Hard Core

Originally published 8/7/08.  I was telling a friend about my oil field experiences and linked him to this post and decided it was worth a "bump".

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I took these photos a few months ago to post in a political forum I used to frequent; I wanted to (try to) prove to a guy that hydrocarbons were formed by deposits of organic material. He was arguing that, since some Georgia textbook had said "oil came from dinosaurs" that that was what was taught in our schools and it was wrong. (never mind that the textbook was printed in the 50's, and was a grade school primer. That was about his intellectual level, come to think of it)

He was insisting that oil is formed in the earth's core (abiogenic petroleum origin) and that we were nowhere nearly running out of it and that oil companies kept this "fact" a secret . (and this coming from a guy who said every Ron Paul supporter was a conspiracy nut)

This is a core sample from one of my dad's wells; it came from approx. 4800 feet and is from the Brown Dolomite formation.



The large white deposit in the above photo is chert (sometimes called "flint"); drilling through the dolomite formation is tricky enough*, but these hard layers of chert could tear up a drill bit if not careful.

*Dolomite is very porous, and that's why -- in that particular area -- it is the oil-bearing strata. In other places, where it was necessary to drill deeper to find oil or gas, drilling through this particular formation took special precautions; if the drilling fluid wasn't viscous (thick) enough, or didn't have enough "filler", the formation could swell from the fresh water and "stick your bit" and pipe. It is also a "lost circulation" zone, sometimes sucking in fluid faster than could be pumped down the hole.

This next photo shows just how porous the rock is.



It's so porous, I used to like to pour liquid incense onto the core; it would soak it up and slowly release the fragrance over several weeks time.

This next shot shows some tiny fossils embedded into it. (Some might argue that they're rock, but I took this to my college geology professor and he verified it. He wanted me to give it to him, but he had already stolen a meteorite from me...long story)



No, it wasn't "just" dinosaurs that made oil; my dad used to say it was dinosaur "poop" more than the prehistoric animal remains, but that was...just like that Georgia textbook...a simplification. The organic material that later became oil came from seas that used to cover this area millions of years ago. It wasn't just one time, but several, over millions of years and millions of tons of organics. The tremendous amount of organic material, under tremendous heat and pressure, formed the hydrocarbons.



That's not as nice an example as is this core sample from Norway, but I think it's still interesting.

My dad and I used to polish rocks, and he made an ashtray out of a slab of core sample. I don't know what happened to it, but it had a beautiful shell in it.

That particular field is nearly played out, but the last time I was out there, they were drilling some injection wells and seemed to be having some success with that method. (tertiary recovery)

But, I HATE to Paint!

You Should Be a Painter

You have the vision, patience, and skill to bring your unique visions to canvas. And you're even tempered enough not to cut your ear off in the process!

What Sort of Artist Should You Be?

Me, even tempered? 

Yeah, right.  I'm not only NOT even tempered, I don't have a lick of talent, at least in the artistic department.   I don't even like painting rooms in a house, but something like a fence is fine because I don't have to worry so much about paint splatters.

The best way to paint I've ever seen was when I was roughnecking and we painted our big fresh water tank;  someone would climb on top with a five gallon bucket of paint and walk backwards, pouring out the paint as he went.  As the paint ran down the sides, all the hands would take long handled scrub brushes and smear it all over.  The job was done in less than ten minutes and didn't even look all that bad...it was going to get scratched up in the next rig move anyway.

Deepest Hole

The deepest hole in the world is the Z-44 Chayvo well just off the island Sakhalin, Russia. Completed in August of 2012, the well reaches a total depth of 12,376 meters (40,604 ft -  over 7.6 miles), surpassing previous records, including that of the Kola Superdeep Borehole.

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I've worked on some deep holes, some being very close to the Bertha Rogers well in Oklahoma.  One well was so deep near the completion depth, I was told the drill bit never got off bottom when making a connection due to the stretch in the drill string (pipe). A length of drill pipe is approx. 30 ft. long, so the fact that steel can stretch so far under its own weight is mind-boggling...at least it is to me.

That Smell - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Heard this song on online radio the other night and it's been stuck in my head ever since.  It reminds me of roughnecking and "nippling up", the process of hooking up the blowout preventer.  Before we began, we had to pump out the "cellar", the pit dug in the ground where drilling initially starts, in order to hook everything up and trust me, there's not many worse smells in the world (maybe something dead).  The fluid is a combination of urine (from guys peeing off the side of the rig) and fermented mud and chemicals and it would be enough to gag a buzzard.  Almost every time we were nippling up, someone would start singing this song. I know it's a song about drugs, but...

"Oooh that smell..."

Roughest Neck Around - Corb Lund Band

Moths of the Texas Panhandle

I stumbled across this video after seeing an article about hummingbird moths and wondering if they were found in these parts. Back when I worked on drilling rigs, all sorts of insects and moths would be attracted to the lights of the rig at night, sometimes so thick around the lights on the floor that they blocked out most of the light and it was hard to see and often far-too-easy to have one fly into your mouth.

I remember one guy I worked with insisting they were hummingbirds, but those are fairly rare up in this part of the country.  Another guy I worked with would catch the huge moths, unroll their "nose" with a pencil, then tape it inside someone's locker.  When he opened it up the next morning, it was always funny to see him startled by the moth frantically fluttering at the guy's eye level.

