iCenter and 80's music videos

For the past month and a half I have been working in the BP iCenter, a drilling optimization and monitoring office in the BP building.  I emphasize office, because everyone else in the BP building exists in a farm of cubicles while two Schlumberger engineers get an office filled with computer screens.  The work is interesting as it exposes me to the client side and allows me to lead a relatively normal life; I sleep and eat at regular hours while having the opportunity to socialize with people in town.  I'm losing my mind from all the normalcy, so to keep my brain limber I have been indulging in more music videos produced in the 80's than usual.

80's music videos are truly a lost art.  No more are music videos produced featuring claymation merging into random images from a Peter Gabriel acid trip, or geriatrics attempting to play the drums for Talking Heads.  No, now we have booty shaking and some ridiculous dance scene with a latex-laden heroine who is heroin-skinny.  While videos such as "Take On Me" by Aha and "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell epitomize the time, I've found that they are the median on weird.  New Order pushed the bizarre envelope of 80's music videos.  My ability to write cannot begin to capture the essence of New Order videos "True Faith" and "Blue Monday", you need to view these yourselves.

The Arby\'s Hand

Arby\'s recently unveiled an ad campaign involving patrons shaking the disembodied hand of the person that made it. While eating food that comes with a disembodied hand doesn\'t entice me, it did inspire similar disembodied hand add campaigns; Conan, call me anytime with an offer.

Taco Bell: Immediate punch to the gut.
CiCi\'s: hand passes deep fried taco pizza to morbidly obese family on electric scooters
Wendy\'s: Sassy, mildly attractive redhead\'s hand shows you a picture of a salad and then pours a bottle of raspberry, Asian fused walnut dressing into your eyes to distract you from the wilted, brown mess included with tomatoes infused with preservatives
McDonald\'s: Zombified arm of Macho Man Randy Savage delivers a people\'s elbow to the arteries

Long time, no update

Hey readers (what few are left),

Life has been hectic since my last update. I'm currently on the north slope filling in as a night MWD after completing my first well as a night DD (only drilled the production section, but we all have to start somewhere). The new job is awesome, and I can't wait to continue my learning where I left off.

It's still cold as sin up here, but the sun is out more thus causing it to warm up (slightly).

-R

Fat man attire and an OU whooping

I'd like to open this post with accolades for the Oklahoma Sooners recent whooping of the Texas Longhorns; 55-17, oh hell yes! (excuse my language). So much for conference realignment drama and distractions, OU came to play football and Texas decided to help them out. As for the fans, I was disappointed that our fans were not as loud as they historically have been and attribute it to the early game and a possible malaise set in after consuming the fried butter, fried beer or too many of Fletcher's corn dogs (save me some of those, please). These fatty foods transformed our normally raucous fan base into a lethargic, hungover bunch left yelling at half their capacity. However, if my arteries were clogged with fried butter I would only be able to yell at 50% too.

Last night I had an epiphany at the Main Construction Camp (MCC - A large BP camp with awesome food) on the East Operating Area (EOA - Old ARCO exploration side); Overalls are the working fat-man's pant of choice. Overalls don't need to be sized properly, and have that natural baggy look. If you've made the life choice to expand your abdomen (as a man) from your old high school 32 to a portly, well-established 42 then the overall can accomodate you throughout the process. No longer are the days of fat pant shopping needed (much to the relief of these manly men) as two pairs of overalls (one pair for laundry day) will cover your entire oilfield career. But wait, there's more! Overalls can also have your name stitched on them, in place of confining coveralls which are often a challenge for our girthy friends to enter. As such, you can grow into your new pants and not be bothered with people asking your name or what company you may work for.

Overalls: the epitome of the lazy, working-man's clothing.

If you want noise then bring the blog post

Oh yeah, another blog post for September. Why? Easy, I found out people actually read this.

I received several questions about how I keep this blog so fresh, creative, and edgy (I asked myself this multiple times, validating the previous statement). I let my job take care of that, as it stretches the boundaries of what my sleep depraved mind finds funny. I then multiply that by whatever weird song/pop-culture reference is in my head at the moment and out comes a fresh pile of creativity.

As for current activities, I'm back on the slope after a massive 4.5 days off. During that time I enjoyed watching OU beat Florida State, eating junk food, and participating in the Anchorage Pirate Pub Crawl. The pub crawl is just that, everyone dresses as a pirate and walks around to various pubs. There was some award at the end, but having an excuse to dress up as a pirate and run around hitting things with a plastic sword is rewarding enough.

