No More "Social Networking"

Apparently, we had too much of a good thing, so of course it had to be shut down. Late last night, the computer administers sent out an e-mail notifying everyone that starting today they were going to enable “a web content filtering product which prevents internet attacks and performance degradation by enforcing DoD/CENTCOM/USFOR-A policy regarding internet usage for authorized purposes.” The program is designed to block access to explicit, hacking, and gambling sites. Well, duh, that’s no problem. The problem is that the program also blocks access to “social networking” sites, such as Yahoo mail and Facebook. I and nearly everyone else use these sites to stay in touch with lots of family and friends all over the world. Something we can’t do with just 30 minutes worth of morale calls per week. More importantly, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to access and update my blog. I hope so, but based on the base support group’s recent performance I doubt it. This development wouldn’t be so bad if we had wireless Internet like they promised. That was supposed to be active on 16 November, but not only did it not happen, but there’s been no update on the status since then. Good grief! These are the frustrations that make a deployment more miserable than it has to be. I hope I’ll still be able to post after tonight. If not, I’ll have to wait until when (if) they get the wireless Internet working. Take care.