Fantastic Environs

Our wind is still howling across the Antarctic Plateau here at South Pole Station. It has been getting up into the 30-knot range, and seems to be pretty sustained. There is currently a lot of blowing snow in the air, which diminishes visibility, but the moon being out helps out a bunch. Today the path to ARO actually seemed a bit more smooth than as of late, so I guess we've currently got a lot of snow filling in the low spots. I'm sure it will blow back out again in short order.

Another weird phenomenon here, especially when it is windy, is how much static charge the blowing snow/ice can deposit on the buildings/structures. I've got a couple sensors down right now because there has likely been a large enough static charge deposited on the sensor platform that it is affecting the grounding situation. Part of me wants to go out and touch the platform to see whether I'd get a big shock, but at least thus far I've had other things to keep me diverted from self-electrocution.

Every so often I get a craving for something different down here (imagine that...), and currently it is a huge yen to play the classic dungeon-crawl, hack-and-slash, "I-cast-magic-missile" computer game "Diablo II". It seems like unplugging from reality and heading off to smite those that deserve smiting would be quite a bit of fun. Sadly, I don't have access to the game, or my characters from when I played it way back when, but I at least got the guitar tab for its cool theme song off the 'net.

Other than that, I'm still plowing through all the junk, I mean project-specific spare equipment, in order to update inventories for all 13 manuals I'm working on bringing up to date. The science lab's mezzanine is looking pretty cluttered with things spread out all over the place, but hopefully it will condense back down pretty compactly when I finish. I could condense it a lot more with a +5 battle axe or chain lightning...

"He grunted with satisfaction. The feel of the hilt cheered him and gave him a glow of confidence. Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared him, this knife was real. The great muscles of his right arm swelled in anticipation of murderous blows."
~Robert E. Howard (The Hour of the Dragon)