Work time,

R-train out.

Work, work and work

Some of you have noticed that it has been nearly 3 months since the last update. Sorry about that, aside from an awesome family vacation, I've been working.

So far I've spent 7 of the past 8 weeks on the slope, with one week in town spent traveling or attending client meetings. When times like these occur, blogs must be put to the side for important things (like iPad games).

All is well, will write more soon.

2 updates, 1 week; it's happening.

You're damn right it's another update this week. Can you handle it? I think you can. Life on the slope is going well, we're back to drilling and bringing all you hard working folks some black gold. Many of you are worried about the high price of gas, and to you I say "Welcome to the Alaska Fuel Club". Yep, we had that 4 dollar gas all year (It's five now).

I've learned a great deal this hitch about rig operations not directly related to my job and even about life. The rig ops stuff is boring to everyone but me, so I won't elaborate; the life lessons are awesome.

The primary life lesson I learned are that people are absolutely crazy. Go ahead and disprove me (you're in denial). No matter how sane you thought someone was, nay. I -almost always- enjoy crazy people and their shenanigans, whether the advice is to start as big a fire as you can if you're in a plane crash or make sure or ensure you always wear pants to WalMart.

Anyway, this crazy bachelor is going to run and keep on drilling in the free world. Adios, Amoebas (favorite saying of a geologist up here).

Back to Drilling

Hey there,

Well after a few days of running casing, cementing and testing the previous two items we are back to drilling. Going back to drilling is always hectic thanks to the ample amount of paperwork that is added to the already large workload. Today went extremely well, and I'm glad of it.

Sorry for the short post, need to get back to the work thing.

Stranded on the slope

I never realized one could be stranded on the north slope in summer. I knew it was possible in winter with the high winds and blinding snow storms, but not the summer time. Well, Alaska has figured out yet another way to defeat our struggle to pump black stuff out of the ground by knocking out our bridges.

The Kuparuk river flows through the middle of the oil field, and is frozen 3/4 of the year. However, it has an annual increase in levels due to melting snow from the Brooks Range mountains south of us; as a result, this water and ice flow can knock out our bridges. Last year was mild, thus the bridges were saved. This year, particularly bad and it even washed out the road leading to where the bridges once were...

You may ask if this is a result of global warming, to which I would reply "shut up". This has been going on for 35 years, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Also, BP will continue to build cheap bridges that can be knocked out yearly so the root cause is still there.

I'm somewhat busy now, but I did want to let you know I'm trying to get your gas prices down.

-Russell

May 3rd Update

To the few readers that have stuck by this long, thanks. I apologize for not writing sooner, I've been busy (and frustrated) with work and every time I wrote a post it was either of poor quality (I enforce stringent QC standards here) or bitter.

All of that has passed now, as today is the anniversary of my entrance into this world. Lo, 24 years ago I appeared and changed all your lives into the magnificent things they are now... such eloquence...

For those that didn't know or I didn't see, I was in Houston for all of April training on our higher tier tools. This was a great opportunity to learn some neat theory, see family and enjoy God's country of Texas.

My last few days have been hectic as I have managed to travel back to Alaska, move to a new apartment and get back to the north slope to work in under 72 hours. Not a world record, but damn close.

End of February update!

Oh man, get excited for the greatest end of February update to ever occur in the year 2011.

Alaska is currently in a slow period of drilling activity, atypical for winter months since this is exploration season (why they won't let people drill in the summer when it's a reasonable temperature is beyond me; I think it's a passive aggressive method to prevent drilling in this area). As a result, we have plenty of engineers and have a rotation! My friend and I work opposite of each other for 2 weeks at a time. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. Yes, 2 weeks off.

"Russell, what can you do with a whole two weeks off?", tons of stuff! Sometimes I do stuff with things or even actions with items and/or people!

I tried to learn to snowboard this past 2 weeks, and am still paying through the extensive bruising on my glorious posterior. I decided to stick to skiing when my good friend Scoffey came up from Oklahoma. Naturally, I thrashed that mountain.

Other than that, I played video games and slept a ridiculous amount. I'm glad that the sun is coming back, the whole lack of sunlight wears on one.

