One of the girls at work was finally able to identify the mystery pest in my garden as Bird's Nest Fungus. Hooray! It has a name.

Now all I have to do is kill it.

It's not our customers stupidity that bothers me. Everybody has gaps in their knowledge and nobody knows everything. It's their outright arrogance and insistence that they are not completely ignorant.

Does anybody out there know a way to ask "Excuse me. Are you really that stupid?" that won't end with me being fired?

It's been a good weekend. I got to see the Riders play - and win - for the first time since 2007, got a rain barrel set up in my yard to water my plants, and learned that a local diner in town has gotten a liquor license (technically, it's a private club now) - they haven't gotten any alcohol in yet, but I'm predicting that business is going to be quite good once they do, despite a boycott by the local church.

Also, with the heat and humidity my garden has been doing great and I've now got a steady supply of tomatoes. In hindsight, six plants was a little too many for one person.

I need a vacation

Well, I'm back. It was good to see (almost) everybody while I was in Calgary. It's also amazing how two weeks can seem like such a short time. Dad's doing good and is now the proud parent of two bouncing baby kidneys (15 - 20 lb each). Not a bad weight loss plan, though obviously not for everybody.

On the home front, almost everything is doing as well as could be expected in my yard - perhaps too well in some cases. The lemon balm has taken over my herb garden in a way that I didn't think was possible, and I've got at least 20 pounds of tomatoes sitting on the vine waiting to ripen (six plants might have been a little too much for one person). My blueberries have started to ripen, so all in all, it's good. I do have some sort of "thing" (all I know is that it's plantlike) growing in my herb garden that I'm not happy about. It showed up last year, and looks like little single nodules, not unlike a single cell of a wasp's nest except that they carpet the ground. When they open up they release a bunch of tiny, pinhead sized seeds that coat everything around it. I tried burning it all out before I planted this spring, but apparently didn't get it all. Nobody around here can identify it. I might have to try getting a photograph of it if I can get a picture of something that small.

Also, my swallows have hatched. Unfortunately, one is already dead (looked like he either fell from the nest or was pushed out). The others are still alive, but in the 100 degree heat they look like they're having a hard time with it. They just lean their heads over the edge of the nest and pant a lot. I hope they make it.

Not a moment too soon

It's been a good weekend and half week. Last Saturday I availed myself to some of my flex days that the company has given me (as a consolation for the wage rollbacks) and flew out to Washington DC to visit my sister, who is currently working there for about 3 months. It was very relaxing (and in fact, likely saved my liver from a weekend of binge drinking just to forget about work). I did visit DC once, a long time ago when I was still in elementary school, but I don't remember a whole lot of it, so it was fun to revisit a lot of the sites that I barely remembered and visit some sites that I didn't (It was also somewhat painful. I really didn't think that The Mall was that big, and I am fat and lazy.) I also managed to catch a great performance of The Pirates of Penzance at Wolf Trap (the only National Park for the Performing Arts) and have a burger at Ray's Hell Burger (it was good).

Now I'm back home for a week of work and stress and gnashing of teeth before I take off again, this time for two weeks up in Calgary while my dad get's his old kidneys repossessed.

Also, I have house guests. A pair of barn swallows have decided to make a nest in my front porch. They currently have eggs as well. Hopefully they don't make too much of a mess. I rather like having them flit in and out around my yard.

Just like a bad sitcom

I have a new alarm clock. It takes the form of a woodpecker whom, every morning decides that my eaves troughs are a good place to peck at looking for his breakfast. He's also getting there earlier each day. Saturday it was 8:30 a.m. Sunday, 6:45. This morning: 6:00. What really amazes me is how much he sounds exactly like a jackhammer.

More Wildlife!

