Ch-Ch-Chatting With the South Pole's IT Manager

Have you ever thought about working at a place where the main worry is keeping the equipment from getting too cold? An excellent detailed interview with the IT manager of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Getting service is a little tough. They try to maintain at least a year's worth of spare parts. Includes an interesting set of photos.

300 club?

[joeytmann]

Being in Minnesota, I am used to cold weather, but -104F! I wouldn't go out in that with clothes on, let alone naked.

An old high school buddy of mine did this

[greg_barton]

A high school buddy of mine went to the south pole a couple of years ago. Here's his blog. [blogspot.com]

Re:never knew

[lowder]

That's right, and in fact the pressure is slightly lower than it is at the same altitude closer to the equator (latitude less than 30 deg.), because the earth's rotation pulls some air away from the poles and towards the equator. So even though the Pole is at 9900 feet, the pressure is equivalent to an altitude of 10600 feet near the equator.

I worked there for a couple of Antarctic summers, one month each time. It definitely takes a couple of days to get adjusted. And there are always a few people who CAN'T adjust to the altitude and have to be sent back to McMurdo.....

Re:300 club?

[arivanov]

Actually, I have done it myself and have seen a large portion of my dad's collegues do it in Russia (with slightly lower temperature differences - +220-230F to -4F).

After a "proper" sauna (not the modern IR shit) you have to quickly chill down. If you go into hot water or try to chill down slowly you feel like shit after that. Now, ice cold water or even snow is a completely different story. It is the ultimate refresher. One of my dad collegues had a sauna near Moscow and we went there nearly every weekend during the winter when I was a kid. Coming out of 110-120C+ into -25-30C, breaking the ice on the water bucket with your bum and throwing snowballs at each other (that is 240F difference so a bit less than on the south pole). Totally nuts. Especially if you do it after a 20-30km ski run.

Re:Sounds awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This AC is actually in the same office at NPX with the subject of TFA.

I've only been here for a month, but I love it. It's weird. You must have a high tolerance for everything: extremes of temperature, people, daylight or lack thereof, variety of food or lack thereof, limited hardware and software choice, members of the opposite sex, etc.

The new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Elevated Station is way cool for a geek. It's like an extraplanetary outpost. Yes, you can go outside whenever you want, but you also take full responsibility for your well-being for even the most mundane of tasks. I snowmobile out to remote buildings with gig-E switches in -60F. I got drafted into a fire response team to help protect myself and everyone else here. I can get called for a fire alarm 24x7x365. And of the three Sundays I have been here, I worked two, doing 13 10-hour+ days in a row.

And after 15 years in the industry, working for Big Blue, SUNW and others, I really enjoy this work environment. It combines extreme adventure with unique technical challenges. Not to mention associating with women who can fuel huge military aircraft and weld.

And I'll be here until November 2008. I suspect that after this article (.25Million hits in 24 hours so far), my job won't be too hard to fill once I move on to a land where birds fly and grass grows.

Regards from 90-South,

The Fingee

PS V-word = "deathbed" I hope that's not prophetic down here.

Re:South Poles

[Deep Penguin]

There is only one Geographic South Pole, but the sign now has the legend on both sides. One side faces the station, the other side faces away, with a view of, essentially, the polar plateau in the general direction of the departure-end of the skiway.

Also, from looking at the Pole markers in each picture (we get a new one every January), it looks to me as if the #1 shot was taken in either March, 2004 (around sunset) or September, 2004 (around sunrise), and the #7 shot was taken this summer season, sometime since mid-October, 2007. If the #7 picture were high enough resolution, you could see my signature on the aluminum plate on the Pole itself.

Re:Sounds awesome

[rossifer]

If you have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Vitamin D (D3, 4000-10000IU/day) is your friend. SAD appears to be a symptom of vitamin D deficiency and supplementation of D3 (not D2, which is harmful in large quantities and ineffective in small quantities) can be very effective at resolving it.

Vitamin D deficiency has been implicated in many other diseases of civilization and correcting the deficiency (getting the value above 60ng/ml) seems to help with lots of issues, from osteoporosis to low HDL levels to atherosclerosis to depression to cancer (reduces tumor growth rates).

There are more than 200 kinds of vitamin D receptors in the body. It does an astonishingly large number of things, and most people who don't work outside are severely deficient. Working on the South Pole is the extreme of that case.