Antarctica? Seriously?

So we've been at sea for two days now. We only got to stay in Punta Arenas one night because we're dropping off some Ukrainian scientists at their station, Vernodsky, on the way down. I was bummed because Punta Arenas seems like a pretty cool town. The the people were nice, the food was good, and of course Chilean wine. We did get to get out and about a bit before we had to report for Extreme Cold Weather gear checkout, a mini physical, and ship orientation . One thing that I really wanted to do, and had time for, was to rub the toe on the Ferdinand Magellan statue for good luck on the Drake Passage. This is in a little park in the center of town. Shiny toe from all the rubbing. Touching the toe for good luck. We found this little restaurant that we thought would be good because there was a line of locals out the door waiting to get in to the counter and order. We figured it must be good with a crowd like that, but decided to come back later in hopes the crowd...

The last two days before I leave have been quite hectic. One day of orientation with the IT folks in Denver, and one day of orientation just for the winterover crew. Because I was local, I didn't get to stay in a hotel like the others and had to commute to Centennial on south side of Denver both days. That, coupled with a lack of sleep due to the excitement factor, made for some very long days. All ready for a winter in Antarctica Anyway, several people have asked me what I'm bringing down with me. They supply extreme cold weather (ECW) gear that you get issued in Punta Arenas, Chile. These are the classic red down parkas with the fur around the hood that you see in all the Antarctica "hero" shots. They give you a bunch of other stuff as well. When I looked at a bunch of YouTube videos of Palmer though, everybody was wearing their outdoor gear from home. When I asked about this, everybody said you just use the ECW gear for dirty work-line handling for the shi...

So I thought I'd keep blogging even though I haven't left for Antarctica quite yet. Both to get into the habit of it, and to learn more about Blogger and its features. For instance I've added a subscription link on the side so that you can get notified by email when there are updates to my blog. This was at the request of my friend Sean C., who although he's an ICT guy, is still rock'in it old school. Anyway, I came across what I think is a recent picture of the Palmer Station sign post. I don't know what it is about sign posts in off the wall places, but it seems to be a tradition. The reason this one caught my eye, other than being at Palmer Station, is that it has the directions to two places that I'm very familiar with. The first is Ward, CO , a town in the mountains west of Boulder. There are several towns in the mountains above Boulder along with Ward- Jamestown , Gold Hill , and Nederland to name a few. But Ward is definitely the quirkie...

More than a few people have asked me what I'll be doing down in Antarctica. While I think there was a little line about a systems administration position in one of my posts, it was well hidden, and many of you might not know what the heck that is anyway. So my official title is "Senior Systems Administrator." Basically, I administer computer systems. I'll be taking care of the virtualization farm, backups, email servers, file servers, file transfer servers, various other servers, and front end computers for general and scientific computing. Mostly Windows boxes, but also some Macs and Linux boxen. I imagine I'll also help the network and communications engineers as I know a little bit about those things too. My boss has also asked me if I would help the antenna riggers with antenna maintenance. Most of the work I've been doing over the past years has been pretty specialized. I've mostly been working on the computing involved with ground systems for spa...

I've mentioned in a previous post how found this job in Antarctica, but getting the job is just the first step. I think I've done more paperwork and had more medical/dental/lab checkups for this job than for any other in my life-including the Navy! All in all, the whole process took approximately two months. After they offer you the position, and you accept it, you aren't really hired yet. Before you are "officially" hired, you have to take a bunch of tests and fill out a bunch of paperwork. Once you've passed everything, and completed all the paperwork, then you are officially hired and you start all the new hire paperwork. I had to do background check paperwork and a background check. I had to do a drug test. I had to do a dental exam. I had to do a physical exam. I had to do a ton of blood work. The dental and physical exams were down in Denver, so a couple of trips for that. The Boulder lab didn't do drug tests, so I had to go to Broomfield to get ...