The eve of my departure

Tomorrow I leave for The North. I'm off for my field season, all of which will be spent in one place this year: Alexandra Fjord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut Territory, Canada. This can be abbreviated "Alex Fjord" or just "Alex". In any case, it's North. Far North. No, further North than that - think more North. That's about right, now.

Unlike my departure last year (which was aimed South, initially), this year I feel much more relaxed and well-prepared. All of the equipment and supplies I'll need has either already been sent up to Resolute, or is travelling with me. Like last year, I'll be travelling with abundant luggage.

My abundant luggage, 2009. Not pictured: my carry-on. Also not pictured: the 1 tonne of stuff already sent ahead.

I'm travelling with the FTIR, the machine I'll be running in Alex, doing the job I was hired to do. The FTIR is fairly fragile, so it's very well protected in that giant black Pelican case seen in the above picture. The two green Pelicans contain other associated machinery - air pumps and valves and so forth. The big backpack is my personal luggage, plus some other gear that didn't fit in any other container and couldn't go ahead because I was still using it up until very recently. Most of my clothing was sent by air cargo back in April, so my backpack only contains about 3 days worth of clothes. The rest of the bulk is things like a soil temperature/moisture probe, some big steel tubes that we call "soil gas probes" (more on those some other time), a number of books and notebooks, and some camping gear. I'm really, really happy I pre-shipped so much - this is going to be awkward to get checked in at the airport tomorrow morning as is, never mind all the other stuff.

I'll be gone for about 2 months - I'm scheduled to return to Saskatoon on August 20. Tomorrow I fly to Ottawa, changing planes in the ever-lovely Pearson International Airport at Toronto. The next day I fly on to Resolute, changing planes in Iqaluit and stopping briefly (I hope) in Hall Beach - this is the same flight from Iqaluit that I took last year. Coming back is the same flight, too, leaving Resolute at 6:30am, but this time I'm supposed to get into Saskatoon around 7:00pm the same day. We've got a few days padding both sides of our flights to and from Alex Fjord (from Resolute), because, of course, "weather and mechanical permitting" means delays up to several days are not unlikely.

I'm going to be working rather hard over the next 2 months, probably on the order of 10-12 hours of actual work per day, every day. Much of this will be hard physical work - deploying gear out at different sampling sites around Alex (it's about 8 square km, so a fair bit of walking around is anticipated), carrying heavy things, and driving our soil gas probes into the stony ground with a deadblow sledgehammer. I'll post more on that when I've got some pictures - probably of me looking either exhausted or lightly injured (or both). In any case, partly on my own initiative, and (mostly) on Steve's insistence, I have taken the last several days completely off - and I didn't work very long hours any day last week, either. To put it bluntly, I was a useless lump for 48 straight hours. I spent my weekend sleeping, eating, and watching many episodes of Top Gear. Steve is very concerned about the entire field team's mental health, and (quite reasonably) doesn't want anybody coming up to the field with lots of background stress. Outside of work, I have essentially nothing to stress about, as I am that stereotypical creature, the pathetic single man. In Apu's immortal words, "just cash, no cheques, no chitchat". Inside of work, everything that can be done is done. I have exactly one task left to accomplish, which is to get a taxi to take me to the airport tomorrow morning. That's it... well, I should empty the rotten/rottable stuff from my 'fridge, but otherwise I'm good to go. This is a good feeling.

My Job in Saskatoon

What am I doing in Saskatoon, anyways?

The short answer, as alluded to in previous posts is “a job”. Slightly longer: a job at the University of Saskatchewan, in the Department of Soil Science, working as a lab & field technician for a professor with interests in climate change biology and greenhouse gases (among other things).

While I’ve been doing a number of different day-to-day tasks here at U Sask since early January, I was hired for one specific project: Arctic fieldwork. Dr. Steven Siciliano, my primary supervisor, hired me to run some experiments and collect (and analyse) some data during a long field season in the High Arctic. For several years, Dr. Siciliano has been travelling to Alexandra Fjord on the eastern side of Ellesmere Island. He has an ongoing series of projects based there that revolve around the cycling of gases and other nutrients in the soil and between the soil and the atmosphere. There are a number of basic techniques to study such things, and last year Dr. Siciliano was able to jointly purchase with another professor in the department a machine that provides real-time measurements of the concentrations of different gases in air samples, allowing measurement of flows of these gases out of the soil and into the atmosphere.

