ExTerra is off duty...Frank is out celebrating

I don't know what's gotten into Frank, but he shut down the entire operation this week. As soon as Tom returned, Frank declared a holiday and sent everyone home. Apparently there was some kind of award given to some math guy that Frank really likes: John Milnor.

I had to do quite a bit of research for this one. What I found out was that the King of Norway gives out the Abel Prize every year for outstanding mathematicians, and this year John got the MILLION DOLLARS, so I guess it is a pretty big deal.

So, anyway, apparently Frank has been following John's work on "7-dimensional spheres with nonstandard differential structure". Just what that means, I have no idea, but Frank calls them exotic spheres. What I can tell you is that whatever Frank means by 'exotic' certainly doesn't match what *I* consider exotic.

As soon as the party's over and Frank returns to his senses, we'll have more to report.
[shrug] What can I say? I've never really understood this engineering attitude.

P.S.
If any of you understand that math stuff, let me know!

Get some sample writing, put Tom to work

Based on our discussion last week, Tom took a handful of engineering pads and a box of standard wooden No. 2 pencils on his trip this week. When he gets back, we hope he's managed to find someone with the ability to give us a good sampling of the native written language.

Only one problem: when he gets back, I'm certain we'll need a linguist. Although Tom has picked up some of the native tongue (which is only to be expected as he's spent so much time over there), he's only managed to learn some rather basic things (food, water, sleep, etc.) and none of the written form. Besides, he's not up to analysing the language to see how it relates to any we have on this planet, if it even does at all. If anyone knows of a good linguist, let us know.

Hopefully we'll have more interesting stuff to report next week.
(Again, if you have any suggestions for Tom, let us know.)

Books aren't common, but is writing?

Apparently books aren't as common over there as they are here, and Tom says that there's not much chance of 'checking' any books out of their library. Frank suggested that Tom take a picture of some of the books, so we can get a sample of their writing, but Tom just grabbed a pen and notepad (of course, it was an engineering pad because we were standing at Frank's desk having the conversation). Tom waved the pad around and said that he was just going to have the town chief write something down. Frank certainly has an engineering mindset; Tom just gets things done.

Tom says that he's certain that the chief would be willing to write something for him because he is a really friendly guy. Remember that I said his name was Shess? Well that's just the nickname that Tom gave him. His full name is Shessiteros; see why we call him just Shess? Tom tried coming up with a nickname for the school teacher, but Zhahmonichas wouldn't go for it. He's a really uptight kinda guy. I guess that's to be expected of anyone who has to deal with kids all day long.

Well, I guess next time we send Tom out, we'll have to give him a whole stack of pens and paper. If the natives were so interested in how books were made, I'll bet that they've never seen entire pads of paper, already lined and ready for writing. Then again, if books are so rare, I wonder if writing is very common. It might be that only the politically connected or school-teacher-type folks can write. We'll have Tom check into that.

We don't have much for Tom to do on his next trip out, so if you have any more ideas, just let us know in the comments. See ya next week!

Books to share

All right, so Tom got a couple books of star charts from the local library and used them to show the natives what he meant about constellations. Most of them seemed to understand, but he said that more of them were interested in how the book was made. They were impressed with the slick pages, the bright colours, and even the binding.

At the level of technology they have now, books are either a stack of almost leather-like pages stitched together with a thong or a scroll of papyrus-like paper. Apparently the oft used books, like the ones they have in the schools, are leather, whereas the ones used by the government officials are the scroll-like ones.

Tom says that Shess, the chief of the local town, only has a couple of scroll books, but Shess says that farther south there's a larger city where there are lots of books. The local school teacher (his name sounds something like Zhahmonichas) has a pretty big collection of books that he uses to teach from, all of the leather variety. He also claims to have even more that he keeps only for reference, but Tom wasn't allowed to see those.

No books brought back this time, but we're hoping. We'll let you know if we have anything more to share.

Sealing the Door room; Getting official

Apparently the problem of getting cables through a hermetically sealed wall isn't a new one. (If you squint, you can see a reference to hermetic sealing on page 162 in the third column of Electrical World from 1889.) Frank just got out one of his electronic catalogues and found what he needed, so now he's going over all the walls he just finished redoing when he built the Faraday cage. First he sealed the room against magnetic fields, now he's done the same for air pressure.

