My Greek Olympics: Six months to go...

DAOA:

I was going out to the DAOA center, which was the Olympic committee's organizational headquarters. It was out on the green metro line to Kifisia and almost to Halandri. We would get off at Neo Ionia and walk the half mile to the place. It was a pain to go out there, but I would have to meet with people and the committee had offices there. It had guards and gates, but like most of Greece, no one really cared who went in, just flash a badge and walk in. I would go and hangout at our office and talk to whom ever was around. Coast Guard Stavroula would be there sometimes and the Army and Police guys, maybe a fire person.

They had a large cafeteria that everyone ate at and we would go over for coffee once in a while. It was always crowded and people out front smoking constantly. Ron had an office there and I would stop and see him, some other SAIC shitheads would be there and I was always running into some fool who just arrived.

DAOA also was where the Intel people were and they had a special floor for their use.  It was a "secret" command center and it was restricted so getting in was actually hard. We had a server room and computers to deal with. I had to install software and maintain the server. This is where one of the computers was hacked or should I say allowed to be infiltrated by our government friends. We knew the CIA want to have access, but one day we found out that the system had an entry from an outside system. It appeared someone downloaded the entire database. The server’s hard drive was copied basically and all the data on it was taken. But since the Greeks never used the system, it only had the basic data set. I hardly ever went to this command center and I was glade, it was not part of my responsibility.

Collateral Damage:

As IET prep continued, I had to deal with Fene interference once again. We listed in the contract that CATS provides a means of assessing collateral damage from explosives. It wasn't a requirement, but when I wrote the description for CATS I wrote what was in the documentation for explaining the output. So when the shit heads put the contract in DOORS, it spit out a whole bunch of requirements that weren't requirements at all.

How it worked was the program DOORS would read the contract and extract parts that were a requirement, like ‘You will supply 20 computer’ becomes ‘requirement 1.1 – 20 computers. But the software was turning every thing into a requirement, things like the work ‘it’ became a requirement. So this caused requirement statements that could never be met to be added to the list which had to be tested for acceptance. How can you show that the system meets the requirement ‘it’??? One of these statements was collateral damage from the description in one of the sub-systems.

The description was something like this; ‘we will give you a tool to simulated explosions’. It shows damage from the blast and effects on people. The effects show damage over many types of possible damage from the blast. Collateral damage is damage that is not intentional, so if a window breaks that is collateral damage. The software shows the damage but it is not listed as collateral damage. But DOORS said we had to test for this requirement and show that it is met in the system. The committee didn’t seem to care but we had to address the issue.

So I had a talk with the Jesus and Vampire about it and I thought we had worked it out. Then Fene steps in and says that CATS doesn't show any collateral damage at all. This of course spins everyone out of control and we have to spend the next week dealing with this stupid issue. I even had to dig up the NATO terminology to prove my point along with telecoms with people in the defense department.

So I argued that this requirement of collateral damage was part of the output that CATS and provides a display of collateral damage in that it shows areas of potential damage from a blast. Finally after about 10 meetings and one hundred emails, talks with the committee and so on, I was able to have the 'requirement' removed and the issue was put to bed. This was a total waste of time and I think most finally realized Fene was a shit head.

Cameras and Hotels:

For the CDS system to work as planned, we had to have a lot of data on where things had been installed. One component was all the video cameras installed at the hotels. I was to be given the data by Siemens, but they screwed it up and I had to organize a survey of the all the hotels that would be used to host the Olympic families. This entailed sending people with diagrams to the hotels and mark where to cameras where located.

It was a little tricky to have the hotels let us come in and see where everything was mounted. Also the people who did the survey were mostly FIFO and they were stupid as hell. It really wasn't that complicated work, but it turned into a big mess. Half the info was worthless and I resorted to using images or diagrams that I got from DAOA.

IET3 run up:

IET3 was planned for the end of February and much was needed still. This is the time in which Fene made his presence known. Dumb shit came and tried to be a hero (in his mind) and did some really stupid things. He didn't know how to act and what to say, so he went to meetings and did his usual of promising all kinds of stuff and of course couldn't deliver. Also he force SAIC to buy a set of computers because of his stupid comments and cost the company two hundred thousand dollars. I could have laughed, but he was causing me all kinds of problems.



A set of servers and storage disks at the MOC



IET3 was going to fail and nothing was working properly, but the decision to go a head was made and the system would be shown as is. Of course it wasn't going to work and I felt as though it would be another fuck up. It would be the same thing, a demo and scenario run by Greek staff. This was the first time the Greeks would use the system and test how they do. The government was nervous and the people in charge didn’t want to use the system and fail so they kept saying they needed to use their old system and way of doing things. We were training people but no one had ever used the system and no one seemed to really care. The standard operating procedure was to use people, paper, and pencils. Lots of yelling and walking paper back and forth between desks, we were given them computers to take this away and track and store what was going on. In some cases the people we were training never used a computer, so this test would be a challenge.