The FTIR (Fourier-transformed infrared) device, which I normally refer to as “the FTIR”, passes air continuously through a measurement cell where an infrared laser, a detector, and some rapidly-vibrating mirrors examine the spectral characteristics of the air. This device can theoretically measure the concentration of any material dissolved in air (not suspended particles) if the appropriate reference files are available to the analysis software. The company that made it supplied us with reference spectra for Carbon dioxide (CO2), Nitrous oxide (N2O), and Methane (CH4), as well as Ammonia (NH3) and water vapour (H2O), though in practice I’ve mostly been ignoring those last two. We’ve also got reference files for Ethylene (C2H4) and Acetylene (C2H2), but I’ll talk about why we have those in another post. For now, suffice to say they were not part of the original reason to buy the machine and take it to the Arctic.

I was hired primarily to run the FTIR on Ellesmere Island. When I was first talking with Steve about this job, before I’d even accepted the offer, we discussed the field season being somewhere between 6 weeks and 2 months long, at a remote field camp with essentially zero amenities. I had a few misgivings, of course, but on balance I was and remain very excited for the opportunity to conduct more High Arctic field work. I’ve never done a really long field season like that before, though last summer did include some remote locations, and in aggregate I was running all over North America for almost 2 months.

Field work in the Arctic is generally summer field work, for the obvious reason that in winter it’s nearly impossible to study the soil, most living organisms, or even the geology when everything is frozen completely solid, covered in blowing snow, and under 24-hour darkness. Starting in January as I did, my first job upon arrival in Saskatoon was to start getting familiar with the ideas and background information around the field work, and learn about the FTIR. This latter task was especially difficult because the machine was not actually in Saskatoon. It had been sent to an engineer in Mississauga, Ontario, for repair and upgrades. I don’t know the details, but somehow late last summer the FTIR was damaged, and water got into the measurement cell and condensed on the mirrors. These are very delicate platinum mirrors, and they needed to be cleaned by somebody who knew what they were doing. Additionally, the software that runs some operations had some bugs that could be fixed at the same time.

We didn’t get the FTIR back here in Saskatoon until early March, so other than reading papers about Arctic soils and greenhouse gases (and trying to get a basic understanding of this whole soil science thing, too) I didn’t have much to do. Steve found ways to keep me busy, which was useful for both of us – he got some useful work done (by me), and I got to accomplish a few small tasks and get used to working with him.

Once we got the FTIR I was able to start familiarizing myself with it. This is by far the most complicated machine I’ve ever worked with. The machine itself is in three parts, from three different manufacturers, and the part in the middle that lets various other parts talk to each other was custom-built by that engineer I mentioned in Ontario. The stamp of his personality is all over it, as a result, so learning to use the machine was at least partly about learning how Allan thinks, without ever having met him. The parts talk to each other via electrical connections and a series of air hoses, which means I have been introduced to an entire field of science I previously knew nothing about: gas chemistry. Short version: once you know the ideal gas law, everything else is pretty straightforward.

I leave for Ellesmere on June 23. I’ll fly to Ottawa, spend 1 night there, then on to Resolute. We’re scheduled to fly from Resolute to Alexandra Fjord by Twin Otter on June 26, weather and mechanical permitting. I’m scheduled to return to Resolute August 15, and to Saskatoon August 20. Contact with the rest of the world from Alexandra Fjord is by twice-daily radio check-in (and a satellite phone for emergencies), so I’ll be out of contact by email, phone, etc., for about 7 weeks. So if you thought my previous episodes of not updating were bad…

People have been asking me why I moved to Saskatoon, and this constitutes the basic answer. I may rant about some of the things I’ve done or had to do or had done to me in the last 6 months, but I wanted to make sure this post got up before I went into incomprehensible detail, or disappeared.

