We finally decided on our itinerary for our four days in Ireland at the start of April - two nights in Kilkenny, then two in Dublin. Booking accommodation in Dublin is a huge pain, since we're there on a weekend. Initially we were deciding between a one-star hotel for €80 per night, a couple of bed and breakfasts for €100 per night, and the Hilton for €110 per night. It's somewhat surprising that the Hilton was one of the cheapest hotels available.

Somewhere in the 24 hours between looking at what was available and deciding on the Hilton, Hilton increased their prices to €135 per night. Bastards. Luckily, one of my work colleagues is from Dublin, and she was able to tell me the good areas and the dodgy areas. We've now decided on a bed and breakfast in a nice area for €105 per night, with the added bonus that the airport express bus stops very close by.

Now I just have to call up gulliver.ie, because their website refuses to accept my booking. I've tried sending them an email, but got no response.

Getting money overseas

I'm a big fan of accessing money from ATMs while overseas. It's so easy! Everyone always talks about how great travellers' cheques are, but I don't see the attraction. They seem to be a bit of a pain. I called up Citibank yesterday, and they claim that overseas ATM withdrawals will cost me a mere $1.25. This is somewhat surprising, since my other bank (ANZ) charges $5.00. I've now sent Citibank an email to get it in "writing".

Java training and beer

The Java training course last week was a big waste of time. Most of the content was really basic, and was addressed towards people who have only ever used other languages. The lunches were good though. We were each given a voucher to use at a cafe in the city, for "one lunch". The best meal I had was a chicken schnitzel, with salad, in a roll, with chips and gravy.

Each day we finished the course way earlier than the advertised time of 5pm. On Friday we finished at 2pm and went to the Belgian Beer Cafe. I had never been before, but I'll definitely be back again. I started with a tasting rack, which had four different beers nicely served in a wooden rack. The beers ranged from a light Belgian beer (6.2% alcohol) to midstrength (8.6%) and fullstrength (12%). Each of the beers in the rack was nice, but after that I started drinking large glasses of Hoegaarden.

Work

Two of us spent an hour and a half installing our new build this morning, because the stupid install script doesn't work properly. After we finished, we discovered that the other vendor's equipment was spontaneously rebooting itself every few minutes, so we couldn't test anything anyway.