donal's blog

This is the first day of the rest of my life… Yesterday, I finished up at Google after 12+ years of service. The past week has been full of emotions and I feel extremely grateful to have been able to work with such an amazing, diverse set of people for so long (even if we all seem to like hanging out in KL*). This is what I will remember: Take risks (no-one climbed Everest by staying at home) Think BIG Measure, Design, Implement, Monitor Look after your colleagues. They are amazing! And now we look forward… To Cork and whatever the next adventure will be! * We discovered on Thursday that many of us had spent time in Malaysia over the years. I blame our good friend Davide who was there for a period.

Had to laugh when I saw this in the Irish Times ( link ) yesterday: Madam, – A moderate levy, imposed each time the word “like” is used redundantly, would surely resuscitate the Celtic Tiger. – Yours, etc, The levy would be impossible to implement in Cork, like...

sinéad likes to spell her name with a capital 'S'. sinéad can beat me at mario kart wii (but only on the luigi circuit). sinéad will defend cork with much gusto. sinéad will... * the stream of conciousness ends here because sinéad battered me. :P

Incandescent light bulbs are to be phased out over the next 2 years as part of an EU initiative to reduce CO 2 emissions. This is abosultely brilliant and should result in cheaper prices and availability for CFL light bulbs. We replaced all the bulbs in our house last year at a cost of about €90 - that's not cheap and will drop considerably with competition. Kevin Barry has an interesting article in today's Irish Examiner. He recently visited the northwest and comments about how the current economic situation in ireland is having an effect on areas outside the Pale. he writes "the shimmering prosperity of the capital verges fades very quickly" and "once you get to longford and beyond, it can seem like you're back in 1987". This is a worrying sign if you take into account that house prices are falling in certain areas of dublin, a number of multi-nationals have reduced their footstep in ireland and that interest rates and inflation are set to increase...