New arrivals

Sunday, April 11: High: 6F Low: -7F Length of Day: 17h 44m
Monday, April 12: High: 1F Low: -9F Length of Day: 18h 02m
Tuesday, April 13: High: 4F Low: -11F Length of Day: 18h 20m
Wednesday, April 14: High: 9F Low: -11F Length of Day: 18h 39m

Along with Michelle, the rotator brought in lots of other people. A large group of Ukrainians and Danes checked into the hotel. They are in Greenland doing joint military exercises. The hotel is a lot livelier with them around although the do cramp our style a bit. This influx of people also introduces a problem. The hotel has wireless internet, but only gives out access in 3 hour blocks. NASA is paying for a DSL connection for the group, and we have a wireless router in the common room plugged into the DSL modem. Although the wireless is password protected, I left some cables plugged into the wired ports for people to use when the wireless is giving them problems. On Friday, a guy not associated with our group walks up, sees the cables on the floor, plugs in his computer and starts to use our connection. Since we pay for the connection by the gigabyte, this is a problem. But I figure we did kinda invite people to use the cables, so it was hard to confront him. As soon as he leaves, I disconnect the cables and put a sticker on the router that says "For NASA use only". The next day, we're sitting in the common room watching some TV, and the same guy comes in, looks for the cables and doesn't see them. So he leaves the room and comes back with his own cable and plugs into the router. What part of "for NASA use only" did he not understand? So, I go over and confront him, tell him that NASA is paying for the connection and can't let him use it. He gets a little aggressive, and storms off.

Sunday is the day that GenCon event tickets go on sale. I volunteer for a GenCon event called TrueDungeon which is *the* premier event at GenCon. The tickets for this event sell out in 15 minutes, and volunteers don't get special treatment when it comes to getting tickets. So, I'm sitting in the common room, plugged into the router so that I have the best network connection I can get. I get lucky and get the ticket blocks that I want. But I hang out for several hours helping other volunteers get tickets who weren't so lucky. Then who shows up but the guy from yesterday with his computer and his cable. He sees me sitting there, and he gets really grumpy. He sits down and starts mumbling things like "There's my tax dollars at work!" and "Yeppers!" My advice to anyone is that if you want to get special privileges in this life, a smile and a happy demeanor will get you far where being aggressive will get you the opposite. He reminded me of my children throwing a fit and once they do that, I don't care *what* they want, but they aren't getting it. If he had tried to be friendly, I might have been able to set him up with a low bandwidth connection. But being all aggressive doesn't make me wanna help him out. So, I spend some time and figure out how to disable the ports on the router. It's a sad thing to have to do, but I figure it'll make it easier to deal with people like him. And as the hotel gets more guests, it'll be a necessity.

The team flies the next two days and Monday and Tuesday are busy days for me. But Wednesday I decide to go to the Greenland post office which was recommended to me by Miss Dell and Elinda. The post office has lots of crafts from the indigenous people including lots of dead things again, but also charms made out of Greenlandic gold and silver. Everything is super expensive, and I have to think about it before I decide to buy anything.

I also stop out at the laundry and talk to Elinda. She gives me a tour of the laundry facility and shows me the embroidery that she does for the base. She also offers me cake and coffee, and while I'm there, Miss Dell calls and offers to take me out site seeing next week. It's so amazing how generous these women are. I only wish I had something to give them back in return. I leave Elinda with a couple of hoodies I bought for the boys to embroider. We decide that dog sleds embroidered on the back would be awesome.