Ryan’s Ramblin’

Think you can do a better job than Dubya? Well check it out here, at the National Budget Simulation. Just messing around with it briefly, I ended up with a 5 billion dollar surplus. I rule!

I am still trying to get used to this damn european keyboard… wtf, ” is shift-2? and @ is shift-’? That is the dumbest setup EVER! And don’t even get me started on the \ key (it’s located between z and left-shift). Oh yeah, and why is ¬ a key that I need easy access to? And instead of giving me a nice big enter key, I have a #/~ key on the home row. Boooo! I don’t want access to the £ key, I want # to be shift-3! Harumph.

Day 3 of work, and I am currently setting up my PC. I spent the last 2 days training on my company’s products, and it has actually been pretty interesting thus far. Our software is pretty impressive, if I do say so, and I’m not just saying that because it now pays my bills Otherwise, not much has been going on. Work, gym, dinner, surf the net, watch some TV, go to bed. Repeat. Nothing to complain about really, I am super happy here and it’s so great to finally be with Liz full time. It was a LONG 10 months without her, I’ll tell you that!

A few more things came to me over the last day:

• The cars here are TINY. I am talking… tiny. Like, a Ford Focus looks HUGE here when compared to the average car.
• Other than Ford, you see VERY few American car brands here. There is a Chrysler Voyager in my neighbourhood, and 2 Neons, but that is about it. Primarily what you see here is Opel, Fiat, Renault, Skoda, Volkswagen (lots), BMW, Seat, and the Japanese makers (Nissan, Toyota, Honda). Oh, and of course Land/Range Rovers. Those are really one of the only SUV brands you will find here in large numbers, and with gas prices where they are (about 1.20 euro/litre) it’s not a big surprise.
• Motorcycles here act like they have the right of way - if there is a huge line of cars at a light, a motorcycle will just zip up on the other side of traffic in order to get in front of them all. It’s actually a little bit crazy

I think that’s it for now… I thought I had more but I always forget them when I get home.

I’ve been here in Dublin for 2 weeks now, and I find myself at least once a day saying to Liz “You know what I’ve noticed is different here?” - I mean obviously, there are a TON of really noticeable differences, like cars being on the “wrong” side of the street, etc. But there are tons of little differences that I’ve noticed, so here’s a bit of a list:

• No recycling bins. Anywhere. And even the garbage bins are sorta few and far between
• Construction EVERYWHERE. Houses are being renovated, buildings being built in town, etc
• EVERYBODY has a cell phone. Sorry, “mobile”. If you’re over 8 years old, you have a mobile phone, almost guaranteed.
• The weather is SO RANDOM. One minute it will be cloudy and gloomy, the next it is sunny and warm!
• People here drive like MANIACS.
• Pedestrians completely ignore any and all traffic signals.
• All of the wildlife here is different. The birds are different, the rodents are different, you name it!

That about sums it up for the moment, I think… I come up with new observations all the time though, and I’ll be sure to document them as I do, because I am a bad, lazy blogger and I need material!

So, apparently Britney has given birth to a healthy baby boy. And rumours are that she is going to name him… Preston??? Wtf, that name is almost normal! Britney, you have to keep up with the times - celebrities are giving their kids STUPID names now!

I’ve been here 11 days… Where has the time gone? But get this - I already found a job! That’s right baby, 2 recruiter interviews, 2 company interviews, and I received the offer this morning. Wahoooo! I won’t name the company, because I don’t want to get Dooced, but I am VERY happy with the position I’ve been offered, and the benefits are outstanding. And the location really can’t be beat either, so I am a very happy camper. I really never expected to find anything this quickly, but I guess I was wrong! This is the last really big thing that had me worried about coming here. Yay! I start on September 26th. So much for being a lazy layabout.

So, I’ve got my first interview with a company here in Dublin today. I’m a bit frazzled with nerves, slept horribly, but I’m super enthused about it. The company seems really great - a great product, a good client base, and great technology that really caught my interest when I spent an hour or so going through their website. So, wish me luck folks! Although most of you aren’t even awake yet.

