yet another CNN rant

I really, really hate it when a news caster pipes up out of ignorance. So I’m watching CNN last night before I head off to bed, and they are talking about the power outages in Florida. The lady speaks up “now this will give you chills” and said that a nuclear reactor shut down during the power outage. DO’H!
Ok, lets see, substation goes down, then grid control collapses, generators making power have no place for it to go suddenly so they trip out and no longer need energy, reactors have no place for the heat energy to go so they shut down. This takes less time to happen than it takes you to read this paragraph. It is entirely automated. Now whether the reactors shut down by lowering the control rods into the reactor in calm stately manner, or if it scrammed and dropped said rods into the reactor to shut it down, either way, it is automated safety protocols, not a panicked emergency. So why should I have chills?

so what do you do when...

the well pad floods (rain)




give the hands a broom, shovel and a squeegee and pump it into the pit.

Mass Tumbleweed Migration of '08

edit: bonus points if you get that allusion.
re-edit: yes, even though I am a geologist, I am authorized to use words like allusion.

It got pretty windy a while back, windy enough that they had to stop drilling due to dangerous conditions on the rig floor. Wish I could have captured some video of that time, it looked like the whole countryside was moving, but it was just tumbleweeds rolling along the ground. Most people who don’t deal with the buggers don’t realize what a pain they can be. Literally.







Here they are piling up into the lee side of the drilling pad.

The biggest annoyances about these things is that one, they pile up everywhere. Two, they have a very robust stalk where they grew from their root ball, this stalk sticks out and can impact into things, leaving scratches and small dents in your car.


And third, they are spiky as hell.

must... breath.... must ... breath......

They have pushed the next installment of startrek back to May 8th, 2009 :(

Where's The Beef!?!

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, THATS WHERE.
The joys of driving 20 miles of state road (gravel) through open range, for a daily commute, aside from the fact this road keeps OK Tire in Winnemucca in business, it tends to have a lot of cows on it. I really dont like cows, well, in a way I do, I love to eat them, they taste great, I just dont like dealing with them when they are alive.





note: no cows were harmed during the taking of these photographs.

Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's a cloud

Or, how mountains make thier own weather.

I am not a meteorologist, and I don’t play one on TV, I’m not even a geomorphologist, I don’t play one of those on TV either ;). I am just a lowly hard rock geologist, working in the geothermal energy field (on occasion, I do work with soft rocks too, nothing personal to anyone, but I seem to have less respect for a rock that’s called soft). Insofar that both disciplines are both earth sciences, I do enjoy dabbling in them, and I understand the principia majora behind both. One of the things I get the pleasure of witnessing out here in the west, is a blatant combination of the two, a nifty little things called uplift and the formation of standing waves make for some interesting clouds, the neatest is the lenticular cloud formations, or just some general uplift and cooling effects. Here in the basin and range these responses can be viewed easily because of the separation of the ranges.

Swimming to Work

one morning in hawaii, on my way to work, I spotted this view down the highway I was on. Out on the east rift zone of Hawaii (big island), it rains a lot, I mean A LOT. Durring the 18 days I was there it rained 28 inches, and thats not abnormal. Just though a pic of the humidity might be interesting.

WANT

how much fun would it be to be a Sith Chef, just think, cooking in volumous black robes.... much safer than cooking naked

George Will for President!

is conservative, he is just barely so, much more of a centrist, like me. On the other hand, while I may be intellegent, Mr. Will is absolutly brilliant, level headed, and willing to call something that is stupid, stupid. If he was president, I feel quite certain he would put an end to some of the stupidity he have gotten from Bush, but not jump off the left side of the pier either.
never mind, tard

p.s. and he loves base ball, what could be more american than that ;)