From the comments we've received, it looks like we won't need to worry about customers...once we get fully up and running. When we sent out those hunters, we thought we would be able to handle any problems. They were responsible adults, or so we thought. Boy, were we wrong. (I guess the super rich really do think the rules don't apply to them. Don't worry, they won't be investors.) The fiasco of getting them all back worried Frank, so he's really against sending out any more folks (other than Tom or any of our other employees) until we get things under control. He's even pulled in some legal help, and the lawyers don't want to do anything until we get registered and incorporated as an official company, so that's the next step. (Of course, you know how I feel about lawyers.)

Paperwork with the state takes forever, but we'll let you know how it goes.

Look for us in the magazine

Well, Frank has been spending quite a bit of time with that guy from the Science magazine. They were impressed with the technology he's managed to get up and running...all without knowing how it really works. (Of course, I'd never say that to his face; he really has managed to do quite a bit without an instruction manual.) The biggest issue he's got to worry about now is the pressure differences. Frank has found that the air pressure here at our new location is sufficiently different from on the other side that there is a serious problem. Before we moved the difference wasn't as great. Frank thinks it has to do with the elevation change. He's working on figuring out how to completely seal the Door room, but we still need to get all the cables in and out.

Tom knows his stars well enough to make it across the Australian outback, but he says the stars on the other side aren't the same. He's talked to the natives about constellations, trying to figure out more about their mythology, but either they aren't saying anything or they really don't think like that. They seemed to think that Tom was confused when he started explaining about people and animals up in the sky. Next trip, he plans on taking a star chart so he can show them what he's talking about.

Any suggestions? Let us know.

Power? We've got plenty

Frank has managed to up our storage capability, so we can keep the Door open for minutes at a time...and still have enough reserve in the case of an emergency trip.

We've been having some excellent luck with the natives; Tom has made quite a few friends over there, in fact, we think he may be bringing someone back with him on this next return. We'll keep you informed on that.

Short posting this time...I'll see if I can expand on more of it later.

Trade? Explore? We're famous!

Last week Tom was talking about setting up a trade route with the natives. I thought he was joking, but apparently he was serious. The problem is that I don't know what they might have that we'd need. Although going the other direction, we do have plenty of glass beads and trinkets that we can send over. [grin] Seriously, at this point I'd hesitate to start transferring stuff back and forth. I want to keep Tom focused on the short term trips and getting some more exploring done. There's still a lot of territory to cover over there.

On the technical side of things, Frank has been contacted by some folks at the Science magazine who want to interview him! How they found out about what we're doing here I don't know, but it looks like we're going to be famous. (Or infamous, depending on how they slant the article.) Having an article published should really increase the number of folks who find out about us. The only problem is that the only people who read that magazine are science techies, and we already know what they think about going outside, so what would they think about going OUTSIDE to a different world. I can't see that happening. Oh, well, maybe they'll have friends who would be willing to go on a trip.

We'll let you know which issue has us in it...as soon as we find out. Next week, more news on the power source to run the Door.

The Door is aimed right! We've reconnected with the natives.

Tom just got back yesterday, and all is well. As we knew, the Door didn't open in quite the same place as before, but Tom hoped that it was at least close. His only complaint when we opened the Door to get him back, was that it not only wasn't at the same place as when we dropped him off, but it also was so far away that he had to run to get over to it. Apparently there are still a few residual magnetic fields interfering with the aiming. Frank says that he'll work on getting those cleaned up at the same time he's upgrading the Faraday cage. And there's still the issue of sealing up the Door room to prevent pressure difference issues.

Anyway, Tom reports that when he arrived last week, he spotted a recognisable mountain and, based on that, he headed toward the river he hoped would be to the west (like 'east' he named that direction 'west' because that's where the sun sets). It was. He got to the river and headed downstream, arriving in the same town he'd visited before. Success! Although he couldn't convince any of the natives to accompany him back this time, at least he's opened up the possibilities. He said that there are a few adventurous ones that might take the challenge later, after some big celebration they were about to have.

We've only been able to visit the other side for a few weeks, but it looks like although days match up just fine, they are celebrating a late summer/early fall harvest while we are in the middle of winter. Of course at this point we don't even know if their year is the same length as ours. I guess we should send over some astronomers to take some readings...if we can find any willing to risk their lives.

All is well, and Tom is really looking forward to his next trip. See you in a week!

Tom is on the other side, checking out the location

Well, the Door is stable, and Tom has headed out for an expeditionary trip. As soon as he stepped through, he looked around and yelled back that he recognised some of the landscape. He said that the mountain range to the east (without compasses, he just named it 'east' because that's the where the sun comes up) certainly looks familiar, though he said that the area where he landed is one he hasn't had a chance to explore, yet. We'll know for certain next week when he gets back, but at this point it looks like the move is complete. We're settled in!

