February 1^st 1999

Today was another early day. We did the routine things and headed out to the field site. On my end of the work, we are getting closer to getting the network ready for our Live Real Media events. But unfortunately we are still unable to encode the Video and audio live. I have archived some Real Video. The Videos should be ready soon to look at on this web site. I arrived and began taking more pictures. I got a call from the help desk. They informed me that my dial up account should work now. I was happy to hear that because that means that I would be able to send mail and receive it also. For the last three days I have been without the ability to use E-mail. So I took some pictures and then went back to the hotel to use the dial up account. It worked like they said and I was able to send back some pictures. Tonight I will send the rest back. I wasn’t able to send them all because they take awhile to send, espec ially over a modem. I then returned, but there wasn’t much action going on at the site. The previous day of work the little platform with wheels broke so yesterday on our day off some of the team went and got supplies to fix it. When I had come ba ck it was all done. Completely redone actually. It was stronger than before. They have already used it and it has proven itself worthy. I will send some pictures of it for you to see. I then decided to encode some Video that I had taken the day befor e and tonight I will send it as a file and then it will be posted to the web. I will probably try to do some more video tomorrow. Then I was eyeing Hans’ bike. He said that I could take it for a ride. He gave me his spiked riding shoes to wear. I then took off down a dirt road. I rode to the site where the Rover will eventually be tested. I realized that I was more out of shape than I thought I was. I should ride more often. My ride was a really cool one though. The desert is a really cool place, especially the mountainous regions. The sun just went down as I am typing and I can feel the temperature drop. It is also a bit breezy so it makes it even nippier. When I came back from my ride I had a good conversation with the Geologist here, Edmond. He was telling me all about how the earth has been changing and the area around us. He also was explaining why we want to go to Mars and study the surface. The reason is because we will better understand the way our Earth was first like when it was born. Unlike Earth, Mars has only one piece of crust on the surface. It has never changed all these years, while the Earth’s crust has been changing since it was born. If we know what Mars’ crust is like, then we might know what the Eart h’s crust was like 4 million years ago. If a rover goes to mars and brings back samples then we would learn a great deal. I feel that throughout this month I will obtain a good deal of information. And what scares me is that it is interesting. If you want to know why it scares me you can email me. Anyway, I am waiting for the moon to come up. I am sure it will be a good sight tonight. Well they are still doing tests on the Rover. Another interesting thing that I have seen here is that the fie ld-test team is very diverse in ethnicity and background. There is a Russian guy here there is an older French man here, there is a Japanese woman here, there is a Philippino man here, there is a White woman here, there is an Afro American man here, and then there’s me who is half Hispanic and half White. I would say that that is quite a diverse group of people, probably not intended to be that way. I think that should be enough food for your brains for one day. Until tomorrow. This is Seth sign ing off.