And so the adventure begins. I'm currently on my first of five flights for this coming week in route to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. I'll be in Antarctica for the next 5 months working as a Computer Tech in support of the National Science Foundation's US Antarctic Program My first stop is Colorado, just a short 2 hour flight from Portland. From there I go by shuttle bus to a hotel in Littleton. I'll be in Colorado for just about 2 full days while I get some basic corporate training and fill out the final round of paperwork. I really can't imagine what else they could possibly ask so it will be interesting to see what else I have to go through. More to come as things develop.

In just a few weeks I'll be leaving for Antarctica for five months working as a computer Technician at the McMurdo Station for Raytheon Polar Services Company (RPSC). Today is September 21st, my second to last day as a Network Operations Center Operator at XpressBet. I'll have a short time off before I leave, just long enough to go on vacation with Brittany at Mt. Hood. Then on October 4th, I fly to Denver and to get my HR training.

Graduation time is rapidly approaching. Just 54 more days remaining, yet every time some high school dropout kid on the street asks me for money so he can buy pot I just want to scream. This town is driving me insane. I'm up to my ears in hitchhiking teens begging for cash for drugs. Throughout all of this I keep trying to think of the things I will miss about Arcata. Unfortunately the list of things I will miss is far shorter than the list of things I can't wait to escape. So what will I miss? As a true geek I'll University Internet connections.

I've been a Mac user for a while and a Mac fanboy for about as long as I can remember (minus the Mac OS 9 years). That being said I was really excited when Safari was released. At the time there weren't really any options for web browsers on OS X. There was Opera which was still $$$ at that time, a really bad release of Netscape and Internet Explorer. Personally I was an IE user and it was painful. The browser crashed left and right (like I was running OS 9), was slow to render, and had horrible standards support (worse than IE for Windows if that's possible).