daily life

Being able to work anywhere

- paul

There is a lot to be said for being able to work anywhere around the world. Today I find myself in Kilkenny town in Ireland, and overlooking the river Nore and the local castle. We are staying in the Kilkenny River Court Hotel, which is quite nice, and not too far from the train station here. Here is a look of the view across the river this morning.Killkenny Castle & River Nore
Since starting to work for myself I can’t really complain with where I’ve traveled to and the work schedule. I guess the main thing is that you need to be well organised, so that you know you have everything you might need to work out of a hotel room.

 

After lunch I took a trip to St. Canics’s Cathedral ,  who have a nice public round tower from 1285AD ! Here I am at the top.

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Time for New Years Resolutions

- paul

I am not really a person for NYR (New Years Resolutions), as I believe that you can make conscious changes at any time, and it doesn’t just need to be on Jan. 1st. So here are mine, 3 weeks into Janurary.

  • get in shape, well not that I am over weight, but I do think that I need to tone up a little
  • have a more regular working schedule. Start at 9am and finish at 5pm or earlier. 
  • go to at least 3 new countries. South Africa is already planned in March, so I just need to find 2 more. 
  • to stop buying new domains, the plan is to develope the existing ones (about 30) before I go  further. 

So there I have it in writing. 

P.S. The domain here is still being setup properly so do let me know if there is anything askew.

Hello world (again)!

- paul

Welcome to the new domain, and now it’s on a new server also. This blog is running on Blacknight’s hosting service . Moving domains, and to new hosts is actually an easy enough service, and if you do it correctly, there shouldn’t be any negative effects on your SERPs. WordPress offers a nice tool for exporting settings, users, posts and comments, so transfering the content is really quite forward. You’ll find it under the Tools section on the left hand side of your WordPress control panel. 

When transfering the domain, you will need to create a new database on the new server, and then populate this with the contents of your export. Also you will need to setup things again like permalinks, but once you have done that you are ready to go. In all it took about 25 minutes to move to the new domain and the new host.

Setting some goals

- paul

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.

Happy New Year 09

- paul

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.  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

- paul

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 !