My Greek Olympics: More work

Working with Rick and Eric:

Now that David and Vic were gone, Rick and Eric were the ETeam experts. I had them and the other ETeam crew members at the MOC. Eric was doing everything he could to make SAIC happy and Rick did his "I know everything" act. I got along good with Rick and I knew Eric from previous work. I warned them not to go beyond their contract, but Eric wanted to do a lot more. This set them up for problems down the road, but at the time they happily went along with everything asked. I spent a lot of time with Rick, since he was working with the customer mostly and I had to as well.

Some of the ETeam crew were screw offs and I didn't quite know what they did half the time. They were to help with the customer, yet hardly ever went anywhere. Also some of them complained about living arrangements, but this was an ETeam issue. ETeam was asked to do a lot, since the IET was fast approaching and nothing was working.

Rick liked to have a good time and was somewhat like David, he liked to drink and eat and hangout with his little group around him. Rick made good friends with the police guys and talked them into a lot of stuff, but he didn't hold a firm line with SAIC shitheads. Jesus and the Vampire manipulated them to do things and it would come back to bite them at IET time.

Lunch:

One day we invited Stavroula, Alex and Sophia to lunch at the noodle bar. So we all walked to the place, about a 10 minute walk and we went in. Stavroula and Sophia hadn't had noodles like this before, so we helped them decide on what to order. When the food came, we all had a good time watching Stavroula try to eat with chop sticks. We knew what to order so it was easy for us, but the others had to look for something to get. It was fun to watch and we gave encouragement. We paid for them and they all said that it was very expensive. We didn't think much of the 6 euros per plate, but for them I can see why they thought it was so expensive. With a salary of just 1000 euros a month, 6 euros on lunch a day was a lot.

On another day, I took Stavroula to Poliathina for lunch. It was expense too, but I liked the place and I always got good service. I ordered grilled sardines and took my time eating them. Stavroula said I spend too much money on lunch and that she would take me to a place for lunch that she goes to. All the staff at the place run around and gives us great service while the other people are left waiting as we get our food first. A few days later we go to a place that makes crepes and we get a ham and cheese crepe, a big one like a quesadilla. It was good and only cost a Euro, so I could see why she would go there. 

Fire Bombs at the bank:

One night, the whole gang of ETeam and 'the good guys' went to dinner in the Adrianou square area. We went to the place that had OK food and served a cheese stuffed squid and it also had a night club inside which would get crowded. It was an average night and as we walked back to the annex, we heard a couple of bangs. I didn't think much of them but as we went around a corner onto Pandrosou street, we could see a fire burning in an alley. I went around the building and could see three fires burning at three different banks, one in an ATM vestibule and the others on the ATMs in the street.

This was an anarchist attack on the banks. It is a common occurrence actually and I wanted to see how it was handled. I waited and finally a cop showed up and looked around, he didn't ask anything of anyone. I could see the fire brigade trucks coming down the street, but they were blocked by cars and since this was Athens, no one moved for them. I stood there for about thirty minutes and watched the fire and police guys do their thing. Just an average day, no one ever asked me if I saw something or to step away. I stood and saw how they handled the incident. If it was here, the FBI would show up and it would be a big deal, attacking a back is a federal offense, not in Greece.

Sushi:

On Apollonius Street, at the end, there was a Japanese place that had Sushi. It wasn't bad and since it was one of the only places in town that we knew of that had sushi, we ate there from time to time. The place was small and the guy who owned it wasn't very friendly. We would do as we said "channel Semos" and order a bunch of food. Soup, platters of sushi, fried things, what ever we wanted. We would eat until we were stuffed, it was expensive, but once or twice a month it was worth it.

The noodle bar down the street would fill in and they would be a cheaper alternative to sushi. A bowl of noodles and a beer would be about 10 Euro compared to 25 at the sushi place. I could always count on the noodle bar and I would go there for lunch once in a while. Once while I was eating, I met Ari and the prime ministers brother, who were eating there and talking business.

I had to spend time at the Fire Brigade center which they were still building the place so we had to deal with the construction. Some times the power would go out or the stairs would be blocked by garbage. We would have to move from room to room as they worked on finishing the place. The daily operations were still going on in the old part of the building, soon they would move up to the new offices.

My Greek Olympics:Before the IET2

SAIC CEO:

Finally the CEO was coming, we had been trying to get Byster to come, but he never did. Now we had a new CEO, Dahlberg, and he was coming to meet the Greeks and the crew. The Greeks thought it was not nice for him not to come and met the customer, the Greeks are into the personnel relationship and having the CEO not come was an insult. So on the big day, every one at the Regis Office in Marousi was excited and running around like little children. I was at the MOC and would be listening in on the Telcon. So we dialed in and everyone was yakking away, then Shitsler speaks and everyone shuts up. He introduces Dahlberg and he speaks for a few minutes. The usual talk of 'how wonderful' a job we are doing and the other crap like that. I really didn't care about his trip and it would not effect me at all.

