Big Sulfer Creek Valley

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?

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)

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

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!

I love thinkgeek

BANG

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

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

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

hammer or nail? (somewhat gruesome)

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

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.