Hey Guys, I am off the boat! Here are some pictures!

As you might have noticed, I am back in the land of more orthodox internets :) I have a ton of stuff to share, but I will try to break it into bite-sized chunks.

First, let's go back to the time when I was still on the boat.

As I mentioned, the boat was super duper nice this time. Here is the conference room:

The meeting is a 10, not 9:30.

Note that the boat is big enough to have a conference room!! Also, check out the wood paneling and the flat screen television, those are not standard features. Also not a standard feature is Kwanchai, our safety dude. He was nice and easy to work with and was also a definite perk.

 Here is the bridge. There were two areas for driving the boat, one looked over the bow in case the boat was going somewhere, and other looked over the back deck so that people driving the crane/ROV/the boat when it was time to use the dynamic positioning system could see what was going on if we were going that way. You can see the fancy chairs in which one sits to drive the boat and also the sitting area and the snacks. We only had access to company e-mail and folders on one computer on the bridge, and that very important computer is making a guest appearance here.

Shhhh, I'm taking a picture, don't tell or the realism will be ruined!

Other guests in this photo are Nick (far right) who was driving the crane, Gunter, who was driving the boat (but who didn't have anything to at this particular time because we were just maintaining our position, and the Captain. The captain name was Nelson, so everyone called him Admiral Nelson. Now that I think of it, I'm not actually sure if it was his first name or his last name or was related to his name at all...

Anywhoozle, at 640cm Nick happened to be THE tallest person I have ever met. A lot of the crew were Norwegian and very tall. About once a day I forgot how to work the cappuccino maker. It didn't have pictorial or English instructions, just Norwegian instructions and there was some pressing of one button whilst holding another button and then adding a third button while holding the first button (or maybe the second? and did you press first and then hold???). It was complicated. So Nick would come over to help make sure I didn't break it and then I would feel like a dwarf. Also the bridge crew bet on horse racing a lot, so I should be more helpful at those random horse racing questions at trivia.

How about some palate cleansing seascapes:

Evening!

Afternoon!

There were a lot of nationalities represented on the boat. The ROV (robot) dudes were largely Scottish and Welsh, the contracting engineers were largely Australian, the people who ran the boat were mostly Norwegian, the deck crew were largely Thai, and I think I was the only American. Also in the mix were a couple of people from China, a Frenchman, and a smattering of New Zealanders. With all of these cultures, there were a lot of different food preferences to be accomodated, something which really showed itself in the number of sauces and spices which had to be kept on the table at all times. Check this out:

Look at all the spices and sauces!

Not. Kidding. There were sooo many!

It was a pretty cool working environment to be around so many people from so many different backgrounds. At one point there were even THREE women!! This was out of about 100 people, so it was pretty clear that everybody was going to have to stop working and start knitting and watching Passions any second. We joked about how the next thing anyone knew we would have re-named the vessel some thing like the "Rose Blossom" rather than the "Hercules."

 That sounds like a joke, but my friend Stephanie and I once named our college robot "Buttercup" (so that our t-shirts could be a pun on "Build Me Up, Buttercup," one has to have priorities in life...) so pretty much anything was possible.

In general I was pretty lucky to have such a great place to get things done from!

Hey guys... a friend made me a present!

Following my last post, my friend kschu made this little piece of excellence, which is obviously the best thing anyone has ever done for me on the internet:

Thanks kschu!

Hey Guys, I have a New Nickname!

Hello All,

Yesterday I promised to tell you the story of how I got my new nickname, and also what that nickname is. Clearly I actually sort of like this nickname (shhhh, don't tell!!) or I wouldn't be sharing this.

As part of my work on the boat,the I am growing some bacterial samples. To be clear from the outset, they are the type of samples you could go to a pool-maintenance store or the internet and just buy, so pretty user friendly and not really that dangerous. Here is a link to a website selling the tests, so you can see what they look like in the absence of my ability to show you a picture:

http://www.hach.com/bart-test-combination-package-iron-related-bacteria-sulfate-reducing-bacteria-slime-forming-bacteria-3-each-/product?id=7640250884 

I can't tell if you can see it or not from those pictures, but what you have there is an inner container which is sealed with an o-ring seal inside of an outer container which is also sealed with an o-ring seal. So there is pretty much no danger of anything, airborne or no, getting out of these containers.

