Sleepless in Midland

National Volunteer Week

This is National Volunteer Week to honor all those people who donate their time to help advance some worthwhile effort. Hats off to everyone who pulls together to get something done. The bystanders' response at the recent Boston bombings gives us a good example of what can be done. And those people deserve all the accolades they get.

President Obama has gotten in on the act by issuing a Proclamation declaring April 21 through April 27, 2013, as National Volunteer Week. His edict:

I call upon all Americans to observe this week by volunteering in service projects across our country and pledging to make service a part of their daily lives.

Workers of the world unite! And work for free!

With high levels of unemployment that's one way to get people back to work.

Revenge of the introverts

We've all seen the extrovert take control, delegate duties, then either take all the credit for successes or try to blame someone else for the failures. Well, finally someone has stepped up for the introverts.

It's a study by a couple of profs, Corinne Bendersky of UCLA and Neha Parikh Shah of Rutgers. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

... we challenge the persistence of extraverts' advantage and neurotics' disadvantage in task group status hierarchies. In a field and an experimental study, we find that extraversion is associated with status losses and disappointing expectations for contributions to group tasks and neuroticism is associated with status gains due to surpassing expectations for group-task contributions. Whereas personality may inform status expectations through perceptions of competence when groups first form, as group members work together interdependently over time, actual contributions to the group's task are an important basis for reallocating status.

Download the full paper here.

Susan Adams gives us an easy-to-read summary at Forbes.com: Leadership Tip: Hire the Quiet Neurotic, Not the Impressive Extrovert.

It turns out that extroverts contribute less than team members expect and the contributions they do make are not valued highly over time. Neurotics, by contrast, are motivated to work hard on behalf of their teams, who wind up appreciating their efforts, in part because they exceed everyone’s expectations. In the end, extroverts decline in the teams’ esteem while neurotics rise in status. ...

The lesson of the study: Bendersky says team leaders should be wary of extroverts. “The core of an extroverted personality is to be attention-seeking,” she observes. “It turns out they just keep talking, they don’t listen very well and they’re not very receptive to other people’s input. They don’t contribute as much as people think they will.” If she were putting together a team, says Bendersky, “I would staff it with more neurotics and fewer extroverts than my initial instinct would lead me to do.”

The extrovert gets the girl, and the introvert gets the job done.

[Is it "extravert" or "extrovert?" Robo-ed. Either one. Sleepless.]

Prostitution -- those who can't do, teach

Hard times in Spain. From DailyMail.co.uk: Spanish company offers professional courses in prostitution which 'guarantees' jobs for graduates:

For just €100, students will be taught the history of the world's oldest profession, how to use erotic toys and the most popular positions contained within the Kama Sutra.

What they learn in the series of theory and practical classes will enable them to 'earn a lot of money, very easily and quickly', according to the ABC newspaper.

Note this:

It will also ensure budding sex-workers will not fall foul of the law, with in depth descriptions of the industry's laws and how to work around them.

Emphasis added. As for the job guarantee:

And, once they graduate, they receive their first job offer - to become a teacher in the 'school' where they can help in practical classes.

Practical classes? Maybe that's the law work-around.

National Tradesman Day -- 9/21/12

Today is National Tradesman Day.  And here's a tool company tribute to help get it going.

I've scheduled a Roto-Rooter visit, but you can celebrate in your own way.

Entrepreneurial spirit still lives -- teen builds mobile shower for ND oil field workers

The spark: "The recent high school graduate [Evan Jensen] got a whiff of himself and his 21-year-old brother, Justin. The two had been sleeping in a pickup while looking for work in the oil fields of western North Dakota. 'We smelled,' he said. 'Bad.' "

The idea: A mobile shower where oil field workers can take a shower and clean up for a small price thus saving them a long drive to a motel or truck stop.

The seed money: He used $15,000 he earned from trapping muskrats over the past two years plus money invested by relatives.

The product: They built a 53-foot semitrailer with a five-stall shower, an office, and laundry facilities. A 6,000-gallon tanker provides fresh water and collects the discharge.

The price: They charge $10 for a shower and $1 for a towel and washcloth. Soap is free.

