Christmas Eve in the ‘Patch’ . . .
Although I’m writing this Christmas Eve, most of you will be reading this Christmas Day, so:
from the Texas Oil Patch.
Some gates and sites shut down for Christmas, while my site didn’t and that’s fine since I’m getting paid to sit here and do nothing. There is no one here and nothing going on. I’ve had two people in and out all evening, one topping off the diesel in the light towers and the other one double-checking some pressure readings.
But last night was an entirely different story. The shift started out OK but quickly went in the toilet.
It started with both AT&T and Verizon having cell service/data service problems in this area. I was having trouble getting online with my Verizon AirCard and my phone was showing only 1X. In fact I wasn’t able to upload last night’s blog until I got back to the rig about 5:30 this morning.
AT&T is what the iPad’s use for the program we log vehicles in and out, but it’s only used occasionally when we upload the data collected to the central server. Well, no problem since we weren’t suppose to be very busy anyway – only 10 vehicles or so all night.
But that was before some guy in a office somewhere decided that it might be a good idea to bring in all the equipment needed for the upcoming job here – Coil Tubing, Wireline, Fluid Tanks, Generators, Pumps, Fuel Tanks, etc., tonight!
Now normally we get a heads-up from the Company Man that we’ve got a lot of equipment coming in, but not this time. The only notice I got is looking out the window at a long line of headlights coming down the road.
Lots and lots of headlights. So grabbing the iPad, outside I go.
Now the company likes us to upload the vehicle data fairly often if we’re busy so we don’t lose anything if there’s a problem. So about 7pm I did just that when I had a short lull in traffic.
Big mistake. Big, big mistake.
Something about the flakey AT&T data signal locked up the iPad and froze the screen. But finally I got the iPad rebooted and figured I was in the clear. But No, it couldn’t be that easy. Now whenever I tried to start up the logging problem, all I got was an error message.
Rut Roh!
And now I’ve got more lights coming down the road. Well, no real problem. I’ll just go back to doing it the old-fashioned way, with paper logs. After all, that’s the way Jan and I have been doing it for the last 5 years.
But . . .
(You just knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you.)
there were no log sheets in the shack at all, not a single one. In fact there was not any paper either, just a few already-filled out maintenance forms.
And now I’ve got trucks waiting on me. Finally I see a stack of folded napkins, the kind you find in restaurant dispensers, sitting on the window ledge. So grabbing a handful, back outside I go. It’s not really easy writing on the textured surface of the napkins, but it’s getting the job done.
But . . .
(Yes, another one)
then it started to sprinkle. Not hard, just enough to wet the napkins so the ink starts wicking through the paper smearing everything. Crap!
Finally I was starting to run out of napkins, and so back inside for a few minutes, I saw a stack of SiteWatch Post-It’s that had fallen behind the console. So now I’m getting 3 vehicles to a Post-It and trying to keep track of all these little pieces of paper.
Then a Circle8 guy sees what I’m doing and hands me a company note pad.
Much better. Then about 2:30am it all wound down to a stop. I then went back and started transferring the napkin and Post-It scribbles to note pad pages.
Counting up, by the time I was done, I had logged 136 vehicles in the 8 hours between 6:30pm and 2:30am. That’s about 1 every 3 or 4 minutes on average. But I would get maybe 10 vehicles in a row and then have a 5 or 10 minute break before more started coming in.
Glad that’s over. When I got back to the rig this morning, I packed away in the truck a couple of legal pads and a pad of Gate Guard Services login forms.
Just in case.
Tomorrow Jan and I will have our Turkey & Dressing Christmas Dinner from Barth’s before I come back on this gate for the last day.
And now it looks like I got another gate STARTING Monday. This is the first time I haven’t just been given 3 or 4 specific days. So I’m hoping that the STARTING means it’s something long term.
We’ll see.
Thought for the Day:
”Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.”
dfadsf
