all photos

[12/15(Sa) more clues]
Got a mail from my sister Seika. It was nice to hear from her. She told me to post more photos; especially her husband would enjoy big mechanical machines. I'd like to try harder with photography.
The weather has been bad, but there was a momentary break in the clouds so I was able to do star pointing calibrations, at least until the clouds came back. I barely made it to the weekly Science meeting.
I got stopped by the skiway lights, waiting for the aircraft to land. The clouds were pretty.
Got some feedback about my proposed tests and found out that the computers themselves were fine (which was a big relief), and finally nailed down the problem to the frame that takes the portable hard drive in. After a long day, just went to sleep around 8:30PM.
[12/16(Su) skiing]
Woke up once to check the telescope, but could not get up forever. To show Seika and Hayachi-kun more photos, I uploaded "all photos" (linked at the top of pages)..
10:30-12:00 Had brunch w/ the 10-meter telescope people, the cryotech Chris, and Kevin who's worked in Japan. Chris went to the camping trip last night and told me they got to make a "Quincy" dome, where they made a big snow dome on top of a bunch of bags, and then shoveled a tunnel and took out the bags to make a room to sleep in. Digging a cave in the snow and sleeping in it (which is what I did at my camping trip 2 years ago) was cool, but the I want to make a Quincy dome, too!
Kept troubleshooting the hard drive frames, but I must be missing something stupid because all the spare frames are acting up the same way... Found out at least that the clone making hardware was fine. That was another relief.
7PM After another long afternoon, had dinner with my favorite people, the meteorologist Jeff, site manage Katie, plus another Katy who recently arrived here as an alternate winter-over for the meterology department. Tonight's Science Lecture is about managing large science projects, which I've heard already in previous years, so wasn't planning to go and was looking to get some exercise. Then Katy said she's going skiing, so decided to join.
8PM I wanted to go see the Quincy dome, but it's ~5km away, and we had only 1 hour, so decided to do part of the ski loop toward the other side of the station. It was the first nice clear day with low wind in a week.
The Moon was out, too, though not in this picture.
[12/17(Mo) Finally found the problem!]
This morning I went to the manufacturer's website for the hard drive frame, and couldn't believe it -- the computers were not detecting the hard drives because the key lock was not turned on -- I thought it was just a mechanical lock, but it turned out to be also a switch! I felt very silly having spent so much time diagnosing much more serious problems that turned out to be no problem. At least I learned some things about computers finally :)
Just before lunch, I stopped by the growth chamber where the station grows vegetables. I want to help out with the plants but no one was working there. There were cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchinis, various types of basils, chives, eggplants, cabbages, cilantros, ... starting to grow up. It was really nice to touch and smell the greens. I wished I started helping from the very beginning, but was too busy to remember to inquire.
How can we go to the South Pole, too?
=) In the growth chamber, I met Colleen who was trying to stay up in the brightness of the room as she just switched from swing shift to day shift. She said her job title is "dining attendant, but probably to make it sound more attractive... we basically wash dishes most of the day :)" They also clean around the station and stuff. Many people apply, so it's selective and hired people are often over-qualified, but you get to come to the South Pole! We figured that the dining attendants probably get selected on the basis of how healthy they are, how pleasant they seem to work with and how likely they'll stay out of trouble. I asked her about non-US citizens, but she said there are so many qualified applicants that she's never seen non-US citizens except for highly skilled jobs... I've met a British machinist and a kiwi (New Zealander) mechanic.
For my weekly report to my team members, I took a photo with me putting my footprint on our telescope.
Or maybe it's supposed to be a paw...
[12/18(Tu) fun volleyball]
I started trying what's more like skate skiing, pushing with my feet more in a V-shape, kind of like ice skating. It worked a little, but I should get a real lesson. Today I did mostly computer work, checking what's in old hard drives, and practicing cloning them.
12:30 Dropped by the growth chamber and saw Kara and Jude this time, so helped out with setting up lines for plants to climb.
At the lab, cargo worker Scott brought 2 air force people who are here for tomorrow's Air Drop operation (postponed from today due to weather). One was a C-17 cargo aircraft pilot and the other was a load master. They were interested in the telescope (that they may have helped transport), so gave them a tour. They said it's neat to see the stuff they transported come to live and in action. Now it was time for me to bust some myths. I had heard that those bomb-looking things under the wings of some aircraft had some aerodynamic purpose... i thought they were just fuel tanks. The pilot reassured me that they're just fuel tanks, and actually create drags. I also asked them why exactly the C-130 aircraft can't land when the temperature here is below 50°C. They said it's not because the hydraulic fluids freeze (because they're heated), but they weren't completely sure why.
4:30PM Went to "LMR Anonymous" to learn about using the Land Mobile Radio. Many people carry them to communicate around the station. I don't, but in case of emergency I should pick up the emergency radio for my trauma team work. There's supposed to be a Mass Casualty Incident drill sometime this week, so I finally made the time to learn about the radios.
5:30PM Did pilates w/ 3 other guys and the instructor. At dinner, I met an emergency medic who gets to fly all over the continent to accompany a crew deploying seismometers. I would love to fly all over...
7:30-9PM Everyone especially enjoyed tonight's volleyball. People kept joking about how I fly all over the court :] We were laughing so much it was good for our abdominals, too. Volleyball is a really fun and thrilling teamwork sport.
