Office of Redundancy Office

Big Sulfer Creek Valley

2009-03-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Behind and way below those trees, sits my office/lab, while the well site location isn't all that attractive, the general location is:

These pics were taken about 1200 feet above and a half mile away from the rig.

Steam Tunnel?

2009-03-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

Part of the road I drive over to the rig goes right by a set of cooling towers on one of the power plants out here in the Geysers. The plant sits out on a ridge, so when the wind blows just right, it blows the steam over the road (there are warning signs about this.

Of course, its much more interesting at night:

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming (repost)

2009-02-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

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

This one; Accretionary Wedge ~~#16 ... #15~~ #17, Recent Advancements (recent and/or noteable advancements or epiphanies 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~~ Friday, March 20, 2009 (vernal equinox).

thanks
KC

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

P.P.S.
ok, looks like I'm actually hosting #17 instead of #16 or #15 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~~

P.P.P.S
Sorry for all the delays, procrastination, and work conflicts are pain.
David and Lockwood, you havn't been forgotten.

Old Iron

2009-02-27T04:20:00.000-08:00

The dozer that time forgot.

Occasionally construction companies and other entities that use heavy equipment either forget, or abandon pieces of equipment. If they are old, worn, or in really remote locations, it can be cheaper to abandon the equipment than to pay to have it taken down and moved, this is especially true of heavy dozers, this one was about the size of a D6, so that would put the weight around 30-45 thousand pounds, while that would fit on one flatbed with out being broken, getting a flatbed to the track and putting a nonfunctional track on said flatbed probably makes it cost prohibitive. That’s really sad though, this pieces of machinery is also a piece of history, its been a long time since Cat used a pulley system to lift the blade.

WANT!!!1!!1!!factorial!!!!1!

2009-02-23T04:56:00.000-08:00

I love thinkgeek

BANG

2009-02-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

See that little red star? That is the epicenter of an earthquake this morning, about 700 feet from where I was standing. There are a lot of minor quakes like that out here in the Geysers, in a one hour time span around that quake, there was a total of seven small quakes. What made this one interesting to me was the fact that I was practically on top of the epicenter, it didn't even feel like a regular quake, just a big BANG! Cool.

edit, it was the equvilant to someone setting off 4.74 tons of TNT a mile and half down.

Daily commute, part deux

2009-02-17T02:38:00.000-08:00

Well it seems my daily commute has recently gotten more interesting:

Glad I own a jeep. They stop plowing the roads up here around 5pm, and I head up the mountain after 11pm... it can be interesting at times.

edit: these pictures were taken after Noon and the road had been plowed, when I go up the mountain, there are typically no fresh tracks in the in new snow.

re-edit:
the next day

Bow down before the Sword of Urlacher

2009-01-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm married, and I still made it ;)

hammer or nail? (somewhat gruesome)

2009-01-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

I stepped out the house my boss rents for us near The Geysers in NorCal this morning, leaving early to head to the auto parts store (I drive an '81 jeep, this is a common occurrence) then off to work, I walked around the house and saw something I hadn't ever seen before, except on TV. Now the people around here are pretty laid back, dope smoking hippies for the most part, none of the people around this area even cuss (except for the roughnecks I work with, go figure, roughnecks cuss). So what I saw really didn't fit in with the smiling hippies, the jays that eat the birdseed we toss out on the deck, or the deer that wander though the yard. What I saw really brought home the old saying "It is better to be the hammer than the nail".

I belive this to be a juvinle peregrine

LOLgeothermal

2008-12-05T17:06:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

TH cosmic variance

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming

2008-11-29T16:42:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-26T13:23:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

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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

2008-10-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

offered without comment

Politics sigh

2008-10-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-28T07:07:00.000-07:00

If this is a "rat with wings"

then what do you call one of these?

photo meme

2008-09-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-09-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-09-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

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

September 12th rant

2008-09-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T06:33:00.001-07:00

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)

2008-09-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

ok, now thats funny.

