The White Falcon - 08.09.2004, Page 2

The Naval Media Center’s radio program, “Talk of the
Town” airs Wednesdays at 2 p.m. on K104FM, Thunder
1530, and Roller Channel 9. Wednesday, September 1,
NASKEF Command Master Chief CMDCM(SW) Mike
Johnson and JOl Alex Carfrae from the Naval Media
Center were the guests. Here are some of the community
issues they discussed:
I understand that we live in a foreign country and
don’t have the same availabilities we have in the
United States. However, is it too much to ask that the
commissary keep the shelves stocked when it’s open?
I was shopping on Sunday and most of the shelves
were empty. I had 13 items on my list and four of
them (sour cream, canned tomatoes, individual piz-
zas, and bagels) weren’t available in any brand.
Can’t the commissary schedule its stock workers
better so someone is always available to replenish
products? And, if not having products available is the
problem, is there a way to order more of the products
the community wants instead of products we don’t?
Also, please check the expiration dates on products.
The past three times I’ve been to the commissary I’ve
picked up products with expired dates. [From Jim
Marino, Commissary Store Director] I would like to
apologize for the inconvenience of not having some of
the products that you want to buy on those times that you
shop at the store. During this summer months, we have
experienced a severe shortage of personnel, particularly
at the warehouse and stocking crew that affected our
ability to keep a well stocked store. Recently, we have
been able to hire three at the warehouse and four new
employees for the night stocking crew. Most of the U.S.
and local national employees that went on leave are now
back to work, so you should see a significant improve-
ment as we continue to unload and stock the backlog of
incoming containers. Please feel free to ask assistance
from one of my staff or any of the store management
if you did not find a particular products on the shelves
as the products may be at the back storage area or have
just been unloaded from a container. Products that are
expired or pass sale by date are available for reduce price
up to 50 percent as long as it is still wholesome and fit for
resale. Questions about quality of our products can be
address to the U.S. Army food inspector at 2786. I went
shopping at the commissary a week ago and noticed
that more than half the fruit on the line had mold on
them. I understand that they have to be flown in from
the states but why can’t the people who work there
take them off the line ones mold starts growing on
them. Mold does spread. And instead of flying fruit
from the states why can’t we bring in fruit from the
stores out in town. I would be willing to spend that
extra dollar for fresh fruit than wasting my money
on old moldy fruit. [From Jim Marino, Commissary
Store Director] We regret your bad experience with our
produce, and we definitely can do a better job in policing
the produce line. Your concern has been communicated
to our new produce manager and her staff. The commis-
sary receives only one produce flight a week. Normally,
the quality of produce has deteriorated by the time we
receive it on Monday as the shipment was delivered to
Defense Subsistence Office (DSO), Tidewater, for airlift
to Keflavik the Friday of the previous week. Buying pro-
duce locally is an expensive alternative, not just for the
commissary, but also for customers. From time to time,
we buy local bananas and other items that we need by
the end of the week and it is very expensive. Depending
on the Kronur rate, the cost per pound of bananas could
be as high as 96 cents per pound as compared to 34 cents
per pound from DSO Tidewater. In addition, as a DOD
agency, we are mandated by DOD regulations to pur-
chase our produce supplies from DSO.
During the past month, the internet service has been
hit-or-miss at best. Since August 17 I’ve tried to log on
to the internet only to have my computer connect to
the server then not be able to connect to a browser or
my e-mail. When MWR made a change to the server
the instructions for updating our system settings were
sent to us the day before the change happened. Not
all of us check our MWR accounts daily and several
of us went without our Internet service all weekend
until we could get the administrator to send a copy of
the instructions to our military accounts. This past
weekend, at least a dozen of us were able to log on to
the Internet once but not for the rest of the weekend.
What is MWR doing to prevent this from happening
again? How is MWR going to compensate its inter-
net users for all the time we haven’t had access to its
service? [From Dennis Merkel, MWR Director] Thank
you for your input, although your time line seems a bit
exaggerated. The dial-up Internet service was down
from Friday through Sunday of last week, not for a
month. The system wasn’t fully down...in fact, we were
down to 60 modems from our normal number of 300,
and as you can imagine this affected many of our ISP
subscribers. This situation was caused by some technical
problems experienced during the switchover from dial-
up to ADSL service. More technical issues may follow
as this transition is complicated. MWR will do its best to
avert any problems beforehand. As far as discounts go,
MWR is planning to credit those customers who were
inconvenienced by the fault. Is it fair to give credit to
those who even didn’t use the Internet over weekend at
all? We’re not going to comment on that except to say
we decided to give a credit to all in this case. The tech-
nical problem experienced was unexpected. MWR has
a set policy for downtime and according to that policy,
we are not required to refund or credit any customers,
but still decided to do so. MWR’s IT personnel will be
closely monitoring the dial-up servers and hopefully this
problem will not continue.
Why did German MTV go away? It had really good
hard rock videos on certain nights. It was formerly
Channel 38, but with the new channel line-up, it has
quietly disappeared. Is there a chance of getting it
back on Channel 38, since it is just a test pattern
now? Recently, AFN announced the beginning of two
new services, AFN Family and AFN Movie. As part of
that, it was necessary for us to rework our channel lineup.
We took the opportunity to do a full channel review and
MTV Germany was the one channel that we removed.
MTV Germany was our one remaining analog chan-
nel. The problem with this analog channel for both the
viewer and our engineers was that the reception tended to
degenerate anytime the weather conditions deteriorated.
Some of the programming normally scene on MTV such
as Punk’d, Dismissed, etc. will now also be showing up
on our new AFN Spectrum Channel.
Look in next week’s edition for the results of the
next “Talk of the Town.” E-mail your questions to
nmcfeedback@naskef.navy.mil or call the Naval Media
Center during the broadcast at 4615.
Page 2 The White Falcon
September 8, 2004