(EDIT to add: funny to see the guy scared by a moth, but I always felt sorry for the moth; it was cruel, even though I doubt the moth had a very long lifespan.)

My landlady's son, the younger brother of a classmate, was a sophomore one summer when the moths were prolific around the rig and had to do the same project his brother and I had to do at the same age;  catch 50 different insects and pin them to a board and label them.  I took the young man a lunch box full of moths and asst. other insects I caught one night and he later told me he had over 70 different types of insects and got an "A" for the project!

I used to have some Four O'Clock plants by my porch and during the summer,moths would gather nectar out of the flowers that opened in the late afternoon and stayed open until sunrise the next morning.  I had an old black cat that absolutely loved those moths;  he grew tired of playing with them and discovered he liked the taste.  He wouldn't eat the entire thing, but I would find just the head and wings all over the place, even inside where he had brought them in through the cat flaps. (along with lizards, garden snakes, birds and all sorts of creatures.)

Highway to Hell - AC/DC

This never was one of my favorite AC/DC tunes;  it's arguably one of the ones they're most famous for, but I much prefer others.  I can't hear it now without thinking of the following chilling story.

Back when I was roughnecking, I went to work for a younger guy named Ricky;  I had worked with him before, the son-in-law of the driller.  He was always sleepy and I resented him going to sleep out on the rig and subsequently forcing me to keep an eye on things.  I also was worried about driving home with him, afraid he would fall asleep at the wheel.

I had a horrible dream about being with him in a wreck and decided to quit that job.  At the time, it was easy to find another rig that needed an experienced hand, especially working morning tour (nights/graveyard) during the winter.  I told him that night that I was going to quit and brought all my clothes home with me that next morning.

Needless to say, he was upset;  I'm sure most of his anger was because he'd have to find someone to fill my spot and that his spoiled rotten wife would be P.O.'d that he'd have to spend most of the day looking for another hand instead of driving her around so she could foolishly spend his paycheck.

(I felt sorry for him;  she not only spent his money on stupid crap, but couldn't be bothered to pack him a decent lunch.  Many times I had seen him open up his lunch box to find a couple of bologna sandwiches...just meat and bread, no lettuce, tomato and not even any mayo.  If he was lucky, he'd have a bag of chips and a few candy bars - if she hadn't eaten them already)

We were sitting in front of his house where I had parked my pickup the night before;  he was trying his best to talk me out of quitting, but I wouldn't change my mind.  As I had mentioned, it was a cold winter morning and when I thought my idling truck had warmed up enough, I told him I'd best go on home.  He didn't answer;  he had fallen asleep.  I opened the door and got into my vehicle.  He didn't wake up.

I decided I would go eat breakfast at the local cafe and did so.  As I was driving out of town to go home, I passed by his house and saw him with his head on the steering wheel, still asleep.  It was a nearly new car and outside, so I didn't worry about him being gassed by the car fumes.  Like I said, he was a sleepy head.

It wasn't but a few weeks later he fell asleep on the way home, driving his brand new truck, and side-swiped a cattle truck.  The rest of the crew was asleep too and thankfully none of them were seriously injured.  I spoke to the county judge/coroner after that and he said there wasn't enough left of Ricky to pick up in a body bag.

I don't expect his spoiled wife was all that fussed about his death; she really was a dreadful person and was having affairs with several men in town.  I'm sure she was looking forward to the death insurance check.  The pickup sat in her front yard for months, towed there after the wreck.  Someone finally offered to buy it for scrap and she accepted the offer but first wanted to get a brand new stereo out of the vehicle.

A friend of mine was called and asked if he would pull the stereo unit out of the car.  He accepted (I think he was one of the men that was sleeping with her on the side)  the driver's side dashboard was caved in, so he was having to take it out from the front. As he was wiggling the unit out of the dash to better get to the wires to disconnect them, the stereo came on.

This was the song that was playing when Ricky died.

Mosquito Ringtones

From the site:

What is the Mosquito Ringtone?

The short version, A tone outside the audible range of hearing for most people over the age of 30. This means that you can get phone calls and receive text messages in class or school without teachers hearing it.

Mosquito Ringtones

Lots of other fun stuff on the site; mosquito games, printable mosquito coloring pages even some variants of the mosquito ringtones available for download.  One useful thing is the Hearing Test.

When I first came across this site, I thought "Oh, I bet my hearing is still pretty good...I certainly don't have "old" ears." I was wrong; I couldn't hear the upper ranges of the tones and after checking out the Hearing Test, I was dismayed to find that the only sounds I could clearly hear were the 10000 and 8000 Hertz Tones.

Dismayed, but not totally surprised. After the years of working on extremely loud drilling rigs, some hearing loss is to be expected. Up until a few years ago, I suffered from Tinnitus but that's gone away to where it's nearly unnoticeable. (I think getting control of my blood sugar has something to do with it, but I'm not sure.)There were times, however, during the dead of night it was maddening.

So, I guess I DO have "old ears".  I might not be able to hear like the young whippersnappers, but I bet most of them can't wiggle my ears like I can!

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EDIT TO ADD: I had several tabs open and before closing the Hearing Test tab after posting, I tried a few more frequencies; I could barely hear some of the others, then thought to check my volume control.