He built that.

Via Carpe Diem.

Romance not in the air according to Redbox

We're number 2. That's in the "least romantic" city category in this unflattering Redbox news release which ranks our fair city of Midland, Texas, as number 2 with our neighbor Odessa at number 6. The ranking is based on the number of romantic comedies rented from Redbox in 2011.

Actually, I may have helped or hurt our place in that ranking. The last movie I rented at Redbox was "Midnight In Paris" which imdb.com ranked as comedy, fantasy and romance. But that was sucker bait. The movie was mildly amusing but not very funny. It was not very romantic except in a Woody Allen world. But it was a fantasy, so they got one out of three right. Therefore, it's hard to say whether renting that movie helped or hurt in the ranking.

But here's the problem. Check out the personals in the local Craigslist.org. One lone woman in women seeking men, and she's seeking a guy who can take her away from all of this. But hundreds of men seeking women. Isn't that the way it always is? Those lonely guys are probably hard at work in the energy industry and aren't going to waste their time off watching silly romance movies. "Hey fellows, since we can't get dates, let's go over to my house, cook up some quiche, watch a Sandra Bullock movie, and have a good cry."

No, those guys are making money during the week, partying hard on the weekend, and socking away that dough for the future. Hey ladies, Mr. Right is out there somewhere. Maybe you're looking for love in all the wrong places. And Redbox, how about a category for "most industrious," eh?

Women of WWII

They weren't all riveters, either. Some were out there shooting. Izismile.com has 42 photos on display.

Some were on the wrong side, however. Should we hold that against them at this late date?

I love the smell of hot asphalt in the morning

It smells like .... Progress!

And tax money going where it should.

Shift ends, train engineer walks away, train blocks traffic

An easy explanation for why some politicians are so fascinated with the prospect of high speed trains zipping up, down and across America is that boys like to play with trains. It's a dream for some, a nightmare for others. Fortunately, in this day and time, the smart politicians are looking at the cost of things and trying to trim, not spend.

But never mind. What we are talking about today is the incident on Friday, July 1, in Houston, Texas, in which a Union Pacific crew reached the end of their shift at 4:30am and shut down the train. Just so happened the train was pulling a hundred cars which blocked traffic on both sides of the track until noon that day. Commuters that morning were probably wishing for any speed -- slow, medium, high, didn't matter. See MyFoxHouston.com and HoustonPress.com.

Sounds like some passive aggression going on. But with jobs as hard to find as they are, those employees took a big chance, unless however, they were union jobs in which case it's a safe bet that the union delegate will be defending the crew to the fullest.

Elephant Kill

It's a good video, except that half the action occurs in total darkness. GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons:

Each year I go to Zimbabwe and hunt problem elephant. It's one of the most beneficial and rewarding things I do. This video shows a typical day of this year's trip. I just returned home today March 14, 2011.

Apparently, a "problem elephant" is one that tramples the crops of the subsistence farmers of Lobola, Zimbabwe, thereby amplifying the food scarcity brought on by disastrous government policies.

Parsons and his team wait in the dark until they hear the elephants. The team moves toward the elephants, and when the elephants hear them two of the elephants "turn to move in on them," according to the text. The hunters shoot twice, and an elephant goes down. That all happens in the dark, so we have to take their word for it.

Then at about 2/3 through the 3 minute video it's the next day, and we see the hungry villagers mob around the dead elephant and slice up the carcass for food. "As more and more villagers arrive hoping to get something to eat. Some walk as far as 20 miles." And many went away hungry.

All in all, it looks like Mr. Parsons performed a good deed. But as you might expect, he gets criticism from the usual suspects who, it seems, value animals over humans.

The rest of us might complain about the poor visibility in the night time portion of the video. Maybe next year Mr. Parsons will take along a night vision lens for the camera.

Link to video.

The Great American Cleanup

The Keep Midland Beautiful Great American Cleanup / Don't Mess With Texas spring cleanup took place this morning, and the fine city of Midland, Texas, is surely cleaner for it.

Most people learned early on to pick up after themselves. And most find it a little distasteful to have to pick up after other people. If this sounds familiar, it's been said on these pages previously and by others long before. The tragedy of the commons has been with us a long time.

