Internet-Technology in the Netherlands

When Laura panned the internet-technology savvy of the university (not the students/professors, but the IT staff themselves), she wasn't kidding. Consider the following:

• Tomorrow, I will have been waiting six weeks for my student/employee ID (called a "campus card") to arrive. At UF (or even at Clemson as a freshman 7 years ago), I would have had my ID in less than 5 minutes. What could possibly be so different about the ID cards here? Am I getting some kind of extra top secret clearance? Will it be indestructible? Manufactured from carbon nanotubes?
  
• Centralization is a foreign concept. Why are there both university and department-based email servers? Why do I have the same username and email address for both, but different passwords? Why do I only receive incoming emails to one but can send outgoing emails from both? How was I supposed to know when I first got here which one to use? Why in the world do I need to get a separate library card and gym card, which involve filling out separate paperwork, when they could just use the "campus card" for all of these functions?
  
• Nothing involving the internet works the first time. Nothing. Ever.
  
• When registering for courses, NONE of the courses say at what time or place they are offered. To find out this information, you have to first find a course that interests you, then search by hand through a list of course numbers (if the course is even listed). There is no indication that this list exists or a link to this list. It can only find it through dumb luck or by begging someone else who has previously found it via dumb luck to show it to you.
  

In the end, what I am saying is that the internet-technology situation at the university would surely be better if they were to replace the current internet-technology staff with the Tanga Tanga Ichiwichiwawa Tribe, which was recently discovered in the forests of Brazil and is rumored to be particularly good at system integration. The displaced staff could then go back to something more familiar, like reclaiming land from the sea.

The Tanga Tang Ichiwichiwawa Tribe as viewed from a helicopter.

(Disclaimer: The tribe in Brazil is not really called the "Tanga Tanga Ichiwichiwawa," but since they are uncontacted, someone has to name them. It might as well be me.)