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01/18/05 |
     
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October 2004 10/1/04 An Answer to prayer about my Dad! 10/2/04 My trip to Teddy Roosevelt National Park 10/3/04 Leav'n on a Jet Plane...hey, I'm in Denver's airport right now -- how ironic, and kinda sad! 10/8/04 My first week of The Real World: Scotland. 10/14/04 Reasons not to write. 10/24/04 The meaning of relief. 10/30/04 Rough day. 11/1/04 A few stories. AN ANSWER TO PRAYER!!! For those of you who don’t know, a quick update about my dad: He’s installed carpet all his life (he’s 50 this year). Around Christmas 2000 he was experiencing extreme shortness of breath. It turned out that he has IPF – interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. It’s when your body attacks the avelioli on your lungs, creating scar tissue. It prevents you from using full capacity of your lungs, and it unless you have a lung transplant, it is always fatal. There are several theories about what caused it in my dad, but I won’t get into that. His condition deteriorated for just over a year, when he was put on a study of a new drug that prevented any additional scarring (though it doesn’t heal the already scarred tissue). That combined with a stomach bypass (as you can imagine, it is hard to lose weight when at that point he couldn’t walk up and down the stairs without pausing halfway), has him in the “best” condition since he’s been sick (most days he can mow the lawn and similar activities, though obviously he can’t return to his job of manual labor). However this is only a temporary solution, the insurance (Aetna) that has paid virtually 100% of everything, including the new expensive drug, is only providing coverage for the new drug for another 12 months or so. The only long-term solution is a lung transplant, which many people have been praying for, almost 3 years now. Well, yesterday, 9/30/04, my dad “got on the list”. He’s on Shands Hospital at Gainesville’s lung donor list. This is provides an alternative to the current situation. My dad is still not sure he is going to do it, because it’s by no means a sure operation, and his condition could even get worse even if the surgery is successful, but it is an answer to prayer to have that option. I can’t thank all of you who have prayed for this very thing – praise God for this answer. I ask that if you wish to continue praying for my dad – give him wisdom to decide what to do if he has the option of a transplant surgery. Thanks again guys, this really is great news!
What a day...My first day off since I started working August 8th, and I took advantage: I slept in to 10:30, even though I was wide awake after 8:00 am! Then I headed out to Teddy Roosevelt National Park. That was awesome, I've been itching to get down there since I saw it on my way into town over a month ago now. I did a 5 mile hike that went through the Badlands and then a 2 mile hike that took me to "Prairie Dog Town". I was hoping that there'd be a casino and a traveling circus in this Prairie Dog Town, but there wasn't. There was about 70 prairie dogs though! It was neat that they let you get very close (see my pictures), before they start warning all their buddies with high pitch squeeks. I also saw a ton of bison, which was pretty neat, and a little scary as well. Also some mule deer, and grasshoppers that can sound like rattlesnakes. By the way, the name "Badlands" (in South and North Dakota) came from French trappers who when first saw these formations said, "Zac le blue! These are bad lands to cross." It's true. Then I came "home" (I'm still living in the El Rancho Motel) and saw the highlights of one of the most exciting baseball games I've seen in all season. The LA Dodgers came from 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth against their rival the SF Giants with a GRAND SLAM to win the game. The winner of that game clinched the division, so the Dodgers are going to the pennant. Auburn destroyed Tenn, Georgia beat LSU, and NW is winning against Ohio State, this is an amazing sports day. Leslie Simek also gave me a call from Philadelphia, where she was at a PHILLIES GAME! That's one of my life dreams you know, and she beat me to it! I hope you had fun despite their loss Leslie! I also gotta give a shoutout to Chris Harris, math genius of Purdue (beat Norte Dame today!)...I got your message and just need to find time to call you back! Well I'm off to Scotland Monday. Birthplace of one of my favorite actors. I won't have phone access up there, but feel free to email me, and I will be updating my web page. This is Boone, James Boone, signing off. (Last sentence was reference to the actor.)
I'm currently at my 2nd layover location: Denver. My flight starts in Williston, ND, goes to Dickinson ND, Denver CO, Washington DC, London, Edinburgh. Off to the Brothers Karamazov...Oh yeah, I almost forgot what prompted me to write this -- I was just listening to my mp3s and Hot Water Music (local band from gainesville) came on, making me think of gville. A couple of hours outside of London a Brit from London named Tariq struck up a conversation with me. He is an IT recruiter and saw me designing the web page (Microsoft FrontPage makes me look a lot better than I am!). He gave me a lot of advice on cool places to see in Britain. I met the most random people lately! I'm also listening to Taking Back Sunday, a pretty good band so far, I'm impressed. I also am experimenting with having music play when you visit my side, make sure you email if you have an opinion about that.
