Turn Off All Portable Electronic Devices!

To: the Texas A&M Women's Golf Team Member in Seat 12C

I know you think that I am just the grumpy guy across the isle, but the flight attendants don't make safety announcements because they like to hear themselves talk. You are supposed to shut down personal electronics when the doors close. Of course, you know better (because you are an Aggie, blond, and female) and kept playing during push back and taxi and until I gave the attendant a high sign and he asked you to shut down.

But then you just had to turn back on as soon as we were wheels up and barely off the ground. You then received my wrath about the use of personal electronics below a flight level of 10,000 feet!

I thought that Texas A&M taught their students better, or at least how to listen to instructions. The next time you fly, get the buds out of your ears and listen to the instructions. You are not exempt from the rules!

The Energy Policy

I paid $3.159/gal in Houston yesterday for regular gas! From the sounds of things it won't get less any time soon even though the price is being driven more by panic than actual supply and demand.

Where is the public outrage?

Looking at the drilling rig count, there are currently 25 rigs working in the Gulf of Mexico. These all appear to drilling development wells - these are wells into an existing reservoir that enhance recovery. None of them are exploratory rigs - rigs searching for new reservoirs! The rig count is some 20 rigs less than one year ago. With rigs leaving the Gulf, it will take several years for the production to recover - if it ever does. Rigs that have left will not be easy to get back.

As you should have learned during Katrina, the Gulf of Mexico provides some 25% of the USA's needs. What will the price of gasoline be when production from the Gulf starts falling off?

Teachers - Welcome to MY World

There's an article in the Providence Journal about the RI Superintendent of Schools will send out termination notices to ALL teachers. The reason is to give the board maximum flexibility in resolving a budget deficit. The union, of course, is up in arms.

Well, welcome to the real world. When I worked for a major oil company we would undergo some sort of re-organization about every 18 months. At each re-organization, your job was in jeopardy. You had to qualify for your new position - if you had one. In some cases management would call everyone together and announce that nobody was guaranteed a position. In one case, we were told to sit in our offices and wait for someone to offer us a job. If nobody came, that was the sign that you were now unemployed.

Our operations people were union and seniority rules came into play if there were layoffs. I watched the young, smart guys who were up on new technology laid off because of seniority of older guys who were entrenched in the system.

So I have no sympathy for these teachers who think they are owed a job. They have needed a good shaking up for a long time.

Petit Garcons - 1, Mom - 0

My daughter - in - law was making chocolat covered strawberrys last Sunday when the 6 and 10 year old grandsons ran into the kitchen yelling about a mouse in their toy room. Dutiful mom went to try to corner the critter leaving the boys unsupervised. When she returned, after finding no mouse, all of the strawberries were gone.

They hatched a plan and executed it perfectly!

10 Commandments of Project Engineering - NOT

Thou Shalt:


1. Not violate the process
2. Avoid risks at all cost
3. Not violate the Delegation Of Authority Guide
4. Not operate outside thy silo
5. Honor the audit process
6. Change nothin’ without Management Of Change approval
7. Seek endorsement and approval for all decisions
8. Conform thy office space to company standards
9. Use toolkits and checklists in all activities
10. Abide by Operational Integrity Management System above all others

The above was prepared by an employee of a major oil company to describe the expectations for new employees. Rigid control and innovation do not coexist well with each other. But it makes a managers job easier because he doesn't have to think.

Here endeth the lesson......

Vienna - Departure

We left Vienna on a Sunday morning under an overcast sky and snow flurries. There was no traffic so the trip to the airport was made in about 15 minutes. We flew Vienna to Amsterdam to Memphis to New Orleans. There were no delays and all connections were made easily and with no long layovers. But no matter how you cut it, by the time you walk in your front door, you have been on the road for about 24 hours and its hard to sleep because you are chasing daylight the whole time.

Something worthy of note was a retinal scan security device at Amsterdam that allowed trusted travellers to bypass the immigration desk. You slide a card with a magnetic strip and let the device scan your eye and you are in! Also, Amsterdam uses body scan machines on every passenger but it is the type that only indicates "anomalies" in the scan. When you step out, you can see your screening while the agent gives you a fast pat down in the areas indicated. No doodles or other body parts canbe seen. (I did it because there was no other choice - everyone had to be scanned)

For you smokers, the Vienna airport "Jet Lounge" has a smoking room. Its a glassed in area with excellent ventilation where smokers can burn a last one before boarding. Also, Amsterdam has some bars on the concourse that have closed off areas for smoking. My wife compared it to the bar scene in "Star Wars" after observing some of the Euro-characters there.

Vienna Day 7

Today was Saturday. We started with a tour of the catacombs of St. Stephan's Cathedral. Along with Bishops and Cardinals, the crypt is also the final resting place of parts of the royal family. It seems there was a competition between churches to be the final resting place of Dukes and Duchesses. In order to keep the peace, the entrails of the royals were preserved in alcohol and placed in copper urns for placement under St. Stephans. The tour ended with a peek at the ossuaries where the bodies of plague victims in 1735 were dumped into a hole under the church square.

We then caught the U-Bahn to Shonbrunn Palace. We did a tour of the Royal rooms but it was too cold to walk the gardens. Besides, they are dormant at this time.

Tomorrow its up early for airplanes and the trip home.