Book Club: SAS Survival Handbook

SAS Survival Handbook
The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere
John “Lofty” Wiseman, 2009
HarperCollins, London, UK

I first heard about this book many years ago, an earlier edition that I recall being a larger format, perhaps the size of a textbook but soft covered. I bought this one recently, after taking a wilderness first aid course that included some material on typical wilderness situations, like helicopter safety and wilderness navigation. This book covers those topics in detail, along with every other aspect of survival situations.

The book is an easy read, with useful information on pretty much every page. It’s supposed to cover every possible environment on Earth, from the equator to the poles, and from the open ocean to mountains, deserts, forests, and even the “home front” (in the case of disasters). There are colour illustrations of the most important plants (food, poisonous, and medicinal) and dangerous animals (e.g. venomous snakes). I particularly appreciated the clear illustrations in the knots and traps sections – I usually find written (or worse, verbal) instruction in rope handling to be horribly ambiguous and unclear, but these descriptions combined with the illustrations are quite good.

I bought this book partly because I’ve wanted to read it for a long time, and partly because I do get a kick out of reading about survival situations, and of course imagining myself in such situations. With my upcoming field work in the High Arctic, the parts dealing with cold climates and the polar regions were particularly interesting. Of the useful plants, I really only paid attention to mentions of willow – it’s one of the few plants even in the sparse Arctic that I can readily identify, and according to this book Willow is rather useful, for such things as the vitamin C in the leaves, or the medicinal properties of the bark.

There were a few annoying typos and what I assume were misplaced words, but overall the style and quality of writing is very good. This book club reads much more like a review than I intended, but what else can I say about this book until / unless I really have to use it?

Book Club: Dragonfly

Dragonfly
An Epic Adventure of Survival in Outer Space
NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir
Bryan Burrough
HarperCollins, New York, USA

This book took me a very long time to read. I’m not sure when I started it, but it was certainly more than a year ago. I’m not sure why, exactly, I took so long to read 519 pages about space exploration, a topic close to my heart, but there it is.

Rather than speculate about my own surprisingly slow reading pace, there’s one issue that this book presents to me obliquely that I’d like to discuss. I don’t normally talk much about my personal philosophy here, but I have to in order to discuss this book. I’m an atheist, and a philosophical materialist. This does not mean I’m in it for the possessions, rather I have yet to see anything to convince me that there is “something more”. I never think of anything about my life in a “spiritual” context; indeed I don’t actually know what that word means. I am not emotionless, but I do not subscribe to any ideas concerning supernatural or paranormal influence on my thoughts or feelings. In short, I completely agree with the statement “that which cannot be measured does not exist”.

That bit of personal background is necessary, I think, for my description of an issue raised in my mind by Dragonfly. Before I get to that, though, I think I need to tell you about the events described in the book. Dragonfly is an extremely detailed, very thoroughly researched investigation into the events that occurred aboard and around the Mir space station in the summer of 1997.

To oversimplify the situation, at that time the USA needed more experience with long-term space flight and space stations because of the upcoming International Space Station (ISS), and Russia had that experience in the form of continuous operation of Mir for several years, and was in need of both foreign good-will and hard currency. A partnership was drawn up, and American astronauts visited Mir for several months at a time over a period of a couple of years.

Unfortunately, a number of serious crises afflicted the station, culminating in a very serious on-board fire and a damaging collision with an unmanned resupply vessel a few months later. As I said, this book provides an amazingly detailed account of these and other events, so I won’t describe them more than that. These events had a range of effects on the many people involved, including a dramatic change in the relationship between NASA and the Russian Space Agency; this change was mostly positive, with greater trust and cooperation from 1998 onwards.

The issue that struck me most about the complex story presented here is never explicitly mentioned in the book. Not once. But it struck me as central to the story of unfortunate decisions, poor communications, and conflicting personalities. Magical thinking pervades the entire story.

Astronauts, engineers, and the vast army of ground controllers, doctors, administrators and so forth who are employed in space are much better educated than the general public. Yet within NASA and the Russian Space Agency, superstition and fuzzy-headed woo seems shockingly abundant. Throughout this book, mention is made of the prevalence of magical thinking within these institutions, but never is there any suggestion that this is odd, and frankly, dangerous among people who make life-and-death, hundred-million-dollar decisions on a daily basis.