I am running these tests because we saw some unusual corrosion on some of the mooring lines we are changing out, which perhaps may have been influenced by bacteria, in a phenomenon which is very practically called Microbially-Influenced Corrosion (MIC). It is exciting that I'm getting to do this because there is not very much concrete data to show that MIC of mooring chains actually exists, because usually no one has a test on hand when this type of thing is discovered. I'm hoping to be able to show not only that there is a microbial influence, but also which kind of bacteria is to blame in this case. Hopefully, by knowing this we'll be able to come up with a design which is not as susceptible to this influence the next time, or if we end up having to replace these chains.

Now, since some strains of the bacteria for which I am testing have high antibiotic resistance, I thought it would be a good idea if we told the deck workers to be especially careful. The deck workers already take a lot of precautions to protect themselves from bacteria and/or cuts on things we bring up from the seabed because there is always a chance that there could be something nasty on anything. I just thought that since we are pretty sure that there is something, rather than there just being a chance that their might be something, it might be a good idea for everyone to check their gloves for cracks and make sure that they are wearing all of their proper equipment. I still feel pretty good about this decision, in spite of the inconvenience it has ultimately caused me.

We had a meeting to talk about whether or not the right precautions were being taken and to think about whether there was any way we could make the operation safer. We came up with a couple of things, which were implemented. Then at the end of the meeting I said that at the end of my tests I'd update everyone and let them know if I had actually found anything which indicated that the bacteria might be antibiotic resistant.

"WHAT TESTS???" "YOU MEAN YOU'RE GROWING BACTERIA????"

That was the exact reaction of the captain and medic, who were afraid that the bacteria would "become airborne, traveling through the air-conditioning ducts of the ship to infect the entire crew." <-- Direct Quote

A kerfuffle erupted, in which it seemed for a time that I would have to incinerate my samples well before the results of the tests were known (a full test takes 8 days). This would have been pretty sad both for me and for science. How can you design for something when you don't know what it is? More to the point: How can you convince a project manager to spend money on something you can't prove is a problem?

I waged a long and hard campaign against having to destroy my experiment, the other people from my company are more operations focused (more like what you think of rather than me when you imagine people who work on oil platforms) and thought the whole thing was rather amusing rather than sad, tragic, and more than a bit ridiculous. Eventually I struck a deal and I am keeping them in a container on the deck rather than in my cabin. This is more inconvenient than it sounds because I can only go on deck when dangerous things aren't happening, which is pretty much all the time because we are performing a high tension operation. To go on the deck, even when the times are not dangerous involves putting on a fancy orange onesie and full safety gear. I have to take pictures twice a day, so I end up waking up at weird times when I know that there will be a lull. 

Anyway, as a result of my campaign and the kerfuffle surrounding the bacteria the other dudes from my company have been making no end of fun of me (with me? I think its pretty funny now that my bacteria are safe...). For instance, one of them came to me saying that he thought he had a bacterial infection, then showed me a crawfish head he had put on said finger.

The culmination of the hijinks came when one of them hit on calling me "Agent Scully," which has pretty much stuck. I've never actually seen the X-Files, so this could be a big insult for all I know, but actually I am pretty sure it isn't meant that way. This is definitely reading more into it than is meant by it but, courtesy of Wikipedia:

" Film critic Scott Mendelson, writing in The Huffington Post, cited Scully as an example of strong female characters on television, calling her "one of the most iconic characters in the science-fiction genre".^[43] Radio Times's Laura Pledger also named her as a strong TV woman, placing her at #1.^[44] ... 

...The character of Scully has become something of a sci-fi heroine due to her intelligence and resilience, frequently appearing on lists of important female science fiction characters, such as Total Sci-Fi Online's list of The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi, where she came fourth.^[47] TV Squad named her the thirteenth greatest woman on television,^[48] while the site also listed her among the most memorable female science fiction television characters.^[49] She is also often cited as being an unlikely sex symbol, frequently being included in lists of sexy TV characters.^[50] She was listed in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters.^{[51] "}

I guess I am willing to live with that...

Hugs!
Pricer

Hey Guys, I'm on a Boat.... with crappy internet!

Hi all,

Once again, I am on a boat. This time I am in the Gulf of Thailand though! And this boat is super swanky, so I have some swanky pictures to share. Unfortunately, I can't share them because the internet here is more  that a bit lame compared to other places and I don't have access to the Google Drive, which somehow matters even though the pictures are right here on my very own computer!!