I might have a problem. What used to be a nice little hobby - plant a herb garden and some trees - has grown into an obsession. In the last few weeks I've entirely rebuilt the front flowerbed, and built two more in the back, filled them with all sorts of flowers (okay, some roses and 3 different types of lilies, but still), planted blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries, and replaced all the trees that died due to wildlife getting at them, my own efforts (or lack thereof), or the guy from Tru-Green running over them.

It was while I was poking around the back fence, looking for a good spot to clear out the overgrowth so that I could plant grape vines that I realized a.) that I might have a small problem; and b.) I was looking at a snake sunning itself on the fence.

It's strange. Arkansas is infested with snakes. My neighbor keeps seeing them all over the place, and yet it's taken over two years before I've finally seen one in my yard (I've seen a couple of dead copperheads at work). Fortunately, I don't think that it was venomous. I wasn't able to get a photo of it (batteries in the camera were dead as usual. By the time they had charged up enough the snake had left) but I think that it was a Black Racer. About 3 feet long. On the one hand, I'm kinda happy that I've got more wildlife in my area, but I'm still going to be a little nervous clearing out my overgrowth.

Also, since when did you need a computer sciences degree to repair a fridge? The EPA or the DOE or something recently decided that the model of fridge I bought was using more energy than the manufacturer said that it was supposed to, so they sent me a kit to "fix" it. Said kit includes a circuit board that appears as though it would work very well in my next computer. I feel old now.

It's officially spring

We've now had our first local tornado watch of the year.

There is nothing I can say that will improve upon the pure win that is this video

Kovbasa: P. Eng.

About time.

I finally got it. Squee. I recognize that in the grand scheme of things this isn't particularly special. After all, there are thousands - if not tens of thousands - registered engineers in Alberta alone, and my job down here doesn't even require it. Still, it's nice to finally have.

Of course, now I've finally realized that there's a decent amount of bookkeeping just to maintain it (Continuing Professional Development forms). The upside of this is that they require me to actually attend conferences and classes and such - something that only happened on rare occasion while I was working in Canada, but has a slightly higher frequency of occurrence down here.

The other big pain in the ass is registering down here. If I was working in, say, Saskatchewan, it would pretty much just be a matter of contacting APEGGS with my APEGGA information and paying a fee. Not so down here. The process is a little more complicated, as in they might not even view my degree as having come from an accredited institution. It might also involve me having to, in essence, rewrite every final exam from my last year of university. Somehow I don't think that will happen.

Oh well. Yay me.

I have a superpower

My power is not so practical as flight, nigh-invulnerability, or heat vision. No my superpower is the ability to, with only a few words, manage to cause a shit-storm of a fight between my two bosses.

Now if I just figure out how to harness my power. For good, for awesome, I don't really care. I'd just like to be able to decide when to use it.

*Facepalm*

I just talked to APEGGA today to find out the status of my P. Eng application, as I have not heard a thing one way or the other from them since October. I do know that they had to be processing it, though, since they had billed me the processing fee, and all of my references had notified me that they had filled out the forms APEGGA needed filled out.

Unfortunately, APEGGA didn't get that last memo. They are still waiting for the forms from two of my references. This means that it will likely be at least another three months before my application gets processed.

I'm surrounded by assholes

Okay, maybe "surrounded" is too strong a word. That said, there do seem to be a lot of them. The latest one, whom I met this week, really takes the cake I think. This particular asshole worked for an auto-parts store (nothing wrong with that) until our customer hired him as a field consultant. He had NO experience in the oil patch before hired for this job that is grossly under qualified for. Now, a year and a half later, he seems to think that he knows everything about his job, when he proves his incompetence every time he opens his mouth (any consultant who doesn't know what an isolation valve is should be shot). This gets him my scorn and derision, but what really pisses me off about him is an incident that happened a couple of days ago.