As far how things are going on this side of the Door, Frank has almost finished replacing the chain-link fencing that's protecting the room from stray magnetic fields. The first part we changed out was all the stuff on the floor. We now have a smooth sheet-metal floor. Much easier to walk on. Most of the walls have been plated with metal, too. The only part left to convert is the ceiling. Right now we have metal fencing draped across from side to side, and considering the weight, we might just leave it at that for a while.

One new thing that Frank suggested: he wants Tom to bring back some of the natives to visit us on this side. If we do that, we'll have to keep them isolated at first; we gotta keep any potential diseases under control, besides, Tom is the only one that can even come close to translating what they have to say.

We'll let you know what happens as soon as we know.

We've hit dirt, not paydirt, just dirt

I guess Frank knows what he's talking about. He was able to block the external interference once he built his Faraday Cage. I don't know who this Faraday guy is, but I think his cage looks more like a big-time wrestling cage than much of anything else. It's just a big box of chain-link fencing around, over, and even under the entire room. And let me tell you, having to walk across chain-link fencing is a real pain (and I mean that literally), but Frank says that we can put rubber mats over it for a temporary fix. He plans on replacing most of it with sheet metal, but until then he says that we'll just have to deal with it.

So anyway, once he got all the local magnetic fields out of the way, he was able to tweak the settings to get the Door to open where it had before or at least pretty close to there. He says that we're definitely still on the same planet, and probably even the same continent, but he can't guarantee that we're even close to the exact same spot where we were before. He says that that's a task for Tom to find out, and he will as soon as Frank declares the Door stable enough for a trip out.

I've got to hand it to Tom, with his willingness to just step out into the unknown like that. I don't know anyone else who would be eager to put their life in Frank's (otherwise well-trained) hands. I don't even like being in the Door room when they power up the system, especially after that total vacuum incident.

In fact as a result of that sucky episode, Frank suggested that we seal room where the Door is to prevent any pressure changes from this side to the other. Apparently some of the techies have noticed a wind whistling through the Door when it's opened, but no one bothered to mention it. They didn't think that we might be transferring all of our atmosphere away from Earth and out to some distant planet. That wouldn't be a good way to influence friends and win customers.  :-)

Well, it looks like I've talked too much already, so I'll save any more news for next week. See you then!

The Door doesn't work right in the new location

One of our readers is predicting terrible things now that we've moved to our new location...and he may be right. Apparently just moving the Door has seriously affected how it works. Frank got all the pieces transported just fine, and everything got hooked up the way they should, but somehow there's some kind of difference in this area. The first time Frank powered up the Door after the move, instead of opening up where we expected, it seemed to open up into a total vacuum. We almost got sucked out into nothing!

At this point Frank thinks that it may just be a matter of re-aiming the Door. He says that the new destination on the other side is probably 31.5 miles above the surface of the planet on the other side. (He got that number from the straight line distance from Timbuctoo to Rocklin.) I figured that if we moved sideways, the destination would, too, but he says that there's some kind of geometric translation going on...something about x, y, and z axes being rotated through some angle theta. I have no idea what that means, but I think I quoted him correctly. Sounds to me like more of that engineering gobbledygook. [shrug]

He's also complaining about the residential area being so close to our facility. According to him, when ever some housewife turns on a mixer, the electro-magnetic fields from the AC motor mess with the Door, and he has to tweak the settings to get it stable again. He's been most of the time just trying to compensate for the local interference, but he says there may be a fix for that problem: a Faraday cage. (I say we put him in a cage.)

Anyway, until he gets the Door adjusted for the new location, we're just sitting around twiddling our thumbs. (Yes, there really is an article explaining how to twiddle your thumbs!)

We're at the new location and settling in

Not much to report, yet. No matter how much pressure I put on him, Frank is certainly taking his time getting all the equipment set up. I know there are quite a few connections to make, but he's being excessively slow and careful about it, so it may be a while, in spite of having the techies working on it all night. One good thing about the move: I must say that the new place is much closer to civilisation than our old one; we can practically see a dozen Wal-Mart stores from the roof top...well maybe not quite that many, but there are quite a few stores in the area, and the view is wonderful. On clear days (which there are many of, except for the recent rain), we can even see the taller buildings in downtown Sacramento.
One of the best things about the new location is that the amenities here are much better, especially the choice of eateries. In fact, right in the centre of Rocklin itself, there's a really nice place to stop for lunch, but it's got to be an early lunch because they close at 2:00pm – the Granite Rock Grill. When you schedule your trip with us, make certain you stop off there for a hearty breakfast before you head out...it may be the last decent meal you'll get for a week!
Seriously though, this building we've moved into is really going to work out great. As the real estate agents are always saying, the three most important things are "location, location, and location" and with this site, we’ve got plenty of that. The power grid is much more stable, there’s a major freeway just down the road, and the folks here are really receptive to new businesses, so I think there’s a wonderful opportunity for growth.
We should have good news to report next week...and maybe more pictures, if we can get them out of the camera.