9-10:30PM After volleyball, Carla invited people for a drink, so joined Chris (the best player), Michele (yoga teacher), and Joe (just met today).
[12/19(We) Air drop!]
6AM Even after pilates and volleyball, I was able to get up without having to sleep 9 hours, although it took a few snoozes.
7AM Skied over to the lab and called in for the teleconference. Shortly after that, the control computer crashed again and the telescope stopped! Anyways, by now I'm used to these crashes, unfortunately... Since I was occupied with getting the telescope back up, I didn't notice that Laurie's 3rd grade class from Michigan just tried to call me! It was too bad, but hopefully tomorrow will work out. In October, I met her class and showed them pictures and videos from the South Pole. They had studied about Antarctica and knew so much about my stories because Laurie had told them a lot before they even met me :)
12:00 I went to the growth chamber again and Kara and Jude came by.
The tomatos plants seemed too crowded, so we had to pull out 3 plants that were not doing well... It was very sad to have to throw them away, but there was no more room for them :( I saved one of the little plants that also was going to have to be thrown away, and took it to my room with the nutritious hydroponics water. After lunch, that plant had shiveled down... probably because of the dryness of the room :( I wonder if I could revive it...
6PM After making backup hard drives of the computer that keeps crashing, I barely made it back to station in time to have a quick dinner and head outside to see the Air Drop, where a large jet aircraft (C-17 that I took from Christchurch to McMurdo) flies by and drops many pallets of supplies on parachutes. I saw this last year, when it was the first time air drop was done by a C-17. As I walked over to the other side of the station, I saw that the aircraft had made one practice pass already. Then, it was flying at ~300 m altitude and 10 pallets parachuted down. Each pallet is supposed to be a cube a little over 1 meter on each side and weigh ~1.5 ton. Then the aircraft made another pass, dropping 10 more pallets, but this time 2 of the pallets fell very quickly without opening the parachutes! The cargo crew got to be very near the drop zone; it must be much more spectacular from there.
Took a walk back to the station with Kevin and Michele as we watched the aircraft fly by two times at low altitudes. Kevin said he walked off the job today because he was frustrated with how things were going. Hope he'll be okay... He headed back to his summer camp housing.
Went back to the dining hall to have the dessert that I didn't have time for, and then heard a video lecture on a project near McMurdo that drills ~1.5 km deep into the ground to study the past. The video screen was small, and it was hard to pay attention, but we mostly talked.
Today my mother wrote me saying that she's translating my journal into Japanese! I need to write something interesting so that it comes close to being worthy of translating! It must be not easy to translate into Japanese... I'm going to try writing the next journal entry in Nihongo: 
[Shift-JIS encoding]
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[12/21(Fr) Mass Casualty Incident!]
8AM "Beep Beep Beep... Beep Beep Beep... Emergency has been reported at the Ice Palace. Emergency has been reported at the Ice Palace." This woke me up and I was surprised to see that it was already 8 o'clock. I got up and started putting my gears on as I checked the status of the telescope. I wasn't exactly sure where the Ice Palace was, so headed to the main station entrance, taking a quick drink of water on the way. The shuttle van was there, so I took a ride to the scene. Apparently a bulldozer smashed into the building and the driver was still in the bulldozer not moving. The trauma team mustered in a nearby lounge and got the emergency cache ready while the firefighters were inspecting the scene and getting out any patients to safety. I got out my latex gloves and put them on in case the patients have bodily fluids. We were called outside and I ran toward a patient lying on the snow. The other patient needed a neck brace, so I took one and tried to put it on to a big guy wearing a big jacket -- it was hard. I had practiced putting on a neck brace last year, but I could barely remember it. He was an African American man, but his skin was pale white. He screamed as I tried to gently put the brace around his neck. We put him on a backboard and put head blocks, but my fingers were already getting very cold. We wrapped him in a warm daffle bag and lifted him into a shuttle van to take to the medical. I went back inside the lounge to warm up, but shortly after there was another call, so I went out and this time there was a naked patient being pulled out of a shower. We wrapped a sleeping bag around him and quickly escorted him to the lounge as he walked on the snow with only socks on. The patient said he slipped in the shower as the building shook and hurt his shoulder and head. I had someone brace his left arm. He seemed fine otherwise, so I was wondering if there are other more time-critical patients to attend to. But then all others left, so I found myself having to take care of him. Just in case, I checked his respiration rate (18/min, good) and pulse (95/min, ok), and perfusion on his right finger nail (ok) and recorded them and reported to medical on the radio. Later the patient pointed out that I should check perfusion on his left (wounded) hand, too, which was a good point that I failed to think of. Checklists are good, but in these situations it's easy to forget to think with reason. Maybe it was because this was just a drill... I hope to be able to think better in a real situation.
11AM With the drill and the debrief, I didn't have a chance to recycle the telescope refrigerator until ~1.5 hour later than usual. Fortunately, the telescope cooled barely in time for the main observation. We were going to go on the snow stake trip this afternoon, but the visibility was poor, so we had to postpone again.
8PM After volleyball, I stopped by the galley and saw Nils and Leslie decorating a gingerbread house and others making pecan pies for Christmas, so I decided to help them.

[12/22(Sa) the Moon]