Blogs from Antarctica, Antarctica - page 25

The last few days have been filled with a lot of running around trying to prepare everything for one final day of work when it comes. I got a spare pre-amp, a device that amplifies a signal prior to it being transmitted through a cable to the processing unit in order to make the signal stronger than the noise it picks up along the way, in the mail from the South Pole. It was dated 1999 and even back then nobody had an idea what it was. There were a couple notes with question marks all over it. I went to a Spanish club meeting a few days ago and chatted in Spanish with a few people, and every now and then we get together for lunch or supper and practice with each other. I am ... read more

I woke up early for to watch Obama's inauguration this morning. It was aired live in the galley at 6 a.m. Then phased between sleeping and reading while I waited to go to my outbriefing at 10:30. Once there, I was asked how the NSF and Raytheon support was, how our visit matched our outline in the SIP (not sure what it stands for, but it is basically a detailed outline of everything we would do and need here). After that, I went back out to Willy Field with more troubleshooting things for the allsky camera and worked on that for a while. It turns out a wire had come loose during the shipping process, so I plugged back in and returned to McMurdo after taking a few more test pictures. I got to talking with ... read more

More food for the intellectuals... read more

Because nobody works here on Sunday and we are waiting to hear if battery reconditioning works before anything else can be done, I have the day off! The recreation team and a bunch of volunteers organized a marathon for today and I thought about skiing the full or running the half. The course is on the ice shelf and goes between Willy Field, Pegasus (where the C-17 jet-engine cargo planes land) and Scott Base. But morning and running don't mix well with me, so, a little disappointed, I sat this one out. However, I found my way to the library and encountered a Runner's World magazine and read that. Eventually, I did go for a run of my own, but far shorter than 26.2 miles. Gallagher's bar had burger night tonight, so I stopped in for ... read more

The switch I installed in for the riometer did not do the job, so today, after the usual answering e-mails for a couple hours, I went out to do a more thorough inspection. Before I left, though, I met up with Jason, the RA here, to see if he had an indicator and a power chord I could use to rock out (hehe, power chord). Actually, the power chord is for plugging the Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) into a standard wall outlet, and the indicator is to determine whether data is being transferred from the DAU to the modem and from the modem to UNH. Jason didn't know what I was talking about and neither did I, so I just took something with a lot of lights on it. By this time it was already lunch ... read more