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

2008-08-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Then a clean Jeep is apostasy

whats for dinner?

2008-07-06T00:11:00.001-07:00

44%

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

You know your stuck when...

2008-07-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

ok, the actual saying on drilling rigs is "your not stuck, untill the free-point truck is there"
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jar that sucker, it will come out someday

Why Count... what big bleep you have

2008-06-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

ok, thas funny, I dont care who you are

what to do today...

2008-06-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

"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....

2008-06-08T18:40:00.001-07:00

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)

a rumble in distance...

2008-05-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Who says several megawatts of practically free energy can't be pretty.

edit: for the environmentally paranoid, that's just steam coming out of the muffler.

MoMoney

2008-04-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

Just completed the next well, it's impressive, here is the flow test into the muffler at about 25% on the valve.
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ballistics trump thaumaturgics

2008-04-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

I laughed hard enough it hurt, thanks Pete.

Battlestar Enterprise

2008-04-20T20:43:00.001-07:00

Anyone catch this weeks episode of BSG, that the weapons locker number that the skin jobs met in was 1701 D? Same designation as the TNG Enterprise of the series fame ;). Nice homage.

Consumables

2008-04-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

This is Jacque, my 3.5 year old daughter

During her lifetime, she is going to need almost 3.7x10⁶ pounds of minerals and energy fuels to maintain her current standard of living. That is the mass of a 200 foot steam ship, all for one person.

1.72 million pounds of stone, sand and gravel
82,169 gallons of petroleum
911 pounds of lead
75,047 pounds of cement
32,654 pounds of iron ore
5,417 pounds of bauxite (aluminum ore)
578,956 pounds of coal
18,477 pounds of phosphate rocks (fertilizer)
1,546 troy ounces of gold
1,398 pounds of copper
31,909 pounds of salt
20,452 pounds of clays
773 pounds of zinc
68,034 pounds of other minerals and metals

It’s kind of staggering really. I hope that recycling gets a little better in her future. I think her future depends upon it. Non-realistic-anti-nuke-tree-hugging-
protect-the-environment-at-all-cost-regardless people annoy me, if you want to bitch at me from that point of view, you had better also be a grass-eating-barefoot-
clothed-in-fig-leaves person, if you are wearing petroleum-derived Nike's on your feet, polypropylene socks, rubber elasticized underwear or a synthetic-dyed wool sweater, I'm going to beat you severely about the head and shoulders with an organic carrot. I am _ALL_ about protecting the environment for my daughter's future, but doing it responsibly. We can all protect the environment, and have our toys too, it’s simply (but not cheaply) a matter of being good stewards of the environment. We do have to mine minerals to supply us with energy and materials (to say otherwise is not realistic), but it can be done in a responsible fashion. So, basically, clean up after yourself. When you dig a big hole in the ground and make tons of money, fill it back in and plant a tree. When you use something up, recycle it. Sustainability is the key, not reducing the population to subsistence level hunter-gatherer societies. Oh wait, PETA doesn't like it when we hunt things.

Some of this information was derived from Mineral Information Institute

The Truth Of Music (in stick figures)

2008-04-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

tumble weed migration, part deux

2008-04-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

well, it was really windy yesterday, I mean WINDY, I raced some tumbleweeds at almost 40 MPH down the road, I stopped to pick up some groceries, here is a view from the grocery store parking lot
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A users guide for cat owning owned geeks

2008-04-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

to hold your breath, or not to hold your breath, that is the question

2008-04-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

do you know these people IRL too?

2008-04-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite web comics, I'm glad to see the author is posting again. I think I went to college with these guys:
click on comic to see the whole thing, and read the author's comments at the bottom.

New Meats

2008-04-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

I really wasnt wanting to deal with this yet, but the rough and very rocky road I drive every day had doen them in, they were delaminating inside and cracking on the outside, oh well. Yay! Traction!

