Here you will find any notable comments I have for the various daily activities.

Pocomoke: Packing up went well. Cats knew something was up and shadowed me as I worked.

Pocomoke: Awoke right on schedule. The drive to the airport was mundane. Arrived about 45 minutes ahead of departure. No significant lines at security.

Minneapolis: Arrived on time however the connecting flight was about 45 minutes late. The layover wasn't all that bad. Ate lunch and tooled around the airport shops.

Fairbanks: The flight was somewhat of an "ok" experience. About halfway through somebody took their shoes. The odor was unmistakable... blech! After doing Sudoku puzzles during the 5 hour flight I an truly say I am sick of Sudoku! I got out the Garmin GPS and managed, to my surprise, to get a lock on GPS satellites. According to the device we reached a max speed of 606 mph! Wow..

I ran out to the local Safeway and got food stuffs for the week. This "hotel" is more like an apartment complete with all the kinds of things you find in a typical kitchen.

I am going to nap for awhile. The time is 1:24AM on the East coast. It's just 9:24PM here and the sun is as bright as it might be around 4PM EST. Wonder if I can sleep!

Wedgewood: I woke up today about 9AM EST. Way early for here though. I took some photos of the apartment (Click to see them). Sunrise was around 6:48AM and sunset is around 3:04AM. Uh... I don't know if I am going to the 3 - 4 hour sunset to sunrise photo series that I had wanted to do.

UAF: My first outing of the day will be to the University. Take some photos from atop the hill the building lives on.

Ok. I drove over to the University. This was like deja vu... but in color. The antenna on the roof, like the one at WFF, is blue not white. The college was basically vacant but then it is only 8:30AM. I took a few photos from parking lot just infront of the building where I am to go. I tried for a panorama looking out over the airport and the mountains in the distance. I will post that later. Need to think about how to organize the pictures.

Saw probably one of the longest trains I have ever seen. All the cars appeared to be tankers, probably oil, and I would guess 250-300 tanker cars... it kept going... and going.... naturally, I took a picture but I don't know how it will turn out as I was looking toward the sun.

Oh yeah... the sunrise isn't a lazy sleepy creep up over the horizon.. no it is a quick HELLO! I would say it went from below the horizon to what we could consider the 9-10AM position in about 30 minutes.

Arctic Tour : Packed the day bag. Bought a decent sub to eat, adding in a poptart, bottle of water and some chips.

Called the tour company and confirmed the trip. We are go for check-in at noon. I drove out to the tour place just to make sure I knew my way. It's a snap to get there and only about 3-4 miles away. The building looks in good shape and the plance look in top condition. I believe they are twin engine Cesna. I am no expert on this kind of plane though. I think they seet up to 12, perhaps 16.

Well... this didn't happen. Weather moved in on Coldfoot and kept the group from going. Bummer. I am rescheduled for the reverse version of the trip now. A bus drive out and a short flight back. This is set for Thursday 4:45 AM. Guess I will be pulling in some long hours M-T-W if things don't go well on the job. Not worried though.

Fairbanks Excursion : Tooled around town a bit this morning. Drove down to Fort Wainright and found the signs to take me to the North Pole. So far the city appears to be easy to navigate. The roads are beat up in places. I guess the ice weathers them heavily. Located all kinds of typical stores, Sears, Taco Bell, Safeway, Sams Club, Radio Shack...yada yada. Mother, you will be happy to know there is a Michaels just down the street from here.

In lieu of ColdFoot today I drove out to Poker Flats. Now here this is one interesting drive. The road grades were 7 to 8 % and there wasn't much in the way of shoulder to stop in places. There are bluffs and places to stop though. I will do that on my next venture out that way. You can see piles and piles of rocks and materials from the dredges all over the place. The entire valley basin has been filtered. It's hard to describe the breadth of devistation the gold hunters unleashed for the last 150 or so years.

Drove out to the North Pole... dummy me left the addresses at the hotel so I will have to go back. Santa's house is without question the single largest attraction in the North Pole. Santa was there along with his Mrs. Clause, an elf and a dog.

