Category Archives: Work

Heavy Duty Manly Stuff

Well I’ve blogged about cats and dogs, kids, and auction baskets. Sometimes I have to let my inner engineer geek side come out. Below are pictures from a customer who is upgrading a refinery and had to get this big widget over a highway via a temporary bridge.

I think the guy sitting down must be the project engineer. Sitting down far away from work is usually the best use for an engineer when actual work is going on. Usually engineers have negative productivity during this kind of thing. Not only are they not doing anything, they prevent other people from working. So planting him down in the grass like a flower is a smart move. The risk you run is him filing a workman’s comp claim for chiggers or fire ant bites on the butt.

Man I wish I knew how much that bridge cost, let alone widget. I bet they ordered all that early last year when oil was over $100 a barrel.
I wonder how much that trailer cost it is sitting on. I hope it has good brakes. That thing gets rolling downhill uncontrolled it could ruin somebody’s whole day.

Don’t you just love this kind of stuff?

Lunch Dates

I had two Luncheons this week that provided a contrast. Both were related to the energy industry but they had totally opposite flavor.

Wednesday, I attended a luncheon at the Tulsa Country Club northwest of downtown Tulsa. A geologist there was talking about the Woodford Shales in Oklahoma. Shales are huge right now. For years it was known they contained fabulous amounts of natural gas but nobody could figure out how to get it out of the rock.

Well, they have figured it out and literally billions of dollars are being spent in a huge rush. In addition to the Woodford Shales of Oklahoma there is the gigantic Barnett Shale field in the Fort Worth area (that is what the wells are drilling for at the DFW airport if you notice next time yout go through there).

There is also the potentially even bigger Haynesville Shale in north Louisiana and East Texas and what might be the biggest gas field ever found in the United States, the Marcellus Shale that stretches from upstate New York south to Virginia. These are all potential right now, but who knows what may happen.

Anyway back to the lunch. The man speaking was a geolgist who specialized in the Woodford Shale and in a particular aspect called “vitrinite reflectance.” It has to do with how much the rock is cooked. If you own shales in with a VR in the gas “window” which is between 1.15 and 3. Its time to have a party. You might have gas! All you need is to lease the drilling rights. ($5,000 per acre, 640 acres minimum or about $3 million), and $7.5 million to drill the well. If you find gas. You get to pay a company like mine about 10% of the value so that we can gather and condition your gas for you, 3/16 right off the top to the mineral owners, 7% off the top to the state for severence taxes, and so on.

In other words, you better have a good well.

The attendees were very studious and intense. Notes were being taken, questions were asked. Lots of looking around to see who else was there. Not much chatting afterward.

Most of the wells being drilled are “tite.” In other words they are not discussing what they are doing or where they are looking.

It was pretty much a male deal. Out of 150 people or so, maybe five women. My tablemates were geologists and well service guys. Nice guys all of them. Very informative.

On the way back to the office I checked on me and SuperPizzaBoy’s Tulsa Country Club Cache. Go find it sometime if you have a chance. I’ll loan you a gps. Its in a formerly fashionable but now almost forgotten area of Tulsa near the Country Club.

Today’s luncheon was the Gas Association at a nice venue in south Tulsa. These people are deal makers. Lots and lots of yakking and gossiping going on.

The speaker talked about Federal pipeline regulation. (Nice time for a nap.)

I sat with my girlfriends. Sonja (we are having our 20th anniversary of working together this year), Susan, Pam, and Cathey. We had a good time. I sign up for these luncheons but hardly ever go because I think I am too busy. My loss. I had a good time.

I’ll tell you why I love my girlfriends. We sat down at our table and one of the wait staff came over and said that we would have to move because it was an overflow table only and we would have to disperse to the scattered seats remaining at the various tables since there were no salads at our table. The girlfriends told him that since we were already seated maybe he should either go gather up those salads and bring them to us or get us new salads. He tried to argue but was ignored so he did as he was instructed.

I love the girlfriends but I don’t cross them either.

