Still here, still cranking away

Yeah, so it has been a busy couple of weeks.  The big push to the end has certainly arrived, with all the usual extra tasking in addition to what I’ve been doing all along (with some extra-extra stuff along with that, thanks to it being the contract turnover year-yea!).  With clear skies, the twilight ratchets a bit brighter each day.  There is now some very definite red starting to band in with the more blue/white tones on the horizon, but it still has a long way to go before the molten explosion of near-sunrise.  Most folks on station had the usual monthly distraction from the usual grind with our emergency response drill yesterday.  I think my fire brigade did quite well today, even with a trainee team leader at the helm.

There is not really any update to be made about the astronaut candidate situation, which (naturally) looms large in my mind these days.  We’re still doing “i” and “t” dotting to make sure my situation here at Pole is explained as clearly as possible.  I’m probably a little nervous about it, but not very much.  I think being sequestered here will not end up being a detraction or impediment in the least bit; in fact quite the opposite.  Confidence is the word these days!  Only time will tell, as it does in so many aspects of life.

McMurdo Station finally received its first of 6 scheduled flights for winfly (winter fly in) last night after days of delays due to some atrocious weather conditions.  I happened to be working our back-up comms here during the first attempt that had to boomerang back to Christchurch after making it essentially all the way to McMurdo.  This is totally normal for this time of year, and anybody that gets their little heart set on a concrete date for going from point A to point B will normally end up disappointed.  Even German and Swiss railways couldn’t maintain their timetables here in the often uncooperative vastness of Antarctica.

Here are a lot of details on the rack of electronics for a bunch of projects I support in the elevated station’s science lab.  I figure I can catch up on the deficit as a result of my reduced (blog) posting rate as of late with this one.

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”

~Dwight D. Eisenhower