The Global Guy

Yesterday was our annual Yuri’s night celebration. Yuri’s night is a party to celebrate the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin back in 1961. Apparently it’s been celebrated at the Pole for at least the past four years. We did it during my last time down here on Radio Dart’s night, but this time we took advantage of the new wine bar to do it right. Justus and I provided free booze and snacks, and I found a bunch of Yuri related pictures on the ‘net to print up for decorations. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully we’ll get pics up on the official site.

The past weekend was a lot of fun down here. It started out great on Friday night when we finally won our first game in the inter-station darts tournament. We started the season kinda slow, but practice helps, and the south pole team won two out of five games. It was great to hear the cheers coming from the radio towards us instead of us having to cheer for the other guys.

The next day we had the BBQ party that I mentioned in my last update. It couldn’t have gone better. The entire day was a blast, starting at 9 am with margaritas, tequila sunrises and breakfast burritos provided by a couple of the guys. When you’ve got a margarita in one hand, and your first cup of coffee of the morning in the other, you know it’s going to be an interesting day!

So the morning was spent just hanging out and chatting with people…when 2pm arrived, it was time to start cooking the meat! Now, I don’t know how many of you have tried to light a BBQ grill when the wood and charcoal are sitting at a temperature of about -45, but it isn’t easy. We ended up using an acetylene torch to finally get the thing started. Once it was done though, it was roaring. We had beef steaks, lamb chops, chicken breasts, and bratwursts all cooked to perfection. After the feast, the band played their first gig of the season, and then most people headed down to the bar to finish off the evening.

Speaking of the bar, this may very well be the last year that it is in use. The new station has a designated "bar" area attached to the galley, but quite frankly, it sucks. It’s not an enclosed space, just an alcove with a few stools and some shelving for drinks. The whole idea of the bar is a place where you can go to get away from the station as a whole, and have a totally different atmosphere. There is talk of modifying some space elsewhere, but that won’t be decided for quite a while.

Sunday was dedicated to sleeping late and relaxing. I ended up in the galley sometime in the afternoon working with one of the Met guys cooking dinner for the station. We made almost a hundred calzones in three different flavors. Fantastic!

Other than that,the biggest news is that we’ve seen the first stars! It’s been reported that the southern cross is visible, but every time I’ve gone out to look I can only see three of the four stars. The clouds have been off and on, so it’s tough to get a clear view. Right now the moon is full, so that provides a lot of extra light. I’m looking forward to two weeks from now when the moon is gone and we’ve got a clear dark sky for viewing.

Talk to you guys later!

Winter is definitely here! It’s been averaging around -85F for the past week, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. The sky has been extremely clear which has led to a really great sunset. We had a contest down here where we had to guess the exact time that the sun would be seen for the last time, and I happened to win. I was off by about 10 hours, but that was still close enough to emerge victorious. I got a travel coffee mug, a french press coffee maker, and a bag of Starbucks beans. Talk about luxury! My work partner, Sarah, and I are both caffeine fiends, so we’re really enjoying this.

So we didn’t have an actual sunset party this year. Instead we had a casino night. I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea, but people seemed to enjoy it. I ended up losing about 10 bucks before I called it a night. To make up for the lack of a party, we’re having a twilight party this weekend. The Aussies on station are BBQing, the band is making its debut perfuming, and we’ve got two days off. It should be a lot of fun!

Hmm, other social activities…The folks that live in the upper berthing area threw a great party last weekend. It was basically an open house, where each room served a different drink. I think it was the best party we’ve had all season. There was just the perfect combination of conversation, silliness and alcohol. It was a different crowd than normally shows up in the bar, probably due to the fact that there wasn’t any smoking.

Last Wednesday I threw a "Big Lebowski" party in the old station. I’d been wanting to watch the movie again for a while, and I figured that we may as well have some fun with it. The rule for the evening was that if you wore a bathrobe to the movie, you got free white Russians all night long. We actually had a great turnout…there were a lot more bathrobes than I’d expected, but luckily this was moderated by the fact that it was a work night, so a lot of people didn’t want to drink TOO much.

Work is going great as well. The biggest challenge we’ve been facing is that the 9 meter dish for two of our satellites has been out of commission since the day after station closing. Well, we finally got data flowing thru it again two days ago. It’s still being tuned, but it seems that it might give us an extra three hours of data coverage every day. Another big project is that the NSF has hired an outside firm to do a complete security audit of the Antarctic network. Some of you may recall that last year (not my year!) the Pole fell victim to a hacking attack. The FBI was called in, and eventually traced the preparation’s to an internet cafe in Romania. I don’t know the eventual results of the criminal case, but the results down here are striking. We’re locked down a lot tighter than the last time. Very few applications are allowed thru the firewall, which has made it tougher to stay in contact via instant messaging and webcams. Anyway, because of the upcoming security audit I’ve gotten to play with a lot of new toys. I’ve built an intrusion detection sniffer, as well as a bunch of other security tools. I’m actually looking forward to the upcoming audit, just to see how well I’ve done.