When we planned the system, we expected to have it up and running six months before the games, but we were six months from the start and there was nothing in place working yet and the people were hardly trained. The IET was to be in February but it was really going to happen in April. That was how messed up the project was and the schedule. The final IET was to be at the end of May but we figured the way things were going the project would not be done till July, the contract ended in June.

Dinner with Tryphon:

In this time period, I was hanging around with Tryphon and Rick a lot. Tryphon invited me out to dinner, so I took the train to Piraeus and waited for Tryphon. He was getting off work and stopped at the train station on his way home. We went to Perama, which is a town to the northwest of Athens and near the ship yards. Not a very nice looking area, but like a working class area in other parts of town. We went to a small place in a small square, the restaurant had no inside seating, only tables outside on the sidewalk.

We got a table and soon a waitress came over, Tryphon started to order, there was no menu, just a note pad with what they had. Tryphon ordered almost half the menu. Soon wine arrives and some small plates and bread. In about five minutes the food starts to arrive, salads and cold items, them the cooked stuff. They had what Tryphon called "illegal" squid, small squid the size of your thumb nail, deep fried, they were the best I ever had, and we ordered more of those.

Then fried spicy shrimp and octopus, fried fish, grilled fish, crab, more salads, dips and on and on. The BBQ octopus tentacle was served with a shot of Raki, which you lit on fire. A Saganaki shrimp, with feta and tomato sauce was good, but the spicy shrimp was the best. They were dusted with flour after soaked is Raki and red pepper, then fried crisp. They were messy, but really good.

The crab was cooked in a green spicy sauce that was a little spicy. It was hard to eat because it was hot and messy, but it was good. The little fried fish were good as always and so was the grilled small fish. I don't know what they were, but they were silver and small. They would bring an octopus tentacle that had been grilled and Tryphon would cut it up and then pour vinegar on it, it was tasty.

This was one of the best dinners I ever had while I was there. I went back a few more time with Rick and David and I could eat there every night. The price was nothing, about 50 Euro for both, if would have been 50 dollars for just one plate here. The location was not that great, but the food more than made up for it.

Out with Silvia, George, Roula and Rick:

One night, I was going to go to a bouzouki with Rick, George, Silvia and Roula. George wanted to go and we decided that we would go to a place in Plaka on the hill. Roula knew a place and we met at the Metropol around 10 pm. We walked up the hill and none of the places were very lively,

George complained about the lack of music so we left. So we walked down to Psiri and found a place to go into, it was very crowded and there weren't many tables. George complained so we went out and found a different place. The music was going and the place was packed. We got a table in the back, but the music was still very loud. George complained about the noise and wined about the table and that the music was amplified. He wanted to go some where else, so we went out again and looked for a different place.

Rick was pissed off and Silvia didn't understand what the problem was. After we walked a bit we found another place. The music wasn't as good and the place was not that great. George still bitched, so we went out and said what you want to do. George said we should go back to Plaka, so we walked back and up the hill. The George says, "I am tired and I am going home". What a shit, he leaves and we decide to just go in one of the places in Plaka. The problem is they are very touristy and not as traditional or fake traditional. We end the night early and I go home, pissed at George for being such a whiner.

I started to go out on my own and walk the area. I didn't have much to do and David, Vic and Jay were out doing their own stuff. I would walk around Lykabettus or walk up Philoppapou hill, across from the Acropolis. I would just go and look out over the city or walk and look at shops. Maybe I would ride out to the port or just hang at the annex. If I could I would call Alex or Stavroula, but they were busy with work or their lives and I just would have no one to talk to. It was boring and I just didn't want to deal with all the shit at work all the time. The project had turned into one big mess and it wasn't ever getting better.

Mobile Command:

In March I had to deal with getting the mobile command posts operating. At first I was just going to install software and test it, but I soon got tied up in the satellite connection for the video and data transfer. I was working with Ron and dickhead on getting the sat set up. We had to install encoders and decoders for the signal, one on the buses and the other at the command centers. They went in OK, but configuring and getting the satellite connection to work was a bitch. We spent about two weeks dealing with all this, then finally we had it working and the video was OK, but the data transfer was way slow. We had to come up with a way to replicate the servers with only a part of the whole data set, this would make it faster, I don't know why I had to deal with it.

The four Fire Mobile Command buses 

Inside a mobile Command bus.

The biggest problem was that the buses were way out of town, near the airport actually. We had to take a taxi on most days and that meant we had to try to explain to the driver where we needed to go. Ron would always just give the name of the bus company, Evo-bus. I would try to tell them to go towards the airport and we would then tell them where to go, a lot of pointing and such, if we had a car I would have driven myself. Once there, it was really had to get a taxi to pick us up, in some cases, one of the Greek guys would give us a ride in far enough to get the Metro. The place was in a town called Koropi and was on the landing path of the airport.

