Cue Maniacal Laughter from back stage
Somebody out there is having an excellent time and doesn’t even know it yet.
Greg got a nifty puzzle contraption for Christmas which has been sitting out on the coffee table since he got back. If you could combine one of those giant expanding/collapsing geodesic spheres you see all the time (but can never ignore – they just look too cool) in science museums with a seagull, this puzzle and that Frankenstein monstrosity would move in exactly the same way. And if it were a very colorful seagull, it would look about right too.
Anyway, I was spending a good chunk of time poking at it this evening (the puzzle, not the above affront to God’s creation). I was getting annoyed; the puzzle just wouldn’t line up in the way I expected (or should I say “wanted”). I could not figure out what I was doing incorrectly. As it happens, some evil sadist out there (and it was probably one of you) took advantage of a slight breach of the puzzle’s structural integrity to either swap two pieces or flip one. So whomever you were, congratulate yourself; you got me.
Fourty-five minutes of my life gone, and I want them back.
Moral of the story: parity checks are good.
*snicker*
Gotcha!
Moral of the story: never trust an oil rigger.
PS: There’s got to be some good slang word for those in your line of work. Chances are you’ve even said it, and I’ve forgotten.
Um.. internally we just refer by job description or company ‘get the Halliburton boys out there’ – whenever I’m talking its just ‘I work for an oil company’ not ‘I’m a…’ because noone knows what I do if I tell them my job title and it takes so bloody long to explain everytime. To those on the platform I’m just “the reservoir engineer”. ‘Reseng’ which isn’t interesting or funny.
All the nicknames go to the guys who actually physically maneuver drillpipe around – roughnecks, roustabouts, toolpushers, drillers etc – See More industry slang.