The examples from this book I can think of off the top of my head include the photograph of the cosmonauts a few days before their launch, apparently seriously considering the advice of a local astrologer. Not astronomer, a professional group of scientists one would expect to have at least some contact with spacefarers, but an astrologer. At one point late in the tale, one cosmonaut must be laboriously persuaded to accept experimental apparatus aboard the station, because it includes a study of cancer cells, and he is afraid this is both a bad omen, and a carcinogenic risk to himself. Did he drop out of high school?

Among the NASA astronauts, there are several cliques. Besides the alarming implications for necessary teamwork and solid professional relationships among people living in an extreme environment and close quarters, one of the cliques is described simply as “the Christians”. Wait, what? There are a large number of astronauts whose primary description is derived from their religion? What about the astronauts whose primary description is derived from their training, from their specialization? Why are astronauts not referred to as being doctors, engineers, scientists, pilots?

Even as we struggle to go beyond this tiny planet, we carry our baggage of superstition and foolishness with us. I am disappointed.

Monday Rant: Failure Pen

The ball-point pen is a fine invention. Before it, writing in ink was done with fountain pens, messy and expensive devices which were nonetheless better than what came before. Pen technology has become rather advanced, and a fantastic variety of styles, shapes, colours, and grips is on display at office-supply stores.

But the majority of these pens are pure, unadulterated, disappointment. Last night I might have disturbed my nearest neighbour, by the crashing sound of a useless waste of plastic and ink shattering against our adjoining wall. Two pens in as many minutes failed the basic writing-utensil test of drawing a short line. A short line, like the letter l on a scrap of paper. Total, repeated, failure.

Ink dries in the reservoir. Rollerballs stick, or become impacted. Grips slide and twist. Click-buttons self-eject, stick, become lost. Caps disappear into a strange, plastic-filled parallel dimension. But most of all, pens gradually fail, in the most aggravating way possible. Oh, for the days of catastrophic, one-time failures, with ink splashed across the page, desk, and trousers. For the days of ink on white shirts, and screaming curses for ruined reports. Instead of this high drama, we have the pen that skips a centimetre, then again. Then drags a scratch through the page, but does not tear it. Weakly, it slides along, deigning to deposit ink only with remorse.

Enough! I say! Bring me a pen that writes and will not quit, then quits and will not write! None of this half-way apathetic incompetence from my writing utensils; I demand a pen of clear boundaries, that draws a line at the end of its life as clear as the first line it drew!

Moving to Saskatoon

After I accepted the job offer from Steve, I started planning my move across the country to Saskatoon. I’d never lived in Saskatoon before, but a couple of my friends had been there for a year or two, and were happy to extol the virtues of the northern prairies. Kamil Juices was quite understanding when I discussed everything with them; they were unhappy that I was quitting, but knew why and when I’d be leaving.

I started planning the move by looking into various possessions-transport options. This took a few days, at the end of which I had discovered two very important facts. 1. It is illegal to transport alcohol between Canadian provinces, for any reason, including personal consumption. Yes, I know, pretty much everyone has done it, but this is why Canada Post, UPS, FedEx, and all of the moving companies will not carry booze between provinces. So I couldn’t use a mover, because I owned a large amount of wine that I wanted to take with me. 2. While there are a number of moving-truck rental companies, only one will rent a truck for a one-way move between Ontario and Saskatchewan. Several companies would do it within Ontario, or within half of the country (East or West), but only U-Haul would willingly allow me to drive a truck from Guelph to Saskatoon. There’s my plan, then.

I was figuring this stuff out in November, with a planned move date either just before or just after Christmas. Plans and schedules were discussed with various people for a while, and eventually I settled on leaving Guelph about a week before Christmas, driving all the way to Calgary but stopping to unload in Saskatoon, returning the truck, and having Christmas with my family in Calgary. This plan was partly based on the fact that my father was able to accompany me for the entire drive. He had some work in Ottawa just before my planned Guelph departure, and was able to fly to Toronto and catch a shuttle to Guelph the night before.