The buses had been designed to be a mobile command post, but the requirements said they needed to house the people, which mean beds, toilet, food and water. This was in addition to the conference room and work areas. They tried to put too much in a small place, but that is what the contract called for and that is what they built. Vic and David came out once to see the system setup since ETeam was being installed. Vic thought they were good buses, but they were designed to do too much.



The Police bus.



The buses were divided into two sections, a front conference room with projector and table and chairs. The chairs were attached to the floor so they wouldn't move and it made it hard to get around the table and to sit. The back was the 4 work stations with two computers. A bathroom and a double bunk area in the way back. The generators were under the bus and they had a mast for lights and a mast for the video camera. With all of us in there it was crowded and I didn't know how it would operate when fully staffed.

My Greek Olympics: Athens life and work..

Re-Enter Vic and David:

At this time, Vic and David had gone to work for ETeam. Vic was put in charge of services and had control over the work in Greece and David was made a technical expert and was there to assist Vic. Jay had returned months ago and was working with Semos from the side, she was helping SAIC in the background as well as the committee. So the whole gang was back, though doing different things.

I was told not to hang around them, but I could talk to whom ever I liked and I didn't give a shit what the corporate assholes thought. It was an interesting time and I had all sides available to me for information. David got his place back and Mie Tie enjoyed the increase in business, Vic eventually got an apartment in the Hilton area and David moved in with him as well to save money.

Enter Kost:

At this time we had a whole bunch as assholes at the MOC, I was in my office and I had my things to do, but the shits were everywhere. Charlie Kost was there, a slack-jaw hillbilly type who was a total moron. He was trying to play a greater role, but knew nothing of what we were doing. Charlie would always use his favorite saying, 'That dog don't hunt'. Or in his slack-jaw southern talk, Thad’t daag dun’t hun’t. He would use it always, the Greeks though he was crazy, so did I. Most of the time Kost would just sit in a meeting and sleep, once in a while he would spout off about something, but most of the time he just sat. Still he was a pain to have to deal with, he would cause problems from the background and I know he was talking to the embassy about what was going on. A lot of that happened, the embassy got a lot of info from the company. Kost was a retired General, he like Adm Meese where two of the most disgusting and corrupt people I have ever met.

Good O'ld American food:

One day I got an email from the shits saying there would be an 'American BBQ' lunch at the Marousi office that day. We were invited to come and have hamburgers and hot dogs, chili and all the other crap that goes with a BBQ. Charley Kost wanted to have some home cook-in and everyone was invited. Of course all the shit heads in the office were excited since they all hated it in Greece. I wasn't going to go near the place.

Kost had a favorite line, "That dog don't hunt", so I can imagine Kost spotting off the whole time about how things are. I happened across a kids play ride, the one that you put a quarter in and ride a plastic animal for a minute or two. The coin box had a plastic turtle, a kind of cartoonish version of a turtle, slack jawed and all. It looked just like Kost and I wish I took a picture of it. Anyway, the BBQ was taking place on a cool and wet day, I think it rained a little actually. From what was said for the Greeks who were there, it was kind of strange and everyone seemed to wish they were back in the US. I can image what it must have been like. The Greek people said the food was strange and didn’t look good, Sweet sauce on meat and bean was not something the Greeks liked. From the comments, all the US people kept saying how much they miss the US and the food and how bad the food was in Greece. What a bunch of close minded idiots…

MOC overrun:

The MOC in training mode.

We had a bunch of people brought in by the Vampire. There were a couple of sub-contractors doing coding, which was never part of the contract. There were a few lackeys of the Vampire and two new 'assistance'. Marcini was pissed, but she couldn't do anything so someone needed to be there who could at least do basic clerical work. The Vampires boys were all over one of the girls, they were young and thought it was all for fun. No concept of why we are there and what the big picture was.

I just ignored them and didn't talk to them at all. Most of the time they just sat around and talked, I had things to do. My office was in the back ad they were all in the front, I interacted with them as needed and I tried to stay out of their way. The girls downstairs were supposed to be our support, but they mostly just sat around and talked. I had some meetings and I didn't care what was going on in their personal lives. I had to work so I couldn’t be bothered with all the high school crap.

Psiri:

I found a new place to hangout, though I didn't go there as much as other places. The Psiri area, to the west of Monastiraki, was up until recently an area were most people avoided. With some new restaurants and clubs opening in the area, it became a cool hangout location. There was a Cuban club that I went to a few times and a bunch of Bouzouki clubs, plus an assortment of other places to visit. I would stop at the Souvlaki stand and get a few kabobs then walk into the area and find a lively place. It was close and different from the annex, a nice change of pace.

Mostly I would go with Roula, Silvia and Rick. A stop at a Bouzouki and some drinks and maybe food was the usual plan of action. The places didn't pick up till at least 11:00 and they would go until 3 or 4 in the morning. The weekends were very crowded, but it was almost all Greeks. To get to the clubs you had to walk down some streets that were not very inviting and I think it scared most tourists. The streets were dark and a lot of people hanging around made it look like it wasn't a good place to go.

