Pet Peeves
I just bought myself a new computer and reinstalling all of the software is one of those activities that I don’t particularly enjoy but I can live with that. What I find incredibly annoying is that a new computer and freshly downloaded antivirus software (direct from the manufacturers site) required almost 3 GB of updates.
I understand that computer manufacturers simply install a standard system image on all machines of a certain type but why is there nobody who updates their image? I would settle for it being done once every two months to sharply reduce the size of the updates needing to be applied but all of the manufacturers that I have bought from don’t bother to do anything but install the standard image from Microsoft.
The situation with the manufacturers drivers is just as bad. A new laptop needing more than 800 MB of updated drivers a month after manufacture (figured from the warranty dates) is simply inexcusable. I understand that many of the hardware manufacturers put out new drivers quite rapidly but most of the update packages installed had been available over a month prior to the laptop’s manufactured date.
The antivirus vendors also need to apply updates to their downloadable packages. What excuse can there be for having to apply an update twice the size of the original downloaded software package and then, after a restart, another update almost as large as the original installer package?
When I find a company that provides a decent specification and includes all but the most recent software and driver updates I will buy their product.
HSE Alert
Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there.
Dihydrogen monoxide:
- is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
- contributes to the "greenhouse effect" far more than carbon dioxide.
- may cause severe burns.
- contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
- accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
- may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
- has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Health Risks
Dihydrogen monoxide is highly hazardous to extreme diuretics and can aggravate their symptoms!
Dihydrogen monoxide can enter the body through:
- Inhalation
- Ingestion
- Skin Absorption
Inhaling high concentrations of dihydrogen monoxide can cause death in less than two minutes!
Ingestion or absorption of dihydrogen monoxide causes bloating, abdominal distension, frequent urinary activity, coughing, ear aches, epidermal distortions, extreme wrinkling of skin; gagging; coughing; responsible for injury, death, and property damage all over the world.
Reactivity Hazard Data
- Avoid contact with clothes (particularly silk and wool) and prolonged contact with the skin.
- Deposition on floors, carpets, or sidewalks can be hazardous to mobile life-forms and moving machinery.
- Contact with this material, in the liquid phase, will saturate clothing and all nearby objects.
- Dihydrogen monoxide decomposes via electrolysis to forms a potent oxidiser and an explosive gas.
- Contact with dihydrogen monoxide vapors above the boiling point will cause extreme pain.
Keep container tightly closed. This is suitable for any general chemical storage area. Dihydrogen monoxide is considered to be a non-regulated product, but reacts vigorously with some materials. These include sodium, potassium, and other alkali metals, with elemental fluorine, and strong dehydrating agents such as sulfuric acid or calcium oxide. It forms explosive gases with calcium carbide. It is incompatible with strong reducing agents, acid chlorides, phosphorus trichloride, phosphorus pentachloride, and phosphorus oxychloride.
Avoid contact with all materials until investigation shows substance is compatible. Expands significantly, upon freezing. If there is a possibility of freezing, do not store in rigid containers, as there is a possible explosion hazard. Has been known to kill over 200,000 people in less than six hours.
Contamination is reaching epidemic proportions!
Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California.
Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:
- as an industrial solvent and coolant.
- in nuclear power plants.
- in the production of styrofoam.
as a fire retardant. - in many forms of cruel animal research.
- in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
- as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.
Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!
The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.
Obama Scorecard
I read an article saying that while Obama T-Shirts were the most popular item in 2008 he has been pushed out of first place by none other than George W. Bush. Not being Obama’s biggest fan I found several sites selling “Miss me yet?” T-Shirts with GWB pictured like the one shown.
I almost bought one but changed my mind when I saw the item below.
Like they say, a picture paints a thousand words, even if the score on the right is lower than it should be. You can get these at Cafe Press.
I Wonder Why
HSE has become an important part of life in the oil exploration business but I have often wondered why it is that many of the HSE people seem to have things backward. Instead of looking at crews that get through without any HSE incidents the HSE people concern themselves with why accidents happen.
Seismic exploration is often carried out in harsh environments and long hours are put in by some crews on an extended basis. A lot of the activities routinely performed on a seismic crew are intrinsically hazardous but when you have been around the business as long as I have you will have seen crews back in “the bad old days” (before the concentration on HSE) that seemed to sail through without any problems.
Basically a crew getting through a survey without any HSE incidents is not the natural state of things. if you disagree you should take a look at the enormous lists of HSE incidents which occur worldwide to change your mind.
The difference seems to be in the attitude of the individuals rather than any designed safety precautions while a certain amount of sheer dumb luck is also involved in some cases. Any crew that manages to get through several years without any serious HSE issues, however, has more than dumb luck working for it. This is where some of the bright HSE people need to look to see what is going right and putting emphasis on achieving that on other crews.
Focusing on what went wrong after an accident occurs is necessary but only makes us wiser in hindsight. In addition I have seen many incident investigations where the HSE department will come up with a complete laundry list of problems rather than admitting that the accident was obviously caused by some idiot just plain doing something stupid. This sort of shifting blame to a system rather than an individual does not help anybody and often just annoys competent people with extra safety rules and regulations that only an idiot would need.
One example of this is a blanket rule which I have run into on many occasions. On one refinery job that I did everybody had to wear hard hats and safety glasses all the time to ensure that no idiot would be able to forget to use these items when they were actually necessary. I also recall working for an extremely HSE conscious client who insisted that all personnel outside of the accommodation area on a seismic vessel had to wear steel toed boots and a hard hat, even to the weekly crew barbecue on the forecastle deck.
