Day 6 - Back to the old routine

So it doesn't take long to fall into a routine here. Especially when you are fed 3 square meals a day at specific times, and the sun never goes down so you kind of need to purposely find some sort of normal in a sleeping schedule. It's a nice sunny day today, and pretty warm (t-shirt with pants is feeling tropical). This means all of the scientists that rely on decent weather to observe bird activities, insects and other wildlife are out all day today. The bird observers probably have the most dramatic day of everyone, as their day is pretty much a treasure hunt for bird nests. Not only that, they are looking for birds in the process of building the nests. Checking on sensors and other instruments seems less glamorous when the birders arrive back from their hunt.

I was able to get some basic wi-fi boundaries testing done today. This involved walking out on the "boardwalk" a.k.a. an extremely long dock, to get to the research land plots. Unfortunately the wi-fi ended right before most of the research areas, so it looks like some wi-fi extension or creative network architecture is in order if researchers want to use any sort of wi-fi device out there. This of course, was kind of what we expected.

The boardwalk is not exactly easy going all of the time, as some areas are still covered with a good 3-4 ft of snow. However, the section in the video was clear of snow and a nice morning walk.

Tonight I will be the entertainment for the evening, and give a talk about Google Glass and Amazon Web Services.

Another nice feature of the camp is the sauna. You only get 2 showers a week, so the sauna is a nice way to warm up and then wash up by pouring water over yourself. I also love the smell of woodsmoke, so that's nice too.

Here are some nice ice chunks breaking up as Toolik Lake thaws for the summer.