Towards the Olympic time, more people would show up and a bunch of TV crews would be there filming. I stayed away during the Olympics, mostly because I had to work, but also it was too crowded and the prices went way up. But for a time it was a fun area to hangout in.

Verkiza:

Alex would call me up and ask what I was doing on the weekend. I would go with him to a small town south of Athens on the coast called Verkiza. He would pick me up and go with his sister, who was a nurse, and maybe someone else. His cousin came a few times or even Stavroula. The place we would go was a little cafe on the water, a nice view out to the south and a few islands were always visible. The place had a large patio in the back with several levels and a big covered area, which was good for hot days.

The cafe in Verkiza

They served the usual stuff, nothing really special, but the location was nice and it was always good to get out of the city. The drive there was interesting, the road was used by people to do street racing and there was always crashes and some fatalities. The road would wind around following the coast and it was just past Vouliagmeni. I really like that place, always relaxing, though it could be crowed in the summer months. We would go back several more times and I always like it there no matter how crowed it was.

Rick, Tryphon, and Chris night out:

So with January out of the way, and not much to show for it, we decided to take a break and have some fun. Of course it was winter and there wasn't much to do, we planned on a night on the town. We ate at Tops and Chris said he wanted to go out to a club. So it was back to the strip clubs with Rick, Tryphon, Chris and a few others. Much money was spent by the others, but I didn't want to spend all that cash for nothing. I would sit and have a beer and watch the girls' dance, once in a while a girl would come by and ask if I would buy her a 10 euro drink, I didn't. Some looked good, others average.

There would have some African girls, they looked nice but you never knew about them. They were the more aggressive ones and would always be the first to the table and ask you for a drink. It always was a long night though and I didn't always want to stay. On this night George came along, I almost puked when George got a young girl to give him a lap dance. George was about 60 and the girl was maybe 20, she did the usual stuff and was all over him, George just loved it, I was sick. Rick and Chris took girls in the back for the “special” stuff, they spent maybe 400 or 500 at the club, just crazy. At the end of the night, it was about 4 am, Alex had the best looking girl in the place give him a dance, save the best for last, she was hot and Alex had the best.

The Crew again, sort of:

David and Vic were working for ETEAM and Jay was doing some stuff for them as well, so everyone was back but in different uniforms. We held special meetings at Aries office and I would fill them in on what was happening, they let me know what the committee was thinking. It was a good way for me to stay up on the news, no one from the company would talk to me since I was one of the "crew". Our lives had just diverged a bit then mixed again. Jay, Vic and that crew had returned and would continue the fight.

Zombies:

On a rare occasion I would go to Marousi for a meeting or something. I would walk in and see the "support staff" working hard. Basically they would just play computer games all day, with breaks to eat Pizza Hut or KFC down the street. These were the people who were supposed to be managing the contract and time tracking of the employees. In most divisions, one person would do this for a few hundred people or more. There they had 4 people to manage the 'charge numbers' for 100 people, but since this was a fixed contract and there wouldn't be any changes, they didn't need anyone to do this in Greece. It was a way for the divisions to charge to a contract and get money, it was a drain on the contract but no one cared.

Green Line Metro Station in Marousi

I would walk in and see the idiots just sitting playing solitaire or something. Most smoked and drank coffee and talked with nothing to do but get paid. What a waste of money and space. We could have gotten more out of burning the money for heat. It was the land of the dead, zombies. We had three corporate groups sending people at this time, each group had people to support there staff, the staff were all corporate support people. So they had support to support the support people, think of having a maid to clean up for the maid. No one did anything to further the project, they just made money for their group. No wonder the company lost $200 million dollars.

Altec disaster:

One of the subcontractors was Altec, they were to do a lot of the physical system installations. Mostly they were screwing things up. They were the worst one out of the bunch, so un-trustworthy and unprofessional. Always behind and half-assed, yet Jesus and the Vampire loved them. Maybe they had some kind of arrangement going on but I wondered how they got away with doing such a poor job. During status meetings they always complained about everything, excuse after excuse on why they were behind. Siemens seemed incompetent, Altec just seemed like slime.

Enter Fene:

In January the Vampire brought in the one thing that would doom the project for sure, Fene. Michael Fene, my old co-worker from my old division. This is a person who thinks the world exists because he is here. He thinks he is God, knows all, can do anything and everything. He will cause more problems is less time than anyone on the project.

My Greek Olympics: The second half starts.

Back:

When I returned, it was still a mess and we had a scheduled IET3 coming up in February. This one had more to show, a really working integrated systems. I got tied up with getting the video system on the busses to work and after a few weeks, we finally had it working, though the reliably would be an issue. Also I was trying to deal with the Coast Guard issues of the nautical charts and the new requirement for 3D visualization.