Duh.  I had it turned down quite a bit while listening to online radio earlier. I could clearly hear the 14000 Hertz Tone. I can barely hear the next one, but not well enough to use it as a ring tone.  I don't need a ring tone anyway...don't have a cell phone, for one.  No one ever calls me, so I hardly need a land line except for my DSL. 

Anyway, good news and bad news:  the good news is my hearing isn't as bad as I thought it was.  The bad news?  Not checking my volume control means my mind is slipping.

fob

fob  [fob] noun
1. a small pocket just below the waistline in trousers for a watch, keys, change, etc.
2. a short chain or ribbon, usually with a medallion or similar ornament, attached to a watch and worn hanging from a pocket.
3. the medallion or ornament itself.

verb (used with object), fobbed, fob·bing.
1. Archaic . to cheat; deceive.
Verb phrase
2. fob off:
a. to cheat someone by substituting something spurious or inferior; palm off (often followed by on ): He tried to fob off an inferior brand on us.
b. to put (someone) off by deception or trickery: She fobbed us off with false promises.

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My dad worked for an oil company as a pumper, taking care of oil and gas wells. His leases started playing out in the early 70's and I remember him once saying that they didn't produce enough oil "to grease a watch fob". The company he worked for sold the production to a German corporation and they thought they could coax more oil out of the half-century old wells, but after spending millions of dollars, couldn't.

So, the old company fobbed off the wells on the German one.

That's sort of what I do in here, fob off word definitions, quizzes and music videos in lieu of any interesting content.

manifold

manifold man·i·fold [man-uh-fohld]

adjective

1. of many kinds; numerous and varied: manifold duties.
2. having numerous different parts, elements, features, forms, etc.: a manifold program for social reform.
3. using, functioning with, or operating several similar or identical devices at the same time.
4. (of paper business forms) made up of a number of sheets interleaved with carbon paper.
5. being such or so designated for many reasons: a manifold enemy.

noun

6. something having many different parts or features.
7. a copy or facsimile, as of something written, such as is made by manifolding.
8. any thin, inexpensive paper for making carbon copies on a typewriter.
9. Machinery . a chamber having several outlets through which a liquid or gas is distributed or gathered.
10. Philosophy . (in Kantian epistemology) the totality of discrete items of experience as presented to the mind; the constituents of a sensory experience.

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I'm familiar with the use of the word as "many", but the first thing that comes to mind is the exhaust manifold on a car. The exhaust manifold taught me a couple of lessons, one being it's always best to let an engine cool down before working on it and two, that I didn't like working on cars, hot engine or cold.

When I worked on drilling rigs, I used to know a guy who would bring out one of those TV dinners in an aluminum tray and put it on one of the huge diesel engine's manifolds when he got out there; after a few hours, it would be piping hot and he'd enjoy a warm meal on a cold winter's night while the rest of us choked down our baloney sandwiches.

I told my wife (now ex) about it and she bought me a few dinners to put on the manifold, but those old TV dinners really didn't taste very good and I told her not to bother.  I was surprised when she packed me a lunch with a casserole in one of those small loaf pans.  I put it on the manifold when I got out there and sure 'nuff, it was hot when I was ready to eat and it was delicious.  She was pleased when I got home and told her how good it was and how jealous my hands were that I had such a great lunch.  She then started putting in two pans into my lunch, telling me I should share with the guys who worked for me and I did;  usually one was more than I could eat, so I had enough to share with at least one other guy.

My favorite was her broccoli, cheese and rice and she'd usually pack another one - meat loaf, Mexican casserole, sometimes lasagna.  I'd wash out the pans before I brought them home as so to save her from having to scrub out baked on food. 

One day, however, we got busy shortly after I got out there and I didn't get to eat.  I was so tired at the end of the shift, I forgot to retrieve my meal.  That evening my ex asked me where the pans were and I slapped my forehead and told her I had forgotten them and I bet they were still on the manifold.  The next day (with sandwiches in my lunch pail) I got out there and saw one of the pans in my locker, empty, except it hadn't been cleaned.  I got busy again and forgot about the other one.  When shift change came around, one of the guys relieving us said he had found it and eaten it. "Tell yer old lady thanks!"  I told him the least he could have done was taken a water hose to it. When I got home, my ex opened up my lunch box and found it and asked where the other was and I had to plead forgetfulness again.

That didn't make her mood any better, nor did her having to try to scrub out the pan.  With a few choice words, she gave up and chunked the thing into the trash.  "Might as well throw the other one away, too." she scolded me.

I got baloney sandwiches until she bought some more pans.  I think she took her time buying them, too, just to teach me a lesson.

Well, I didn't remember the other pan the next day and it wasn't until the rig move when I discovered the forgotten pan.  I figured it might stink, but as I peeled away the aluminum foil I found nothing but a hard-as-a-rock slab of casserole, petrified by several days of baking on the hot manifold.  I thought I might be able to salvage the pan, but even with a hammer and chisel I couldn't get the remains out of the pan.

I've got another story about hot meals on a drilling rig, but I'll wait a day or two to post it.  I'm sure I've bored you enough with THIS one!