A map of my route, from Google Maps. The first suggestion from Google was the American route, crossing the border at Sarnia, driving straight through Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, and entering Canada again south of Winnipeg. Foolishness, for at least 2 obvious reasons.

The day before my departure, a good friend of mine, who had been crucial in the High Arctic part of my summer of fieldwork, helped me pack up the truck. We got about ¾ of my stuff loaded in about an hour, including the all-important wine packing. I had about 160 bottles, most of it home-made (or made at Kamil Juices – did I mention the awesome employee discount?), but about ¼ of that was either commercial wine (most bottles destined for special occasions) or what I pretentiously call my “Proprietor’s Reserve”: 2 bottles out of each home batch set aside for posterity.

Packing the truck centred (and centered) on the Freezer of Irony. My freezer, a little chest model acquired from my sister by way of my aunt-and-uncle’s garage, was thoroughly defrosted and placed in the middle of the truck just behind the cabin. Into it was placed 3 cases (including socks around individual bottles) of my most precious wine, and then the remaining wine (14 cases total, 12 bottles per case) packed around that. Books and other bulky, heavy, insulating items were packed around the wine to provide further insurance against the upcoming freezing trip.

My father helped me pack up the last few things and clean my apartment, which was great, (thanks dad!) then we set off. We’d planned to be on the road by 10, and made it out of town by about 10:30, so not too bad. Highway conditions were clear and cold, and the traffic on the 401 was not horrible. It’s the 401, so of course we hit a few slow patches, but compared to some days I’ve driven that highway, nothing out of the ordinary.

Dad and I both enjoy driving, but get tired after several hours, so the workload was fine and evenly shared. I drove for a bit, we’d stop for a snack or gas or a meal, then he’d drive for a bit. The U-Haul truck we had was sporting Florida license plates (well, just the rear one – Florida requires only one plate per vehicle), but maintained a decent internal temperature and handled the blowing snow well. I really wish there was more leg room, more room in general in the cab, and cruise control, but oh well, at least the truck wasn’t very old.

Driving along Highway 17 along the north shore of Lake Superior.

The second night we stayed at Ignace, Ontario, the same town I had spent a night in during my summer of fieldwork. Not the same motel, though. That evening, after dinner just outside Thunder Bay, we decided to push on to the next small town, about an hour away. We didn’t realize until later, but the headlights were covered in frozen road grime, and once the sun went down I had great difficulty seeing the road ahead. Other cars would pass us and I would be jealous of their apparently brilliant lights, while I struggled along in the dark, mistakenly blaming Ford and U-Haul for the dim bulbs.

We stopped at a motel with a nice bright sign that suggested it was open. There was a note on the door, asking us to phone for the night-manager; no cars were present. We could see that there was somebody upstairs from the flickering lights (probably a television), but nobody answered when we knocked, and the phone number lead to an answering machine. Uh, OK, back on the road, I guess. In this part of the world, facilities are widely separated, we would not see another electric light (except on other vehicles) for more than an hour. I managed to clean off the headlights, though, which made a huge difference.

We encountered a similar situation at the first motel in Ignace – lights on, nobody home. Across the street was another motel, though, so we went there. This motel is also apparently the Greyhound Bus depot for Ignace, as there were 3 men standing just outside the front door, smoking. As my father went inside to book a room, they told us we should plug the truck in tonight, as it’s -31C. They didn’t say the minus, or the C; in these parts in winter, those are unnecessary, simply saying “it’s 31” is sufficient. Sadly, this Florida-registered truck lacked a block heater, we would have to take our chances.

Early the next morning, Dad sent me outside to see if the truck would start, he didn’t want to go through the trouble (and cold) of loading our suitcases only to have to wait for a tow-truck or something for a boost. Fortunately, the truck started, though not without protest. A strange high-pitched whining sound came out of the engine for the first 5 minutes or so, but it did start, so congratulations to the engineers at Ford. When we loaded our suitcases in the back, I could smell wine, but there was nothing we could do about it at this point so we continued on our way.

The only really nasty weather we met was when we were refuelling just outside Winnipeg. The temperature was somewhere below -30, and the wind howled between the pumps and parked cars at the highway-side station. The truck had an enormous fuel tank, probably 90 litres or something, so I was standing there getting sand-blasted by gritty snow for long enough to be unhappy about it. Fortunately, while it was very cold the entire trip, that was the only stop with so much wind. Only a few times in my life have I shivered inside every piece of warm clothing I own.