The charts never were resolved, since the CG wanted certified charts and there are no charts that carry a certification. I did get to spend a lot of time with Tryphon and with Rick there, lots of trips to strip clubs and dinner out. It was a fun time in that regards, but the whole thing about charts was a waste. I also had a good time with the CG people, who all seemed to want to just play and not work.

January was a slow month since it was after the Christmas holiday and a lot of people were still in their village and no one wanted to work in the cold winter. I had meetings with the committee and was dealing with additional costs and having to justify spending a few tens of thousands more, it was stupid since the company was dumping several hundred thousand in other things. I just needed maybe another 25K and I was getting shit for trying to provide a good system. I was told that the IET2 was still not resolved and we would have to go back and revisit that set of requirements as well. I really hated January 2004, it was a lonely time for me.

The Acropolis:

One thing I would do was to walk around Plaka and see the sights, I eventually got tired of this but it was something to do. In the winter there were few tourists and not much of a crowd, and if it was cold and rainy there wouldn't be many people at all. I would walk up to the Acropolis and go in on the free Sundays. I went alone and I would just go up and walk around, mostly I would stand and look out over the city to the west and see the Saronic Gulf and islands. On cold windy days it was soothing in a way, I wasn't in a good mood, but I could see the water at least.

The Parthenon under re-construction

Sometimes I would take the train to the port and go over to the coast side, but from the Acropolis I could see the sea. Of course the tour guides would ask if I wanted a tour, I would just blow them off. I knew already all about the place and I wouldn't pay to hear the same things I knew. Once in a while I would walk up to the hill across from the Acropolis and get a view of the area. In summer the site is just mobbed with people, thousands every day. The temple was being rebuilt and they slowly were taking it apart and fixing it with replacement pieces or with the original blocks.

The British, when they had control, removed all the dirt on top looking for more artifacts, they dumped the dirt over the side. What this did was expose the bare rock and that is how it is today, just rock. So in summer it is hot and there are not trees. In ancient times the top had gardens and trees, water and people could live up there. Now it is just a rocky mass, you have to walk on the uneven surface and it is not that great. There is a crane in the center of the temple and a pile of stones and columns on one side. It has taken them many years to get to the point were they can start to reassemble it.

What is left of some of the statues on the Parthenon.

In winter I could walk around and look all I wanted, not many people, some times there would be only ten or twenty others. The western side looks out to the Gulf and you are high above the city below. To imagine that once there was nothing out there to the gulf, over time the area filled in and now it is a sold mass of apartment buildings out to the sea. The temple will be impressive when they finish, we joked that the Olympic project will end when the temple is finished, of course they will not finish for ten more years at least.

Going to the coast:

Since I had been to the coast with Alex, I knew some places to go and hangout at. I would take the train to the port and walk over to the little harbor, look at the boats or just walk around. I liked the cold cloudy days, it kind of relaxed me seeing the water. I would call Stavroula or Alex and see if they were available for a drink, coffee more than likely. I would suggest we go to the sea, I always like that rather than someplace in land. But the winter seemed like a time to be alone and since I didn't have anyone to be with, I spent the time alone at little coffee shops or restaurants.

On an average summer day.

Athens is a lot like Los Angles, it is in a basin with water on one side and mountains surrounding it. The Athens coast has a lot of places to relax at, on the east side of the mountains there is Marathon and Nea Makri but I didn’t go there much. I also didn’t go north or south much, I would go west to the gulf and just look at the water. I kept thinking that if this was America it would be a wall of high rise apartments and the beaches blocked off by the rich. Here the beaches were empty and the houses were no more than anywhere else.

Making Chili:

Shopping at the central market allowed me to buy enough stuff to make food for the week. I would make a big pot of chili once in a while and keep it in the refrigerator and eat some each day. I would buy a few kilos of meant and have it ground, maybe a mix of pork and beef. Then I would get a kilo of tomatoes and some onions, chilies and maybe beans if I could get the right ones. I found a store that sold canned jalapeños and corn tortillas so I could jack up the spice and make tacos. I would bring everything home and cook up a batch of chili and eat a big bowl, then store the rest for the week. Maybe have some for breakfast or a late night snack. It didn't cost much to make and it would last for several days, I would also make tomatoes sauce and do the same thing, keep it on hand for during the week. But chili was something I couldn't find in a restaurant in Greece so it was special. The one issue was that they didn’t have hot peppers or pinto beans so I would have to make due. But I found ways around these obstacles and was able to have something different from the day to day foods of Greece. I missed Mexican food.

At the Central Market buying meat.

Sardines and Sissy:

On evening I was out on my daily rounds when Sissy called. She said she would be in the center and if I were evadible we could meet. It was getting late and I hadn't eaten all day and I really needed to eat, so I told Sissy I would be back in the center around 8 pm. She said I could meet her in the square and I said fine. I got off the metro and went up and I found Sissy waiting. I asked if she was hungry, since I was, but she said no though I should eat if I needed to. I said we could go to Poliathina and she could get a coffee while I eat.