As you might guess from the fact I know it doesn't work, I had originally planned a much different post  with less of the words a more of the pictures. Sadly, it is not to be. I was very upset about this for a while yesterday but I think I am mostly over it now. After some reflection, I realized that being crabby although I have the ability to send thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of bits of information hurtling into the ether and into the computers of my friends and family was a bit prima donna-ish of me and I should be thankful for what I have.

What I have is, at present:

• Limited, but functional internet. I can read things on Feedly, which is what I am using since Google Reader announced that it would soon be an ex-RSS feed service. I can look at webpages which do not have inappropriate content, but I can't download or stream anything. In most cases, any pages which have streamed content are blocked lest I should be tempted to try it.  Google chat is alive and well.
• A two-man cabin to myself. I think its appropriate to call it a two-man cabin because, since I am using it it is a one-woman cabin. This way I have a bathroom to use, because the other ones are multiple occupancy and set up for dudes. No one will tell me whether this means that they only have urinals or not. My cabin is pretty nice, much nicer than the other boat. I have a sofa and a desk for instance.
• Fresh cut-up fruit and veggies 24-7!! This has confirmed my suspicion that I would eat a lot more fruits and vegetables if they were less work and followed me around constantly. I don't know if this will have application to my onshore life or not.
• Unbelievably delicious goat cheese. I am pretty much using this as my protein source because I am tired of beef. Again, being tired of beef is perhaps a luxury that may people in the world would like to have, so my lot is not that terrible. 
• A small but very high-functioning gym. It has a treadmill, a rowing machine, an elliptical trainer, and a bike for cardio + a pretty good weightlifting setup. There are also some random things like jump ropes, stretch cords, and balancing toys, so there is a good variety.
• Pretty good coworkers with whom I am mostly getting along pretty well.

That is a pretty good list of things to be grateful for, so I shouldn't be put completely out of sorts by a few technological inconveniences. 

I've been here since last Wednesday so I've had a chance to fall into a pattern of sorts. I usually wake up around 5, have a quick wet-my-hair-down-so-its-not-going-everywhere shower, then grab a cup of coffee and go into the client (my company) office to check out what happened while I was asleep. Then I go up to the bridge and check my work e-mail on the computer we have set up which has access to our company network. 

That takes until about 7:30 because I am about 12hrs off from normal so I'm looking at a whole day's worth of e-mails and also because the computer upstairs is run by hamsters which have to change each individual pixel by hand every time something new needs to be displayed. Then I have breakfast and get a little work done. Usually this involved going back up to ye olde hamster-driven computer to wait for some files to download onto a thumb drive so I can work on my regular computer. 

At 10am, we have the daily management meeting where all the people who are responsible for things give a report on how those responsibilities are going. This includes people like the captain, the head robot dude, the various engineers, the head cook etc. This takes about 10 minutes, maybe 15 on a very busy day. Most of the time is taken up with making variations on running jokes.

Then, I go back to doing work until 11:30 when the people from my company have a call-in meeting with the project manager onshore. He is a talker, so even if we have nothing to tell him because we just spoke with him 10 minutes earlier it takes half an hour. This meeting is followed by lunchtime, perhaps to the detriment of my feelings about this meeting.

The afternoons are pretty quiet, there are usually 1-2 engineering questions which are raised and I work on the things that I downloaded from my work files in the morning. The onshore manager calls five or 15 more times and I dig up various files and measure various things to answer his questions. Around 5pm I send off another round of e-mails and close up most of my shop for the day. I workout from 5-6 or 6:30 depending on whether it is a lifting day or not, then I eat dinner, read, and fall asleep at like 8:30. 

Sometimes if something is happening in the middle of the night I get woken up, but this has only happened twice out of the week I've been here, so not that much.

It sounds sort of boring written out like that, but actually it goes by pretty fast. I am monitoring the growth of some bacterial samples, so I have to take pictures of those a couple of times a day, plus there is usually some camaraderie going on. The sense of humor on the boat is very... abrasive. Everyone has some sort of nickname, usually derogatory, but not always, and people are constantly making up things and trying to convince other people that they are true. I have one person convinced that my hair and eyebrows are actually very high quality wigs which I paste on every morning, for instance.

I think I am going to do another post on another day about all of the silly things people are trying to convince other people are true and all of the weird personality quirks I have noticed, which will probably be more interesting to read than this train schedule of a post. I'll also tell you about my bacterial samples and how I earned my nickname!