Ch-Ch-Chatting With the South Pole's IT Manager 120
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.
While you're keeping an eye on IT... (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:While you're keeping an eye on IT... (Score:4, Informative)
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"What do you want to do now?"
"Why don't we just wait here for a little while? See what happens."
LOL antartic humor (Score:5, Funny)
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300 club? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Think of Pascal's Law (Score:1)
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Re:300 club? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I believe he's lying about his nudity, as the top of a sock is clearly visible in this picture [computerworld.com].
I learned a long time ago never to completely trust an IT Manager.
Santa lives at North Pole.... who's at South Pole? (Score:3, Funny)
Then Satan shows up and heats up the joint.
Re:Santa lives at North Pole.... who's at South Po (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Santa lives at North Pole.... who's at South Po (Score:2)
Rock on, reefer Santa, rock on!
The one bright side to such an environment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The one bright side to such an environment (Score:4, Funny)
Two words: Global warming.
And it's all their fault.
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Re:The one bright side to such an environment (Score:5, Insightful)
It has to be much, much easier to overclock machines when you never have to worry about overheating. Who needs liquid cooling when you can have polar cooling?
Apparently not: The FA mentions that they are at 12,000 feet, so they have a real problem with computer fans not being able to move the thin air.
Other effects of the thin air include laptop disks that don't spin properly, because they are built to float on a layer of air and are designed for near-sea-level densities. The air is also very dry, leading to increased risk of fires and disk failures caused by static.
Fire is a huge problem in general, because in the winter they have no choice but to fight and extinguish. Relocation isn't an option. Very interesting article.
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Which is why, back when the DoD provided uniformed support personell (they contract out to civilians mostly now) - a high proportion of them were Navy, and a large fraction of those were submariners. (Sailors went mostly to the South Pole station, McMurdo was virtually an Army base.)
I wanted to go - but never applied because it was almost ce
Re:The one bright side to such an environment (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know, but it might not be a good idea. According to http://healthandenergy.com/suggested_indoor_air_pressure.htm [healthandenergy.com],
Of course, the next section of this page appears to contradict this....
http://www.trane.com/commercial/library/vol31_2/index.asp#control [trane.com] has more on this. Summary: It's complicated, man.
I asked about maintaining a positive pressure differential when we had an ERV installed (for reasons similar to those suggested by the PP); the technician indicated that while a nice theory, it could cause the ERV to ice up. They had been instructed to create a slightly negative pressure differential for this reason.
So my modern, plastic sealed house has slightly negative pressure relative to the outside. Several years and counting, and no negative side effects as far as I can tell.
Oh, and that's in Ottawa: Summer highs in the 40s, and very humid, winter lows in the -30s, and very dry. Nothing too extreme....
Sounds awesome (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm thinking about moving to Alaska after I pay down some of my student loans. I have some relatives that live there and they love it.
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d'frent strokes...
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Living there, and visiting in the summer, are two very different things. Much of Alaska (south of the circle at least) is awesome 4-5 months a year, the other 7-8 take some serious fortitude. If the weather doesn't get you down (Anchorage and Juneu can be mild-ish), the short days probably will.
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If you haven't been to NZ, once you been there, you don't want to leave.
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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
Re:Sounds awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Ask yourself what kind of stuff you want to tell your grandkids when you're old. Then sign up
I'm dying to winter down there--just to say I've done it--heck, I'd apply for the janitor job if that's all that was available. They don't seem to have much need for security consultants
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The thought of working at the south pole has crossed my mind a few times but every time I've done reseach it seems the main barrier to entry for me has been that I'm european and (at least in the past) most jobs had that lovely "You must be a US citizen to apply" line in the requirements...
So I guess I'll take the chance and ask if anyone here who's not from the US has managed to make it to antarctica without getting a second degree and a PhD in something relevant and if so, how did you do it?
/Mikael
An old high school buddy of mine did this (Score:5, Interesting)
CDW (Score:5, Funny)
That may be the first time I've cracked a smile at an online ad.
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ch-ch-chatting with south park's IT manager (Score:2)
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Chinpokomon?
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NSFW (Score:2)
Re:NSFW (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, being that it was a balmy +5F outside this morning on my walk in from the car, I was seriously considering making my dreams come true and showing up in a school completely naked -- well, except for the yellow smiley face hovering over my dick.
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never knew (Score:2)
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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 CA
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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.
But while the air pressure is lower, the density of oxygen in terms of moles/liter might actually be higher. Considering that the air there can get as low as 100C be
Battle of HOTH!!! (Score:1)
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cue the jokes now (Score:4, Funny)
Security software - BlackIce
Snow license Manager
Snow screen savers
Frozen Heads Software for the Macs http://frozenheads.com/ [frozenheads.com]
polar software for the helpdesk http://www.polarsoftware.com/ [polarsoftware.com]
And of course Penguin everything
but the burning question: Does he type everything using the CAP lock ?