The rest of them are back, the move is under way

All is well. The second group of hunters made it back, and they brought back quite an interesting selection of specimens. Tom says that the reason this group got so many new trophies is that they didn't rush through the hunting. He says that the first group was in so much of a hurry that they didn't have the time to find the good stuff, but this group slowed down a bit and even got to know some of the natives much better. Besides being invited to spend time in the tavern in the nearby town, they also were shown the best hunting places, but they say the hunting was only the start of things.

According to Tom, that tavern was something worth visiting all by itself. We almost couldn't get him to stop talking about the ale they brew there. In spite of the bite it has, he told us it goes down very smoothly, and he kept bragging about not having a hangover in the morning...no matter how much he drank. Well, that's just about enough to convince me to visit, but I'm still concerned about the Door itself. If I understood it the way Frank does, it might not be too bad, but all that engineering mumbo-jumbo still concerns me.

No more trips until we get set up at the new location. Frank has already started the tear down, having the big parts loaded onto a flat-bed trailer. He’s boxing up the sturdy parts and packing them into the back of a small moving van, but he’s keeping all the delicate parts separate, so he can transport them personally.

I’ll let you know when we’ve got the move done and are back up and running. Until then, Frank says that he’ll keep working on documenting just how this thing works. Maybe someday, you’ll be able to read about in one of his techie magazines.

The first group is back...at least most of them

We had anticipated a variety of possible problems, but when we opened the Door to retrieve the hunting group, we faced a problem we couldn't have expected: they didn't want to come back. Apparently when the group arrived, they decided that there were too many of them in too small of an area, so they split up into two groups, with one going hunting whilst the other waited around at camp, and they were going to swap after a while. That idea would have worked fine if the first group had come back on time, but they didn't. The hunting group didn't bother to come back until they'd all bagged the prey that they had been tracking. Unfortunately that took longer than the second group expected, and they never even got a chance to head out.

Fortunately our timing couldn't have been better: we opened the door just after the first group finally got back, so the second group hadn't had a chance to leave the drop site yet. The only thing we could offer them was to let the ones who wanted to stay remain over there for another week. Most of the first group was willing to return, as well as a few from the second group who had given up waiting. We will pick up the rest next week.

One last thing, the pictures that Tom took on the hunt are being developed (they had to be on film because digital cameras won't work over there), so I'll get them posted as soon as they come back from the lab. Keep an eye on things here.

They got off to a good start...move imminent

Frank hooked up the spare bank of capacitors to keep the Door open even longer than normal, and the whole group got through without having to rush, although a few of the porters had to make more than one trip to get all the equipment through. [shrug] I guess it's better to have too much, than to run out of something you might really need. There is still the problem of supply...there ain't any.

The new building has been secured and leases have been signed. We'll be moving in the next couple weeks. Frank doesn't want to risk moving anything whilst there is a group on the other side, just in case some setting on the equipment gets changed. It would be a real pain to drop off a group in one place and then try to pick them up hundreds of miles away, so we're going to wait for them to get back, early next week, then start packing up the Door equipment. Most of the office stuff has already been boxed up and loaded into the trucks. In fact as soon as this group returns, I'm going to be spending the rest of the week setting up the new location. Frank and the Door will be coming later. He's in charge of packing the Door itself, so it might take more than a week to complete the actual move; you know how engineers are. :-)

Lots to do, and hopefully everything will be up and running by the end of next week, so I can post on time.
Keep busy!

Volunteers? A trip out

Well, it looks like we've got folks who're ready to volunteer...not for a trip, but to help out in the office. I guess not everyone is willing to take the plunge and head out into the unknown. Don't worry, there are folks heading out this weekend. Remember those big game hunters I talked about last week? Well, we've got a good sized group leaving tomorrow. I told them about the charging problem, so they're bringing everything they need for a week in the bush...including their own porters. It'll be crowded in the office when they all arrive, but once they've left, Frank has some ideas to test out.