ASF: Stood up the system this morning. Appears that all is working! We have a few configuration checks to do tomorrow before testing can begin.

AGS: Stood up the system here also. What luck! No problems! I was done in about an hour. Actually took longer to drive to the top of the hill than to get things working.

Return to Fairbanks : Took dozens of photos. Some are completely outstanding. Almost better than being there in person. There was a light breeze on the top of the mountains where I could go. Sun was out with a few clouds. Check the photos (when they get posted)! I have only seen one beaver and no other animals.

Located the Turtle Club. I will try to go there on Wednesday for steak! Tomorrow is another trip to the North Pole. This time with the addresses, duh!

ASF: We did it! The system is working. All the problems have been worked and the system is ready for its final testing.

AGS: The system is back online. That's two for two!

Turtle Club : Ooooh yeah. Steak. Fantastic meal!

Evening Road Trip: Alan and I went for a road trip out to Poker Flats. He's never been there. We stopped at a couple of places along the way including Chatinika Lodge.

I am generally whipped. No energy left to process photos tonight.

ASF: Well... today was one of those YAY... Oh no!! Yay... Oh no!! kind of days. We ended in a YAY... none of the problems were real problems just oversights that were easily worked out. The big one was earlier in the day my partner had changed the system password. When I arrived we rebooted the system. That's when the horrific messages appeared that resembled a failure we encountered a month earlier which left us rebuilding the system. Good thing we realized passwords were the culprit before we did anything really dumb!

Poker Flats (AGS) : Surveyed the range network environment. I can see why they had so many problems. The environment is completely out of control! Save nothing for security posture! Argh.... I will have quite a few recommendations to offer.

Evening and Road Trip: Alan and I went to the Knotty Shop today. That was neat. In Fairbanks we took in a play at Pioneer Land, something of a tourist trap amusement park.

Went to the market and got another sandwhich for tomorrow. Going to get my day pack prepared for the bus trip to Coldfoot. I leave at 4:30 AM and return around 5PM.

Did some research for what to do Friday. I think I hit up the college museum first then go do either the riverboat or the gold mine.

I way far behind on photo processing. I am just too tired to do more than this journal.

ColdFoot: Leaving at 4AM. More when I get back!

Ok, I am back. Wow. I am in overload. The scenery... the vistas... incredible. I crossed into the Arctic Circle! I have something like 196 photos to work on. I am REALLY tired though. I might work on them tomorrow evening after AGS.

AGS : This nemisis is back. They are claiming the disk array failed. Frankly, I think they are deliberately breaking the system in hopes of justifying the request for an update. My partner also has a similar suspicion. Anyway, we are going back to AGS in the morning to survey the system and see if it is operator "panic" induced error, sabotage, or truly system failure. We've been down the latter several times and I have to find anything that would constitute a "natural" system failure.

AGS : Ack!!! ARGH!! Well... sabotage er... perhaps extreme operator blundering is the proper terms. These guys decided to "test" spare power supplies in the LIVE system!!!! They should know better!! The result appears that #5 SCSI channel took some kind of nasty jolt which appears to have trashed the RAID controller and all it's configuration information. Truly a dissapointment. We have toe tagged the system. The success we enjoyed earlier in the week has been wasted. However, from a trip objective perspective we have been successful in our goal to recover the system from the original unavailable state. Guess we can hold onto that victory.

ASF: Spent the afternoon and evening hours writing up my report on findings at ASF. I have some more to do but I need to get rested up so I can get up in the morning on time.

Last evening at Fairbanks: I have spent the last few hours packing and getting myself prepared to leave in the morning. I took a few minutes and pushed on some photos onto the website. I think I will let the rest for when I get into Pocomoke.

ENTER DATE HERE: Event description. Rapiebant me spectacula theatrica, plena imaginibus miseriarum mearum et fomitibus ignis mei. quis est, quod ibi homo vult dolere.