Back from a vaguely enjoyable holiday in Crete

Ok, after a fortnight in the sun and relatively un bothered by the phone for a change, I am back in the last of the floods... Alex has been busy while I've been away spending our money on UPSs and arguing with estate agents to no avail, and therefore as our last two #1 choices have officially fallen thru we are planning a long trip over to survey the area again.

More when I've looked at flight prices and the diary...
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UPS s for Nirenet

Courtesy of an offer earlier in the week, we have just purchased two fully redundant 40kva UPSs. They are Digital Energy™ SitePro® UPS's and came at a brilliant price.

While they are not as large as we would have liked, they are fully interlinked and run master-master for complete resilience.

Unfortunately we've had to delay the shipping as the previous premises fell through as I guess you've already read but at least they are ready to ship and as soon as we've moved them to NI, we will order up a complete set of batteries
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Premises Fell Thru

F***** B**** B*******

The estate agents just called to tell us that although our landlord agreed the generators' locations at the rear of his unit, the ground is owned by a communal landlord, who also agreed to the location.
However some of the other tenants have objected as we will be obstructing a fire escape route. This is flipping rich as the generators are large brightly coloured with a compound around them and other units in the same building have fire escape steps, oil tanks, refrigeration equipment, pallets and all sorts of other c**p in the walk way too.

For lord sake, the alley is 4 meters wide and we want to put a 1.5meter deep compound into to.

F******* B****** and B****** more....
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Estate Agents work at the pace of a snail..

Hmm, late on a Wednesday, finding myself sitting here pondering on why estate agents seem to rate timescales in weeks rather than days or hours. I can produce a leased line quote for two sites 200 miles apart in about 15 mins, yet an estate agent takes a week to fax some docs across. Maybe thats why I have so many grey hairs, and she is beautifully preened and manicured etc..
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BT Wireless Service for Belfast

Hmm, I read this morning BT have been flexing the corporate bank balance again and providing over-priced hotspots in Belfast.

While my initial reation was "sausages" (or similar) I've come to the conclusion that is fine. BT will spend a fortune on advertising and raise the public awareness. Then we will bowl in with a solution at half the price, keeping all you lovely folks very happy indeed!

Story below, credit BBC.


Belfast to become a wireless city

Wi-fi connections are becoming more commonBelfast is about to become a wireless city, promising surfing at the touch of a button in the park, bus or street.
BT engineers have completed the installation of wi-fi equipment in the city, following similar schemes in other UK cities.
When the technology is fully live, it will enable people to access high speed wireless broadband from a wide range of locations, the company said.
The move has been welcomed by Belfast City Council.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6286844.stm
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Day 2 property hunting

Ok, after another productive day, we've seen both of our top two properties.

As expected, one is a really nice business park, extremely well maintained and such, and externally looks excellent. However the unit we viewed is very dated inside, and we suspect we would have to spend probably in the order of 10k on the inside to bring it up to scratch. It’s also technically less than ideal having a smaller incoming power supply than the other unit.

The second one is in a major office / industrial area, with a modern mezzanine / office space, with windows overlooking the lower floor where our equipment will be located. It’s quite new, relatively clean (nothing a lick of paint will not fix) and had good facilities for generation and air conditioning. It also has plenty of surrounding business which could well be you! We have to get agreement to place our generator at the rear of the unit yet, but as soon as that is done, we will be signing on it!

Its a refreshing change to view sites with the landlords, rather than the estate agents to be honest as you can find out what they are like and more to the point whether they actually care about their property or are just money grabbing.

As soon as we have a decision regarding the generator and air conditioning we can make a move. Oh and finally this unit also has the added advantage that there are two major carriers already there, and they are ducted down separate sides of the building so we can get a fully resilient wan service with no pinch points and complete diversity. This is excellent news for both ourselves and yourself too!


http://www.nirenet.net/

More Estate Agents and properties

Currently sitting in our hotel after being around some of tomorrows potential viewings at night just to check over the areas, and we think we might have found our goal.

We have short listed two, one is a really pleasant business park and the other is slightly more industrial, but newer. Going to have a beer or two now and ponder on our options.
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Trip to Belfast

Hmm, currently sitting in an airport awaiting a plane to Belfast. Its cold, wet and I'm tired due to getting up at 4.30. Still at least (unlike Alex) I didn't have to get up at 3.30 to make it to the airport.

Will post more later when we are there, but at the moment, we have six sites up for viewing today

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