LOLgeothermal

Ormat Technologies
Clean, renewable energy


Your doing it right!



Note, the full pic is 8.55M, it's eleven ten megapixel pictures stitched together
its big enough you can actually read the rig name on the mast

mmmmmmmm, bacon

TH cosmic variance

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming

An Accreationary Wedge is coming!
An Accreationary Wedge is coming!

This one; Accretionary Wedge #16 #15, Recent Advancements (recent and/or noteable advancements that have directly affected your expertise, interests, or the work you do).

Not this one:


It shall be hosted right where your looking, this entry makes a nice little place holder. Please post a link to your articles in comments, or email them to me at Thorthr at cox.net. I will be deleting this post when the Wedge goes up and I'll have the Wedge up by Wednesday, December 24^th, 2008.

thanks
KC

P.S.
yes, that is xmas eve, gives you plenty of time to write something.

P.P.S.
ok, looks like I'm actually hosting #15 instead of #16 I picked up off of the who's hosting site:) thanks Dave, for saving me from have to do the math and subtract two instead of one

A Daily Commute

I'm staying a house only about 10 miles from the drilling rig, but the commute is brutal. About three miles of the trip is on state roads, the rest is on private roads up in The Geysers. Its all well and good until you meet a tractor trailer coming down the hill.











For icing on the cake (OK, icing like on a Scheißekuchen, nothing like the icing on Janiece Murphy's cake).

The Geysers, in Haiku

Suvrat Kher started a geology haiku meme, so I had to put in my $0.02

Franciscan mélange
Free energy to produce
Mesozoic rocks


Steam from the ground abundant
Turbines spinning true to form
Heat source age debates



Holocene’s winter’s cold
Cloud factories issuance
Money drives it all

Only You

Come on
You, you got, you got
You got what I want
You got, you got, you got what I need
Only you, baby, only you
Only you, you, you, you, you

[/Pendergrass]

Oh, your not kidding are you

offered without comment

Politics *sigh*

I'm not big about posting on politics, I don't think this particular blog is about such things, some would say that is exactly what a blog is about so there you go. Anyway, I do tend to keep my politics to myself, maybe share a bit with my wife or other close friends, but this commic in particular caught my interest.

rocks with hair

One of the procedures when completing a well here in the Imperial Valley, is to change over the well to a KCl solution (mixed to a specific gravity of around 9.2 lbs/gallon), this helps manage the clays in the formation and is heavy enough prevent the hot geothermal fluids from coming up the well bore. The real problem with this stuff is its cost, its not cheap. It is normally separated form NaCl and other minerals from salt domes and other sources of brine (my favorite is the basins seen from Dead Horse Point, Utah, even though it is rather disruptive to the scenery). Some care must be taken with it as it can interfere with electrical function of the heart.
This lump of claystone/siltstone was saturated with some of the solution in the well and was circulated out of the well bore. It started to dry in my petri dish and sprouted KCl hairs as the crystals nucleated on the surface of the clay. Pretty much formed these hairs in about 24 hours of exposure to air.



and just a pretty pick, here is Nabors 58, with some "sort of" noctilucent clouds.

the sun was already going over the mountains to the west.

Civics Lessons, A Rant

So, I get to work, talk with Dave before I relieve him for the next twelve hours, boot up my laptop and check my email. One of the things I receive is a feed from MSNBC news, and they had this nifty little article from the AP about mental heath parity bill being tucked in with the bail out bill that congress just passed. I thought to myself for a bit, stewing, getting angrier. So I went off and researched the article and found it. It came from the Lacrosse Tribune out of Lacrosse Wisconsin by AP writer Kevin Freking. Kevin… dude, time to go take some remedial high school civics classes. The Mental Health Parity Act was not tacked onto the bail out, the bail out was tacked onto the MHPA, the difference, while subtle to most Americas (and that is unfortunate) was critical by the fraking Constitution of the United States of America. *exasperated sigh* the Senate has the powers of “advise and consent” (treaty and appointment approval), and the House has the powers of impeachment (trial in the Senate) and powers of Appropriations (article I, section 7), i.e. all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Therefore, for the Senate to get the ball rolling they had to tack the 0.7 Teradollar bailout onto another bill, it could not ride out of the senate on its own. That other bill just happened to be the Mental Health Parity Act. Kevin, you are a reporter, reporting on something quite critical to the function of the United States, it may seem pedantic to point it out, but the error is important, and too much knowledge of how the government works has been lost to the average citizen to reinforce the ignorance.

EDIT: Am I tilting at windmills here?

Happy Birthday Nasa

Edit: NASA was created July 29, 1958 but did not start operation as an entity untill October 01, 1958.

Keep up the good work.

I want to go play

Want to come over for a visit?

Door to Hell in Antarctica - Watch more free videos
I snagged that from the Bad Astronomer

_______ with wings

If this is a "rat with wings"


then what do you call one of these?

photo meme

Take a picture o' yourself right now. Don't change yer clothes, don't fix yer hair ... Just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editin'. Post these instructions with yer picture.

As you can see, I've been up for about an hour, and have not sufficiently suffused myself with caffeine yet. I will officially become ungrumpy in about one more hour.
(taken with my laptop webcam)

Overburden

Overburden (biology to us rock types) can really be quite pretty and interesting, if your into that kind of thing.


can you spot waldo (the turtle)?

