NMCI Rant

Okay, this probably comes as no surprise to any of you who use the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), but I feel the need to vent.

First, for those of you who aren't familiar with NMCI, the Navy hired Electronic Data Services (EDS) several years ago to provide and manage ALL of the Navy and Marine Corps' unclassified and SIPRNET (secret internet protocol routing network) computers and networking. It's quite a racket if you ask me. EDS gets ungodly amounts of money from the Navy.

Case in point: If I walk into my local Verizon store and buy a Blackberry, I'd wager money I'll walk out the door in 30 minutes with a fully functional Blackberry - email set up, phone numbers and address book transferred over, full-blown access to the internet. AAAAAAND, I bet you it would cost me significantly LESS than $200.

In order to get an NMCI Blackberry, it takes MONTHS of wading through a dump-truck full of bureaucratic red tape and waiting. Then, when you finally get the Blackberry, it's just like those ridiculous appointments with the cable company where they tell you they'll be there "between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m." and you have to wait with baited breath for them to show up, and while they're in your office for an hour and a half installing the Blackberry software and syncing it up with your computer, you aren't allowed to go anywhere or do anything besides stand guard over the visitor in your office who has unfettered access to your computer.

Then, after standing there waiting for an hour and a half, the technician tells you that he has to go back to the shop to redo your Blackberry setup because they erroneously set it up for Kevin.Lastname. Unfortunately, because there is more than one Kevin Lastname in the Navy, I'm actually Kevin.MIDDLE INITIAL.Lastname in the NMCI global address book, so they set the Blackberry up for the wrong user.

When you finally DO get your NMCI Blackberry, it's severely limited in functionality. It's nice that I can check my work email and calendar, but that's about all it's good for because just about every other feature is locked-down (no bluetooth, most websites blocked, etc).

Oh, and in return for all of this great functionality, EDS gives the Navy a bill for over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS (for ONE Blackberry).

Jeez, I didn't even sit down to rant about NMCI Blackberries. I just got on a roll when I was trying to give some background information for non-Navy folks to understand what NMCI is.

No, I actually sat down with the intent to write two other relatively quick rants.

Rant #1. NMCI fairly recently installed some new features that cause these text-boxes to pop-up and chastise you if you leave your CAC card unattended. While the programmers who wrote these new updates surely meant well, the practicality of their application fell short of the mark.

For example. If I tell my computer to LOG OFF, then it pops up an annoying little window telling me that my CAC card is still in my computer keyboard and asks me what I would like to do.

The first time this happened, I rolled my eyes and said, "Oh FINE!" and pulled my CAC card out of the keyboard. Then the computer promptly locked itself because I had removed my CAC card. Yes, you read that right, the computer did NOT log off as directed because I had just removed my CAC card.

What it boils down to is this. When I want to log off my computer, I have to leave my CAC card in the keyboard. I have to tell the computer to log off. Then I have to wait for the annoying little pop-up window to appear. Then I have to click on "I want to continue what I was doing" in the annoying little pop-up window. Then the computer will continue with the log-off sequence and I can remove my CAC card and go home.

Rant #2. They tell us to log off our computers at the end of the day and leave the computers on so the administrators can remotely provide software updates and whatnot on the back shift. If that's the case, then WHY on EARTH does my computer perpetually tell me as soon as I log on in the morning that it has an update to apply and needs to reboot??? I thought that was the whole point of leaving the computer logged-off and powered-on all night!

Okay, I'm done ranting now. I'll get off my soap box.

The dictionary according to BlackBerry

Dear Guy Who Programmed the Dictionary and Auto-replace feature in the BlackBerry,

I'm curious... What planet are you from?

I mean, I appreciate that the BB helps me replace words with typos, and lots of times it gets them right, but where the heck did you learn English? There are some real doozies that seem to happen pretty often though.

For example, if I mistype "haven't," the BlackBerry replaces it with "ha bent." Riiiight, like those are the two words I MEANT to write.

The other one that really throws me is when I mistype "they" and the BlackBerry INSISTS on replacing it with "thry."

Um...

(a) What the HECK is a "thry?" Note there is NO entry in the www.dictionary.com for "thry" so I'm not sure why it's even offered as a suggestion must less automatically replacing it.

(b) How in the WORLD does it come to the conclusion that "thry" (even if it IS a valid word in the dictionary) was more likely the word I wanted than "they"????

A couple of suggestions:
1) Buy an actual English dictionary. It can't possibly be that hard with all the computerized spell-check programs out there.
2) Use some sort of histogram to tell the frequency of words occurring in the English language to figure out which was the more likely word the fumbling typist intended to type.

In case you were wondering: No, my typing speed has NOT improved with time and experience on the new BB storm keyboard. I try to type faster and make mistakes, and the BB tries to help me out by replacing my mistakes with nonsense words like "thry."