One of the things that I have always said is that if you hire idiots you can’t expect any amount of training to make them safe. One thing that I wholeheartedly agree with is that safety starts with the individuals on the crew but when those individuals don’t measure up to a decent standard you need to question the focus of HSE. Nothing can be idiot proofed because whenever you think you have eliminated every possible hazard some idiot will come up with an ingenious way of hurting themselves.
Now if evolution was just allowed to take its course we might get rid of the stupid people by natural selection but the problem is that idiots don’t always just hurt themselves.
I realize that these sort of statements will offend a lot of the politically correct crowd (how something so wrong-headed can even contain the word “correct” in its name is completely beyond me, the other part of its name shows its origins and politics don’t belong in the work place, unless you are a politician) but it may also change somebody’s attitude and save an injury caused by an idiot.
New sensor supports oil exploration
Sensor Systems claim to have made a the first advancement in almost 50 years in seismic sensors.
The new device, an all-optical, fiber-optic omnidirectional geophone, requires no in-situ electronics, copper conductors, or electrical power. It incorporates a self-contained optical interrogation unit (using an optical time division multiplexing methodology) with integrated laser sources; all of the system electronics reside in the optical interrogator. Receiver electronics demodulate the optical signals from the geophones, translating them into digital electronic signals. A fiber optic telemetry cable provides the data path to and from the individual geophones. A single optical interrogator can address up to 128 individual geophones.
I have worked with marine gravity systems which improved by replacing the old gyros with fiber-optic gyros and this also increased the life of the gyros at the same time so this could easily be a major advance. The graph below shows a marked improvement in signal to noise ratio.
If the results really are as shown in real-world situations it should mean much better data and that is rally something to look forward to.
If anybody has more information on these new sensors please let us know in the comments below.
Small Times – New sensor supports oil exploration
Spending Your Way Out of Trouble
The world’s financial problems came about by having a government push financial institutions into providing home mortgages to people who would not be allowed to hold a credit card in a third world country. These mortgages were invested in by a wide range of outside companies without anything approaching due diligence. These companies include insurance firms and private pension funds who should have known better.
Long after it was obvious that there were looming problems with the so-called “sub-prime” mortgages investors (generally using other peoples money) continued to buy in. When the penny finally dropped there was such enormous exposure from financial institutions that many of them needed to be bailed out with government money. It sort of makes you wonder why these firms paid big salaries to their financial people if they couldn’t see this one coming.
After throwing money around like drunken sailors to “stimulate” the economy the world’s leaders including Obama, Brown, Rudd and many others are still wondering what to do next as they have to keep the money printing presses working full time just to pay for what they have already spent.
Perhaps they should take a look at history, particularly the quote below.
“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced,
the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign
lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.
People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” ~ Cicero – 55 BC
Great Service From Amazon.com
A recent experience with Amazon’s service people has left me smiling. Generally I have rather low expectations for service from online sellers but this was one occasion when the service was genuinely excellent.
I had ordered some books and had them sent to my address in Indonesia using the cheapest method, which has worked okay many times before (though slowly) and the first shipment (out of two) arrived in about the normal time frame of about five to six weeks while the second shipment, which had been shipped the same day but probably from a different location, was nowhere to be found three weeks later than the first shipments arrival.
I notified Amazon about this and they apologized profusely and immediately reshipped all of the books again and also upgraded the shipping method for free. As luck would have it the original shipment arrived a few days later, thus setting a new low standard for Indonesia’s customs and excise people.
When I informed Amazon about the arrival of the original shipment they thanked me for being honest and asked me to ship the newer shipments back to them by the cheapest air method and let them know the cost so that they could reimburse me.
Amazon obviously has no control over delivery of their shipments once they go out the door. Their gracious apology and their wonderful service in reshipping the books was a very nice customer experience. The way that they handled things when the original shipment turned up several weeks later than even the usual long period is nothing short of amazing.
I highly recommend shopping at Amazon for this reason. The helpful attitude does not stop after the product is sold and they have your money, unlike many others.
Global Warming Scam
I think that it is high time that the public started calling the media on the garbage they are spewing about global warming, sea level rises and all of the associated ills which they are making up as they go along. Take a look at the old pictures and quotes below and make up your own mind.
Call me a climate sceptic but when I see a program on CNN saying that Bangladesh is being inundated because of climate change I start to get annoyed at the crap that the media spews. Every report regarding a flood, drought, tornado, heavy rain etc. etc. is blamed on climate change.
This is patently ridiculous and contradicts the media’s own articles. Consider some of the following quotes.
“Bangladesh is already facing consequences of a sea level rise, including salinity and unusual height of tidal water,” said Mizanur Rahman, a research fellow with the London-based International Institute for Environmental Development.
ADVERTISEMENTS for beachfront properties should include warnings that they may end up worthless because of rising sea levels, a planning expert says.
Now compare them with the quotes below.
Venice has also suffered serious flooding for the second time in two weeks, with the waters reaching 1.05m on Thursday morning.
Last week, the “acqua alta” (high water) reached 1.56m, the highest level since 1986, before falling back again.
The USA sweated this year through its hottest summer in 70 years, with temperatures not seen since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, according to a government report.
You will notice that the last one was from 2006, not 2007 as you would predict if you believe what the climate change people would have you believe.
Now don’t you think that this could be classed as evidence that the climate change people are talking through their hats?
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
- Michael Crichton
