Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Well, I am sans 6 teeth today. I had 4 wisdom teeth and 2 molars pulled over the course of 45 minutes yesterday morning. It is the first time I have had a tooth pulled. If I had my wisdom teeth pulled a few years ago I wouldn't have had to get the molars removed. Now I am on the track for perfect dental care. I have been at the fringes for years. The extraction wasn't too bad I guess as far as they go. There were no infections and most of them pretty much popped out. Only one of them hurt as it got yanked on and only one of them got really crunchy. It was also the first time I have had nitrous oxide. I find it to be very similar to beer without the nasty headache. It is over now and I can relax. I still have a lot of paper work to get through to be physically qualified. There are a lot of things to do in a very short amount of time in my case.

The really good thing is that when I ask these professionals for expediency and explain that I am going to Antarctica, they really work with you and make time and effort. There have been some pretty funny conversations such as the need to remove wisdom teeth to get to the ice.

My computer is almost back. I have a few more drivers to load and get right. I think I may coin a new tech phrase "OS atrophy". This is a condition that after a couple of years your OS registry and file system setup becomes increasing quirky and unreliable. At some point this atrophy causes the need for attention and reinstallation at some level. After a few years of getting updates, registry tweaks, upgrades, features, functions, compounded by hardware aging of the processor and peripherals it all adds up to the same thing. It takes a lot of time to get everything reinstalled and right again, no doubt.

I will be spending quite a bit of time this weekend on work related issues.

I am having issues with my computer at home. I am reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the system. It is very time consuming to go through and fix these things but what else can you do? I have no net access at home for the next few days. The good thing is that this will give me more confidence of the computer for Bonnie while I am gone so we can email each other easily. McMurdo now has 2 T1 lines this year. That will be a big help compared to how it has been there. There are a lot of folks (with lives off the ice). Bandwidth would be a requirement. I don't expect gobs of bandwidth but hopefully I can buzz through some emails as the opportunity presents itself.

It appears I am getting some teeth pulled to go to Antarctica. Today I find out how many. So... I am giving some teeth up to have the opportunity on top of all the other sacrifices. I have never had a tooth pulled up to this point so I am a bit nervous. I hope this will be the last on the list of sacrifices.

It is going to be a trip. 6 weeks from now I will probably be on the ice. I will be a "Fingee". With it sunny 24 hours a day that will be some adjustment. I don't like sleeping with the light on. So I will probably get some big eyes as I adjust and eventually pass out from sleep deprivation after a couple of days. My goal is to stay well and achieve the highest work performance rating attainable. I will be exercising, running and working on equipment that is fun to work on, radios and telecom. I am pretty sure the program uses ham bands for VHF since they are the US government and they set the rules. I will be programming, setting up and repairing repeaters and all sorts of other stuff to be sure.

Four months away is a long time. As a percentage of my life at 45 years old it is 0.74 percent.