Army Email Getting More Portable?

I came across this article in Federal Computer Week about how the Army has put out a Request for Information(RFI) to unify its email systems. Right now the Army manages them at various command and installation levels. The RFI would be for an enterprise system to manage all email, calendar and other functions for all those using Army email. One benefit supposedly of this would be to reduce the cost to the Army.

One of the problems that the Army current system has is its security level. To access non-classified email you have to log into a computer with a Common Access Card (CAC) Card and pin. The card stays in the computer in order to utilize it. This means that to get your email away from your work site you use your CAC in a laptop or use a Blackberry.

Personally I think a Blackberry presents a whole host of security issues and in fact this whole idea highlights the major problem with the Army's IT set up: security. It has limited functionality and ads considerable cost. An employee if their manager desires email from home or off site requires a laptop or blackberry as well as whatever system they use at work. This increases the cost to the government to outfit each employee.

The proposed system is required to use a CAC so it will require dedicated machines to support. It would be hard to see how much cost savings could be made by this idea unless it maximizes the use of existing equipment and that owned by the employee.

More to come on this as it fleshes out but security will make this hard to implement.

Just What The Raiders Need

This is not very constructive. Reports: Cable punched Hanson

Worst Lip Sych Evah!!!

It is tough New Wave melody with lots of keyboards and high pitched vocals but the female part of this Peter Schilling appearance on a German TV show has to be about as bad as it can get. Starts around 0:42. Peter doesn't do that great a job either.

Using Posterous

In a desperate search for traffic to my actual real blogs I have set up google reader to allow me to push stuff to Posterous. Then I have Posterous push it to my Twitter feed. We will see what this accomplishes.

Of course it is yet another account to remember.

Arsenal Stuns Everton And Whole Premiership

While Arsenal has had quite an off season they are still one of the top teams in the Premiership. There should really be no doubt that they could beat Everton to start the year even at Everton's stadium. To win, though, 6-1 is just crazy. It gives them a tremendous jump on the rest of the league. For more on this stellar victory which saw Cesc with two goals see the Telegraph.

Newport News Advertising

Since I write for three different blogs now (real ones not vanity sites like this) I spend a great deal of time browsing around at various newspaper and news sites. I also go to many political blogs researching things and getting edumacated. The Newport News bikini ads are everywhere. They must have one heck of a budget or just place them on sites I go to.

Here I am also giving them free advertising just by talking about them.

New Site About Smurfs

If you are interested in the upcoming Smurf movie here is a good site about it: Smurfplanet.com. Yes, they are actually making a live action movie about the Smurfs.

Huntsville Mirrors The U.S. On Housing Sales

This subscriber only article at The Wall Street Journal reports that the recovery to date in the U.S. housing market has been focused on the low end of the market. If you have a high end home it is still hard to sell. This is what was reported in The Huntsville Times as well about the local market. There has been an uptick but it has only been in the low-to-moderate price.

Unfortunately I cannot find the article on their website www.al.com.

It is probably for the reasons that large mortgages are hard to get and people do not want to borrow several hundred thousand dollars anyway with the uncertainty in the job market and economy overall.

Testing Out iCam

I put iCam on my iPhone and got it installed on working on both my PC and a netbook with a built in camera. The result is seeing the beautiful me in stereo on my iPhone. I don't know if I will really use this but the technology is so neat I couldn't help myself.

A Rule Of Blogging About Arguments Or Arguments About Blogging

Not for me to come up with a rule for blogging but anytime an argument devolves into the court scene from Animal House I say it is over. The Other McCain goes there in the big Erin Andrews/Douglas/Little Miss Attila dispute.



Oh Yeah it wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

Obama's Presidency Will Be Over When...

Robert Gibbs says that the President doesn't pay attention to the polls but is just doing what is best for the U.S. people. At the current trend I would say that is Labor Day.

When Fiction Becomes Truth - Big Bang Theory Strikes

I guess Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory did really design and fabricate the toilet on the International Space Station (ISS). It is reported that the waste disposal system has flooded the orbiting base.

Meritocracy and Affirmative Action

Mr. Other McCain has a post here about meritocracy. Having worked in the Federal Government for the last twenty years or so I have come across the concept of meritocracy and affirmative action in action. At one of my jobs were a group of fine senior Federal employees we called the "bitchy GS-15 women". These were a group of women that had been hired, groomed and worked their way up to decision level management who lorded themselves over everybody because of their "position". Their problem was that they had never been told that hey had made a mistake or screwed up. Constantly promoted and receiving the highest ratings they could not consider of making mistake and demanded the respect they were due to the point that they were not only annoying but self-destructive. McCaian calls this "Elitism as Self-Congratulation"; and the only point they were where they were because they were women first; then fairly competent people later. In many ways they were oblivious of this.

Rant kind of over.

Proper and Efficient Use of Free Time

Hey, I work one full time job and blog for three sites and I do have free time to explore the internet. Perhaps I don't have enough time to write one thousand word plot summaries of Seinfeld episodes. Not that I don't like Seinfeld as I am one of those Gen X'ers that it speaks to.

Fed Admits Modifying Mortgages Doesn't Work

The Boston Fed did a study looking at Obama's premier program to fix the mortgage crisis by providing financial incentives for lenders to modify delinquent loans. Its conclusion is it doesn't work as most mortgage companies are hesitant to modify the loans. The reason is simply they lose money on the deals.

Part of this is that a lot of borrowers end up delinquent again anyway and another large group fix the problem themselves. The Fed says one simpler solution would be to just give the cash to homeowners and use it to pay the mortgages. Just as I predicted the government will end up using my tax dollars to keep people in their overpriced homes.

Why do I pay my mortgage every month?