23 November, 1996

Journal - November 23, 1996

As much as I hate to admit it, I think I have a slight case of the flu. I thought this would be a good day to try to get some extra sleep, work on my web page, and catch up in the lab. Catching up in the lab is an impossible task, you can only fall farther behind. Since the easiest of these three tasks was to first, that's where I started. After an hours nap I started on the web page. I have been saving all of my digital photo's for the page on a removable hard drive on my computer. Of course I planned to make a back up copy but never got around to doing it. Today it happened, the fate of all un-backed drives, it crashed. I wasn't in a complete panic because we have a computer wizard who works in the lab. Ethan takes care of all the computers at the station and can do wonders. Within an hour he had recovered most of disk and I could get back to my journal.

My journal resides on a server in Storrs, CT. When I upload my entries they go from my computer to another computer at McMurdo, to a satellite in orbit 22,000 miles above the earth, to at least several other computers before they get to the server and finally to you. It amazes me that I can transfer a file from Antarctica to Storrs in about ten seconds. When I'm at home, I live about thirty miles from Storrs, but because I use a telephone line to transfer files , it takes longer than from the other side of the planet. After being away for seven weeks I'm still in awe that it never gets dark here and that information can be transferred to any where in the world in the blink of an eye. We really are a small planet.

Dom Tedeschi

http:/www.neca.com/antarctica/

tedeschi@csec.mcmurdo.gov