WOW! that was close

2008-04-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is a 17.5 inch Hughs Christiansen hard rock drill bit, it is the Mercedes Benz of drill bits, and it costs as much, as a nicely equipped Benz, $40,000-$60,000.

Here is the same type of bit with normal wear, all the paint is gone, the diameter of the skirts is slightly under-gauged, normal after spending several days down a hole making said hole deeper.

Here is another similar bit, although much more worn, the rocks we just went through were very tough, with lots of void space, where we couldn't maintain circulation of drilling fluids, this bit just didn’t want to go, so we changed it out, notice the extra wear on the skirts that hold the cones in place, they are slightly dished out from reworking the cuttings, this is very heavy wear on a bit.

Now, this is a Hughes diamond enhanced drill bit, it runs more around the upper end of the Mercedes Benz, say $80,000 (yes, I know Merc has some that run over $100k, but you don’t see many of those). When this thing came out of the hole everyone went OMG, we are lucky we aren’t fishing for those cones. This is the second most worn drill bit I've ever seen that still had its cones attached.

Notice the dishing from reworking the cuttings had almost eaten through the skirts and dropped the cones, normally when cones fall off, it is because the bearings have worn away and they just slip off the pin that the ride on. Here the base of the pin is almost complete eaten away.

This is actually an odd form of wear, because of drilling blind with water (blind meaning that the drilling fluid pumped down never returns to the surface). Water doesn’t carry the cuttings away as efficiently as thick drilling mud (a bentonite clay suspension with water and polymers). The annular velocity is low enough that the cuttings do not stay entrained in the flow of fluid and sit around the bit until they are reworked enough that the flow of water will haul them up the hole and out into the formation through cracks.

At the end of the day though, the drill bit worked, it got through the tough section, and made hole, so now we are running casing, of course, trying to cement it in place is going to be fun. Not.

An Almost Rant

2008-03-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

This morning, about 4am, I woke up, and turned on the TV to watch a little news, as I got ready for work… just like normal. Every now and then a story will go by that makes me wince, twitch, or just get down right mad. I guess this morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, cause I heard this story (video) and I wanted to scream at the crap spewing from Bruce Malcolm (R, house district 61, Montana).

They need to fit into the rest of Montana’s wildlife, like all the rest of the wild life.
They’re not sacred.
There is nothing about wolf that’s sacred.
He doesn’t need to be treated that way, he needs to come down off the pedestal and fit into the ecosystem, like all the rest of the animals.

My first knee-jerk reaction was to say “what a fucktard, fit into the ecosystem … just like your cattle do, you twit?” There is a reason the word cattle is derived from the word chattel. Representative Malcolm’s losses over the last few years since the reintroduction of wolves, as an apex predator surely amount to a sum of money that I would not want to loose, ~24 cows since the wolves return. But I question that statement.
After spending a few hours bouncing around a 20 mile dirt road this morning (I forgot my laptop at the hotel and had to return to get it, 3 trips down that road in my jeep), draining the blood from my kidneys, and drinking a diet coke, I calmed down. I no longer think of Rep Malcolm as a fucktard, just a man trying to make a living raising beef, and I know that’s not an easy job, I grew up in a rural area. But the part of his words that appear short sighted to me is this: One, he sponsored a bill to reimburse ranchers for cattle lost to wolf predation (signed into law 4/26/07). Second, how many head has he lost, previous to the reintroduction of wolves, to injury and sickness, and how many lost after? (My money is the rate probably dropped, as wolves tend to go after those they can catch, the weak, young, sick, injured, and old) Those losses before would not have been compensated. And Third, how many cattle does he run, that I have no idea, the losses of 24 head may be major, may be minor compared to his total herd. Anyway around it though, I know it sucks to loose money for your job, I don’t like it when it happens to me, so I doubt he does either. But I think his compensated personal loss of a few head of cattle a year, vs. the return of an apex predator to the wild is miniscule. And that has nothing to do with pedestals.