Furthermore, one person's trash usually isn't another person's treasure, especially if the trash consists of cigarette butts and empty beer containers.

Those cigarette filters may eventually degenerate to the point that they become inconspicuous, but first the paper wrapping has to deteriorate, then the individual fibers have to separate from filter at which time they are so thin as to be practically invisible. Until that time, it's just a tossed butt. And there is never just one butt -- they seem to attract others. It's almost as if smokers have been so beleaguered by society that they are acting out in the one distasteful way they can still usually get away with, flicking the butt.

Then there are the beer bottles, or in many cases, shards of broken beer bottle glass. Beer buyers probably don't think about what they are going to with the empties before they buy the beer, and expecting beer drinkers to plan ahead when buying bottles or cans might be too much to ask. The concept of crashing an empty bottle onto a sidewalk or against the street curb is probably something that comes spontaneously. But if they did actually plan ahead, the people who clean up after them might think of them as a little more human and a little less porcine.

Anyway, enough ranting. The KMB project always ends with free hot dogs, chips, soft drinks and cookies at Hogan Park. And today was no exception. However, in the past, the chef's special was always blackened hot dogs -- dogs with a burned crust. Some might have thought it was a result of sloppy grillmanship, but those of us from the "glass is half full" school saw it as a feature of the chef's delicate touch.

So today it might have been a challenge for the food servers to hand out dogs that were grilled a toasty brown but not charred black. However, the dogs were quite good. In fact, some might even prefer those over the burned ones. As Adam Richman of Man v. Food says, "Once you go blackened, you'll never go backened." But maybe you can. Maybe you can.

Sunday's Wildfire

You probably read about it, heard about it, or saw it on TV. The wind was blowing away from town, so people in the city may not have smelled the smoke. It was a huge wildfire between Midland and Odessa which produced hazardous driving conditions on I-20 resulting in a multiple vehicle pileup in which a child died. Get the details at 5-year-old dies in crash caused by grassfire confusion and Several fires erupt because of dry, windy conditions at MyWestTexas.com.

Meanwhile, here are some photos taken a couple of miles East of the crash.

Fence posts burn from the bottom up leaving an oddly inverted stump.  The dog in the upper left was scared but unscathed.

Batter up

As seen Monday morning at a local ball park.

A different take on the expression "In the batter's cage."

Actually it was a fellow working on the light fixtures. The crane lifted him in the cage up to the point needing work.

Oldest profession meets newest profession

It had to happen. People in the prostitution business have to stay on their toes, in the business sense. So in retrospect it seems inevitable that prostitutes would hook up with the social networks to make new friends.

According to an article at AllFacebook.com, of the prostitutes interviewed, 83% have faceboook pages while only 61% previously used Craigslist for advertising their services.

Old meets new -- synergy in the sex trade.

AllFacebook.com draws the info from an article by Sudhir Venkatesh at Wired.com. And about all he says to back up his data is this:

I followed 290 women, 170 of whom made enough (at least $30,000) to separate them from streetwalkers. I spent at least 12 months earning their trust, trying not to ask a lot of prying questions. Once they realized I wasn’t a cop or social worker, they usually told me their stories. I focused on financial questions first, because it made them feel validated as workers. How much did you earn this week? What expenses did you have? Do you save any money?

So his survey wasn't scientific by any means, just a series of interviews. Mr. Venkatesh writes about the underground economy and has relayed astonishing stories in the past, one of which pertains to an alleged ammo seller in Chicago and which was the subject of a This American Life episode some years back. That one was so unbelievable that I wrote a blog item about it but never posted it. Since Mr. Venkatesh is in the periodicals again I might search the word processor archives for it and post it later.

Meanwhile, here's my gripe of the day --
Why do they have to call prostitutes' customers "Johns?" Eliot Spitzer, Al Gore and Charlie Sheen have probably done more to put hookers in the news than any Johns. So let's update the vernacular along with the network and give the customers another moniker. Change the name to protect the innocent, if you will.

Finally, please note the absence of puns involving hard drives in this post. You're welcome.

