Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Internship Update

So, I had no idea that having so much free time would make it so hard to blog! Part of the problem is working 24 hour shifts with 24 hours off in between is pretty exhausting; it also doesn't help to have such inconsistent internet access here. I'm still in McAlester, Oklahoma, still training, but in about a week or so I should be "breaking out" as they say, done with training. I was getting really worried that the guys training me were lazy and had really no idea what they were doing despite being hyped as awesome well loggers by the guys in the office, and I've recently found out that I'm exactly right.

One of the guys I was working with left for a vacation, after arranging for me to cover his shifts for the rest of this well. The first day I was supposed to work on my own, another guy, Pat, shows up unannounced saying that the office had sent him to finish training me and help cover the shifts. I was kind of annoyed at first, since I hadn't been kept informed, and since I was looking forward to just working on my own, but it's basically the best thing that's happened so far. I'd had a lot of questions about things I didn't understand regarding well logging, and no helpful answers. Also, the other guy I was training under expected me to know things about logging I that seemed way over my head, until I started suspecting he didn't know what he was talking about.

As it turns out, he and I were making a fairly useless well log, and within one day working with Pat all my confusion has been straightened out, the log finally makes sense, and I finally feel like I've learned something and can handle this job. Even better, at the next well they're sending me to (for British Petroleum), I'll be working opposite shifts with Pat, which makes me feel much less nervous about being solely responsible for the data I collect knowing I've got a good senior logger to set me straight.

There's still a lot of downtime, though, and now that I've gotten into the routine I can get to some non-leisure reading I'm supposed to do for one of my geology professors, which requires more concentration than the light reading I've been doing (I've gone through books seven and eight of the Wheel of Time series since coming out here). Also, I've been rewatching The Office from the beginning, and also watched several new movies. If I feel like it I'll post my thoughts on them (in detail for some) in future posts. For now, super brief reviews:

Iron Man: Awesome! I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, and it is a must-see.

Evan Almighty: Didn't want to watch it until Orson Scott Card said it was worth seeing despite Bruce Almighty. It was surprisingly good, and thought-provoking.

The Pursuit of Happyness: Another must-see. Will Smith is amazing, and so is Jaden.

City of Ember: Very good family movie. Not perfect, but highly recommendable.

The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Don't waste your time. To sum it up: Yetis. And the Chinese chick can talk to them.

I've also been getting sick of fast food, so I bought a burner and a pot and some utensils, and I made soup. It's one of Kate's and my favorite recipes, called Spaghetti Soup, and it's fairly inexpensive and extremely easy to make and makes awesome leftovers, which is why I made it. You may have noticed I put a little spot with links to posts where I include recipes, and there's only my salsa recipe there so far. I mean to expand that section to include many different good recipes that Kate and I like, and I'll post Spaghetti Soup there soon.

I've also been looking for more photo opportunities. There are apparently some good scenic drives within an hour of here, and if I can manage it I might take my camera to some new places, especially since my photos have been getting positive responses on this blog. We had a big thunder storm here tonight (the first I've seen in forever!), so I tried to get a good lightning shot, but no luck. I guess I need to practice and experiment, but a good lightning photo is one of my big goals. I also might try to take some photos on the drilling rig itself, since this one is particularly dirty and has to be seen to be believed if you've never worked oil before. A drilling rig like the one I work at was featured once on Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel. I did get a cool shot of the rig the other day as the sun poked through the clouds, and I'll use it to close this incoherent post:

No comments: