Wednesday, March 5, 2008

D-336 NKO SUCKS!

The weight of this rapid deployment was grinding on my nerves a bit today. I had modest goals for the day; I would spend the morning completing the required Navy Knowledge Online courses. Which are always a nuisance, but usually you just click through a powerpoint, take a test, and print off a certificate. I would turn over the remainder of my NROTC duties in the afternoon. Nice little Wednesday actually.

Then I had a two hour meeting with my CO, who has been on IA before. and had a lot of very sound advice on the difference between tax deferred and tax exempt TSP contributions, and told me about something called a Savings Deposit Program (I think that's what it's called), which guarantees a 10% return on up to $10,000 for the length of your deployment.

It was after lunch when I finally got around to NKO. First, my browser was improperly configured; by the time I fixed it, I had to go to a staff meeting which took forever. I got back to NKO at 1500. I started the first required course, M-16 Safety. Infuriatingly this is required even though I am not being issued an M-16. Instead of powerpoint format, the M-16 brief is a video presentation. It is given in 2-3 minutes segments, and it takes the crappy applet about 20 seconds to load in between. So the presentation itself is 2 hours long, and you can not pause it, so each time you get interrupted, you have to restart a segment.

Frustrated beyond belief, I skipped to the test. The test asked a series of bizarre and specific questions, and I failed my first 4 attempts. So I quit and went home. I suppose I'll try again tomorrow.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify a couple of things about NKO and Navy eLearning (NeL). NKO and NeL are two separate websites. NKO is a portal to many sites including but not limited to NeL.

NeL is a repository of courses developed by dozens of contracted companies hired by even more sponsors throughout the Navy. NeL does not develop any of the courses hosted on NeL.

The M16 Weapons Safety course was developed for and sponsored by the Center for Anti Terrorism & Navy Security Forces back in 2003. This course, if failed the first time and continues to give the same grade repeated, likely means you are on NMCI and still have Java 1.5.0 update 1 installed. Your score will never change. You can thank NMCI for this. Call NMCI's helpdesk to get the latest Java installed (1.6.0 update 5).

As for browser configurations, these are only necessary because of the many tools that have been used over the years by the many different developers. This is changing and developers are being held to much higher standards as well as well defined standards being developed.

If you continue to experience problems, you should always attempt to contact the NETC Enterprise Customer Support Center. That's just a fancy name for the helpdesk. They are now open 24/7. Because of the aforementioned network, they are pretty busy during normal work hours. I would give it a try later in the day, or call and leave the speakerphone on while you do something else.

Hope this was helpful.