HospiceMidland and Pet Peace of Mind -- making a video

Remember Pet Peace of Mind? It's a program that was created by Rev. Delana Taylor McNac a few years ago to help hospice patients with their pets. A pet loves its owner even when the owner is sick. But the patient may be too sick to provide the care a pet needs, and the pet suffers, too. And HospiceMidland, the only non-profit hospice in Midland, Texas, was the first hospice in Texas to adopt the Pet Peace of Mind program.

See What if you die before your pet, part 2 on these pages from March of last year about the program at the introductory phase in Midland.

HospiceMidland volunteers have placed several pets in new homes under this program, and each one is a two handkerchief story. Word gets around, and UMTV.org commissioned Jess Warnock to make a web video documentary featuring some of the hospice stories.

Watching a professional work

Jess Warnock is a professional videographer working out of Toledo, Ohio. Check out this video he did titled The Noah Project about a program helping the homeless in Detroit. First class in every regard.

So I was watching him work this past weekend on a video featuring some of the pets that got new homes through the HospiceMidland program. And it was a privilege being around such a smart professional who is so good at his job. He made it look so easy to make a high quality video, but he had the education, experience and equipment to make routine work out of a difficult project.

He could size up a situation immediately and determine where the best spot was for manipulating the light and what furniture would best suit the subject of the video. Working with animals is a challenge, but so is working with humans.

His videos aren't about him, and he prefers to let the subjects do all the talking. He might tell them what he would like them to talk about, and he might ask them a leading question. But they are the focus of the piece, and their words will end up on the finished video. From a spectator's point of view it's kind of funny to hear him ask a question and then hear the subject start out with something like, "Probably" or "Yes, " when the ideal answer would have been a straight narrative statement.

But he got some good stuff. And many people will be watching for the finished product to appear in about a month at UMTV.org.

Blogger's note. Have you ever been around a smart professional and thought how ignorant you must look in comparison? Then did you do something that removed all doubt? Well, I did. I took still shots of the video shooting process, staring outdoors, moving indoors, then going back outdoors.  I adjusted the camera white balance to get a better indoor shots. But once outside again I forgot to readjust the white balance. The next dozen or so photos came out bluer than the deep blue sea. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Long weekend? Think again.

Many workers will get a long break if they get off work on Thanksgiving and don't have to go back to work until the following Monday.

But researchers say workers don't really start to unwind until around noon on the first day of a weekend. Normally that would be Saturday, but this weekend it will be Thursday. So just about the time the family sits down to a big Thanksgiving dinner the workers in the family will have been able put the corporate grind behind them and eat in peace.

But they start worrying about work again on Sunday afternoon cutting another half day out of the weekend.  What should have been a four day weekend became a three day weekend.

So make a detailed list on Wednesday afternoon of what needs to be done on Monday, and leave the job at the office until then.

And have a happy Thanksgiving!

Construction on steroids -- Hotel in China built in 6 days

It is probably more accurate to say it was "erected" rather than "built" in that short time span. It's a prefab hotel 15 stories tall, and once the pre-assymbled parts were on the scene it didn't take long to put it together.

Watch a time lapse video here. It's probably propaganda, but it's still impressive.

Here's Yahoo News about it. "Honey, I don't remember a hotel there, do you?"

Oil spill on the road way

It happened early on Saturday morning. The driver of a Permian Crude Transport truck took a sharp left turn and tipped the truck and trailer over onto its side, spilling part of the oily load. The unofficial version at the scene was that the driver was unhurt. The truck was carrying less than a full load, and what didn't spill was off loaded into another truck. The Midland Fire Department haz-mat team attacked it right away with some disposable drain dams and a foam fire retardant. Later a load of dirt was spread over the spill for absorption, and the firefighters got a chance to relax their vigilance.

The accident occurred at the intersection of Highway 349 and the Loop 250 service road on the north end of Midland, Texas. That left turn was probably a little misleading to the driver. It's not a typical 90° turn, it's more like 67°. So it's a very sharp left turn. Take it too fast in a high profile vehicle and over it goes. See an overhead shot at this Google map of the intersection. Traffic was blocked for hours.