Highway 1 a few dozen kilometres east of Winnipeg. Not pictured: any altitude change or terrain relief of any kind at all.

We got in to Saskatoon just before noon, and found my friends’ house without major difficulty. They had thoughtfully left some refreshing beverages for us. Unloading the truck directly into the garage took less than an hour, after we’d found a grocery store and bought some food. Some of the wine boxes were stained, though everything was frozen solid so there were no drips. While my dad relaxed in the very pleasant sun-room upstairs, I set about dealing with my wine.

Of 160 bottles, approximately half had frozen solid and pushed out their corks. In most cases, the resulting wine spill was quite small; as the wine was forced out of the bottles by expansion, it froze solid itself, so only a little liquid actually escaped. Red wine is really messy, though, and I wanted to find out how much damage had been done. I wanted to thaw the frozen open bottles (still-closed bottles were not a concern), clean up the slush, and put them away somewhere I wouldn’t have to worry about them. I started by thawing them in the kitchen sink, but that filled up fairly rapidly. I moved to the bathtub, upstairs.

Allow me to repeat myself: these bottles were frozen solid. Not slushy, not a little ice, FROZEN SOLID. We’d had about 72 continuous hours of -30 C temperatures, and I think the wine had reached thermal equilibrium. Because of the alcohol content, wine freezes at around -9 C; at -30 it’s rock-hard. There’s so much negative thermal mass there that defrosting takes an injection of huge amounts of heat. At one point, I had placed around 60 bottles in the bathtub, and filled the tub with warm water to a depth of about 15 centimetres. I went away for a bit, and when I returned, rather than melting the contents of the bottles, the top 2 cm of the bathwater had frozen solid. Solid enough that by gripping a single bottle I could move the entire collection. I showed my father, and he laughed and said he didn’t think that was possible. I managed to free the bottles from their ice, and clean them up, but it took hours and hours, though of course most of that was just time spend waiting for heat to move around. I only lost 6 bottles to breakage, which was pretty amazing. Stupidly, I neglected to take any pictures. Sorry.

To accompany our pizza dinner, I thawed (in the sink, under running water) one bottle of Malbec, which is the ideal wine to go with pizza, according to Wine Spectator magazine. Despite having been frozen, the wine tasted fine. I now have a collection of iced wine (not ice wine).

The wine packed inside the freezer was undamaged. Hence the name for my freezer: the Freezer of Irony. The irony is my freezer prevented freezing. Yes, obvious I know, but I find it amusing.

The next day, we put our luggage into the back of the empty truck and drove to Calgary. The landscape between Saskatoon and Calgary is very flat, and during the depths of December, the best word to describe some parts was “bleak”.

We got to my parents’ home in the early evening, and we were able to return the truck that night so we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Driving it in Calgary was fun, actually. The driving culture in Calgary infamously includes “bigger is better” when it comes to interacting with other traffic. Merging in the U-Haul was enjoyable because I was in something bigger than all of the F350s and Dodge Ram Turbo Diesel pickups that infest the roads of Calgary. Drivers clearly used to intimidating other traffic were forced out of my way because I had several metres of length, about 1 metre of height, and perhaps 1000kg of dry weight advantage over them. The weird intersection to get into the U-Haul depot’s parking lot was less than fun, though.

The entire journey took 5 days. We reached Saskatoon on day 4, after about 36 hours on the road from Guelph. Calgary was 7 hours from Saskatoon, which seemed rather quick after the previous 1000-km days.

Monday Rant: Printers Redux

I’ve ranted about craptastic printer technology before, nearly 3 years ago. The situation has not improved. In fact, printer technology appears to have regressed in the last few years.

I don’t own a printer, for multiple reasons. Besides all of my experiences with utterly useless printers and their horrid idiosyncrasies, a personal printer for me is unlikely because:
a) they’re fairly expensive, if you want something that will actually work 1% of the time or more;
b) ink or toner is often close to as expensive as the hardware;
c) ink and toner do not last long, and must be replaced regardless of use after some months;
d) I have no space to put one, anyways.