A Picnic Every Day

I used to roughneck for a man named Delmer Miller; he was quite a colorful character and had part of his nose missing from a long-ago fight. He was rough-edged, but had a great sense of humor. (and could also be petulant and childish, as you'll see) I was single when I worked for him and like most bachelors, my lunch box didn't hold a decent meal - or the love - that most married men's lunch boxes had in them. I often went out to work with not much to eat, sometimes just a few packages of cheese crackers and a couple of pieces of fruit.

After missing many meals because I would sleep right up until the time to go to work, I got in the habit of making a couple of sandwiches when I got home, then putting them in the fridge. I also bought some small Tupperware containers from my sister and filled them with slices of tomato and lettuce so they wouldn't make my bread soggy until I was ready to eat my sandwiches. I also learned to use mustard on my sandwiches because on hot summer nights mayo or salad dressing would spoil before it was time to eat.

Sometimes while eating our lunch - when we had time to eat it* - Delmer would quip "Ain't this great? A picnic every day!"

It was funny the first few times we heard it, but...

*(I used to work for an old man and we once had some down-hole trouble on the rig and for several nights we didn't even have time to eat our lunch.  One of the other roughnecks was bitching about it on the ride home and the old man told him "Hell, boy...I give you two chances to eat every day!"  "I'd like to know when THAT is!" sniffed my co-worker. "Well..." dryly replied the old driller, "Once on the way out to the rig and the other on the way back.")

Delmer had a wife who absolutely doted on him and once when I brought out some stroganoff my mom had given me when I ate supper with them, told his wife that he too wanted something else besides sandwiches in his lunch box. That day, while Delmer was asleep, she cooked a big batch of stew and sent some out in a wide-mouth thermos.  She had also baked some cornbread and had included a couple of big slices of that, too. He ate every bite and when he got in that morning, gave her a kiss on the cheek and told her it was great.

The next night he opened up his lunch box and found another thermos full of the stew. (like I said, she had made a big batch of it) He complained about it, but still ate it.  The next night he opened up his lunch, muttering that there had better not be any more stew, but when he opened up the thermos...yep, more stew.

In a fit, he poured out the thermos into the lunch box, crumbled up the cornbread and stirred it all up with a spoon, then closed the lid, lit a cigarette and got a cup of coffee.   He was in a bad mood the rest of the shift and we tried our best to stay away from him.

I knew there would be fireworks when he got home and confronted his wife and I knew I really shouldn't, but I followed him inside before getting in my own vehicle and going home.  She greeted me and tried to kiss Delmer, but he shrugged her off and plopped the lunch box down on the table.  She asked what was wrong and he said he was hungry and angry that she had put "the same damn thing" in his lunch again.  She opened up the lunch box and even though her eyes narrowed in anger, she didn't say anything about the mess inside the box but asked "Well, what DO you want in your lunch?"

"I don't care." Delmer said. "Just sumpthin' different."

That night when we all sat down to eat, Delmer was telling the rest of the guys, also bachelors like me, how he had "handled his old lady" and that we should take lessons.  "You'd better believe there's sumpthin' different in here tonight!" he bragged.

There was.  It was a coconut and a hammer.

Skiing on Sour Milk

Reading this article earlier: 101 Uses For Soured Raw Milk, it reminded me of my once skiing on sour milk. No, I didn't ski ON sour milk but I skied BECAUSE of sour milk.

It was a long time ago, the late 70's. I was roughnecking for a man who lived in my home town of Miami. I lived in Pampa and had to drive to his house every day. There wasn't much of a drive after that, thank goodness; the rig was just outside of town, not even a five minute drive from my boss's house.

Still, I had to leave home fairly early in the morning in order to get there by shift change - 6:30 a.m. At the time, the speed limit was still 55mph and I gave myself 30 minutes to drive the 23 miles to Miami. One afternoon driving back home, however, my muffler fell off and I knew driving through town and on the major highway that I would most likely get a ticket, so the next morning I went the back way along Farm-to-Market Road 282, passing right by where I grew up and my folks still lived.

Thank goodness there was a small convenience store on the outskirts of town;  it was where I stopped every morning and bought my usual breakfast of a sausage/egg biscuit and a pint of chocolate milk. (Breakfast of champions - or that of lazy bachelors)

I was running behind a little later than I liked;  this drive added close to ten miles more to my usual route and I hadn't factored that in when I left that morning.  The road was deserted as it is most any time of the day, so I stepped on the gas when I got outside of town, my pickup sounding like a race car on steroids.  It was so loud I didn't even bother trying to listen to the radio as I usually did.

Trucking along at around 70 mph, I remembered my breakfast - I grabbed the sack and keeping one eye on the road and another trying to unwrap the biscuit sandwich, I started with my morning nourishment. I noticed a shimmer on a normally dry playa lake on the south side of the road, still off in the distance, probably a mile or so away. Must be some water in the lake, I thought, remembering that it had rained during the rig move and making the location a mess.

Here's a Google Earth screen shot of the playa lake I was talking about.  The "X"  will play a part in the story - give it a minute. (I'm traveling left-to-right on the road)
.

I took a bite of the biscuit, chewed a while because it was a little dry. It made me wonder if it was cooked a little too long or was left over from the previous day. I made a note to myself to complain about it the next morning. With one hand on the wheel, I used the other to pry open the container of milk   I took a swig, swallowed the liquid and what was left of the breakfast sandwich. I put the carton to my mouth again for another swallow and that's when I realized....

