misc

Sorry for being absent on this blog for a while. Life has been busy but I didn’t really feel like writing about it. Last week another colleague from our Austrian office moved over to join the NY team for at least a while. It feels a little bit like a shadow is following me. When he started his first job he joined a company I worked for and I taught him some development and database stuff. Years later he filled in my position at my current company in the Austrian office when I moved to NY. And now he followed me to NY and funny enough he is gonna live in the same area at least for a while I used to live in when I first came to NY. I think so far he learned a couple of things: Life in NY is faster, choices of decent food are endless, London can not be compared to NYC and communication between different departments that are spread across different continents always appears to be different once you join the other side. But I’m sure he will be able to continue that list. Anyways, welcome to NY, my little shadow!

Although I still officially work for the sales department, I sometimes get pulled into services work again to support those poor guys that are trying to implement our software at the client’s site. Currently I got asked to help at a client in Stamford to support performance tuning which should rather be called on-site QA. Performance-wise today has been quite successful but the sad part is that most of the performance improvements were due to bug fixes on our out-of-the-box packages which made us all wonder how this could pass our internal QA and even more how we should explain that to the client. I guess we will focus on the positive part which is that we are in a good shape from a performance perspective right now although we still have some days of more performance tests ahead of us.

That’s pretty much it for now. Only thing left to mention might be that I have booked my XMas-trip to Austria and really look forward to it. So everyone in the country of the farmers and cows beware: pumsti’s on his way again, haha

As you may have recognized this site was offline for a couple of days. My provider decided once again to change the IP adress and since my “administrators” (my parents ) were on vacation I could not find out the new address remotely and had to wait until they got back home.

Last Monday our company organized to do the Tour through to see the FED gold vault and I didn’t want to miss that. It was an easy commute since the FED is located only 2 blocks away from our office. After the usual security screening and depositing all bags, cameras, cell phones etc, the tour started at the coin exhibition that shows some of the oldest coins from the ancient greece up to the newest coins out on the market. Highlight of that room was definitely the most expensive coin of the world the “Double Eagle” from 1933 which was auctioned off for 7.6 mio USD in 2002. Then we saw a short film about the EROC (the East Rutherford Operations Center) where the Federal Reserve Bank stores the Cash for the districts of NY and NJ since 1992. Before it used to be in vaults above the gold vault in NY city. After the movie the tour continues to the gold vault which is 86 feet (26m) below see level and the deepest basement in Manhattan completely surrounded by rock and holds about approx. 190 billion USD worth of gold. We were walking through the cylindric entry door which locks air- and waterproof and got a glimpse on some of the gold.

There were no pictures allowed but you can find some nice ones here.

However you want to name the latest world wide crises. If its a recession or depression or whatever…I think we all can feel an impact. In NY City it was really visible during February and March since shops/streets and restaurants were completely empty. Places that were filled last year during lunch breaks were nearly empty. Due to all the tourists coming into the city (the EUR/USD fx rate is still nice for European shoppers) during the summer season this got a lot better and streets and shops are now more crowded. Looking at those people carrying full shopping bags (so it seems to me that it’s not just window shoppers) and at the rising stock market you should think that the worst is over and we will see an uptrend in the economy now. My latest experience last weekend shows me that it’s not over yet though. I was craving for Thai food and had to discover that both of my favorite closest Thai restaurants had closed recently. This is just a small example and taken from my recent experience but I’m sure we will still see “out of business” signs until end of this year. And of course there is also a good thing about it. Rents were going down in average and I was able to negotiate mine down a little bit

I think I was kind of lucky for the past 2 years that I never got robbed or mugged in the city although I believe there was a lot of improvement in terms of security over the last 10 years. But yesterday I was reminded that it can always happen to you. Some friends from Austria are in town and they insisted of going to the hard rock cafe on Times Square for dinner which is a very touristy place but since it was their last night in NYC I joined them. But after we finished eating (the food was just alright….), Karin was suddenly missing her bag. We looked everywhere but since we couldn’t find it and she was taking out her camera 15 min before, we were certain that someone must have taken it. We filed a report with the manager who will contact her whenever the bag will appear again but I don’t think chances are very high. Thank god she didn’t have her passport, camera or cell phone in her bag and she already locked her credit card last night. But it wasn’t the nicest way to end a vacation in NYC…