Yesterday was another routine day at the office. I did manage to hit the treadmill again, though, so hopefully I can keep that up. It’s my only defense against this all you can eat food three times a day.
Scott arrived back from the South Pole around 3:30. He had lots of interesting stories to share about SPSM (South Pole Station Modernization) and the new elevated station that is currently under construction. He also took a photo of my wedding picture on the geographic South Pole marker. I’ll post that once I get a copy from him.
At dinner we met with Pat Smith, the IT director for the NSF, and Scott sold him on the idea of the local mirrored instance of POLAR ICE. I’ve been doing a lot of benchmarking and the data I have clearly shows that a local copy would save a ton of time for the application users on station. It’s a fairly decent undertaking, involving finding hardware, installing all the software (some of which is on its way down here from Denver right now via a colleague’s handcarry baggage), harden the server for security reasons, load current data, test, test, test, and then launch. To complete it in less than 3 weeks, given the amount of additional stuff we have going on, might be a challenge. Cleve, my supervisor on station (Scott’s boss) said he could extend our deployments if needed. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.
After dinner several of us played a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. We found an old copy of the game at The Coffee House, though the board was from Genus IV and the questions were from the original 1982? game. We played two teams of four, and my team won. We had science lab techs, GIS and GPS specialists, security information specialists, etc., playing, and I’ve never seen as many correct answers when playing with that old set of cards. It was fairly humbling, as the only question I answered that nobody else on my team knew was “What was Alfred E. Neumann’s favorite saying?” However, that question was for the win, so I contributed just in time.
This morning broke very cold, windy, and overcast. It’s actually Condition 2 right now (that’s the middle condition, defined by one or more of the following conditions: winds speeds of 48-55 knots, wind chills of –75º to –100ºF, or visibility of less than ¼ mile.) Today is also the day we start FSTP (Field Safety Training Program), or as it’s known on station, “Happy Camper School.” The course is two days long, and I’m to report to the SSC (Science Support Center) at 9am – one hour from now – in my full ECW gear. We’ll spend some time learning the rules of survival in the Antarctic wilderness, and then go out onto the ice shelf and learn how to build igloos, which we’ll then spend the night in. I can’t wait, this should truly be the Antarctic Experience, and if it’s Condition 2 weather out there it will make it all the more realistic.