So, on those rare occasions when I actually need to move something from electrons and magnets to blobs of pigment and cellulose, I use somebody else’s printer. Currently I have (limited) access to 3 printers: my boss’ (in his office), my co-worker’s (in his office), and the big printer in the University of Saskatchewan Science Library. Each has its advantages (few) and disadvantages (abundant).

My boss is currently on sabbatical, and has loaned me his office for a little while. Why I need to borrow an office is the subject of another rant. In his office is a Hewlett-Packard Laserjet, which does not work. It used to work; up until a few days ago I was able to connect my work computer to it via USB and it would spew forth papers. Yesterday, for no apparent reason, it stopped working. With much frustration, it is possible to get the printer to print a single page from a given document, but not without much swearing and carrying-on. I have no idea why this should be so, but repeated reinstallation of drivers and runs through troubleshooting algorithms has not improved the situation.

My co-worker’s printer has worked well for me in the past, but suffers from the distinct disadvantage of being located in his office, which he is never also in. Because he’s on another continent, and will be away for several more months. Nobody else shares his office at the moment, so I can’t even bug somebody else and get in there to print. Besides, it’s rather awkward to unlock my computer, carry it to his office, and sit there cramped in the corner with my computer on my lap and a cable running out of it, and a person in the department admonishes me for being in an office.

Finally, the very nice, very expensive printer in the Science Library has always worked well for me, with one exception. The major problem there is twofold: the Science Library is pretty far away, 5 floors down and 2 buildings over, and I’m charged 10 cents per page. For how much I print, this is an entirely reasonable price, but it still rankles when I’m paying out of pocket for a form that somebody else will have to sign anyways. The one exception to the Science Library’s printer’s usefulness was when I had to print a legal size (8.5 x 14 inches) form from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. A form based on a large, complex, fillable PDF. Fillable PDFs can’t have their fillable parts saved, so in a long, stupid process I had to assemble all my answers in a Word document, carry that down to the library on a memory stick, sweet-talk the librarian into letting me fill the form on her computer behind the desk, and load the handful of legal-size sheets into her printer behind the desk. This whole process took about 4 hours spread over 3 days, between figuring out what was required and assembling the required materials. Ungh.

So, yeah, any time I need to print something, even a single page, there’s a strong possibility my day has just been ruined. Yesterday afternoon: sucked. This afternoon: sucked. Both days near-ruined by useless goddammed printers.

Here's a picture of a cat attacking a printer, which I found through Google and I like because of those sharp claws raking the delicate insides of an evil, evil machine.

Job Offer

While I was working at Kamil Juices, I was also applying for a “real” job. My idea was to work for the government in some capacity – many biologists are employed by municipal, provincial, and federal governments, and the posted salaries were quite attractive. However, I was offered a non-government, non-private-sector job before I heard anything back from any of the jobs at the DFO, NRC, CFIA, or other acronyms I’d applied to.

Dr. Steven Siciliano is a professor of soil science at the University of Saskatchewan. I’d met him while I was in the High Arctic; he’d taken me to Devon Island. Coincidentally, when I quit my PhD, Steve was looking for a field technician, somebody who could go to Ellesmere Island in the summer of 2009, for a period of up to 2 months to run some experiments for him. When I’d emailed him regarding my current academic status, he’d considered things, talked to some people, and then offered me the job (that's the way he tells it).

We talked on the phone a few times before I committed to working for Steve. The clincher in my mind was the requirement, not opportunity nor possibility, of spending a serious amount of time in the High Arctic and visiting Resolute again. The government jobs I’d applied for had mostly included the “possibility” of short bits of field work. There was never much detail presented in the web job advertisements, but I got the distinct impression that somebody working for the DFO in Winnipeg would get to go out and about for an afternoon or a day, in the area of southern Manitoba. Two months on an Arctic island is a completely different story.

The University of Saskatchewan is in Saskatoon. A couple of my good friends live in Saskatoon, and were happy to tell me about living there. Nothing too scary was described, which contributed to my decision to move to Saskatchewan. In December. The move is a story all its own.