We had a line part earlier this week. For those of you who do not know a line part occurs when, for various reasons (worn iron, too high pressure, human error, etc), a steel line that we are pumping through bursts under pressure. There are a lot of safety controls to limit this (regular iron inspections, check valves, pressure relief valves, etc), but they still do happen infrequently and they are always dangerous. We were fortunate that nobody was seriously hurt (one guy was shaken up and a little bruised, but that's it). This particular asshole, immediately after the line part, asks simply: "When can we start pumping again?". Yup, this guy's a real class act. Honestly, it's people like that that cause the oil patch to have such a shitty reputation.

In completely unrelated news, when I came to work this morning, I saw that somebody had actually plugged in the block heater on their truck.

Also, for your amusement, I present the following picture. It was the response from one of the guys in our lab when asked by our Calgary for some pictures of the pumps running some of our testing equipment (a really stupid request, for reasons that I won't go in to here). I hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as I did, since it's the funniest thing that I've seen in a long time.

Time for a public service announcement

This piece of helpful advice is for some of you landowners out there.

IF you own land in an area where oil & gas wells are being drilled...

and IF you and your neighbors still have the mineral rights for your land...

and IF you are feeling like you are missing out on some money because the producer has not drilled any wells on your land, just your neighbors...

It probably will not help convince them to do otherwise if you blockade a public road and try to extort money from a service company in exchange for allowing them past.

Shooting at them won't help either.

Just a tip.

And now begins the drinking

My parents arrived on Sunday, and my sister arrived yesterday. Somewhat unsurprisingly, yesterday was also the coldest day in Arkansas since I moved down here. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm a little stressed about having to actually be the host for the holidays for once, despite the fact that it's a small group (unlike a couple of my friends, who felt the need to host something like 19 people for Christmas day, the masochists) and I'm bound to get a lot of help. Fortunately there is eggnog and rum.

Anyhow, I hope everybody has a Merry/Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Dies Natalis Solis Invicti/Holidays/etc.

Just like old times

It's been below freezing all day and raining for the latter part of it. This is the first time since I moved here that I've actually had to scrape my windshield. I can't believe how right that feels.

I'm actually hoping for a really good ice storm tonight - I've never been in one before.

Heat's on.

Furnace is fixed. Apparently it was just a loose connection, and the filter wasn't forgotten, it was left out deliberately because there's another one farther up the line (that I also forgot to ever change) and having two filters would restrict the air flow too much. Mea culpa. I'm glad I limited my righteous indignation to here rather than spewing it all in the furnace guy's face.

My rage keeps me warm at night.

Another exercise in the mundane and extremely irritating.

I got home last night and it was - unsurprisingly - a little cold in the house. Thus did I go to turn on the furnace.

"Hmph" says I. "The furnace is already on, but there's no air coming out of the vents. Wonderful." I started to check the system out right at the beginning. The blower outside was working, so the problem was somewhere in the furnace. I checked the furnace. It was warm, so the heater still worked. It wasn't too difficult to find the culprit though. I went to check to see if the filter was clogged only to find that there was no filter, so most likely anything that the filter would have caught is now plugged in the ducting somewhere down the line. Wonderful. Thank you furnace man for forgetting to install such a simple and critical piece of equipment.

I swear if you could channel my rage directly into a generator you'd solve the world's energy problems.

That's not severe...

AccuWeather just informed me of a severe weather alert for the area tonight:

A FREEZE IS EXPECTED IN PARTS OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS FRIDAY AND
SATURDAY MORNINGS.

A VERY COLD CANADIAN AIRMASS WILL SETTLE OVER THE AREA TONIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY...AND BRING VERY COLD TEMPERATURES TO PARTS OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS. MORNING LOW TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO BE IN THE MID TO UPPER 20S OVER CENTRAL ARKANSAS BOTH FRIDAY AND SATURDAY MORNINGS.

For god's sake, put on a sweater and quit whining about it.

And get off my lawn.

Phrases that I don't want to hear:

"I found a brown recluse spider in your truck. I tried to kill him but he got away. Fast little bugger."

The bad news? He wasn't joking.

The good news? It wasn't my truck.