Matthew's Journal

Good morning everyone! Last night we left American territorial waters and entered Cuban waters. At the time of writing this, the Ronald Brown is just north of the far western tip of Cuba. Last night I was treated to a spectacular light show courtesy of thunderstorms over the Cuban mainland. The horizon would be dark before it would explode with light and you could see lightening arc from cloud to cloud across the horizon. Today, we have wonderful weather and the sea hasn't been this calm since we left Charleston.

This morning I thought I would give everyone reading a brief glimpse of my life on the Ronald Brown. The picture you see below is my work area in the main lab. The main lab, as you can see, is long and narrow. It sits on the starboard side of the ship on the main deck and it's almost half the ship's width. I'm working at a table on the far end of the lab on the bow end. The picture below is looking aftward. I'm doing most of my work on the two laptops that you see in the foreground. Both laptop are dual boot systems and I usually keep one running Windows XP and the other running Linux. You'll notice that everything in secured to the tabletop with bungee cords and velcro to prevent the from flying off the table if the sea turns rough. You'll also notice that everything you see in the picture is built to a utilitarian standard with little to no regard for comfort or aesthetics. The Ronald Brown was built to work, not play and everything has to withstand being in an environment that's constantly moving up and down and back and forth.

My work area on the Ronald Brown
[click the image to see a larger version]

I plan on putting together additional segments of life and work areas aboard the Ronald Brown, but if anyone has a request of something they'd like to see sooner, make the request in a comment and I'll put something together.