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Hi - I'm Pádraig. I decided, while on holidays in Tenerife, to do a bit of web authoring just to keep my hand in this technology yoke that I do for a living. I'm not sure yet if this will work out well or not, but I decided to try and make it as useful as I can. Here's hoping. |
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By the way since I agree with Jakob Nielson that "frames suck most of the time", I've done my best to avoid the stupid things. I'll try to use some other HTML functions (tables etc. ) to make the pages look interesting but without confusing your scrolling or printing - as frames are stilll apt to do. Mind you tables are not perfect either - try shrinking the browser window to less than the size of the table above - this text will re-wrap nicely thank you but the table is pretty rigid. Lastly if you access this via pdeburca.com then I can't help the frames there - it's the price I pay for the domain and it's well worth it. If you really hate them go to http://homepage.eircom.net/~pdb/ instead.
Click here to hear me. So here's the summary:
I live in Dublin, Ireland
but I'm actually from Waterford
- 100 miles (160km) to the south.
Dublin is famous for James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and as the birthplace of Guinness. Waterford is famous for Waterford Crystal and infamous for Gilbert O'Sullivan. Ireland has a long and glorious history - mostly to do with fighting off and suffering under foreign invaders. I know I exaggerate slightly - that's only been the last 1,000 years or so.
I am married to
Íde & we have have
two kids: Bláithín
(10) & Aisling (7).
The kids play Camogie with St.
Vincent's GAA club.
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My brother Kieran also lives in Dublin and
is a photographer. I like his stuff a lot - especially the social commentary.
Here are a couple of good examples.
Other family:
As I said I'm from Waterford and my mother May, my sister Mary and my two
brothers Seamus and Dermot live there. My Dad, Paddy passed away after giving
outstanding service to the people of Waterford and south Kilkenny as a postman.
To be more precise,
I live in Fairview, Dublin. I have been
involved with Fairview Residents Association for
ages now - every time I consider leaving this so-called voluntary organisation
some other big local issue comes up. The latest is the proposed development of 100 or so apartments on a 5 house
site at the bottom of my road. Through the FRA I also got involved in the
Combined Residents' Association's campaign against the Dublin
Port Tunnel.
Since this is the Year 2000 there is also a Casino Millennium Association, which is organising a number of commumity activities for the Millennium in the Marino / Fairview / Charlemont area. I am also the community representative on the board of Marino College. I used to be involved in North Dublin Community Radio (mostly presenting a folk / trad show) - but that was a long time ago - and I still make an occasional appearence on its successor: NEAR fm (North-East Area Radio).
All this stuff gets me a mention in some of the local newspapers now and again. Have a search through some of the archives of the Northside People for a few examples.
As for my job,
I work for PricewaterhouseCoopers
and have for the last 12 years. I've had various positions all around my
specialism of IT. At the moment I'm primarily coaching the senior people
in the ABAS (Audit & Bussiness Advisory Services) department in the
best use of all the hardware & software at their disposal. I've also
planned, budgetted, Y2K proofed, administered, DB managed, programmed, tested
software, implemented systems, manned a helpdesk and lots of other stuff
for PwC. I'm particularly proud of my involvement in the flotation of Irish
Permanent, which at the time, involved the biggest mailshot in Ireland.
Before that I worked for the Central Statistics Office as a Systems Analyst (you can blame me for the Wholsale Price Index and the Farm Structural Survey among others). Yet earlier I spent 4 years as an Executive Officer in the Department of Agriculture. The PC I am typing this on is far more powerful than the mainframe I had to tweak to get land annuities, grass surveys and pig AI (and we're not talking artificial intelligence here) sorted out for every farmer in the country.
Politics: I'm
a proud member of the Irish Labour Party. I actually
ran in the 1999 local elections in the Clontarf
ward. I'm fairly left-wing in my outlook in that I don't believe markets
are the answer to everything. I believe in fair trade not
free trade.
