The School of Rock

Sunday was a pretty busy day for us - Mike Hodge started the EOL/BOL (End of Leg / Beginning of Leg) routine, which essentially backs up and removes the data collected from the last expedition, and also adds new information from the shore to our ship-based database. It's a long and grueling process, and I'm glad Mike is taking care of it! In the meantime, I focused on creating new NetWare and GroupWise accounts for our oncoming "science staff," and vetting personal laptops for use on our ship.

For the next two weeks or so, we'll be sailing with the "School of Rock" - a group of 13 middle school and high school teachers, a publisher from McGraw Hill, and representatives from the Smithsonian Institute and the Science Museum of Minnesota in St Paul.


The School of Rock - Class of 2005

We are treating this group as our science party, but they will spend the transit time learning all there is to know about the ocean floors, the IODP, and scientific ocean drilling in general. Our deputy director, Ann Klaus, is also sailing the transit to coordinate the S.o.R., and everyone is pretty excited about the new program.

What it means for me is that I have a 2-week trial run before we reach Acapulco. I can't exaggerate how fortunate I am to have this time to learn about the ship's systems and MCS procedures in a miniaturized state of operations, or how much better prepared I'll be once the scientists board.

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