Serenity, NOT (no, I dont mean browncoats)

2008-03-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

from here the rig isn't that noisy and the bustle is not apparent, but there really isn't ANYTHING serene about a drilling rig

Random Cute Moment from Jacque

2008-03-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

here she is, after climbing up a ladder to the top bunk of the boy's beds, to pet the cat I guess, of course, navigating up a ladder to a two year old is much easier than down, muck like a tree ;)

A funny thing happend to me on the way to work.......

2008-03-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

Geology is an interesting discipline; we seem to be able to recognize one another, by the oddest means. For example, I was leaving the hotel for the rig the other morning and there is a guy ahead of me, we both head to the break fast bar, and grab a couple tubs of yogurt, then both of us head out the door carrying a pack and wearing coveralls. We are parked right next to each other, backed into the parking spaces, and he goes

“is that your jeep?”
yes, it is I say
“are you a geologist?” he asks.
Why, yes, I am, I respond.
"thought so" he states.
Is that your truck, I ask in turn.
“Yes, it is” he returns.
you must be a geologist too, I observe
“yup”.

Scarry world out there ;)

Frustration

2008-03-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

I was just reading on CNN about the price spike in gasoline. Having worked in the energy sector for a few years, I have learned a few things about how the energy system works (oil in this case). The refiners are complaining that profits per barrel are so low now ($6, down from $38 last year) that it's just not profitable to make gasoline. Now this is the part the gets me, think of it like this, if McDonald's had their own farms for beef, and the price of beef skyrocketed, their farms would sell their beef at market prices to their own processing facility, and then having McDonald's bitch about how the margin is so low on their hamburgers that its just not worth making them anymore, all the while, pocketing record profits from their farming division. It makes me twitch.

Shooting the Moon

2008-03-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

no, not playing spades, all I had with me was my camera phone, so the pic is pretty low quality, it was about 7:30 at night, the sun had set and the camera exposed brighter than was actually there, it over exposed the moon and the rig lights, but I thought it was a pretty pic, and its been snowing since then at night and I havnt been able to recapture the picture with my good camera.

Self Explanitory

2008-03-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like this?

yet another CNN rant

2008-02-27T11:33:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-02-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

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......

2008-02-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

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

Where's The Beef!?!

2008-02-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-08T19:25:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-07T12:24:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-04T11:56:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-02-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

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 ;)

Aural Presence: Redux

2008-01-31T13:10:00.000-08:00

edit: ok, these are raw video, so they are bigger than youtube or google video, they are 4M and 2M, so be patient while they load, on the other hand, the resolution is much better than if the other services were used.

This is a couple short vids of a long term flowtest of the last well we completed (48hrs of flow) the wells here on blue mountain are quite spectacular, there is enough down hole pressure to start the wells to flow, then, as the column of water in the bore heats up, some of it flashes into steam, lowering the weight of the column, allowing even more flow (not actual weight, but density loss due to flash and increase in the velocity of flow). These tests actually measure not just the amount of water flowing from the well, but the actual total enthalpy from both phases of the flow (steam and water) to get an energy content, thereby knowing how much electricity may be generated by the well. Turn your speakers up just a bit, and the treble down if you can, and under the noise of the wind blowing over the mic, you can hear the low rumble of the flow into the muffler/separator, the mic on the camera doesn't pick up low end all that well (go figure) but it really is an aural presence, the vibration is transmitted into the ground, and felt through your feet as well as felt/heard through the air.
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The second vid is of where the James Tube is inserted into the muffler, just so you know, the well is throttled back to about 50% on the control valve, so its not flowing as hard as it could (50% on the valve does not necessarily mean 50% flow, the flow can stop increasing at less than a 100% valve setting) the gauge on the very end of the James Tube reads about 35 psi, pretty good actually (not as powerful as the Puna, Hawaii wells, those things are something else, some of them have been known to flow over a million pounds per hour, this one is (educated guessing here) a bit over 150k#/hr). The ventury effect of the flow into the muffler is apparent, and the rumble is a lot easier to hear from this angle.
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Hawaii flora 1

