Short time

I'm leaving the South Pole in about 30 hours, so I haven't done much except work since I'm tying up a few loose ends.

I think Sabrina's able to finish her work, though while I'm in Christchurch I'll be checking my email and chat to see if she needs any help.

I was able to make one big improvement in my data acquisition software and I'm hoping to finish off another big feature before I get on the plane tomorrow.

I also did my House Mouse duties today. Everyone takes turns cleaning their shared bathroom, and the IceCube people also have responsibility for cleaning up B2, the big science area where most of the scientists work as well as B1, the lounge across the hall which has a foosball table, a pool table, bookshelves full of books and a sitting area where a group of IceCubers generally gathers each night to sit and talk (and drink). Those cleaning duties are referred to as house-mousing.

Once I leave here, I'll spend another night in McMurdo before I'm finally off the continent.

Work and play

Today I helped my co-worker Sabrina read data from the three new strings which have been frozen in ... it can take up to a month for the water surrounding some of the strings to completely freeze. Also, because it's warmer a kilometer below the ice than at the surface, the strings freeze from the top down. We found a couple of minor problems with my software, but everything else looks good and we should be ready to take data tomorrow from the old IC59 strings as well as the 13 new strings which are ready.

The South Pole International Film Festival was fun. None of the entries would be mistaken for professionally made films, but they were mostly entertaining. The IceCube party was also a good time. I even managed to make it back to the station by 5AM and get in a few hours' work!

Busy night

I'm still working the night shift. Today I'll probably work until 10AM then get to sleep because "tomorrow" is busy. At 5PM there's an IceCube barbeque. At 7PM, the South Pole International Film Festival (SPIFF) will be held in the galley, showing films made by people here at the South Pole. After SPIFF, the IceCube party will be held in a building at summer camp, a short walk north of the station (because almost EVERY direction is North from the station!)

I'll let you know if I get any work done after the party!

Done with drilling

I finished at drill camp yesterday, so I'll be working in the station for the rest of my time. The 20th hole was finished a couple of days ago, so the drillers are now tearing everything down and packing it away for winter.making sure it's all ready for a quick start next season when they drill the final 7 holes.

While I was at drill camp, I got to drive a 287 (a little forklift machine) out to the drill site where one of the drillers hitched the 287 to a fuel tank. I then followed him as he towed the drill building back to the main camp (that's me in the rear view mirror, and the red box is the building):


Here's the 287 parked in front of the TOS. The white tank in front of the building is the fuel tank (after it was reattached):


When everything is packed up and ready to be stored, they'll hook together all the buildings in drill camp and tow them to the berms, an area of land dedicated to long-term storage. The buildings will sit there (along with all the other equipment which isn't needed during the winter) all winter long. The snow piles up against them all winter, so one of the first jobs when people start arriving in October/November will be to uncover the buildings and haul them back to the new drill camp site

Correction to my last post

The woman who was supposed to arrive today at noon apparently missed her bag-drag last night so she could not get on the plane today. Instead, all IceCube people have been invited to sign the last DOM to go into the ice this season, so I'll walk back out to drill camp at around 9AM and get my name buried in the ice!

Working, copying, greeting

The last hole of the season is being drilled today, so the final string should be deployed by tomorrow morning. 20 strings were added this season, for a total of 79 strings in the detector. There will only be 7 new strings next season, so the IceCube detector will likely be complete before the end of the year.

Today I started work at drill camp, copying all the drilling and deployment data to a portable disk drive which I'll carry back to Madison and save to an archive. It'll be used to diagnose problems and possibly aid in analysis of future scientific data.

At around 3AM, I headed over to the IceCube Lab building to take down parts of the detector in order for one of the I.T. people to upgrade the network cards on all our machines. Fortunately, the ICL is only 500 yards from drill camp ... in past years it's been far away.

The data acquisition software (a.k.a the DAQ) runs on over 70 machines -- and growing, because each string requires a separate server. We'll need over 100 machines when the detector is complete.

I don't have much else to report, because I practically slept the day away yesterday! I was going to try and stay up until noon, but I hit a wall at 10:30 and managed to stay asleep (aside from a couple of half-hour stretches of lying awake) until 6PM. As I've written before, everyone has sleep problems here, primarily because of the low-oxygen environment. Getting 7+ hours of sleep was a pleasant surprise!

