Monthly Archives: October 2014
Sometimes you shake the Jello,
And sometimes the Jello shakes you.
As of 6pm this afternoon we are off the gate and parked in the Gate Guard Services yard near Buffalo, TX.
Chelsie, our Gate Guard Services sales rep, showed about noon today with some new clothes for us. We had been expecting her to show up with our new GGS shirts that we would be wearing along with the new work pants we recently brought. But what we got was something completely different.
As it turns out, MD America, the oil company we were working for, has decided that all workers must wear the complete FRC outfit, including coveralls, steel-toed boots, and hard hats.
Including us.
And not just us, who work right across the road from the rig, but the gate guards up the road from us, almost a mile away, also have to wear the outfit.
So at about 1:30pm I called Jamie and told him this wouldn’t work for us. He said he understood, and there was a couple here at the yard that would take over for us. So Jan and I started tearing down, And about 4:30, after briefing the new guards, Jan and I headed out for Buffalo, TX, about 55 miles away. By 6pm we were parked, hooked up, and settled in.
After the busy afternoon, we were too tired to go anywhere for dinner, so we had one of Frack Food meals, Chicken and Beef Fajitas. Very good, especially considering there’s no more where that came from.
Tomorrow we’ll probably do our shopping trip that we had planned for this Saturday, just a few days early. It’s about the same distance to Waco or Bryan/College Station, so I imagine we’ll go back to B/CS since we kind of know the place.
But that remains to be seen.
You know, Jello, and all that.
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Thought for the Day:
“I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger, then it hit me.”
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The Operation Was a Success,
but the Patient’s Still Dead.
Today’s vehicle count was in the mid-180’s, almost identical to the previous two. But that will probably change in the next couple of days as our last remaining frack job is supposed to finish up.
And we’ve been told that we’ve got another couple of weeks to go with our drill rig here before they started fracking it immediately afterwards. Hopefully it will all work out where we can stay here until we head back to Houston toward the end of November. But you never know.
The operation mentioned above was on Jan’s Kindle Paperwhite. Last night she was starting up a Mahjong game she plays when the screen froze and it locked up. So she put it aside until I could look at it.
Now normally, when the Paperwhite locks up, you hold down the power button for 30 seconds and then it will reboot. But not this time. It stayed stuck on the Mahjong startup screen. A little Googling to me to try holding down the power button for 60 seconds, release it, and then press it again. Well this didn’t work either.
At this point I was supposed to call Amazon Tech Support, and since Jan’s Paperwhite was six weeks out of warranty, they would sell me a refurbished one at a slight ($10) discount off a new one. Bummer!
But another post mentioned taking the Kindle apart and removing the battery for a while, before putting it all back together. Several people said this worked for them. So never able to resist tearing into a piece of hardware, I had at it.
Disassembly instructions are on the Internet and it’s really pretty easy. First you insert a small screwdriver (I used one for eyeglasses) in the corner of the front bezel and carefully pry it up enough to get a spudger inserted. A spudger is a small flat piece of plastic or wood similar to a popsicle stick but thinner.
In this photo, the screwdriver is at the top and the white plastic spudger is at the bottom.
Then you run the spudger around the edge of the bezel, breaking the glue seal that holds it on. This is very similar to how you break the bead between a tire and the wheel when change a car tire. After carefully peeling off the bezel you have this
Next up, you remove the 11 screws holding the mainboard in the case. Again, I used a Phillips eyeglass screwdriver. After gently prying out the board, you are here.
When you turn the board over, you find the big blue battery held in by another 3 screws.
Removing those screws gets you here.
I left the battery out for about 30 minutes, and then put it all back together in the reverse order.
But when I tried the reset procedure again, it was still frozen with the Mahjong startup screen. Bummer again!
Well, I’ve still got several more things to try before I give up. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Thought for the Day:
From all the news reports it seems like one of the primary symptoms of Ebola is an irresistible urge to travel.
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