Wow, have I been here for 5 days already? That’s insane. The time is going by SO FAST! So here’s what I’ve accomplished this week, in no particular order:

• Spent tons of time with Liz (yay!)
• Got internet set up at home on Wednesday, which nicely comes with its own wireless DSL modem. Saweet!
• Saw WAY more ads for Jamster, Ringtone King, and the like. These are only JUST starting to catch on in Canada (text message for jokes, etc) but you are guaranteed to see at LEAST one, if not two commercials for one of these things during every single commercial break on any of the music channels (hrmm, aiming our marketing at kids, are we?)
• Spent tons of time with Liz (yay!)
• Sent my resume to many many recruiters
• Had a couple recruiters get angry with me for sending my resume to so many of them - you see, every recruiter has just about all the same jobs, so when they call you up and you’ve already had another agent send in your resume for every job that they have, it’s pretty much guaranteed they won’t be getting your commission
• Interviewed with two different recruitment agencies
• Spent tons of time with Liz (yay!)
• Got big blasters on the heels of both feet after running for the bus in my brand new dress shoes (ouch!)
• Scheduled one in person interview
• Had my resume submitted to at least 10 different companies.
• Spent tons of time with Liz (yay!)
• Worked for my old company every day as well
• Went to a useless orientation for SWAP - yes, I already have a place to live and a cell phone and I know how the bus works and I am already looking for work. There was about 6 minutes of useful information for me in that hour+ long orientation. Grrr. It’s really aimed more towards the 21-22 year old recent college grads looking to spend a year partying and working at a pub. Oh well.
• Spent tons of time with Liz (yay!)

That about sums it up. Went to see The Island yesterday - I dunno why everyone keeps saying that this is so horrible, I quite enjoyed it. Ok, yeah, there were a few plot holes, but come on now - it’s a movie about clones bred for organ harvesting. If we can suspend our disbelief enough to swallow that giant nugget, certainly we can look past the fact that a transport truck loses an entire load of train wheels (incidentally, the trains run on what look like some sort of hover technology, why are we still making train wheels? Or were they going to the junkyard?) and the driver doesn’t even flinch. Incidentally, some great smash-em-up scenes there.

Finally, *finally* caught up to all my bloglines feeds. Yikes! And it is rainy and 15 degrees today, Ryan is not happy. I want sunny and mid-20’s back! Hope everyone is doing great over on the other side of the pond

Liz forwarded me this one, pretty hilarious:

Here I am at the Garda National Immigration Bureau office. I was told I need to register here, what a pain in the butt. Oh well, it’s gotta be done right? Very typical government immigration office, I must say - crying babies, a whole lotta non-english speakin folk, and very uncomfortable chairs. Oh yeah, and big long lines. Not to mention a bunch of government officials sitting behind their desks, chatting away, DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Hi, I’m waiting here!!!

This is day 2. I slept in till 1:30 today, I guess that flight took a little more out of me than I thought it did. Oh well, this is really the only big thing I had planned to do today - I was going to stop by the local SWAP office (which is actually the USIT office) for my orientation but that was at 11am. Whoopsy. I’ll stop by there on my way out of the Garda office (it’s just down the street) and book myself into the one for Wednesday. Othat than that, just have to go pick up an electrical transformer, a hammer, some cleaner for my electric razor, and get a key cut. Oh, and meet Liz at 5:45 for some little errands. Fun!

I must say, I can’t complain about the weather today. Yesterday was a bit chilly, but today it is sunny and somewhere in the mid 20’s. I had better enjoy it while I still can, because I doubt it will last long!

I’m sitting at gate 84, Terminal 1 in Heathrow, watching BBC News 24 on a nice big plasma TV. Just as I sat down, the news-guy asked the following question: “So tell me, how is it that to combat the binge drinking epidemic, the government has given them even longer to get smashed at the pub?”

You’d just never hear that kind of hard hitting journalism in North America

So, here I sit in seat 17K on my way to Dublin. It’s starting to sink in, a little, bit, I think. I’m actually moving to Ireland! I have to say, I’m glad I shelled out the extra cash to fly British Airways as opposed to, say, Air Transat. I’m currently watching some random movie with Christian Slater and Selma Blair, but I love having the ability to choose what movie I want to watch. Sadly, the movie I want to watch is Kicking and Screaming, which is a bit busted. Oh well.

You may have noticed the name change on the blog. Or not. I’m aiming to blog a lot more in the future - detailing my job search, life in Dublin, the current state of my liver (those Irish, they know how to drink!). I’ll probably write up another entry when we get closer to our destination, but for now, I guess that does it! Ryan’s Ramblin’, indeed!