It was sour.  No, more than sour.  Sour would be delicious compared to the putrid fluid I had just taken in.  I started gagging and one memory will stay with me forever - the date on the carton, barely visible by the dashboard light, was two weeks ago.  (I'm about to barf thinking about it.)  The chocolate flavor had disguised any smell that might have tipped me off.

I started slowing down because I knew I was going to vomit and hoped I could come to a stop before I did.  Cleaning up the mess would make me puke again, I was sure. 

Slowing down probably saved my life, at least that's what I've always thought.  Still, I was going at least fifty miles per hour when I hit the water on the road.  The playa lake had overflowed across the road and there was probably six inches of water on the pavement.  The water immediately slowed me down from whatever speed I was going, but my truck started hydroplaning.  I was out of control in a second.  My vehicle did a 180 and I was suddenly going backwards. I don't know what sort of G-forces I encountered, but it nearly made me black out.   Then, just as soon as I noticed I was looking at the road I had just traveled, I did another 180 and was out of the water and onto dry pavement. 

I stopped, got out and emptied my stomach.  I'm sure the sour milk was the main cause of my being sick, but I think I also would have vomited from fear.  Ever been scared nearly to death? I have, quite a few times, especially from working on drilling rigs.  The taste it leaves in my mouth is like sucking on a penny - a copper and acid combination that must be the result of pure adrenaline rushing through my body.  I've never thrown up from it...or the scare...but I spit for an hour afterwards.

Here's another screen shot of the road and low spot.  The "X" is the place in the above graphic where I hit the water.

I learned a couple of things that morning:  One, to not speed on the way to work, even if it is on a deserted road.  I'd rather people say "That damn Mike is late." than "My, don't he look natural?"

The second thing I learned?  Well, it's a two-parter:  to always check expiration dates on food and to always....ALWAYS....smell milk before drinking.

Wanna know something funny? (or strange or stupid or whatever adjective you want to use, I wouldn't be offended.) Through that scary few seconds, when I was whipped around worse than an astronaut in a centrifuge, all through the time of trying to regain control of my vehicle, I didn't drop the milk. 

A Slice of Life

Quite a few years ago, I was roughnecking for one of my best friends. Besides me and the driller, the rest of the crew consisted of my friend's brother-in-law and a guy who I knew, but not very well. I knew his family, though, because his dad had worked for my grandfather in the oil field.   For the life of me, I can't remember the guy's name...but that's not important for this story.  I'm sure he would want to remain anonymous and I can't say as I'd blame him.

We worked nights - morning tour (pronounced "tower") and on the way home, the guy, like many of the guys I worked with, liked to drink beer.  Before you gag, remember that night shift workers have their days turned around and 7:00 a.m. is like 5:00 p.m. to everyone else.   I've never been much of a drinker and especially when I worked that shift.  Drinking upsets my sleep and it's hard enough getting rest during the day, what with the usual daytime noises.

The guy whose family I knew liked to drink any chance he got, though, and that morning when he cracked open his first beer I got the impression that he had started drinking even before the shift was over. (really stupid thing to do on a drilling rig - they're dangerous places to work even when you have all your senses about you)  By the time we dropped him off, he was sloshing drunk.  We watched him stagger up the sidewalk to his front door and as we drove off, made wisecracks about his wife being angry with him and hoping he wouldn't have a hangover that night at work.

The day passed, I got what rest I could trying to sleep during the day and when my boss picked me up, we headed straight on to work without picking up the guy.  I asked where he was and was told his wife had called and said he couldn't make it, that earlier he had suffered an accident at home and had been forced to go to the emergency room.

We guessed at what had happened - his wife had hit him with a frying pan when he came in drunk, he had slipped in the shower or maybe he had continued his drinking when he got home and was just too drunk to go to work and the ER story was just an excuse to keep from being fired.  Even though we were short-handed, we thankfully got through the shift without too much trouble.  Another day went by and it was time to go to work again. This time, however, the guy was ready to go to work and on the way to the rig, told us why he had missed the previous night.

"I was really drunk when I got home." he started his story with an obvious fact.  "My old lady woke up when I fell down in the living room and gave me hell for a while." (That was something else we had figured would happen, duh.) He went on: "I really needed to pee, so I went into the bathroom and started peein' like a Russian racehorse when I noticed a loose thread hanging from my fly.  I pulled on the thread but it wouldn't come loose.  There was a piece of broken mirror on the toilet lid (probably the result of a previous drunken episode, I thought) so I picked up the jagged glass and slashed at the thread."

Get the picture?  Do I need to spell it out for you?  I don't think I will.  When we got out to the rig and started changing clothes, he showed us his injury.  It was close to the top of "it" and had required 27 stitches to close. 

Made me cringe then, makes me cringe now.  There's a moral to the story, but you can supply your own, I'd wager.

I quit that job after a while, then a few months later I came back to work for my friend.  In that time, the guy had also quit and and had also come back to work on the rig, but on a different shift.  We passed by an ambulance on the way to work and nervously hoped it wasn't coming from our rig....but it was.  The injured party was the same guy!  He had to go up in the derrick and must have been semi-drunk when he did because he forgot to put on his safety belt and fell out.  He slowed his fall some by grabbing onto a cable but still hit hard enough to break several bones.  That was lucky - in a way - but even though he didn't hit as hard as he could have, he landed a-straddle the drawworks guard.  He managed to avoid crushing "anything important", but he was split from his rectum to nearly his belly button.  That makes me cringe even worse than thinking about his other injury.