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When the software gets really bad: SoftICE [wikipedia.org]
Locking down workstations: Deep Freeze [faronics.com]
Don't forget to shop at Polar GPS [polargps.com] before heading out!
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Re:Why they cannot get supplies/parts during Winte (Score:5, Informative)
also bear in mind that any plane they sent up there would almost certainly have to go through McMurdo. They generally use modified C-130s for their heavy transport, and they don't have tremendous range on one tank of gas. So, you'd need to get a plane first to McMurdo, which has its own difficulties of winter flying, and then head to the South Pole.
None of this is to say that they can't fly in during the winter. If the station were to blow up, for instance, they'd get some daring pilots to head in for a rescue. A few years back there was someone on the over-winter crew that needed treatment for breast cancer (it was the doctor, ironically enough), and they did some dicey flights for that (to send supplies, then for an early extraction). It's mostly that they prefer to not have to, because it's logistically difficult and mighty risky.
Re:Why they cannot get supplies/parts during Winte (Score:5, Insightful)
To come down here in the middle of winter, they would do what they did in April, 2001 for a medevac of a different doctor, send a Twin Otter from Canada. It has a shorter range than an LC-130, so it has to fly down the Americas, hop over to Antarctica at the Drake Passage, refuel and switch from tires to skis at Rothera Base, then fly to Pole and refuel here. They do that at the beginning of every season, then reverse it to go home.
The situation you mention was in 1999, and involved an air-drop of supplies from a C-141, then a C-130 showing up about two weeks early, in mid-October, weeks after the sun rose. The Twin Otter medevac was in full dark and around -80F.
All that being said, yes, it is difficult, and it is risky. It had better be a matter of life or death to bring a plane here between late February and early October. If the station did blow up, and there were no immediate life-threatening injuries, there are plans to be able to survive for weeks/months in either the B-wing of the new station (it can be split in half for a catastrophic fire in the A-wing) or in other buildings that can be heated without depending on the main power plant. The winter crews are large enough that it would take five or six Twin Otter flights to evacuate the station. That would be incredibly tricky to accomplish. An air-drop would be orders of magnitude easier, especially since until 1995, they used to do that every winter.
Too cold ? (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't that a perfect situation to make use of Netburst-based Pentium 4 processors ?
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inaccurate article (Score:5, Funny)
The sign... (Score:1)
Other Antarcitc Resource (Score:2, Informative)
Geosynchronous satellite dish at that lattitude? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a photo of an satellite dish antenna pointing horizontally at the south pole. Is communication with that satellite only possible during certain times of the day?
Re:Geosynchronous satellite dish at that lattitude (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Geosynchronous satellite dish at that lattitude (Score:1)
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It seems geosynchronous satellites are not the best tool for the job here. They could put some in polar orbits, or maybe use a natural satellite [wikipedia.org].
Denver (Score:5, Informative)
"Image Gallery: The Loneliest Place on Earth" (Score:2, Funny)
Hello, McMurdo? Hello? Hello? (Score:2)
ping: unknown host mcmurdo.gov
What happened? Their ice foundation melted already? Roving gangs of starving polar bears finally cracked their nut? Some kind of cosmic driveby [imdb.com] took them down? Or maybe the South Pole Station IT department repair to McMurdo's WAN is just glacially slow...
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Nothing so exciting; router's just frozen.
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Most buildings in the Antarctic are built on foundations which can be raised over time to compensate for both the sinking of the buildings into the ice (due to heat) and the covering of the buildings by snow and ice.
Roving gangs of starving polar bears finally cracked their nut?
Polar bears only exist in the Arctic. Penguins exist mainly in the Antarctic with a few that have evolved to live off the southern coast of South Africa.
Please hand in your geek c
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OTOH, "The vast majority of people are idiots. The problem is they're too stupid to realize it."
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It's okay, you're on slashdot... we understand.
South Poles (Score:1)
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So in the pictures, one of the marker poles is probably from a previous year.
Re:South Poles (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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No, you can't have one.
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future geek give it thumbs up (Score:1)
linuxpenguinhome Tag (Score:1)
When I first saw it, I thought it said "linuxpenguingohome".
Antartic, why not Hawai? (Score:2)
Still I must say; He definately has a cool job.
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My brother's college roommate is currently there (Score:2)
To prove I read the article (Score:2)
"Liquid water is such a hot commodity"
Hermetically Sealed Hard Drives? (Score:1)
Dont they make hermetically sealed hard drives anymore?
They never did (Score:2)
Hip Hop Hooray, Ho... Oh wait. (Score:1)
Greatest headline ever? (Score:2)
Not the south pole, but colder.... (Score:2)
It's filled with plenty of nerdy anecdotes, including the difficulties of running laptops in Antarctica (hint: don't bother), and a few jury-rigged experiments that would make MacGyver proud.
If you have a good bit of time to kill, I strongly recommend reading throug
Now there's a 'cool' job (Score:1)
More in depth south pole IT manager (Score:1)
http://antarctica.kulgun.net/blog/ [kulgun.net]
For example this post on communications at the pole - very readable.