We get to Poliathina and get a table, I ask if they have sardines and order a plate of them. Sissy didn't seem to like them, but I love them. I get a bowl of lintels soup and then the sardines come all dripping with oil and some bread. They were so good. Sissy had more information on the data issues we were having and I was able to finally figure out what some of the problems were. As I was eating, the waiter came by with a candle, like we were on a date or something. Sissy laughed and so did I. I paid and we left, it was fun and I enjoyed the food.

IET2, again!

During the end of January, I had to take part in the post-IET2 walk through and had to do re-demonstrations and explain the system to the committee. I did get to see CG Stavroula, and her "Jesus" button. Her shirt was not made for her body and the top button was severely strained by her body trying to escape her shirt. We all hoped that one day it would let go and we would all see her flowing out of her top. It actually did happen, but the guy she was with was gay so there was a double loss.  We said the button was the Jesus button because only god knew how long it would last. Stavroula was nice, she looked like a model and it was hard to imagine she was a chemical engineer, but she had a great body.

I was called in to be "available" if needed or to set up software for display, but I would get dragged in and have to be there all day, every day. I would have to explain the software and what it meant and I did this over and over with no success. I would sit off to the side and the Vampire or Jesus would talk and argue, then I was asked to demo something and explain it again. This lasted two weeks and I had to show up every day and do the dog and pony show. Most of the people in the office from the company just sat and said nothing, they didn’t know anything so they couldn’t talk.

The committee knew I knew what the systems did and the contract, but we played the game of ‘I don’t believe you’ over and over. Then someone from the company would say the wrong thing and there would be a big effort to clean up the mess. It was very hard and frustrating, week after week of no progress. We finished the IET2 re-do and it was decided to roll over what wasn't taken care of into IET3, which was supposed to happen in February. Only half of the system was passed and the other portions would have to be shown during the IET3. We had a 95% pass requirement on the contract and we were not even close to getting there.

Digital Sight Imaging:

A requirement that popped up on us was a small one line reference to something called Digital Sight Imaging. No one knew what this meant, not the customer or us. I don't know how it made it into the contract or what it was for. I didn't remember it in the first draft so I was not prepared for this.

In January we where asked about it by the committee and we had to scramble to find an answer. I had a secret meeting with Jimmy and we discussed it, I showed him the 3D viewer in Arcview and explained how it could be used to show 3D analyst of certain types of events. Jimmy agreed that it would satisfy the requirement if we provided the software. Now I had to sell it to the shit heads in the company, it was easier to deal with Jimmy than the assholes. So another 10K spent for software and more headaches dealing with corporate. It was an easy way to satisfy the requirement but I had so much push back. They spend tens of thousands on other equipment and software that didn’t work or wasn’t needed, but a couple of grand for software and it was like herding cats.

12 days to landing..

The latest Mars rover is just twelve days from landing. At 10:35 PM PDT the space craft/rover will land on Mars. This is no small event, there is only a 50% chance of success. Mars is a hard place to land and there is no guarantee it will land properly.

Currently the spacecraft is in the cruse configuration, this is how the craft left Earth and will stay in this grouping until landing day. The craft has a ring attached to the descent craft, this is the power and attitude control and communication component. Once the craft reaches Mars and before it begins the descent, the ring is jettisoned. The descent craft contains the final landing stage, parachutes and rover and is protected by the heat shield.

London calling.... Or was it Athens?



One of the command centers



Since the Olympics are starting this week and there is so much talk about security and cost and a comparison to Athens, I am adding some pictures of the Athens security facilities and venues. I will add the second half of my Olympic experience shortly and more pictures to go along with it.

A command center and video wall



The basic setup of a command center.



Summer berries

It is the height of summer and berries are in the market. I didn’t get these for a store, but I picked them at a berry farm outside of town. They give you a pale and send you out into the field of bushes, the berries are everywhere and the best way to pick them is to simply run your fingers over the bunches. The ripe berries will come right off and the green ones will stay. The farm has a minimum of five pound you must pick, but the cost is just $2 a pound. So you will spend $10 minimum, but compared to store prices, this is a great bargain. I was at a farmers market in town and they were selling the same berries for $3 a basket, this works out to about $9 a pound. Of course five pounds of berries is a lot, so I freeze them in bags of about one pound each. I will keep them and eat them in the winter when berries are expensive and the weather is cold.

Found this article on London vs. Athens.