Talking about the office, it seems we've found a possible new location for the operation: an old abandoned, warehouse-sized building. It sits at the end of a road, so there's little issue with traffic. It's near enough to civilisation that we will be able to get customers in and out easily enough. And down the hill from the back side is a train track, so we can transport some of the heavier equipment in and out with ease. The funny thing is that it used to be a Wal-Mart store. Well, at least that's funny to me as I haven't visited that store chain for almost a dozen years. Just not my type of employer to support. [shrug]

Anyway, I'll set the poll to track your opinion on that topic and be back in a week.
Keep up the adventuring!

All is well...no exciting news to report...they all survived

I was really hoping to be able to report some exciting news, but all the squints survived just fine. Although we got the Door open later than planned, they weren't worried. They were just biding their time over there, patiently waiting. How boring.

BTW I was right about them not getting invited to any parties, in fact they pretty much were snubbed by the natives, which was only expected as they snubbed the natives as well. The high-tech scientists didn't think the backward natives had anything to contribute, and the kick-back natives thought the techies were too uptight. Apparently the squints never even tried talking to the natives. One look at the native agricultural society and the scientists put down the entire world. Talk about judging a book by its cover. Ha!

Good news: Based on the experiments they did, the scientists are planning on reporting to the government that there is no reason to keep us shut down, so I'm gathering a group together to get a real hunting party going. I've got friends who've hunted big game in Africa, India, and even South America, so I'm going to let them have a chance to see what they can do over on the other side of the Door. Can you imagine putting up on the wall, next to a lion or tiger or bear, the head of something that has never been here on this planet? What a conversation piece. (I actually don’t know what there is over there, but I know it’ll be something interesting.) I’ll make certain that they take pictures, and then I’ll post them. You’ll want to see that!

On the tech side of things, the charging is going well, and Frank almost has a full second set of capacitors hooked up, so future rescue operations will go over much smoother.

That’s all to report for this week. See you in seven days.
P.S. Check out the poll. I’ve extended the time to respond.

Delayed, what do you expect?

Apparently there were problems in slowing down the charging cycle. As the capacitors get closer to a full charge, they charge even slower, so there wasn't enough power to open the Door on schedule. Frank says it has something to do with the Law of Diminishing Returns. To quote him, “The charge approaches 100% asymptotically.” Yeah, right, whatever that engineering mumbo-jumbo means.

Anyway, the techies need a lot of help getting a full charge, so I'm on call to fix things for them, but I want to make a quick comment on the poll we had on the bottom of the page. We asked where you’d like to vacation. Most of you (75%) agreed with us. An Out of This World Vacation certainly sounds like fun, doesn’t it? The rest of you need to open up your minds and consider the possibilities. The poll for this week (or so) has to do with what you’d bring with you on such a trip. If you have any better ideas, let us know.

Keeping it short this week as Frank is frantically running around trying to get the Door open and ‘rescue’ the squints. (They hate it when I call them that, but it’s a habit I picked up from Seeley.) See you next week!

Just waiting...

We’re still charging the capacitors, but we’re keeping the cycle slowed down during most of the day, only running it up to full power in the middle of the night so that it won’t affect the neighbours; we’re trying to stay on good terms with them. Fortunately the slowdown has been calculated so it won’t affect the plan to open the Door by the end of next week. I really want to be there when the squints come back through. I’m curious to see how well they’ve survived out there in the open world. Knowing them, they’ve probably built a whole lab…including a basement, but we’ll just have to wait until later to see.

While the charge continues to build, Frank and the techies are working on trying to fully understand the technology that makes the Door work. They think that pretty soon, they’ll be able to actually control where the Door opens. Apparently at this point, they can open it, but they can’t aim it. It’s gotten so bad, according to Tom, that when he’s sitting over there, on the other side, ready to return, he’s had to sprint to get over to where the Door appears, so he can get through before it shuts. It hasn’t happened yet, but even if he does miss the Door, he knows that we’ll re-open it as soon as we can, so that’s not really a problem, but the way things are right now, it could be as much as another whole week before we get up enough charge for a rescue attempt. That’s why Frank is trying to get a second set of capacitors connected up. He wants to get them charged and keep them on the side, just for emergency openings. You never know when we might need to get Tom back in a hurry. Tom’s solution was to only open the Door at night. That way the light from this side will shine through and be easily visible, and he can start running as soon as it starts opening. I'd rather get the Door to Tom, rather than hoping Tom can get to the Door.

Until next week, we’re all still waiting. See you then!