Two tow trucks from Neal Pool Rekers arrived, and it was like watching a commercial free episode of Wrecked. No kidding, it was quite a show -- a link to photos is below.

They hooked onto the trailer, lifted the tank and threw a strap around it. They hooked chains to anchor points on the cab and the trailer so with the chains and straps they had four points of contact. Then, oh so slowly, the tow truck engines revved, the cables tightened, and the truck and trailer crept into upright position. It was a very impressive display of skilled workmanship. You should have seen it.

It was an expensive morning for Permian. According to some of the Permian employees on the scene, the cab was probably totaled, and one like it would cost about 20 grand. And the tow company would probably charge a couple of thousand. The city could make a claim for reimbursement as well, but that is not known at this time.

You can see an exiting series of 18 photos at the newly created Sleepless in Midland Flickr site.

Aside: It was a hard day, yesterday. Watching people work is exhausting. But a blogger's work is never done. TV and newspaper photographers? That's a different story. They have it easy. Sleep late, show up at the scene, hang around a few minutes, take a few pictures then head for the bank to deposit a paycheck. Now that must be the good life.

The intersection is open!

Today was the big grand opening of the intersection of Garfield St. and Golf Course Rd. in Midland, Texas. If you recall, the pipes under the street that carried rain runoff had rusted after having done their jobs for 35 years, and a cavern grew under the intersection. A small hole in the street was discovered, and that exposed the problem. The intersection was barricaded, and a month long street project began with a coordinated effort involving the city of Midland, Key Enterprises, Inc., and James Hindman, Inc.

And a major effort was made today to try to get the intersection open by 4:00 pm. Asphalt was laid, but the temperature was too cold for some of it to cure properly. So steel plates were laid on a problem area, and one lane remains closed.

I would have liked a ribbon cutting, but it was more like a synchronized movement of city vehicles to unblock the streets when the intersection finally opened.

Ever wonder how those white arrows and lane markings get stuck to the street? They come in pre-cut sections, and they are melted onto the street with torches reaching temperatures of 450 degrees.  Here are some photos.

The first car to travel through the intersection legally in almost a month came through at about 5:40 pm today. You can see it in the last photo -- a silver Camaro.

Road Repair -- snow day shut down

The road repair work at Garfield and Golf Course Rd., Midland, Texas, came to a standstill the other day when the rains first came. And the Friday morning snow didn't exactly light any fires.

Pop-ups.  Left click on the thumbnails to get a larger pop-up.

 

So the whole operation has been delayed. The good news for anyone hoping to use the intersection sometime soon is that, aside from laying a new surface, the work in the intersection itself appears to be getting close to an end. Work may continue West of the intersection, however.

A Prius in the Pit

Dig a hole, and someone will fall in.

It started a couple of weeks ago when a cavity was discovered under the intersection of Garfield and Golf Course Road in Midland, Texas. Work crews have dug up and replaced much of the bad water drainage pipe. But the work is not yet finished, and currently there's a deep ditch in the intersection.

Ditch Diving -- In the predawn hours this morning a woman drove a Prius past the "Road Closed" signs, plowing through the fence into the ditch.

Try to visualize this in slow motion. The vehicle enters the hole with the right wheels still on the street. The left wheels go into the hole tilting the car to the left. The car starts to roll, and while the vehicle is almost sideways, the left front strikes a conduit in the hole. That stops the front of the car, and the rear comes over the top. The car rights itself and settles at the bottom of the ditch, upright, facing the opposite direction from which it came.

Sunk in the Sink Hole -- The driver called in the accident report herself, and she was said to have incurred minor injuries. As you can see from one of the photos, the airbag had been deployed.

Pop-up thumbnails.  Left click on a thumbnail for a larger version.

 

Police officers speculated that alcohol may have been involved.

A welder's sparking rod - Plus a manhole exposed!

No, it's not gay porn. It's a water drainage pipe repair.

Left click on a thumbnail for a larger pop-up.

There's something mesmerizing about welding. The sparks, the bright glow, the smoke -- it's a cross between 4th of July fireworks and Christmas lights. Throw in Labor Day, and it's a holiday triple treat.

