On The Road Again

I've started a new assignment in Houston working for a company developing biomass to biodiesel plants. It's been a crazy few days getting up to speed with a new technology and all that goes along with that. Today I walked into the office and was asked to attend a meeting in Columbus, Ohio on Thursday. So I made a few quick reservations and am now typing this in Ohio.

As an interesting side light, I went to the hotel lobby this AM for breakfast and there was one other guy there. We got to talking and it turns out that he was a survivor off the "Deepwater Horizon". He was in Houston for medical checkups. So we killed the time talking about the disaster and the oilfield in general. A Vietnam Vet, the rig sinking was worse than Vietnam in his mind. He made it clear that he was finished with the oil industry. At 62 he was hoping for a nice settlement and a retirement from Transocean and he would go back to central Louisiana and go hunting. He put a human face on the disaster for me.

By the way, Bush International in Houston is preparing for body scanners. You now have to remove belts and wallets before going through security. The idea is to get you ready for the scanner prep but they don't tell this in time to prepare for it but yell at you as you are stacking your stuff on the xray belt. If I thought the effort was a stick in the eye to a terrorist, I would do it without flinching, but I suspect the terrorists are laughing at our silly attempts to thwart them. And I hate to see power in the hands of an uneducated martinet. Screw the TSA!