most thoughts without you ever knowing, or they ever meeting you! I've been told before its good to express your feelings and get your thoughts out of your head. Now, it seems like its going to happen!

Well, as promised, here are the other blogs that kinda got me interested in blogging. The first one that I saw yesterday is this one: Laura McKenna - Dublin I was searching for a Dublin internet cafe so I can upload more photos to: UCC Volleyball Club Gallery after the Intervarsities this past weekend, and came across it. It was actually funny and so decided to join in.

The other one I saw on BBC News called "Queen of the Sky" Its pretty interesting that posting a blog on the supposedly free internet can get you fired.

Well, I have to go leave work early to go rescue my tickets for the Snow Patrol concert tomorrow night. My sister's boyfriend's friend posted them to Apartment 11, but I live in Apartment 111! Hopefully the people that live there are nice and dont take advantage of this mistake. The tickets have a face value of about €100, but could be worth that much each as its such a big concert.

Slán

Ciaran

Hello World

Hello World!

For some reason I've decided to jump on the band wagon and have just created my very own blog that will probably be neglected, not be very funny and just one of the 10 million other blogs that are on the internet.

Probably the main reason I set one up was because I randomly came across one yesterday and it was actually pretty funny and interesting just reading peoples thoughts, someone I dont even know!

I've read quite a bit about how online blogs get people into trouble. There was one instance of a Delta air hostess got fired because she posted a picture of herself in ther uniform on her blog. I'll get around to posting some links of the two blogs I've just mentioned, but I'm starving and I need some lunch. I also need to do a few things, namely call up Apple and complain why my iPod has broken again, just a week after they sent it back after being "repaired"

Slán

Ciaran