Τhe cumulative costs of the Athens 2004 Olympics have risen to $15 billion and is most definitely a prime reason for the Greek state’s dramatic financial crisis. Olympic spending left Greece with a hefty budget deficit in 2004, reaching 6.1% of Gross National Product, more than doubling the EU’s cap of 3%. Olympic spending also pushed up public borrowing in 2004 to 43 billion from an earlier target of 35 billion. Since then, Greek public debt has exploded exponentially. In 2010, it reached a stunning figure of $469.8 billion (142.8% of GDP).
The cost of the Athens 2004 Olympics security effort is truly astounding. Athens’ Olympic security bill alone was $1.5 billion, more than four times the security costs for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and six times that spent for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. Athens Olympic security was originally based on a C4I surveillance project (standing for Command, Control, Communications & Integration) that proved to be a technological fiasco. The system is still unworkable, years after the end of the Games. Regardless of the system's dysfunction, I cannot over stress how absurd this project was for the Greek people. A population of 11 million individuals were made to pay 300 million dollars for an unworkable security system. Astonishingly, every single Greek citizen could have been given 27 million US Dollars for what it cost to provide security for the Olympics.
Besides the extraordinary cost, C4I was also mired with corruption. Siemens, the subcontractor of SAIC which had been awarded the contract for the super panoptic security system, used C4I as a "jack pot" or "a dummy project" to incur overpayments and bribes, instead of providing a feasible and effective Olympic security system. According to a 2008 Munich court judgment, the Greek branch of the German electronics giant, Siemens Hellas, set aside 2% of the revenue it received from Greek state contracts to pay off both ruling parties in Greece. The conservative New Democracy ( ND) and socialist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) benefited as part of a system of bribery that ran years before and well after the Athens Olympics, until 2006, to secure lucrative state contracts.
Yet, C4I Olympic security project is also disturbingly associated with pervasive phone tapping against the Greek government. On February 2 2006, the Greek Government officially announced that the mobile phones of then Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, most of his ministers and many other  top government, military and security officials were hacked by an unknown source during the Athens 2004 Olympics and for nearly an entire year after. Our research has led us to adopt the dominant theory on the subject,  that the phone taps were organized by US secret agencies, for reasons related to US Olympic security, the C4I problems and US mistrust of the Greek government and its Olympic security system.
Indeed, the Athens 2004 Olympics had authoritarian effects over the hard-won rights and liberties of the Greek people. Before the Athens 2004 Olympics, U.S. and British pressures and threats to boycott the Games contributed to the Greek Parliament voting in the so-called “anti-terrorist law” 2928/2002 which meant mass surveillance policies and maximum security presence, seriously jeopardizing political rights and freedoms in Greece.  In a country where memories of the last oppressive military dictatorship (1967-1974) are still very much alive, this controversial, so-called “terror law” (tromonomos), has reinforced all surveillance provisions in Greece. The law encourages spying on citizens and provides pecuniary motives for police informers. It also introduced non-jury criminal trials, initiated limited right of appeal, DNA testing without consent, expanding police powers of infiltration and surveillance of groups and individuals, and imposed a penalty of ten-year terms for members of terrorist and crime gangs. Based on this draconian law and the assistance of the British Scotland Yard, the Greek terrorist group November 17 (N17) was arrested and sentenced to jail in 2003. However, this terror-law is a real threat against any kind of political mobilization and reactions against police brutality and state violence.
In addition to the terror-law, another Olympic dowry was largely technological. Over 1,200 sophisticated CCTV systems were posted throughout the Athens metropolitan area and inside Olympic venues during the Games. They were not simple CCTV systems, but were enhanced cameras with speech-recognition software, capable of collecting visual and audible conversations from long distances. The software could transcribe the audible conversations into digital text that was then searched for suspicious patterns along with other electronic communications entering and leaving the area--such as emails and image files.  The Athens 2004 Olympic CCTV system reads, watches, and then synthesizes the data into pre-configured threat designations. The software was capable of understanding Arabic, Farsi and all major European languages, on top of Greek and English. This interoperable network was part of the C4I system. The extraordinary cost of this particular capability pushed the Government to insist on their use in "post-Olympic" contexts, that is, they were used not only for traffic control but also for security and antiterrorism. It wasn't long after the Olympics were over that these CCTV systems monitored political rallies and demonstrations all over the Athens metropolitan area. Political activists started to "blind" the CCTV cameras after it was made evident that they were used to monitor a demonstration by educators in down town Athens during June 2005--almost an entire year after the Olympics.
The Greek Data Protection Authority (DPA) had placed serious restrictions on the functions of the CCTV system and allowed them only to be used for traffic control. This put the Greek DPA in conflict with the Ministry of Public Order and the Greek police HEL.AS. on the matter.  On October 8, 2007  the DPA fined the police 3,000 Euros for using the traffic cameras to monitor a student protest in Athens earlier that year. The DPA also found that 49 of the police cameras still did not operate with privacy protected software that would blur people’s faces. Images from some of the cameras were also kept for more than seven days, further breaking privacy rules. 
