that went fast

Huh, it's the Tuesday after Labor Day. That would be the Tuesday that's a week after Labor Day. That all went by very quickly.

For starters, I'm no longer angry about what happened what is now two Saturdays ago. Instead, my eager, grasshopper spirit has been crushed by further events and I've lost the will to fight the inexorable system that I cannot help but dream about when I close my eyes. Or not. more or less. I'm not angry because I, uh, made my opinions clear using cogent, even-toned, polite-society language last Friday to express my disappointment with the poor execution of a particular support department. This was after a similar incident of poor execution earlier in the week as well. While not affecting any ultimate job execution, these were still problems that required additional work to remediate. Anyway, my cogent points were noted by the relevant managers and some stern words have been issued. So apparently I do have pull.

Actually, that’s not why I'm angry. Venting is generally ineffective because it doesn’t address the root causes of the anger. I'm not angry because I have or others have addressed the root cause, or at least as much as it can reasonably be expected to be addressed. The necessary things have been said to the proper people to try to make this not happen again.

So, last week I got sucked out on a couple long, relatively difficult jobs on Wednesday and Friday. Long enough to kind of make Thursday disappear. That happens some of the time. You wake up and it's not clear what day it is, but it doesn't really matter because when you answered your ringing phone, it was time to go to work. That also happened Saturday, though that turned out to be a red herring. I got to spend the day hanging out at a rig talking to the company man while they tried to solve a problem they were having drilling. I was there to pimp our new solution to their problem (which I should note falls somewhat outside the bounds of most of everything else we do). It was a red herring because the rig was able to resolve their problem on their own. Charming. At least I (read: Schlumberger) got to charge them for time and mileage. Sunday was mellow enough that I was able to play office catch-up in between round-tripping some trucks in from the field and doing some basic pick-up upkeep. And now it's Tuesday. Oh, and I spent last night/this morning on another job after someone who is going to find himself out of a job really soon if this keeps up decided that we was too sick to work. That was after spending the entire day in the office. But hey, I slept all this afternoon when I got home.

And my phone just rang. Apparently, jobs are stacking up again and it's time to round-trip some trucks. And yes, it is the middle of the night, or the beginning depending on how you look at it.