Looks like after only 3 flights, we’re done for this year. A nasty oil leak on the #1 engine, some instrument problems (PSR), and some cracks in a part of the aircraft (near the bombay) all held us up for a bit; in the end, the cracks worsened and ended it all. We didn’t get done eveything that we intended, but at least I won’t go home without any data at all. Its kind of a letdown to go through so much effort (on the part of everyone) to get here and make these flights, and then not get it done because of a seemingly small problem. I think I would have put more effort into trying to fix it here in the field (if I were somehow in charge) and just extended our stay a bit, but that’s not the way it is going (c’mon, just make a patch!) At least I get to go home early

I just got my first Nigerian 419 scam in German. It’s really funny – I can’t quite read all of it, but I certainly got the idea of it even with my small German vocabulary. If you want to read the sillyness (and a translation thereof), keep reading. The funny thing is that the Google german-english translation sounds like most Nigerian 419 scams do normally in English – check it out! Perhaps this one is written by a genuine German speaking citizen

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I left from Stuttgart on Saturday headed for Ushuaia, a town on the tip of South America in Argentina. From here we’ll be flying to Antarctica to study sea ice in a Navy P3 (ours is getting inspected or some such business at the moment). We have several missions to fly, and they’re all about 10 hours apiece (I am not sure why they are not longer, however). Today will be the first time I’ve seen our installation, and will also be my first attempt at fixing some of the problems that I know exist with it.

I was expecting the town to be similar to Punta Arenas, but it’s really different.

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I decided that I’d vote this election, even though I never gave a crap about voting before. Why the change?

Well, I still hold to the fact that the US isn’t a true Democracy – voting isn’t fair, and your vote doesn’t necessarily count as much as everyone else’s vote. That’s just the way it is. So, despite my previous feelings of not wanting to endorse the “lesser of two evils” and that getting involved is somehow worse than not doing anything at all, I’m voting by absentee ballot this time around. Read the rest of this entry »