My Greek Olympics: Pre-IET2

Trip to Aigina with Ron:

One Saturday, Ron and I took a hydrofoil to Aigina for the day. We just wanted to get out of town for a bit. When we got there we did the usual drink and eat at one of the places around the port which served a good lunch. We ordered the standard yogurt with honey and nuts and coffee with bread, after eating we went to rent a car. No cars were available so we rented scooters instead. They had little 50cc ones and a few larger ones, I didn't want to get a big one so the 50cc was what we got.

We went riding to the south and soon left the town and were in open country. We took the road as far as we could go south and it ended on a hill with a nice view of the Peloponnese across the water. The scooters were 50cc and they had trouble going up hills, I had to push mine up a few hills since they just didn't have the power. Luckily there was little traffic and we could go at our own pace.

On the way back, we stopped at a small town and had lunch at a water side taverna, the owner said he had a good fish special and we both got that. It was good and relatively cheep. We then rode back to town and to the other side. Ron didn't seem to know the signs and he went down a one-way street the wrong way. I chased him, but he soon realized the mistake when the cars were all coming towards him. We made it back to town and had a drink then walked around a bit before we got on the boat. A nice day trip and we had some fun.

IET2 Command Centers setup:

The IET2 would be the first exercise in the new facilities. They were spread out across the city and we would have 5 command centers to deal with. I had to go to all sites and do software installs and setup of the tables and such. Also I was the video wall guy so I had to be at each to baby sit their installations.

One command center was at the military command complex, what was called the pentagon, and it was down in the basement area of the main building. I would have to go there from time to time and it was easy getting on base, then I had to be escorted down the elevator to the room. From then on I was loose to do what I wanted, kind of strange. The other center was at the Fire Brigade 911 center, the MMM center at the port, at DAOA in the Intel center and the Police department's main complex on Alexandros Boulevard.

Each location would have servers, a video wall of some size, computers and communications. The MMM center was the smallest, only one room and not all of the space was the command center. The police had the largest command center, since they were to move their operations into that facility after the games.