Harsh

As the saying goes down here, "Antarctica is a harsh continent". That expression is the explanation for everything from frostbite on your nose to dropping your cookie on the floor.

However, it's a particularly harsh continent for Internet-addicted computer nerds like me. We're limited to 6-8 hours of internet access per day.

It's almost impossible to string cables from the coast to the South Pole, and fixing the cables when they break would be treacherous. Therefore our only alternative is through satellite connections.

Because we're at the absolute bottom of the world, there are few satellites that come into view, and those only stray down this far occasionally. Thus we get a block of time from 6:30AM to around 1PM, then a couple of short hour-long bursts of Internet.

Yesterday, that smallish window of Internet was closed even further, because the computer that handles satellite communications crashed in the middle of the night and the tech guys didn't get it working again until around 9:30.

That's why I wasted most of my Internet time yesterday doing work (with a bit of web-surfing) rather than doing important stuff like blog posts. Sorry!