2008-01-25T18:09:00.000-08:00

I think I originally picked up photography a long time ago, because I liked to take pictures of flowers, I actually seem to take more of landscapes but anywho, these are pics of flowers I took while in the Puna area of the big island Hawaii, sorry for the mishmash and lack of organization on the pics, they were only vetted for poor focus or poor exposure.

hawaii flora 2

2008-01-25T17:35:00.001-08:00

hawaii flora 3

2008-01-25T16:59:00.000-08:00

hawaii flora 4

2008-01-25T16:24:00.001-08:00

hawaii flora 5

2008-01-25T15:37:00.001-08:00

hawaii flora 6

2008-01-25T14:58:00.001-08:00

hawaii flora 7

2008-01-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

hawaii flora 8

2008-01-25T13:28:00.000-08:00

the only fower pic I have from the slopes of Mauna Kea

Hawaii fauna, from a geologist point of view

2008-01-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

Lots of fascinating critters on the islands of Hawaii, many are native, several are imports (for good or bad (mostly bad from a conservation POV)). Here are a few of them:

finches

not sure what kind of bird this is

mongoose
feral chicken

big red ants
a highly specialized moth

mosquito (start Dracula accent)"I vant to suck your blood"(end accent)

large land snail, maybe 3-4 inches long
European honey bee
dove
annoying Porto Rica import, the Coque frog (juveniles, adult call can get up to 100db)

late instar husk of a dragonfly nymph, post emergence
dragon fly (now this was a hard to get pic, these guys are fast and always in motion)

fauna 2, gecko, not geiko

2008-01-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

one of the many species of animals that are not native to Hawaii, the gecko (7 introduced species and 5 species of skink) has endeared itself, it seems almost native there.

on the screen

in the shower

on the fence

and hanging on the the satellite dish coax

fauna 3, moths, lots of moths

2008-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

most of these beasts are really quite large, this first moth has a span over six inches

this little critter was the smalles, at just over an inch

this one is about two inches

this little beasty ran about 3-3.5 inches

Fauna 4, araneae, araneae, on the vertical planer surface....

2008-01-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

lots of different spiders inhabit Hawaii, not the biggest I've seen, the garden spider (Argiope aurantia) of the midwest is much bigger than any of these pictured.

this spider looks big, it was about 2.5 inches across the leg span.

Dude, you may want to rethink that....

success! this spider landed a damselfly for lunch

Jacque's hair

2008-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything of Jacque in a long time, she really doesn't enjoy getting her hair worked on very much though. Mommy is behind her working on trying to tame it during Christmas.

Thank you Anonymous

2008-01-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Anonymous said...
AC's piece on her was not that long and he doesn't cover her often. He didn't say people were stupid he talked about the ugliness of the whole thing, the ugly impulses involved in enjoying watching someone's life fall apart. You may not enjoy it or be interested but you are not the huge number of people on gossip blogs and scooping up tabloids who he was talking about.

Anderson is from a famous family. His mother was at the centre of a famous tabloid fury. When his brother killed himself in front of their mother it became a big gossip topic and people came into the funeral to try to get his mother's autograph. Photographers were shoving cameras in her face while she clung to Anderson. Of course he's going to be sympathetic to the famous woman whose problems are being gobbled up by the masses and have difficulty relating to the people eagerly consuming this stuff.

He didn't give a big lecture he just registered his own sadness and disgust about the whole affair and conflicted feelings about Britney's way going out of her way to feed into the whole thing.

