Black Crevasse Forum

The hiring should be the same.  The contract should be awarded in October, but it should actually turn over in April.  Therefore, Raytheon will be doing the hiring for the summer and winter positions coming up.  After that, it should be the new contractor. 

Internet is faster during the winter than the summer.  During the winter, you also get wireless in your room (for most people).  The speeds are pretty comparable to what you would see in the states.  Not super fast, but fast enough to make it worth your time.  The biggest thing is the websites that are blocked because of the filter.  The filter is there to make sure that we are not surfing porn on company bandwidth.  However, it has also blocked The Onion, Urban Dictionary, parts of Craigslist, and bigdeadplace (for less than a day).  Most of those sites get unblocked eventually, but there are definitely enough blocked sites to make you feel like you are closer to China than you are the States sometimes. 

Food this winter has been better than any other season that I have been down here.  They NSF gave additional funding to bring down better quality food.  So far, it has been a big improvement.  That being said, it is still cafeteria-type eating.  It ain't fancy.  Overall, the food is good enough and not much better.

You can ship groceries down, but not booze.  You are, however, allowed 150 lbs. of luggage when you fly from Christchurch to McMurdo and a lot of people use their extra weight to bring in as much as they can from Christchurch.  This has to be done because they no longer sell booze in the store...just beer, wine and Bailies.

Most people really like Palmer, but it is tougher to get your foot in the door there.

I guess no one else has heard McMurdo referenced that way either.  Where did you see that?

Hand washing is now mandatory at McMurdo Station.  To enforce this policy, they are making members of the community, stand guard at the front of the galley, and tell people to make sure they wash their hands, and take the names of those who do not wash their hands.  They are making people do this in their free time, with some schedules starting as early as 6:00 a.m.  This was my conversation with Don Brogan:

"I always wash my hands.  But let's say I don't...what are you going to do to me if I don't."

"I am going to try and stop you from eating in there [is that a physical threat?] and I am going to take you over to H.R. and dock your bonus." 

Now if I were truly the Che Guevara that I sometimes think I am, I would have gone right ahead and made him put his money where his mouth is (or I guess it would be my money in this situation).  First of all, I would love to see the Station Manager forceably remove me from the Galley.  Second of all, I would love to see the lawsuit on that one when he docks my bonus.  Is it even legal to threaten to withhold food from employees for not washing hands?  Anyone know the legality of this decision?  This is surely an act of sheer stupidy.

We used to have a greenhouse, but now they are shutting it down.  Supposedly, they will fund the postition for next winter, but with them closing it down for the winter, it certainly does not bode well for next winter.

http://www.usap.gov/USAPgov/travelAndDeployment/documents/ParticipantGuide-Chapter3.pdf

This has probably already been sent to you, but maybe you didn't see it with everything else that has been sent to you.  It is still a pretty good resource.  Of course, you will have certain things that are particular to you, but you really only will be able to figure those out once you are here (i.e. learning experience).  They are thinking of getting rid of the ability to ship things down here, but so far that hasn't happened.  Stay tuned...

We used to have a weight room with all of the machines that you need, a drinking fountain, and a rest-room.  The weight room now does not have a bathroom or a drinking fountain and a lot of the machines that you need could not be fit into the tiny room that they have allocated for the weight room.

We used to have janitors and D.A.s...now we have to wash dishes and clean our work centers and dorms.  I know that sounds like whining to a lot of people, but when you think about the cost of paying someone I.T. money to wash dishes and scrub toilets, it speaks to the terrible waste of money that comes from this company all the time.