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.