Then I get a call from TJ, he is bring the CEO to the MOC to get a quick demo of the system. I run down and tell all to clean the place up and get ready. George is there with me and when TJ arrives, I come down with George and meat the CEO. We do the introductions and I give a quick demo of ETeam on the video wall. It lasts about 10 minutes and they leave after he meets everyone. The next day on the Telcon everyone is still excited, I still don't care.

IET2 prep:

The run up to IET-2 was such a mess, nothing was working and Jesus and the Vampire kept me in the dark, plus I had to go to meetings all the time to see what was happening and what had changed behind my back. The scenario was going to be done by some SAIC guys who I knew from Salt Lake, they were OK guys and they did their own thing. I did have to go over their scenario because of the parts that I had to deal with. I spent a lot of time with the Greeks who would be the interpreters and facilitators.

I was going back and forth between the different command centers doing installs and updates. I would have to take the metro to one place, then taxi to another, then back on the metro to a third. I would have to get permission to go into some facilities and others I would just walk in. The military places were hard to get into, but once in I could go all over.

Most of the people we had trained didn't know what to do because they had practice with the system. I was also the video wall god and had to deal with issues at the centers. I seemed to be doing everything and the other shit head nothing. Minerva, who was working on the CCTV sub-system and Tetra radio system was suppose to help me with my work. She never seemed to do anything and always was going somewhere for vacation.

Ouzo:

I had started to drink Ouzo once I arrived, most people here drink it as a shot and it isn't very good that way. In Greece it is drunk with ice and a splash of water. It is very common to have a glass before dinner. The after dinner drink is Metaxas, which is like cognac but not quit as good. When ever I would go out with Dimitris or Alex, I always would get an Ouzo or in some case several.

ENC mess:

I dealt with this issue for a long time and had many meetings about the data. A requirement in the contract said we would provide a means to view data and ENC charts in the system, the problem was the Coast Guard wanted the data as well as the viewer. ENC are now commercially available and are used in GPS units. But the map data is expensive and to get data for the whole country would be very expensive. I was trying to work out a way to just provide a cheap means of showing data and the data could come from any source. I had several meetings with companies that supplied systems and data to many agencies. I tired to find a source of data we could use, but most had the data in a form which required special software.

It was painful to deal with this, Tryphon was always asking and I tried to explain it to him over and over. What was worse was when CG Stavroula would talk to me. She would look at me with her big eyes and kind of flirt or pout; it was like she was intimidating me with her looks. Even though I liked her, I didn't want to have to deal with her in the meetings or else where.

AVL meeting:

I had Danny sit in on a meeting with the Police because I had to start working on the AVL interface and look at how we would make the system work. One of the biggest problems with the AVL system, even though we were using a commercial system, was we couldn't seem to get it to integrate. All I needed to do for my sub-systems was demonstrate it, sounds easy but the committee was causing problems all the time.

I had Danny talk to the Police and he did a good job smoothing things, but the Police officers didn't want to be tracked and they would disable the system by simple ways of interfering with the antenna. I was trying to work with a few other SAIC people, but they never helped or lifted a finger to do anything. Even though it wasn't totally my system, I would have to deal with the issues by myself half the time. I never seemed to get the support that I needed and I was always running in circles because of it.

http://youtu.be/430ykbW1zqA

A really cool video from space. Look at the stars and look for familular constelations.

YU55 Asteroid

The last time a space rock this large came as close to Earth was in 1976 so having YU55 pass by is a little bit of a news event. As of today, the asteroid has safely past, of course if it didn't we would all know about it...
The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) as measured from the center of Earth, or about 0.85 times the distance from the moon to Earth. The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on Earth, including tides and tectonic plates. Although the asteroid is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth, Venus and Mars, the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest it has come for at least the last 200 years.
NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes some of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Thinking about Time.

As I do from time to time, I was thinking about scientific theory and was just running through my head what ‘time’ really is. It is said to be a fourth dimension, like the familiar 3 (up, down; forwards, back; side to side). These 3 dimensions are all 90 degrees to each other, think of a cube where the corners meet. The fourth dimensions would be 90 degrees to all three other dimensions, if you have a cube try to create it by trying to put a fourth line that is 90 degrees to the other three (it can’t be done). But that would be a fourth dimension and this is what time is supposed to be.

The thing is that Time is said to always be moving forwards like water in a river flowing. I don’t think this is right, I would say Time is like an ocean and we are floating in it, under ‘water’, completely surrounded by this “water time’. We move with it, it moves around us but stays with us. What is really the ‘passing of time’ is the changes and interaction of the ‘water time’ with us. It is always changing and this change is what is what we perceive as the moving of time. There is no past or future or present, time does not pass.

We think of time as the ticking of a clock, but that is a man made property, there are no clocks in the universe, though some people would say that the spinning of certain particles or decay of certain atoms are natural clocks. I still say no, we find something that fits our need and call it a clock, nature does not care, only man would care. So Time is this dimension that surrounds us, surrounds everything, and fills the universe. Planets, stars, galaxies and everything else in the universe displace Time. This effects the property of Time, time wants to be uniform but the matter causes changes in the consistency of Time. This is what we perceive as the Einstein effects on space/time as described in his theory.   

I will write more about this......