Hello everyone,
The days are getting longer here in Dublin. I am awoken these days by sunlight at 8am which is nice on weekdays but not so nice when I want to sleep in on the weekends. It's much better playing soccer in the sun though. these days the sun is setting at about 6:30. At its worst, the sun sets here at 4:30 and at its best it sets at 9:00.
Work is going alright. I had my mid year career discussion last week. It went alright, but I am not on track to get top 20 performer this year. I need to pull an amazing idea out of my ass over the next 6 months to make that goal a reality.
My boss said I need to be taking more training courses. The one that is top of my list is cocoa/obj-c programming training which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany. So hopefully I can get on that course! There is another possible travel opportunity coming up to Seattle as well for some training on a Microsoft tool. It would be nice to do both :)
We are coming up to a major release of mac office 2011. It should be released around August but you never know, it might slip a bit later. So, things are starting to get very busy around the office.
I've been a bit disappointed with how restrictive my new phone is. I couldn't get the paid applications because Google was too slow to setup a payment system for Ireland. So I hacked my phone to fake my location. My phone now thinks it was purchased in USA and I can now buy paid apps through the US payment system. So far so good. I got a very neat application for learning German. It's a fun little game with sounds, words, and pictures much like Rosetta stone for the PC.
My German is going alright. I found myself getting off track for awhile last month. The snag was that I had no metrics for myself as to how much I should be doing per week/month/year and therefore didn't really know how much off track I was. So I decided I should be doing a full lesson per week which usually takes 3 half hour sessions per week. So I setup email reminders ever Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday to remind me to do my German. This way I know exactly whether I am on track or off track. Its worked so well that I have decided to add metrics to all my goals whenever possible. I really recommend using metrics and weekly/monthly/yearly milestones to make sure you are on track with your own goals.
I got a nice little present from the Irish taxman today. I filled out some forms for "Rent relief", which is a tax break for renters. Always nice to get a bit of extra cash.
I miss home ownership. Our house in Kanata is doing so well that I want to replicate that success again. But our lives are in limbo these days because we are not sure how much longer we will be in Dublin. We need to wait to see where Julie will be taking her PhD. She has her eyes on a few schools in the UK at the moment, so it's likely we will be moving to the UK at some point and then settling down there for 4 years at least. I'd really like to get a fix-er-upper. Something that just needs a cosmetic touch but has solid foundation, wiring, and plumbing.
That's all for now.
Cya