Then there's the manhole. We've all seen manhole covers in sidewalks and streets. But did you ever wonder what the rest of it looks like? Well, there it is in fiberglass splendor.  A manhole xxxposed!

I didn't know what it was and had to ask. All of this is taking place at a road repair project at the intersection of Garfield and Golf Course Rd. in Midland, Texas.

I'm becoming a such a nuisance around that work site that I was told I need a hard hat, a reflective vest and safety glasses. In other words, gear up or get lost.

Road Repair -- work day two

It's the formerly busy intersection of Garfield Street and Golf Course Road in Midland, Texas, currently closed to traffic. City Engineer Rene Franks was kind enough to explain what happened in terms elementary enough that even I could understand.

There's good news, and there's bad news. First, the good news. The old pipe will be dug up in the intersection and replaced with new plastic pipe with a 50 year life expectancy. And the bad news? The intersection will probably be closed until after Thanksgiving. OK, we got that out of the way.

Ms. Franks provided a little history. There are some natural low spots in the area that have always accumulated rain water --maybe they were buffalo wallows. The city made these temporary reservoirs into parks, and drainage pipes were put under the streets so that the water could be pumped out of the parks.

But these 35 year old pipes developed problems in two ways.

The drainage pipes were coated with zinc which should prevent corrosion. However, a rock might enter the system and bounce along the bottom, nicking the zinc all along the way. Once the zinc was nicked, corrosion could occur. First a pin hole would develop, and the pressure of the draining water would create a jet of water which would eat away at the surrounding soil. The hole gets bigger, and water creates a cavern.

The other way, and the one which caused the most damage in this intersection, was a size mismatch in the drainage pipes. There's a water line crossing the spot where the drainage pipe was supposed to have been. And the original installers attempted to solve this problem by using a smaller diameter drain pipe in that spot to avoid having to move the water pipe. The smaller drain pipe was connected to the bigger drain pipe with an adapter. Eventually the adapter gave way, and a major soil erosion problem developed under the street producing a big cavern. But amazingly, a layer of caliche above the leak became so compacted that it formed a hard ceiling which prevented the street from collapsing into the cavern.

Ultimately, a small hole appeared at the surface, and that started this whole ball rolling.

P.S. The same thing happened a year ago at an intersection a mile West of this one. And there are drain pipe connections with the same type adapter all over the city.

Road Repair Day One -- a surgeon's touch with heavy equipment

It's the intersection of Garfield and Golf Course Road, Midland, Texas. Saturday afternoon a hole was discovered under the street, and it was determined that a water drainage pipe had ruptured. The spillage eroded the ground creating a cavern under the street.

Sunday was a day of rest, and repairs began today, Monday, as a crew used heavy equipment to dig up portions of the street. As you can see from the photos, standing water in the drain pipe must have rusted out the bottom.

The photos are pop-ups.  Left click on a thumbnail and a pop-up should appear in the current window or tab.

The CAT 416E operator looked like a surgeon performing a delicate operation as he carefully moved that heavy shovel in and around the gas pipe.  The only question now is how much of the drainage pipe to uncover, remove, and replace with more durable plastic.

Sorry commuters, it will still be a while before the intersection opens again.

Previously: Attention Midland Commuters -- a big hole where the street was.

Attention Midland commuters -- a big hole where the street was

Anyone who regularly passes through the intersection of Garfield St. and Golf Course Rd. in Midland, Texas, will need to plan for a traffic interruption the next few days.

One wonders how long it took to develop, but yesterday afternoon the surface finally broke. A driver saw a hole in the street and alerted firefighters at a nearby station. They took one look and called in the troops.

All photos are pop-up.  Left click on a thumbnail and a pop-up should appear in the current window or tab.

The Street Department blocked nearby intersections and widened the hole for a better look.

 

It seems that a waste water line sprang a leak, and the escaping water washed out a significant amount of soil under the street. The result: a big bad hole. What a mess.

I'm tired.  Watching people work is such an exhausting endeavor.

Updated: See Road Repair Day One -- a surgeon's touch with heavy equipment.