My Greek Olympics: Starting to get things togethere

Meeting with Mies:

In June, we had the pleasure of having Admiral Mies Rtd. join the team. This was when we still were fighting the corporate types and there was a lot of bad blood between us and the corporate types who just showed up. After some interesting meetings, that I was not part of, I was informed that I would have to meet with Mies and have a talk on the project's future. The Jay, Vic and that crew had to stand before the idiot and get a lecture on being a team player. I was one of the last ones and Vic's advice was to take it, say yes sir and leave. Vic told him 'You are not in a uniform anymore and I don't take orders from you', that set the tone.

I found out that Vic had a rocky meeting and David did as well. I thought it was a joke, this guy shows up and tells me that I have to be a team player, when the company was screwing the project with all the crap they were doing. It was a power play for one group to get control and Mies was there to put everyone in line. In the end Mies was fired or left the company, but it was done in the usual "wanted to spend more time with family" crap. SAIC couldn't understand that they were working for the government of Greece not the DoD, this would cause most of the problems for the entire contract.

Looking for a site for the MOC:

Since we were looking for places to live, we also were looking for a place to work. We looked at a place near the US Embassy, but it was to small. There was a place we saw across the street from DAOA that would be perfect. It was two levels and had a large open area that would be good for training. The place had to be re-modeled but that wasn't that big a deal. We asked the corporate shits to look into it and they of course had the real-estate lady make the inquiry. She was the one taking the kick backs and we think she wanted money from the owners of the place and they said no. Basically she said that the place was not suitable. How would she know what is suitable? Anyway, the place was sold to someone else and we had to keep looking.

The MOC:

Looking out the window of the MOC

We got the place and started to do the set up, Altec was to put in the network and I organized the office space. It was June and the IET was at the end of July, we thought we had enough time to get things set up and running. A video wall was to be put in and the tables for the workstations would be installed to show we met the IET requirements. We didn't plan on the site being the training center at first, but we were having trouble finding a suitable site. The guys from the video wall sub-contractor came to measure the place and we decided on where the video wall would go. The MOC was for testing, integration and planning, a mock-up of a command center.


My office in the MOC

We (I) had to take down some walls and re-wire the place. I also got to work with the guys for the video wall which led me to become the expert on how to use it and everything else. It wasn't even part of my subsystem, but no one else bothered to learn how to use it. The upstairs was our offices and the ground floor the MOC. When we got the place, there was a partition wall and set of offices on one side. We had to take the wall down so we would have a meeting room. George said he would find someone to do the work, but I took a look and decided that I could take it apart myself.



It was simple light-weight metal and glass held together with screws. I had most of it taken apart with in an hour. I save the pieces under the staircase and in other rooms. The only thing was we needed an electrician to take care of the wiring. The guys from our sub-contract came to deal with installing the video wall. It would need a lot of space and we decided to have it on one wall and put the tables in three rows in front.

Because the police and fire people would be there, we needed to have a fire inspection. We were able to have the fire brigade send two guys and take a look. They said we needed some fire extinguishers and a fire hose. The fire hose was a garden hose and I was able to buy the extinguishers at a store on Athinas street. The setup would take place in June and July, we had to get the network installed, the phones and tables delivered, plus install the computers. It fell to me to do most of it, George wasn't much help and David was dealing with the politics. Vic and Jay were off in meetings most of the time and I didn't know what they were doing either.