I wish there were more people like you in the internet
kc

NSFW rant

2008-01-04T23:56:00.000-08:00

Never have I been so angry at the news, well, news caster really (much like a chimp is a poo caster). So I'm sitting there watching the news before I make my long, back road commute in BFE Nevada to the drill rig and Anderson Cooper insinuate that we are fucktards for watching the news on Brittney Spears, uhhhh, AC, dude, YOU JUST SPENT THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES WASTING MY TIME ON THE BITCH (less commercials). I personally don't give a flying fuck whether she lives, dies, falls off the face of the earth or what, she is NOT in my monkeysphere (and has no effect on those within it). I. JUST. DON'T. CARE. If you didn't spend so much time on her, I wouldn't have to watch your reporting on her. I mean, it was a toss-up, I could watch Flash Gordon on scifi, and let my brain leak out of my ears, or watch CNN and restrain my hands from gouging out my eyes. Fucktard.

edit: I checked cnn.com this morning, and they only hand one small link about her, thank you CNN.

Headgear-a-plenty

2007-12-31T06:41:00.000-08:00

One of the things as ubiquitous as mountains in the basin and range, are abandoned mines, here is a few pics of a mine on the way to the rig.

I was hoping for more sunlight on the far mountains (which I have to drive around to get to Winnemucca). The headgear of the mine stands out on the horizon as you drive by, a nice 4x4 trail leads up to it. I'm not too sure what was mined here, but from the spoils that are piled all around, I would judge some kind of sulfide ore, most likely cinnabar, I found several small pieces of the red ore around, mixed in with the hydrothermal alteration of the native rock, possibly a phyllite.

A view down the mineshaft, showing the rails for the carts, whoever mined here was not claustrophobic.

my daily commute

2007-12-29T02:25:00.000-08:00

7.5 miles of paved roads, and 18.5 miles of this, one of the more remote locations (by far not the worst though) to be working. On the other hand, the scenery is nice:)

Toto, we're not in Hawaii anymore.

do you love sci/fi too?

2007-12-23T20:18:00.001-08:00

	I received 93 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

deciduous basalt?

2007-12-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Lava trees, at Lava Trees State park near Pahoa, an interesting formation of basalt lava, when it up and wraps itself around a ohia tree, then the bulk of the very fluid flow drains away, leaving the cooled remnant standing upright.

these are 'O'hia trees that are growing on a 1954 aa lava flow

sometimes, the contact and cooling is fast enough to preserve surface textures of the bark on the gnarled trees, in a chamber running up the middle of the lava tree (mold), but the light was failing me so I couldn't get a good picture of the inside tube/chamber to show this texture. The tree eventually burns/rots out of the mold cavity. Some of these geologic feature range from just holes in the ground to almost 20 feet tall.

my attempt at a stereo pair, good luck

EDIT: I've been trying to get back to the park and retake the stereo pair, unfortunately, its has rained pretty consistently and I haven't had the chance. My flight leaves in a few hours, and I may not have the chance to go back again until early next year (crosses fingers).

with a resounding (albiet silent) thud

2007-12-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

the rainbow crashes onto the motor shed roof

You would think....

2007-12-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

This

is a noni fruit, a lush, common fruit, at least on this part of the big island, mabey it would be good, on the other hand, did you ever see that little rascal episode where they are all forced to take a spoon full of cod liver oil? You get the idea. Other critters like them.... and they are welcome to them as far as I am concerned (albiet a lot of people sell a snakeoil product made from them, juice, pulp powder, ect.)

ooooooooo paradise

2007-11-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

It snowed the day after I left to come to Hawaii, it was 76 in Hilo when I landed, i was impressed, you know the weather is mild somewhere the airport and related facilities often only have a roof, no walls. It does rain a lot here, to the tune of 150 inches a year here on the eastern rift zone of the island Hawaii (if that doesn't make sense too you, neenerneener, I'm a geologist, I'll be happy to teach you geology, not geography, geography is just overburden to us hardrock types). here is a simple pic, of a rainbow over a flash separation facility.