Monday Rants

Some things I don't understand...

1. To whoever it is that spilled coffee all over the counter in the men's room in my office building and didn't wipe it up:

Um... why? There are plenty of paper towels in the dispenser. Do you think your mother works here and is going to clean up your mess???

2. To whoever it was that caused the urinal in the men's room to overflow and did absolutely nothing about it:

Okay, I know you may not be a nuke like me, but still, why wouldn't you at least TRY jiggling the handle of the flush valve to see if it would STOP gushing water everywhere? I was in the stall (sorry if that's TMI) and I heard you flush the urinal and then wash and then dry your hands while the urinal was noticeably GUSHING water and overflowing and SPLATTERING all over the floor. Yet you did NOTHING. "Ho-hum, not my job to fix it, so I guess I'll just let it flood the building." Luckily, before I could get up and before the water reached my feet, someone else came in the men's room, immediately recognized the casualty and source of the flooding, splish-splashed his way across the men's room, and jiggled the handle. Ya know what? The water STOPPED! What a concept!

3. To the guy standing on the sidewalk who flicked your cigarette butt into the street right in front of me:

I must say, that was quite the debonair flourish and fancy flick of the wrist you used to dispose of your cigarette butt. You must've spent a lot of time in front of a mirror practicing that move at home to get it JUST RIGHT. But dude... you were STANDING RIGHT SMACK NEXT TO A GOSH DARN ASH TRAY!!!!!!! It made you look pretty darn STUPID if you ask me.

Granted, anyone who flicks their cigarette butts in the street annoys me, but to stand next to an ash tray and do it just added insult to injury.

4. To any other husband/father types considering starting their own blog:

DON'T WRITE BIRTHDAY POSTS. If you write "Happy Birthday" blog posts for one child... and then another child... and then DON'T write one for your wife... YOU'RE GONNA HEAR ABOUT IT!!!

Happy belated birthday Sweetie! ;-)

Aside: I got LW a pottery barn coffee table she wanted...


...which the boys promptly turned into a "fort." (YB is actually IN that picture, although you can't see him.)

Friday Night Rants

Okay, I feel the need to vent and get a couple of things off my chest...

1. Main Stream Media

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but WHAT THE HECK is wrong with the main stream media???

Yesterday I was at the gym for about an hour. They had CNN on all the TVs. In the hour I was there, I think they spent about 50 minutes providing LIVE coverage of the ROOF of Mic hael Jac kson's bus driving through London. (Spaces inserted intentionally so my blog won't show up on Google searches for that freak's name).

It gave me flashbacks.

Suddenly, my mind was back in the Knight Out bar & grill across the street from UCF on the outskirts of Orlando. My roommate, Joe, and I liked to go to Knight Out because they had nice pool tables, real cork dartboards (all the other places in Orlando had those weird plastic computerized things), and THE BEST burgers I've EVER had (then or since).

Anyway, we were there one night shooting some pool, and I remember saying to myself, "Self, why is the news providing us continuous live coverage of some white Bronco driving slowly across the highways of Los Angeles???" Little did I know then how that slow chase and subsequent trial of O.J. would preoccupy the main stream media for a LONG time to come.

Yesterday... M.J. wasn't even WANTED for anything.

There was absolutely NOTHING interesting about watching the roof of his van.

I don't CARE if there are RUMORS he may go on tour. Count me OUT.

Must have been a slow news day I guess.

2. Clueless People Who Try to Make Rush Hour Traffic Worse Than it Already Is

So I'm driving home this afternoon along Waxpool Road (one of the main roads through Ashburn). A lady coming toward me from the other direction was holding her cell phone to her face with one hand. With her other hand, she flipped on her LEFT turn signal. This perplexed me, because:

(a) Turning left would mean she'd be turning right in front of me and she still had enough speed that it didn't appear she was going to wait until I passed.
(b) The road at that spot wasn't wide enough for her to do a U-turn, and all that was on her left (my right) was a ditch, so it wasn't like she was going anywhere in that direction.

Low and behold, much to my amazement, while still holding her cell phone to the side of her face, she spun her wheel to the left and started turning in front of me toward the ditch. She quickly came to a halt at the edge of the ditch and immediately threw her car into reverse. It was then that I figured out she was trying to do a 3-point turnaround. Unfortunately, the people who were coming up behind her were equally clueless of her intentions and were trying to continue driving along behind her as she threw her car into reverse and tried to ram the car that was driving by behind her. Luckily, the driver behind her was alert and able to swerve to miss her.

But dude, if she had hit either me or one of the cars behind her, she would have jammed up traffic across Ashburn for a LONG time.

Where do people like this get their driver's license from? As a prize in a box of Lucky Charms?