After the month-long holiday, and doing very little excerise & drinking a lot of beer and eating well, I’ve decided I need to hit the gym and loose some weight. I’ve also decided to put it in writing so that I don’t skirt around the issue. So the aim is to loose 10 lbs, 4.4 kgs by the end of February. 
Let’s see how it goes. The final weigh in should be sometime at the end of February.
Author: paul
Missing the Blue Skies
It seems like a world apart from Munich right now. Umbrellas, beaches, sand, water and temperatures over 30C. Well back to work tomorrow ! 
Negril, Jamaica.
Happy New Year 09
Well 2008 has been great, lots of things have happened, but probably the best one is that I will be able to spend more time working for myself (As of next week I will be finishing up with the current client). So BlackDog will be wagging it’s tail into 2009. December has been a great month for me, first there was the winning of Damiens competition, a trip to Charlotte, NC, a week long beach holiday in Jamaica, Christmas in Florida and back in Munich for snow and New Years. Going from +28C to -2C took a little getting used to. Â It was the first Christmas I wasn’t in Ireland, and the first away from my family. 🙁
To be honest it didn’t really feel like Chirstmas, well not Christmas as I knew it anyway. It was a mixed bunch of emotions , missing the family back home, enjoying beers in the sunshine, not seeing the normal bunch of people in Cork over Christmas, meeting some new people and catching up with the Florida clan of Savages. The holiday was a nice break from the crazy world of work, yes it’s been hectic and emotional over the last 4 or 5 months. Taking a 4 week break is probably what the doctor ordered (before I went insane). I am still catching up on emails and enquiries from December, so sit tight if you are waiting on a reply. 😉
So is 2009 the year I do great things ? I hope so. Best wishes to you and your families in 2009 !
And before I forget , here are some photos from last night.
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Right after this these guys started to light fireworks under cars and in the phone boxes. The Germans go crazy at New Years, it’s really quite crazy. Places like Marienplatz are supposed to be like war zones. But we decided to stay home after flying back early yesterday.
More photos to come over the next few days.
How not to get a job
I run a number of jobs websites and it’s funny or sad to see what comes in to the email addresses associated with them. Here is one I got earlier today:
hai this is james mailing form india i watn any job in u r contry i work with any body sponsor is the pls send the mail i am waintng for the mail it very urgent
If I was an employer I wouldn’t look twice at this. I mean there are various reasons why I wouldn’t extend my hand and try to point this guy James in the right direction.
- Poor English : Grammar / Spellings
- No reference to qualifications / background or an offer to send his CV.
And this is beside the fact that I don’t have any jobs that I could offer this lad myself !
There are even people who reply to my jobs blog posts asking me for jobs with the companies I have blogged about. Normally I don’t reply to them, if they are stupid enough to think that I, as a blogger can help them get jobs at SuperValu or a job at IKEA then they don’t diserve a reply. Sometimes people try to paste their CVs in reply to blog posts, but I delete these.
I’m all for new ways of getting jobs, but these routes highlighted here are bound to fail !
Real reviews of businesses ?
In my epic search today for some whole coffee beans (whole coffee beans doesn’t sound right) I came across this review for Cork Coffee Roasters which in my opinion stinks of coming from someone attached to the company. It goes something like this:
It was really good value too, and a great place of breakfast. Inside the café on Bridge Street it’s quite small, but nicely warm and homey. It’s pretty popular, with lots of locals coming in for their morning take-away coffee. All the beans used in the blends here are hand roasted in Cork, and a lot of the pastries on sale are made using only organic ingredients.
Maybe I am just too sensitive to totally positive reviews. It seems like it’s too overdone, what ever you business you have you will have good reviews, and not so good reviews, but you should not try to go out and blatentally try to game these review sites. Someone will see it, and possibly call you out. When looking at Amazon reviews for books and products, you can spot when they are coming from the Authod/someone attached to be product/etc.
And as for their “really good value”, I took a look at their site, for the prices of their beans which they charge from €30 for 1kg (which I can get it for 1/2 the price in Germany), I really wonder how someone could say that it was good value.
Anyone know where one can get some reasonably priced whole coffee beans ?
Interesting Photoblogs
Sometimes you don’t want to read, but you do want to surf and get some stimulus. So here are 2 of my favourite visual blogs
If you have any other recommendations do let me know 😀
Be gone google ads
Today has been a bit of a blog maintenance day. We (here and my other sites based on blogs) are now on the latest wordpress version. And I’ve decided to clean up this blog a little and remove the silly ads. Seeing as noone was clicking on them there wasn’t a real point in keeping them.
Also I’ve reverted back to the default wordpress theme. It seems like I change the theme more often than I post !