Views at Work

When I started this blog I promised “Views from work.” I haven’t done any except for an extended business trip last month.
I work for an old school type company. I like them but they have a few quirks. One of the quirks is that no cubicles can face a window. I guess that it is to be fair since lots of cubicles face other cubicles. Another rule is that no woman can be in a cubicle within two cubicles of a men’s restroom.
Anyways, cubicle farms are just they way it is corporate America and in my line of work they are handy because our Account Managers have to be aware of what their peers are doing. Plus we don’t have staff meetings. We have all day all week staff meetings.
Plus we know the state of each other’s marriages, how the kids are doing, medical conditions and all that other stuff.
Anyway, a few years ago my boss at the time said that he would try to get me and another manager cubicles with a view if we wanted. What a deal so we two have the only cubicles with a view in the company.
I’ll give you a tour!
The Beautiful New BOK Center.
Metallica is coming in November,
They are already sold out! Sorry
The City County Complex. The high rise in the middle is vacant, City Hall is moved across downtown.
The Doubletree Hotel and various apartment buildings.
The building at the bottom is the downtown YMCA.
It will be gone in three years.

A view south along Cheyenne.

The river is in the middle distance.

What do I see when I turn around?

Pretty messy uh?

You should have seen it before I decluttered for the photo!
I’ve got a refrigerator and a coffee pot.
I have people come by for my Atomic Fireballs,
SuperPizzaBoy loves them.
People ask if they are free. I tell them only if you don’t take them out
of your mouth.
They are $100 each otherwise.
Only about one out person out five of survives the challenge.
Nobody has paid up yet though.

Road Trip Chapter 3 or Back to Work with an aside about Temple Grandin.

Days 4 and 5 on the road trip. The Daves met up with some of the other guys from Tuesday and toured some of our plants. I had been doing the commercial work for the plants for several years and had never been there so it was pretty interesting to me.

We had to wear Nomex lab coats so it looks kind of funny.


At lunch both days I participated in presentations at lunch for the field guys. I got up and told them what I did and how I did it. They were very polite. They kept the yawning down and only a few went to sleep.

We spent the night at a hotel in a town that had the most feed lots and beef packing plants I’ve ever seen. We had dinner with our local managers. We got out late, around 9:30 pm. I went geocaching. I didn’t find any skirt lifters but I did find one cache that I thought was pretty cool.

It was a post office box in the driveway of a fruit stand. I thought it was very creative.


After lunch the last day, we drove the 377 miles back to Tulsa. We stopped at Braum’s at the Blackwell and had the usual. Large chocolate mix with heath bars.

Got home about 10 pm. Great to be back. Gone to long.

As an aside with an autism angle. The national poster person for Autism and Asperger’s syndrome in particular is Temple Grandin. Ms. Grandin, who is an agricultural engineer, has Asperger’s syndrome and has been a great advocate people with autism and has published several books and magazine articles.

In her chosen field of designing packing plants she is also famous. She has some sort of empathy with animals. Her most famous innovation is the inlet ramp from the yard to the killing area. She designed them to be a ramp with a continuous curve that narrows gradually. Somehow the cattle stay calm as they are driven into the wide inlet that goes up at a slight angle and then turns, all the while getting narrower.

I saw a couple of those ramps on this trip. It is very eerie watching the cattle moving very calmly in line to their doom. It is almost enough to turn me into a vegetarian, but not quite.

The whole mysterious thing is like at the crux of Asperger’s Syndrome. Very high intelligence and a different way of looking at things combined with a strange sense of empathy with a total lack of sentimentality. She sensed the cattle were nervous so she determined how to alleviate that while still facilitating their deaths. I cannot quite get my head around it.

Road Trip Chapter 2 or Time to Play!

The convention that me and the two Daves attended lasts two nights. The following morning was the golf tournament. What a deal. Free Golf (or at least free to me). Free beer (I didn’t drink any) and free golf shirts (from Symcrude, not too many takers except us blood sucking natural gas gathering and processing guys).

Lots of prizes. Look at all the signs.

The tournament is a scramble type format. So I feel sorry for the guys who get stuck with me. I am truly a miserable golfer. But they are always good sports and the results take into account my handicap so it is not all downside getting a guy like me. We finished in second place in our flight and we each got $60 in cash. The guys in an oilfield tournament are a lot of fun. The world is their toilet. Women participate but they need to be good sports and avert their eyes when need be. The guys are a mess. I hear lots of really good jokes but they are not really repeatable here. I also hear lots of great new words. I won’t go into that either.

My ball striking was awful but I made a few good pitches and some putts. Not bad for somebody who plays twice a year. I spent half the money at a liquor store buying my favorite beer, Fat Tire. I like it but the Oklahoma powers have forbidden its sale in Oklahoma.

After the tournament we headed back to the hotel. The Dave who is my boss graciously offered the use of the rental car (a Suburban) to use in my next favorite activity. Wow! is a he a good guy or what! So I took him up on it and so I dropped the Dave’s off at the hotel and went out on the town to do a little skirt lifting. My favorite activity.

