Daniel Leussler:

It turns out that there’s always plenty to do at the South Pole.

Work has slowed down considerably since the flood of incoming new people has become a trickle. I always have things to do, but it’s become more of a make-your-own-project kind of thing, mixed with cleaning up the clutter that’s left over from the rush of turnover. My focus has been on revamping the inventory system, which is currently a surprisingly low-tech Excel spreadsheet that’s in poor shape. Since I’ve done some scripting on OS X but none on Windows, I’ve taken this as an excuse to learn Powershell, Microsoft’s relatively new scripting/programming language. My pet project is Spo-Inventory, a script which queries all the workstations in our Active Directory OU and writes info about them to a persistent XML file for internal storage, and a prettied-up HTML file on the webserver for retrieving information about a device. I’ve labeled it as version 1.0 right now since I can actually use it to inventory machines, but every time I finish adding a feature I think of a new one I want.

I haven’t mentioned it much in this blog, but one of the best things about Pole is that we have a fairly well-kept music room, with many guitars, an upright electric bass, a drumkit, a keyboard, and an assortment of accessories. I’ve been heading down to play almost every evening since I’ve been here, unless otherwise occupied; it’s pretty common to run into someone else, but they’re usually looking for someone to play with anyway. The musicians here range from absolute novices to old pros, and generally multiple bands will form to play for events. I’ve been playing with a bluegrass/folk group that Mark (a longtime Icegoer) usually runs, and I’ve been working on forming a Violent Femmes cover band tentatively called “Violet Phlegm” starring myself on bass, Eli on vocals (and occasionally mandolin), Orin on drums, and our choice of one or two Johns on the guitar.

I’ve also been playing soccer once a week in the gym, which is unbelievably exhausting at this altitude. We play 4 on 4 in a tiny gym, with 1-3 subs ready on the sidelines. The first game I played I probably spent more time out than in, wheezing and chugging water. Playing soccer indoors is faster than on a field, since the ball never goes out and you can use the walls to bounce around people.

The satellite will be going down soon, so I’m going to finish this post and leave plenty to talk about in the future. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!