That's not really funny, not unless you have a sadistic sense of humor.  Maybe I do have a sadistic sense of humor because it reminds me of an old joke:

Johnny's mother sent him to the store for a loaf of bread.  He was walking home, the loaf of bread under one arm and the hand of his free arm stuck deep in his pocket, when he bumped into the pastor of his church.

"Afternoon, Johnny!" said the preacher. "I see you have the staff of life in one hand;  what do you have in the other?"

"Oh," sheepishly replied Johnny. "That's a loaf of bread."

Hot Mel

Here's another mail that hit my spam folder.  At first, it looked real;  it had the official WindowsLive logo and since my Hotmail acct. had been hacked several months ago, it alarmed me.  After looking at the body of the message, I knew it was a phishing attempt.

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 Dear ,

We have recently detected an unusual activity on your account .

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I deleted the URL, but it wasn't a valid one, anyway - it was masked.  Hovering over it with the cursor, I saw a different URL, one that went to a PHP page on imenasa.com.

Not sure why anyone would want to get into my Hotmail account;  I never use it for online financial transactions.  In fact, it's the address I give when I have to give an email addy for free samples or when I don't believe the site when they say they will keep my information private.  I checked the account the other day after not signing in for a couple of months and there were a half dozen newsletters I had never bothered to cancel when I pretty much quit using Hotmail and went to Gmail and there were over a thousand mails in the spam folder.

I should have noticed it was a phishing attempt from the get-go, as the reply to address was Hotmail Team services@hotmel.co.uk

Hotmel?

That reminded me of someone I used to know, a guy named Mel who was a derrick hand on a drilling rig I worked on a long time ago.  Mel was anti-social and didn't like the other hands visiting with him in the mud house .(where the derrick hand mixed the drilling mud/fluid)  That was OK; it was during the summer and the nights were hot, so there was no need to get in out of the cold like there was during the winter.  I can't remember the details, but I didn't work too long on that rig.

It was several months later and I was behind a rather large and hairy woman in line at a neighborhood convenience store. She was dressed fairly nice - a white blouse with blue trim and a short white skirt and was wearing nylons. As "she" turned around, I saw that it was Mel!   Trying my best to remain nonchalant, I spoke with him a little bit, reminded him that we had worked together on the rig.  He was a lot more cordial than he had been on that job. He asked what I was doing now, I asked the same and that was about it. He said goodbye and walked out the door, a little rocky on his high heels.

I turned to pay for my items and the clerk was staring at me, her mouth wide open.  "You know that guy?" she asked with an incredulous look on her face.  "Yeah." I told her.  "We roughnecked together on a drilling rig.".

She shook her head in disbelief.  "Can you believe the way he was dressed?"

"Disgraceful." I told her and she nodded in agreement, still looking astonished.  I went on:

"Wearing white after Labor Day.  Disgraceful."

Yup, Mel looked pretty hot from the back until you noticed the matted hair under his stockings.  When he turned around, it was another story.

Edit to add: I am Facebook friends with a local woman.  Looking through her friends list, I noticed Mel was her friend.  I messaged her and asked if he still liked to "dress up".  She wrote back, saying she had heard he had done that, but she never had seen him cross-dressing.  She said he was a devout Christian now.

No, Thanks

I already have a set.

Couldn't sleep, so I got up to check my reader and noticed a new posting from WikiHow, my subscription to their "How to of the Day" feed. I had to laugh because it looked like they were talking about either obtaining some incredible intestinal fortitude or making something that could only be made on an expensive and advanced lathe or milling machine.

There was another similar post from WikiHow that hit my reader while I was clearing out the rest of the posts - this one was about making Brass Ball cocktails.  The article was blank, as was the original one and I noticed that it had already been edited a dozen times.  That's the trouble with the Wiki sites, namely that anybody can edit them.  "I know that's true, I just read it on Wiki!" "Oh yeah, that's not a good source."  "Well, I know it's true because I just wrote it!"

Back when I was active in MSN Groups, the help group "Community Feedback" had a Wiki listing.  They had a description that went like this: "Community Feedback is dedicated to giving help to MSN Group managers." along with a bunch of other self-congratulatory crapola.  I used to go in and put "dubious" in front of "help" in the sentence. Petty of me, I know (some might say infantile or even passive-aggressive), but I loved to annoy them.  It was cheap entertainment.

Speaking of brass balls, I watched one of my favorite History Channel programs Saturday morning: "Heavy Metal".  The show is about all things military, but my favorites are when they highlight ships, tanks and airplanes. This program was about the B-17, one of the best U.S.bombers of WWII. One segment detailed the heavy losses incurred during the raids on the Schweinfurt ball bearing plants.

After the program was over, it made me think of ball bearings and different situations in my life involving them. One time when I was a driller on a rig I had a bearing out of the drawworks and was about to replace a couple of the small ball bearings when one of the guys who worked for me accidentally kicked it and sent them rolling everywhere.  We were down for quite a while until I could scavenge enough to replace the ones that we couldn't find.  Wasn't my fault, but guess who got the butt-chewing?  I passed it along, of course.