I love lifting skirts, I have done it all over Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. I ‘ve learned to be careful because some people don’t like it and will call the police. It is not too cool to get caught! I’ve never been caught. I am very clever at it.

Below is a picture of the first skirt I lifted in this town after the golf tournament.


Its that light pole skirt over on top of the concrete cylinder on the left side of the photo. It has a magnetic key container underneath it. Oh, I meant geocaching is my favorite activity. Some of the caches are are called skirt lifters. What did you think I meant?

Actually I lifted only two skirts. I don’t like them too much. They are usually in parking lots and close to peoples cars and I like to do my skirt lifting in more secluded areas. They are considered a lame type cache to hide. But hey you don’t know what they are until you get there so you might as well get it.

For some reason most of the caches I found that day were in trees. The following one was in a park in a really bad area of town. I was in the tree rooting around trying to find it. Some guy with a dog shows up. I still had my golf togs on so I guess he thought I was some sort of forest ranger or something. He asked “Is that tree going to make it?” I said, “Yea I think so, it looks like the ice laid some of the branches down pretty bad, but it will be ok” He said “that’s good, I noticed that it had some damage.” I said, “no, it will be ok I think.” He said “great?” He left. I eventually found the cache.


The following is a picture of cache put out by a Family Dollar Store in a tree near their store. It took me a while to find.


I looked up and there was a Starbucks down the street. That was God’s way of saying “time to quite geocaching.” So I did. I had a venti Pike Place with cream. I have only 98 cents left on my card. Time to reload.

Road Trip Chapter 1 or What does $120 a barrel get you?

I was out of town most of the last week. I went on a road trip with a couple of my coworkers. Phase one of the road trip was to attend an energy industry convention in a state north of Oklahoma (not Knebraska). It is good to get out and see our customers and competitors.

This is my third year at the event. I like going but the difficult part is that it starts Sunday afternoon. We have to leave Tulsa about noon so and the family doesn’t go to church. We hang out and then drive downtown to meet with the other two guys. They are both named Dave. Both Daves are pretty cool and good guys to be with.

We go to the city where the show is being held quite a little bit. We have a tradition now. We stop at the Braums at Blackwell, OK and me and one of the Daves gets a “large chocolate mix with Heath Bars.” I had never heard of them before driving with this particular Dave but I am now addicted to them. . To show you how addicted, there are two geocaches within walking distance of the Braums. I would love to get them while Dave gets his mix. I don’t want to miss out out on the mix.

Anyway we finally get to the hotel where the convention is and get changed into our dressup clothes. We have to be at the booth for a few hours. People come by and chat. It is pretty nice. Then the bar opens up. Free Drinks! Free Food! I’m there.

Below is a picture of one of the Daves. He is a very nice guy. Very old school in that he is very polite and courteous. The other Dave is nice also but I didn’t get a picture of him.


While there I always run into people I know. My friend Sonja was there. I have known her for 20 years. I told her that it was our 20 year anniversary. I got the other Dave to take the anniversary picture. You can see why I don’t like pictures of myself. Mrs. Yogi always says “you did that thing with your mouth.” I can’t help it. So I try to not smile or show any expression at all in pictures. I don’t like how that looks either so I avoid all unnecessary pictures.

Another anniversary is with Derald. He is my employer’s booth guy. He is wonderful. Previous employers always required us to put up our own booths. That is a lot of work. Derald does all that. He and his wife do it all. Derald is awesome. I started with him 8 years ago. I would show up and try and help him to make sure that it is done right. He was polite but I could tell he didn’t really want my help.

Derald is awesome. He is one of those guys who just handles things in a very competent, professional manner. He takes a lot of pride in his work. He won’t let me take a picture of him so I took one of him while he was taking one of me at the booth. Its kind of fuzzy, but it is the best I could do, for now.


The show was well attended. Why not. Oil prices are way over $100 a barrel. The doo-dah days are here! Time to party! A big downer is the Symcrude situation. I’m told that Symcrude buys 20% of the oil produced in this state. Some of the folks at the show got stiffed for over $20 million. I just hope that Symcrude doesn’t take anybody down with them.

High oil prices lead to a lot of goofiness. Most small oil producers are very good businessmen. They are very generous but conservative financially. Something new this year was a helicopter dealer. I had never seen that before. The dealer flew one in to the vacant lot next door to the hotel. I wonder if they give lessons. I didn’t ask the cost. I don’t think that you could talk me into riding that little thing. It doesn’t look very safe.
It was a long road trip. About a week. More later.