I wanted to stay up until noon yesterday because I'm going to need to be awake at noon today to greet a passenger on an incoming plane. The passenger is a postdoc who will be checking out all the new strings and making sure they're ready to
be included in the data acquisition runs, and I'll be standing by to help with any DAQ-related problems.

Tomorrow should be my last day at drill camp. It'll also begin my last week at the South Pole.

Earning my pay

I'm working two jobs at the South Pole. My first job is to support the software which controls the drill that makes the holes for the strings of sensors. Once drilling ends (in a day or two), I go back to doing the job for which I'm normally paid, working on the data acquisition software (which pulls the data out of the sensors, throws out as much garbage as possible, then packages up the remainder for uploading via satellite to computers in Madison)

Since I'm on the night shift, I went to sleep a bit after noon yesterday, then woke up at around 4:30PM. I was still in my room at 5PM when someone from drill camp called my room to tell me that when they tried to start up the drill software to drill the final hole of the season, it didn't work! I quickly dressed, grabbed an IceCube snowmobile and drove out to the drill camp. (Fortunately, I had gotten certified to drive a snowmobile about 6 hours earlier.)

It took about 3 hours, but we eventually fixed the problems with the drill software and by 9PM I was back in the station eating a couple of bowls of cereal. I went back out with the night shift drill crew at 10:30PM (which is the usual time I start work), then came back for midrats (the midnight meal for the night shift) and stayed at the station to finish working.

In a way, it was fortunate that I was able to work the rest of the day at the station, because I needed to do laundry. There are washers and driers on the first floor of the station, along with detergent, all available for free -- though we're only allowed one load per week. These machines can be busy during the day, but they're usually wide open at 3AM.

One bonus of doing laundry is that I hang my jeans in my room rather than running them through the drier. As I've written before, there's almost no humidity here (because the moisture freezes out of the air), so the drying jeans act like a humidifier!

Frozen treats and other sweets

One of the most treasured machines at the South Pole is the Frosty Boy, a soft-serve ice cream machine. Unfortunately, Frosty Boy spends a lot of time either broken down or out of ice cream.

As a stopgap measure, the head cook had a bunch of ice cream treats delivered from New Zealand ... I've seen popsicles, Drumstick-like ice cream cones, and chocolate coated ice cream bars. He also sent out a warning that if everyone has a frozen treat with every meal, we've only got enough to last for a couple of weeks, but if people only have one a day, we'll make it to the end of the season.

Fortunately, the ever-present (and legendary) cookie cart keeps my sweet tooth satisfied! So far I've come back with one new cookie recipe each year

The first year, they had some incredible s'mores bars which I've since made a few times -- when I brought Christmas cookies down to my parents' house for the holiday, one of my nieces asked if I'd brought s'mores bars as well

The second year, they had some really good cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies which are a big hit with my family.

I haven't found the "must have" recipe this year, but I've been here less than a week!

Sleepy

I'm still adjusting my sleep schedule from days to nights. It's made easier because the sun is up 24 hours a day, but I'm still not quite there. Also the idea of a day gets a little fluid ... I arrived Monday at noon and it's now Friday morning, but I've only had 3 "days", each about 28 hours long.

Yesterday (which started Wednesday at noon) I had my first day of work, starting at 10:30PM. Unfortunately, there was a minor disaster with my normal IceCube job, and I ended up staying up until 10AM to get the problem fixed. I got a bit of sleep, but woke up at 11:30AM to meet the incoming plane, because an IceCuber who was arriving had been nice enough to carry a few items I had forgotten. After that, I was agitated enough that I only got a few more hours of sleep, so I spent the last half of my work day today fighting to stay awake.

There is a low, dense layer of clouds here right now, which makes it hard to walk (because the dimness hides any details in the all-white landscape. The clouds extend to the horizon, so when you look out at the distance, you see nothing but dim whiteness everywhere!

I just got off work, and rather than go to breakfast, I'm writing this entry and then going to SLEEP! Good night (or day) all!