Thinking of the rigs - and ball bearings -  reminded me of a joke about a govt. man sent out to test the intelligence of rig workers.  He started the tests out with a roughneck, giving him three steel balls and told him to do something with them. The govt. man turned his back, but when he turned around again, the roughneck was gone.  He looked around, but couldn't find him.

Getting another three balls from his briefcase, the govt. man went to the roughneck's immediate boss, the driller, gave him the three balls and told him to do something with them.  The driller looked at the balls for a while, scratched his head and then put two balls side-by-side, then balanced one atop the bottom two.  It was a fairly difficult and ingenious feat, so the driller got a good score.

The govt. man looked around for the roughneck, but still couldn't find him so he then gave the three balls to the driller's boss, the tool pusher.  The pusher looked at the balls for just a little while, then stacked one on top of each other, nearly impossible to do...but that was why he was the tool pusher.  He got a great score from the govt. man.

About that time, the roughneck came ambling up.  "Where are those balls?" asked the govt. man. "What balls?" replied the roughneck. "Those three balls I gave you an hour ago!" exclaimed the exasperated govt. man.

"Oh, THOSE three balls." the roughneck sheepishly said. "Well," he went on "I lost one...broke another..."

"But the other one's here in my lunch box!"

I'm a Lone Night Owl.

That would make a good nickname, I think. "Lone Night Owl"

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You Are Independent

You dance to your own drummer, and you like to live life on your own terms. You do and say whatever you feel like. People are sometimes shocked by your outrageous behavior. You have a wild and passionate side that you love to express. You have your own way of doing things. You are a bit of a loner at times. You need space to grow and become who you really are.

What Does Your Favorite Time of Day Say About You?

Blogthings: Learn Something Surprising About Yourself

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Dunno 'bout the "outrageous behavior" but the rest is right. I like the nights because they're cool and quiet.  Of course, they're really cool during the winters! 

Back when I worked on drilling rigs, I always preferred "morning tour" or graveyard shift as it's called everywhere else but the oil field.  It was always easier to find a job - because most guys didn't like working nights - and there were hardly ever any bosses or company men out there at that time.  I hate to paint and the night shift seldom had to do that, especially during winter. 

You also had the entire day "off" if you wanted to look at it that way - at least you could go to the bank, something that was hard for the day shift to do or if you worked evenings you had to get up "early" in order to do any business or laundry.  I treated the night shift just as a day shift, staying up until I got sleepy, usually around noon, then trying to get eight hours of sleep(at least, always seemed I needed a little more when working nights than I did the other shifts).

I also like mornings, as long as I'm up of my own accord for them.  Being woken by an alarm clock is nearly one of my least favorite things.

cheechako

cheechako \ chee-CHAH-koh \, noun:

1. A tenderfoot; greenhorn; newcomer.

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Oil field terminology isn't quite so kind to people starting out on the job; they're called "worms". (and if they're particularly inept, they're called "weevils", which is a worm's helper.)

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noctivagant

noctivagant \noc-tiv-A-gant\ , adjective;
1. Pertaining to going about in the night; night-wandering.

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I'm definitely a noctivagant type of person; I've always preferred the nighttime. It was always easier to find a morning tour job on a drilling rig...not only to find a job (because not many other guys wanted to work that shift), but to find the rigs at night, the derricks lit up like short strands of pearls sticking up into the sky.

The best night shift is during the summer, although it's sometimes hard to get out during the day to enjoy the weather. It's cooler at night which certainly helps when having to work really hard. Winter nights were bad many times, especially during blizzards or wet, windy weather, but there's no better feeling than to be going home after a bad night and it was always a neat thing to be getting off when the rest of the world was going to work.

Fat Joe

A long time ago I worked for a local drilling contractor; it was a small company and at the time had only six rigs and I did stints on three of them. For a few weeks I worked on the smallest rig they had, a triple like the rest, but with the smallest sub-structure and in fact, it was the "junkiest" rig of the six.

At the urging of a guy I had worked with before, I went to work for his cousin, Joe. Now Joe was a big man...not a large man in size, but he was FAT. I've worked with guys who weren't in the best of shape, with guys who had beer bellies, but a truly fat guy is hard to find on drilling rigs due to the physical nature of the job.

Joe was the exception, both in size and "the physical nature". He never did much, instead preferring to point at what he wanted done. Sure, a driller is a step up from a floor or derrick hand, but they're still expected to get their hands dirty now 'n then. I think Joe had gloves that lasted years, never needing washing.

Joe was so fat, we called him "Joebba the Hutt"

To top all that off, Joe wasn't a fun guy like many fat guys are; basically, he was a despicable S.O.B. without much of a sense of humor, nor much good sense. For a work vehicle, he drove an old orange Dodge pickup with tires showing a dangerous amount of cord (and I've always said the drive killed more roughnecks than ever did the drillers) and that P.O.S. truck was lucky to hit on 6-7 of the 8 cylinders. I don't think the heater worked, but if it did, it wouldn't have mattered because there were holes in the floorboards big enough to throw a hardhat through.