Splat! (in ultra slow motion: Wavelite)

2007-11-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

Al3(PO4)2(OH)3-(H2O)5, Hydrated Aluminum Phosphate Hydroxide

Wavelite is an interesting mineral, its a soft, yellow-green, what makes it so interesting is it habit of forming radiating globules of crystals, so much so that when you see this Crystal form in a book, wavelite will be the picture they show you to demonstrate this. The crystals them selves are actually orthorhombic needles radiating from the center (radiating along the c-axis; very long, skinny crystals). I found this sample in a small rock shop in California while driving down the 101

its fall? really?

2007-11-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

here it is November 7, and I stop for lunch at a taco bell, all the trees are brown, most of the grass (where there is grass, and not sage brush) is brown, this little bush decides to say "HEY, LOOK AT ME!!!", so I obliged it:) and decided that maybe others should take a look at it too.

addendum: the flowers are about 1.5 inches across

Moment Tensor Solutions

2007-11-01T01:42:00.000-07:00

The magnitude 5.6 earthquake near San Jose on Tuesday is one of the most "classic" strike/slip fault rupture I've seen in a while, it makes reading a moment tensor solution of the waves very easy, the west side of the fault moving north west (Vader voice on)"come to the dark side Luke"(Vader voice off), tensors like these can be hard to read sometimes without a good idea of what faults in the locality are doing already, lucky for us, this location is very well documented, and the motion was almost totally along the strike of the fault. (thanks to the USGS for collating this information into one, easy to find location)

In Your Face!

2007-10-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

So, did you get out and see the full moon at perigee last night? That's as big as it gets, almost 10% bigger than when at apogee, nearly the earths circumference closer than at apogee. It really was a glorious full moon.

nipples and bits

2007-10-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

Seems two of the most important things in my job are nipples and bits, pipe nipples and rock bits that is. I use a pile of nipples to connect different sensors (mostly pressure transducers) to different parts of the drill rig to measure all sorts of parameters for the log. As to bits, I don't directly interface with them, just what they produce.

The first pic is a 3.75" drill bit I was given, next to it is a 1/2", sch 40 pipe nipple, 6" long, that will give scale to all the other pics of drill bits, several different sizes of drill bits are used to drill a well. Most people do not realize that a well is not one size, all the way down, as drilling proceeds, different parts of the well have to be sealed off from others, to prevent the migration of fluids, and to provide integrity to the well wall, to help prevent it collapsing in behind the drill bit, at different depths, different weights of drilling mud are needed to keep fluids down in the hole, and too much pressure differential from one part of the hole to another can cause all kinds of headaches (and cost all kinds of $$$), hence, at the surface, most geothermal wells start as a 36" hole for about the first 100 feet, into this, the conductor, a 30" diam pipe is cemented into place.

After the cement is cured, a 26" hole is drilled, with a 20" casing cemented into place(300-600').

Out of the bottom of the 20", a 17.5" hole is drilled to a depth of 600-2000', and a 13.375" casing is cemented in place.

(this pic is of 17.5 and 12.25 bits)
A 12.25 hole is drilled is drilled as deep as 6000 or so feet, with a 9.625 casing.

Misc pics:

Different teeth are needed for different kind of rocks, soft rocks (shale, limestone, sandstone (most sandstones that is) enjoy the ministrations of a wide chisel tooth of a mill tooth bit, knocking out large chunks, and often drilling rapidly down (PDC bits are for a later date). The carbide button tooth is used for hard rocks, like granite, basalts, gneisses, quartzites, and quartz cemented sandstones (near quartzite).
The following pic is of a carbide button chisel tooth bit, well worn, the rounded nubs of carbide used to terminate in a chisel like tooth, this one has seen a lot of hours making lots of hole.

Contrary to popular belief, all of these bits (tri-cone roller bits) do not scrape the rock away, instead, a lot of force is used, pushing down on the bit, as the cones roll around in a circle, an immense amount of force is concentrated at the tip of the tooth as it rolls over the rock, this action simply pops a little chuck of rock out of the drilling surface, much like dropping something heavy on concrete will do, but this action is performed over and over and over, with drilling mud picking up these fragments and carrying them to the surface, for me to collect, study, analyze, classify, and document.