Review: Babylon A.D. (here be spoilers)

I've never reviewed a movie before, I not really much of a writer, unless you want a technical report on some feature of geology. But I went to see said movie and just had to write down my thoughts, such as they are:
One, I love Vin Diesel, yes his movies or often weak, but come on, XXX was a shitload of fun. He is a lot like Kevin Costner; Costner always plays Costner in movies, so does Diesel. This movie is no exception. On the other hand, it’s exactly what we expected from Diesel.
Two, it's a very Calontiri movie, everybody dies, and nobody gets laid. Toorop's nemesis dies, the tigers die, bystanders die, the guy in the cage dies, more bystanders die, Toorop’s associate dies, Aurora's chaperon dies, Aurora's creator dies, Toorop dies ... twice, and Aurora dies... that one I don’t get, why did she die? Her death did not advance the plot (that I could tell). Oh ya, and her "mother" doesn't.... there is so much left dangling all over this movie, I then find out why, Fox Studios cut 70 minutes out of the movie, the editing was so bad, that the director disavowed the movie. WTF.
I hope this movie doesn’t take long to come out on DVD, in a directors cut, it will be hyper violent, but that’s to be expected, but it should make more sense. I truly hate it when a movie leaves me so dissatisfied. 1 out of 4 stars.

Mah Nà Mah Nà

I plucked that one from Janiece, I've always like that song, even when Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper acquired it for their commercials (I enjoyed the commercials too). All said and done its probably my second favorite Muppet song next to the Count.

Is that a countdown I hear?

Jaws, Mr. Bond must be cold after his swim. Place him where he can be assured of warmth (/Drax voice)

September 12th rant

Well, its September 12, do you remember where you were 7 years ago, or have you forgotten? (I was at work again, stewing, considering reenlistment) Stonekettle remembers (by the way, thank you), most Americans have forgotten the pain we still felt on September 12th, I remember looking up in the blue sky with zero contrails wondering how things were going to change, for we can not go through such attacks without some kind of change, for better and/or worse.

And this is the curse of an eidetic memory; I remember September 13th too, I remember packing my Grand Am for a long ride to South Dakota, listening to NPR the whole way, listening to pundits, generals, and reporters discuss the events of two days ago, their implications, who had done “it”. The words of Yamamoto Isoroku came to mind, at least they are attributed to him: I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. I stopped at a walmart on the way and picked up a flag (they were nearly sold out) and penned on the hoist of the flag “Sept 11, 2001 lest we forget”. I could go on for the next couple days. But that is not my point, do you still feel the anger, rage, and affront? I do. I am not a person motivated by emotion, I don’t get hot and strike out, I may get very angry but it seldom shows, my kind of anger tends to be cold and ruthless. When we smashed the Taliban in Afghanistan, I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t jumping for joy, It was simply duty done, a bit of justice served. Too many people have forgotten those feelings they felt the next day, the next week, the next month. It is remembrance of those feelings that will allow us to forge ahead in a dangerous world. Glen Larson once wrote for one of his shows: The opposite of war is not peace, it is slavery. If you are not willing to stand up, take up arms and defend your way of life, some one else will be willing to stand up, take up arms and take your way of life away from you.

Plant Pr0n

While I was in Florida, I didnt get many pics of flowers like I would have prefered, all I got was these




and some out of focus shots of a small orchid.

I was walking on the Cape one day.... (/singing)

This building is the VAB and its monstrous, one of the largest climate controlled spaces in the world, you could drive a truck up one of the stripes on the flag, and it sits right next to where Damaris Sarria works.



here it is again, from 30,000 feet, yes it blurry, it was turbulent and a long focus.



bonus points for those who get the pun.

splish splash

ok, now thats funny.

The Birds and the Bees (ok, butterflies, not bees)

To be sure though, the title of this post does have a lot to do with sex, well, butterfly sex that is. Today was an interesting combination of effects, this field of alfalfa has been recently cut and baled, leaving it just the right height for ,alfalfa butterflies to mate and lay eggs on (around six inches high), hence, the yellow be-winged hoard that has descended on the Imperial Valley (requires free registration), clogging radiators, and air filters, gooing up windshields, but otherwise looking quite pretty as fields of alfalfa writhe with butterflies as you watch;







and irigation of said field, chasing all the crickets across the field with egrets and pheasant chasing them (wow, is that a run-on sentence or what).

If Jeeps are a religon

Then a clean Jeep is apostasy

whats for dinner?

44%

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

You know your stuck when...

ok, the actual saying on drilling rigs is "your not stuck, untill the free-point truck is there"

jar that sucker, it will come out someday

Why Count... what big *bleep* you have

ok, thas funny, I dont care who you are

what to do today...

"Gee Brain, what do you want to do today?"
"The same thing we do everyday Pinky, try to take over the world."

birds of a feather....

Went off to the nature center in Springfield Missouri a few weeks ago, took Jacque for a walk on the nature trail and went through the visitor center, they have a bird feeder station and viewing room there, got picture happy while there.

Cardinalis cardinalis,, Northern Cardinal
female

male




Cyanocitta cristata, Bluejay


Felis catus, Lacey, Van house cat....wait a minute, she doesnt belong here...


Meleagris gallopavo, Wild turkey, a tom (jake?)



Sciurus carolinensis, Grey squirrel



Carduelis tristis, American goldfinch





Zenaida macroura, Mourning Dove


Passerina cyanea, Indio Bunting


Archilochus colubris, Ruby Throated Hummingbird


Dryocopus pileatus Pileated Woodpecker (tentitive)