On November 19, 2008, the President and five members of the Greek DPA resigned in protest of the Government decision to allow police usage of the CCTV cameras to monitor political rallies and demonstrations during the commemoration of the November 17, 1973 student revolt against the military dictatorship. Early in the following year the government appointed a new DPA, which accepted the use of the CCTV as a broader surveillance tool for protests and demonstrations. In Greece, besides the DPA, senior Greek legal experts, civil liberties organisations, as well as most opposition parties and various other civil society groups have all strongly condemned continued use of the Olympic surveillance cameras after the Games ended. Anti-surveillance resistance against the Olympic CCTV cameras have taken many forms, such as blinding the cameras with black hoods, ripping off their cables, spray painting the CCTV lenses, knocking down the CCTV poles, arson, and so on. Not only young radicals but also mayors and union leaders have blinded police CCTV cameras.
During the last mass rallies in Athens and demonstrations in Constitution Square against the Greek politicians’ corruption, management of the debt crisis, and protest against the severe  austerity measures imposed by IMF and EU, outraged people who gathered daily there and  at Greek squares all over the country entirely disregard police CCTV.  On the other hand, the Greek police, now increasingly modernized and better equipped due to the Olympics, is also reluctant to use the CCTV footage out of fear it will reveal police wrongdoing and brutality, which could then be exposed by the media.
Although Greece is not the UK, Athens is not London and 2004 is not like 2011, we can still spot significant similarities between Athens 2004 and the London 2012 Games. In an era that sees the coupling of a post-9/11 logic of global security with neoliberal economic impacts, Olympic-induced securitization and militarization is also characterizing  the city of London much like it did in Athens as the first post-9/11 summer Olympics.
Despite the financial crisis, costs of London 2012 are estimated to soar above $16.5 billion dollars, surpassing the previous record cost being Athens 2004. I fully agree with what Boyle & Haggerty have previously argued, that the Olympics have become a testing ground for new surveillance technologies produced by powerful private security firms. The firms are able to capitalize on the prestige of their Olympic involvement that helps market their products in wider contexts of "public safety" and "homeland security".
If Athens 2004 was a catalyst for the deployment of the military operated C4I super panopticon, London 2012 plans to deploy second generation electronic surveillance system with martial metropolitan technologies like Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), Face Recognition   Closed Circuit Television, (FRCCTV) including Unmanned AerialVehicles (UAVs), or 'drones' , which are currently deployed in Afghanistan, to perform a wide range of missions including enhanced day or night surveillance. Also, the highly controversial e-Borders programme will be in use. The e-Borders programme deploys sophisticated computer algorithms and data-mining techniques to track the identities of people flowing across the UK’s borders. Using records of past activity and associations to identify future threats before they materialize, the program might be legitimated and implemented on a permanent basis due to its deployment for Olympics security.
And finally, let me make a general comment on the evaporation of the Olympic spirit. The modern Olympic Games, especially after 9/11, represent nothing of the classic Olympic values. Nationalism, commercialism, doping, urban destruction, and especially securitization over rights and freedoms are now a central feature during and also long after the Games.  The classic Olympic values have clearly been undermined with these new practices associated with the Olympic Games. Securitization of what we might call a "post-9/11 Olympics" in a climate of terrorism and fear, have supplanted Olympic ideals that claim “to promote a better world through sports”. The Olympics have now come to be viewed, not as a pleasant sports event for competition and enjoyment, but as a high-risk security problem that requires its resolution at the expense of democratic freedoms, notably through lucrative corporate profits. The resulting "fortress Olympics" combines extreme securitization with profitable commercialization. As such, it implies the corruption and destruction of bodies and nature, and protracted authoritarian effects versus freedoms and democracy. The contemporary model of Olympics reflecting dominant economic interests tends to become more and more securitized and commercialized, and increasingly dominated by multinational corporations and the homeland security industrial complex. 
Greek people who view their country as the cradle of a classical model of Olympics and Democracy suffer today by the negative outcomes of Athens 2004 as a distorted Olympics and a corrupt democratic system. All those who love real sports and oppose the contemporary security and market-based Olympics should fight together to form a global volunteer movement for the founding of an alternative Olympic Games that would contribute to the construction of a more peaceful and better world.

Is it real?

This is an image of a fake US dollar bill from the Second World War. It is a German propaganda bill dropped over the city of Milano. The Germans made a good copy, but the back of the bill was not real, they would put things that were obvious to us that it was fake, but if you had never seen a US bill you may not know.

London Olympics

With less than two weeks to go, I know what it is like for the London Olympics people. An amazing amount of work goes in at the last few weeks. All the TV and athletes start to come, all the equipment and all the support material. The venues have to be ready to accept these things and if they are not finished, it throws everything off schedule. Security of course is all the news now, I see Athens mentioned a lot, but the military is always there. In Salt Lake the US sent the army and National Guard in. Thousands of troops were in the area of Salt Lake though it was never really mentioned. The visible security is what people are talking about, the behind the scene stuff is there already. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

NASA video space craft test

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=148695651

A C-17 plane dropped a test version of Orion from an altitude of 25,000 feet above the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona on July 18, 2012. This test was the second to use an Orion craft that mimics the full size and shape of the spacecraft.