What am I doing?

Palmer Station

I suppose the best way to start this blog is from the beginning. Since some of you may not know my background, allow me to fill you in. For the last 10 years I've been a System Administrator working indirectly for the National Science Foundation (NSF) one way or the other. Originally I was with a group called CIRES under the University of Colorado, but the last 5 years I've worked for a company called UNAVCO Inc. UNAVCO, in a nutshell, is a company that supports science through the installation of remote instruments all over the world - including Antarctica. For many years they've been sending engineers to all of the Antarctic stations and also many other interesting places on the continent and the rest of the world. I've been in the datacenter in Boulder pulling cables and flipping switches.

So after all these years of watching these guys give their Antarctic slideshows and talk with all their Antarctic friends, it slowly became time for me to make my move. I worked out an arrangement with UNAVCO to go down for a summer season in October '09. This meant submitting an application March 1st, '09 and I counted the days until then very closely. Come March, I submitted my application and started pulling strings hoping to find out about my deployment in the fall. Come April, here I am going down to Palmer Station for a winter season in 3 hours.

This time I'll be working for Raytheon Polar Services, contracted under the NSF, as the Network Engineer for Palmer Station. More or less, this is the same sort of work I've done at CIRES and UNAVCO, but for much of my time down on the ice I'll be the only point of contact for the other staff. The Antarctic program also has a slightly larger and more complex configuration than my prior employers. I feel ready though, and I'm going to take good care of them down there.

While I'm there I'll be with about 45 people at first (the maximum capacity of the station) and then in June the number will dwindle to just 18 of us once the winter really sets in and the last vessel departs. After that we'll be camping out with no more visits from the mainland until September.

Well, that was fast. Guess I'm going to Antarctica. Careful what you wish for!