EDIT: the depths listed are just a generality, and for some wells, may be off by a factor of x2, also, deeper wells continue the theme of getting smaller in diam, the next stage is a 8.5" bit with 7" casing and so on add nauseum.....

The Story of My Life

2007-10-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

(cliche alert) There's a fungus among us

2007-10-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not a mycologist, never have been a mycologist, I don't even play one on TV. On the other hand, I am fascinated by science, fungi are one of the things that I do enjoy (eating and looking at) the morphology and colors can be quite varied and fascinating, here is a fungus that is growing on an old stump in front of my house, some kind of (shelf?) fungus, don't know which, that grows quite large, the first pic will give you scale, the second shows the other expressions occurring on the stump, due to the nature of fungi, there is a real possibility that these are actually all expressions of one organism living in/on/under the stump (not sure of the tree type, but i think it was either a cotton wood or a maple that was growing way too close to the foundation, and the land owner about three years ago cut it down, I spent the intervening time trying to kill it, as it would send up new starts from the rim and roots (does that help identify it to anyone? if i was smart, I would have looked up they type of tree from the leaves, hind sight is 20/20)

they had the right stuff

2007-10-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

60 years ago today, 24 year old Cpt Charles Yeager climbed into a 31 foot bullet with wings and a rocket engine, dropped from a B-29, eased back on the flight yolk, closed a switch, and flew into history.
Here we are today, 60 years later, with the F-22 Raptor, with supercruise, it can fly faster than the speed of sound, without resorting to afterburners.
Its tough to remember to appreciate all the advances in technology, and the luxuries that tech and engineering deliver to us every day, if not for people like Chuck Yeager, Henry Ford, Niel Armstrong, Wernher Von Braun, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Tycho Brahe, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Rene Descartes, Issac Newton, Rudolph Diesel, Eli Whitney, Louis Pasteur and way too many others to name who bucked the norm, dreamed big dreams and chased them relentlessly we would still probably work where we live, and loose 30% of our children in their first year.

camera shy

2007-10-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

my wife hates having her picture taken, especially right before she starts to beat on people with a stick

Mommy and Daddy's little chiefs chearleader

2007-10-11T11:40:00.001-07:00

Went to a Kansas City Chiefs game, not that great a game, the chiefs lost 17-7, and only scored on at the VERY end of the game to prevent a shutout. It wasn't pretty, but Jacque was:)

six steps from mercs to violins

2007-10-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Segues, its how a train of thought, during a conversation can lead from German cars to Venetian violins, via the paleolithic.

I gave away my old '74 Mercedes Benz diesel the other day, since it was given to me if i could make it run, which i did. The Merc was not appropriate for use with my job (67 horse power just isn't enough to get up the mountains out west), and some mechanical issues i just didn't want to address at the time. I seriously wanted to restore the car, just never wanted to invest the time or money to do so, even though she is a beautiful car, with the classic Benz lines and curves; I would rather build a jeep, while not as pretty, much more fun. So, as I was saying, I gave it away to a guy who would restore it, not just sell it for salvage (he loves the look too). as we were cleaning out the truck, i had several pieces of obsidian to transfer into the garage when napping arrow heads came up, the process and techniques of doing so, and that in Kansas, large pieces of obsidian are HARD to come by, well napping arrow heads led to an old collection of early ozarks indian arrow heads I had way back when (wish I still did, they were around 2-10k years old, from the style), this led to a discussion on the fact that they weren't really arrow heads, but atlatl dart points, the atlatl led to other type of spear chuckers of the middle ages (ballista), this of course led into all kinds of period artillery and cannon, a brief discussion on the invention of trunnions and how that made cannon mobile and much easier to use, somehow that triggered an old memory in my head about Niccolo Paganini's "The Cannon" (a Guarnieri masterwork) of Venice and an old NPR article I listened to as a driveway moment.
Nice segues don't you think?