However, the 2 weeks eventually ended and now I am back on the slope. All good times must come to an end (William Faulkner had a quote similar to that in 'As I Lay Dying' but I'm too lazy to google it at the moment).

Regards,

R

Back on the rig

Hey readers,

The oilfield booted back up right as I was leaving. We are about to resume drilling this new section of the well.

My time off consisted of eating, sleeping, skiing and skating. Primarily the first three, I only went skating in one of the public parks once.

I took on my first double diamond run this past break, and had moderate success the first time through. However, after a big snow storm, I was not as graceful the second time around. Either way, my skills are progressing and I'm having a great time in the process.

Will write more later.

Prudhoe Bay temporarily shut down

Well, the oilfield is shut down yet again thanks to a recent spill at occurred on the BP side of the Prudhoe Bay Oilfield. We're all just hanging around the rig until we can get trucks to transport old/new drilling mud.

The weather warmed up to 10 degrees, it's amazing up here. Definitely a nice improvement from the weather during my previous post.

140 degree temperature change

From 70 degrees in Texas to -40 F (ambient) and -70 to -80 F wind chill (there is always a breeze).

Definitely missing Texas and its weather right now.

Back to work

My mother informed me of my lack of updates; I had it on my to-do list which you can imagine has not been touched in sometime.

The well on Steelhead ended, and it was a great success. I went back to the slope for a week after this to perform various odd jobs around the shop, and then I had 2 weeks off to visit the family. I got to see most of you guys, and for those that I missed feel free to come up here.

I'm in the airport right now, about to head to the slope again to finish up a well and assist with a new rig we have coming online. Hope you had/have a great holiday season.

-Russell

70 mph winds

70 mph winds = no work getting done right now. The wind is too strong to operate anything in the derrick, so now we play the waiting game.

Oilfield Drilling Basics

As the title implies, this is a list of necessities when drilling:

• Hardhat
• Safety glasses
• Article of FRC (fire retardant clothing) with a nickname or some type of altered name aside from that on your birth certificate (Michael = Mike, Jeroen = jeroen [notice the lowercase], Russell = Russ, Dave = Spud)
• Willie Nelson and/or Hank Williams Sr. playing at all times. Best to not play at the same time as the awesomeness can overwhelm the weak of heart

That's it.

Week 3 update from Steelhead

Hey there readers,

We have hit some tougher formations recently, so things have slowed down allowing me to catch up on the important things in life (fantasy football, personal email, this blog, etc...).

I'm proud to say that everyone involved with this project is performing admirably and we have yet to have an injury on board. Now that I'm done with that recognition, I'll get to the more interesting parts of life out here.

The oilfield is interesting not because of the work that we do (which is, don't get me wrong), but because of the people that occupy various positions. Some are drag racers that know the local judges so well that they (the judges) call the crew member by their nicknames, others are paranoid about martial law being imposed in Alaska and buy property based on its defend-ability.

Anyways, I need to get back to the grind.

Ahoy there

Ahoy readers,

Today marks my first week on the illustrious Steelhead Platform in the Cook Inlet of Alaska. We are currently drilling ahead, and things have gone relatively smooth thus far (knock on wood and what not). Drilling out here is challenging primarily due to the logistics of everything, but it's still fun.

This client is running tools that I have not had the opportunity to run regularly or ever, making this a challenging well and one to hone my skills on some new tools.

Life on an offshore platform is like going to summer camp, but you get paid and you drill/process hydrocarbons instead. This particular platform burned down after taking a gas bubble in 1987, so it has a more recently redone living quarters than the surrounding platforms. The rooms have 4 beds, each with a privacy curtain (oh boy!). It's similar to living in a fraternity house or college dormitory. The bathrooms are community, but cleaned daily. Overall the housing and food are better than the rigs I stayed on at the slope, aside from having to share a room with multiple people.

I'm going to try to snap a few photos later on. Adios.

Getting ready for the platform

Hey friends,

This post will have to be brief as I'm about to head to a meeting to discuss my upcoming job on the Steelhead offshore platform. The weather in AK is sunny, but hovering in the mid to low 30's. It's nice to see the sun again, but the temperature and weather leaves us in the transitional season of fall waiting for winter and the daily dumps of snow. I just bought some skis that have an alligator eating a bull on the bottom. I know what you're thinking, "Russell, you are EXTREME!". Yes, Yes I am.

I'll write and post pictures from the platform within the next week or so.