Well, I’m back. Survived the great frozen wastes of Osaka, Japan. Actually wasn’t that bad, temperature-wise. More than a fair heaping helping of boredom and “Why-the-$#%@&^%*! did they need me here for three weeks for a 6 day exercise?”
And of course, after being gone for three weeks, I quite naturally forgot my password to login to our secure network. Being old sucks.
You know what sucks worse? NMCI. The acronym is supposed to stand for “Navy-Marine Corps Internet.” Around here, we call it, “No More Computer Information.” On the scale of Fraud, Waste and Abuse, this freakin’ money-sump ranks right up there with selling smallpox infected blankets to the Indians. So get this. In the old days, before we, eh hmm, “Upgraded” to NMCI, I could walk downstairs, sheepishly ask the network guys in the tech shed to reset my password, and boom, I’m off and running.
Under the new, IMPROVED system, I have to call the central help desk, wait on hold for a few minutes, finally talk to a tech, who has to take down my name, rank, phone, domain, and building number, so that he can assign me a “ticket number.” He then in turn forwards that ticket number to a “site rep” back here, who puts it into his “service queue.” When my turn rolls around, he calls me, and…yes, you guessed it, I walk downstairs TO THE SAME DAMN ROOM AS BEFORE, and he resets my password.
You’d think I could at least call the “Help” Desk, as some server jockey could hop onto the ol’ User Manager and just reset it for me. Nah, too easy. They need to be able to track call volumes and response times and completion percentages, ad nausem. So now, instead of being down for a minute and a half while I chuff it up and down one flight of stairs, it’ll be a couple of hours before the one contractor on staff for the entire building comes back off his third coffee break and clicks on my ticket #.
Why? Because they CHARGE US FOR EACH SERVICE CALL. To the tune of $50 or better. After we are paying over $450 a month, PER COMPUTER solely for the priviledge of being on their network. $450 per month, per computer, across the entire Navy and Marine corps. Do the math. That’s one $%$#load of money we are dishing out to some retired general or colonel I’m sure who’s getting kickbacks like it’s cool for ramming this thing down the military’s throat. Oh, and if your computer goes haywire, and they turn off your network port (which they can do remotely), and you want it turned back on, they charge you another $250! To undo what they did in the first place!
Auuuuuggghhh!
Anyhoo. I’m back. Your world is now back on track, in order, and less gray and featureless than before.
Some misinformation here. First of all, unless you have every conceivable option on a computer it is NOT $450 per month. It’s more like $250. Heck, even a classified seat is only around $370 a month. And you most certainly DO NOT get charged for each service call. Tech support and trouble calls are included in the cost of the seat you’re leasing. As for them turning off your port? They only do that in the event of a security violation. If that violation is the fault of the user then your organization MAY be charged for the reactivation. If it’s not the user’s fault then your organization will NOT be charged. Even if it’s the user’s fault you’re only charged if all of the “Move/Add/Changes” (MACs) have been exhausted for the year. Each seat gets two MACs allocated each year. And for the record no Marine Corps unit has EVER exhausted all of their included MACs.
Well, you’re somewhat correct in that Desktops run ~$250.00 a month but laptops run ~$350.00. But in either case are GARBAGE systems! The desktops have been a quality a person could purchase ~6-8 of these systems a year from Dell. As for being a ‘Service’ contract, I’ve got little more than ‘Lip Service’ frankly.
It is robbery!