(that's no exaggeration; I lost a good lunch box when it vibrated out the largest hole, the one on my side of the cab. Joe, being the despicable S.O.B. as I previously said, wouldn't even stop to go back and get it. I probably would've insisted, but I expect it didn't survive the fall and besides that, I was probably somewhat addled from the exhaust fumes coming up through the holes)

It was in the middle of the coldest winter in years when I worked for Fat Joe and normally, when there wasn't much to do, the hands would congregate in the top doghouse to get warm. Since Joe very seldom left it, we dressed as warmly as we could and stayed away...otherwise ol' Fat Joe would grunt and point to something he thought we should be doing that we really SHOULDN'T be doing during sub-zero weather, like painting or scrubbing the derrick.

I was down in the mud house, huddled around a propane torch with the rest of the hands when we heard a whistle; it was Joe at the top of the back steps, waving. His cousin started up the steps but Joe shook his head (and several rolls of neck fat shaking in tandem, his triple-chin wiggling like Jell-O) and pointed towards Yours Truly.

Oh crap, I thought, and headed up the stairs. As soon as I got to the top, Joe said "Get me a clean bucket." I figured I was going to be set to scrubbing something during that frigid night, just great.

I looked, but couldn't find a clean bucket, so I opened up a new bucket of pipe dope (a graphite-based lubricant for the drillstem) and scraped what was left of a nearly empty bucket into it. I then had to get some diesel and wash out the dregs, then used soapy water to finish cleaning it. I put some more soap in it, filled with water in anticipation of having to wash whatever it was Fat Joe wanted washing. I figured he might very well have me wash his truck, that's what kind of S.O.B. he was.

I lugged the bucket into the doghouse, set it down and backed up to the stove for a bit of warmth, hoping he was only going to have me clean up the floor or better yet, wipe down the doghouse. At least I'd be warm while I scrubbed.

I barely had time to get out of the way of the sudsy deluge as he kicked over the bucket in the general direction of the door. Astounded, I couldn't help but just look at him, wondering if he'd gone crazy.

"You gonna stay in here?" he asked. I shook my head, not understanding. "You gonna stay in here while I take a ****?" he elaborated.

Oh gag. I shook my head in disgust and left. I made my way back down to the mud house where I told the guys what had just taken place. They told me he did that to all the new hands and that I would be required to go dump it.

I stared at them in disbelief. "You're kiddin', right?" I asked. "The fat bas***d is too lazy to go out to the outhouse at the edge of the location....and he expects US to dump....???" I couldn't even finish, I was so flabbergasted. "Yep." said his cousin. "I'm glad yer here or else I'D have to keep doin' it." he said.

"Well, I ain't doin' it." I informed my smirking crewmates. "Oh, I bet you will if you wanna keep your job." the derrick hand told me.

"I wouldn't have a job where I had to do something like that." I maintained, looking in their faces for traces of "the big tease". "You're BS'in' me, aintchoo?" I went on.

About that time we heard another whistle and there was Fat Joe again, waving for me to come back up to the rig floor. With growing trepidation , I started up the steps, following Joe as he waddled back into the warmth of the doghouse. "Dump this out." he informed me, pushing the bucket towards me with his foot.

"You're kiddin', right?" I had to ask. New guys get pranks pulled on them all the time. "Nope." said Joe, sucking in his huge gut, puffing out his chest, trying to intimidate me. "Thass yer job."

"You can stick that bucket and what's in it back up where it came from." I told him with a cold rage I'd never felt before. "You lazy fat ****, you can dump your own ****."

"I'll run yer ass off." he told me. "Fine." I retorted. "I've been fired by better men than you, that's for sure."

"You'll have to walk home." he told me. "Nope," I replied, taking a step towards him. "You brought me out here, you're gonna take me home." and advanced towards him with clenched fists.

I guess Fat Joe had never had the threat of violence directed to him before. "I can fire you if I want." he said with much less assurance in his voice than he did when he directed me to dispose of his bodily waste.

"Yep, you can." I told him, taking off my glasses so they wouldn't get broken in the fight. "I can also get rid of THAT" kicking the bucket with my foot "by making you eat it. "

Fat Joe frantically glanced around, looking for something to put between him and me for protection. The only thing that would have saved him was that bucket.

"You can fire me." I said through my clenched jaw, looking at Fat Joe through a haze of red. "But I'm ridin' home with you and as soon as you let me off I'm jerkin' yer fat ass outta that truck, THEN I'm going to go see ******* (the owner of the drilling company). Handlin' yer crap ain't part of the job description."

I said more, but nothing that's fit to repeat in this blog. I did absolutely nothing the rest of the night and dressed into my street clothes an hour before relief got there, packing my stuff then sitting in the truck until time to go home. I was going to make sure that fat S.O.B was going to give me a ride back to town. He couldn't throw me out, but he COULD file charges against me for kickin' his fat butt.

To make this long, distasteful story short, his cousin had to go dump the bucket. I wasn't fired, because I was quitting. Fat Joe probably lost some sleep that day, rustling up another hand, or I expect, being the lazy puke that he was, he had his cousin find him someone.

His cousin was killed a few years later; he fell asleep while driving home from the rig. The derrick hand was knifed to death when he made a drunken pass at a lesbian's girlfriend. I don't know what happened to Fat Joe but the next time I worked for the company he was no longer employed there.

I expect he asked someone else to dump the bucket, someone who hadn't the kind and gentle nature I possess.