Home, home on the range

Writing from the Desert, more or less. I’m currently in Barstow (not Baker, as previously reported) a much more civilized home base from which to do testing than was China Lake, which was really just a tiny main street and a bunch of fast food joints. This place has a much larger main street and a whole lot more fast food joints. Some of which even sell healthy food, so I’m excited about that.

I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier as time has progressed, and even though I don’t have to meet anyone until 9:00 today, I still got up at 5:00 because I’m probably going to have to get up at 4:00 tomorrow and I don’t want to waste all the effort. This means I’ve had time for a leisurely breakfast, a stroll around the hotel, and a morning skype-call with Jessie. The internet in this place is unfortunately slow (I’m pretty sure it’s either shared or *dramatically* throttled) so I can’t get video of her, but she can get video of me, which is nice at least.

I’ve also set up my Xbox, so all is well. I’m planning to do a little bit of exercise, take a shower, and then goof off with video games until It’s time to meet up with people. The work promises to be generally boring, but pretty long. Maybe 10 to 12 hour days. I doubt much longer than that. Today is mostly ‘fill out forms and attend safety briefings’ day for me and my travel buddy, and then tomorrow the testing begins in earnest. I’ll try and drop little updates on people as things happen but other than ‘sat in a car for many hours today: glad I brought books’ I doubt there will be much to report.

-N