Oh my gosh, what a first week! I'm writing this from my beautiful "flat" in Livingston, Scotland on Saturday night. It feels like "The Real World" on steroids here. I get thrown together in a living situation with a bunch of random people, in a really cool neighborhood in a beautiful city. So far I've really enjoyed my "school". For information sake I'll be here until Dec 28th, as long as I don't quit/get fired. Apparently they average around 50% passing rate, not because it's too difficult, but mainly because people don't like the 24 hour lifestyle. But they've been breaking us in easy, and so far I've loved every minute. Let me try an give you a picture of what it's been like in a couple of stories: I just saw a pretty cute scene out front. A local (Scottish) man was talking to his 5 year old son, who obviously was wanted something different from his Father. He kept on whining in the way that only a young male child, regardless of origin, can do, but in a strong Scottish accent that always reminds me of Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: "Naaa" said the son. "Iye" said the father. "Naaaaaaa" said the son. "Iiiiiiiyyyyyeeee" replied the father. It was pretty funny. I expected someone to suddenly yell "Land A'hoy!". On the first night we had a "social" -- bowling in Scotland. In the good American spirit I quickly organized a game of 4 vs. 4 on two adjacent lanes. Our team was me, and American; a Spaniard; a Russian; a Malaysian; and a person from Yemen. The other team had 1 American; two Canadians; a Chinese; a Nigerian. Talk about multi-cultural! This entire company is like that: Americans are just another group, and always the minority (everyone is the minority), and people from *all* over the world. Well whenever a person from our team bowled, we yelled something relevant from their homeland. For example, we all chanted, "ole, ole, ole...." for the Spaniard, or "Do this for Mother Russia", etc. Only, no one could figure out what to yell for the Yemenis. So we would yell random other things. Oh, did I mention that among this group of 8, with only two Americans, we were bowling in Scotland? This is crazy. An unexpected side effect of this diversity and being in Scotland and no one knowing others is that this is the first time *in my life* that I am thrown into a new situation with people that I don't know, and no one has asked about my speech problem -- because everyone has one! Well not really, everyone has accents, and people are from all over, so when I say that I'm from America, no one questions my speech problem...haha, that cracks me up. By the way -- I'm not offended at all at such questions, and am completely comfortable with my "accent", but I've just gotten used to explaining it, and haven't had to much here. In this setting one thing that has struck me is how similar Americans and Canadians are alike compared to everyone else. It defiantly has something to do with the "rugged individualism" that is ingrained in our culture (Americans have it even more than the Canucks). I am busy learning common phrases in about 8 different languages. Humor can defiantly be a stretch, I believe that many foreigners "general dislike" for the "American stereotype" is mainly based on not understanding our humor. For example, we all share open cubicles in one big office. We have assigned desks, and in my corner, I improbably happen to be with 2 other Americans, and we have the only coat tree in the room. So we quickly printed and attached an American flag to the newly ordained "Liberty" coat tree. I only found out today that many people did not understand that it was a joke. haha it cracks me up, I guess they though that I was doing a preemptive strike on the coat tree while creating a trade embargo of the "American" natural resource of the coat tree from the rest of the world. But the miscommunication of jokes goes both ways: We've been sending out group emails and one keeps getting bounced back to everyone. It is hu@.... and no one at first knew all of our last names, so someone asked, "Who is hu?" Others (from different countries) quickly responded, "I don't know who hu is? Who is Hu?" Making a pun on his name. I said allow, "I don't know who Hu is either, but he's probably on first." And looked up to see the roll of eyes that I expected from my bad pun on Abott and Costello's "Who's on First". Only I met blank stares from a smathering of European and Asian eyes. "First? What do mean, "on" first?" Various cultures "talking space" is also humorous to me. This morning I did something that I have been guilty of many times throughout my life, since I rarely remember to do one last check in the mirror before I leave -- I left my fly down. While waiting on the bus to come pick us up, the above mentioned Hu (his first name is Jian), came up to me, very close saying, "Ohh ohhh, ohhh oh". I had no idea what he was doing. Then he sticks his finger IN MY OPEN FLY WHOLE! All I could do was meekly thank him, zip up my fly before the Canadians see me, and make a mental note if I ever visit China to quickly step back if I see a Chinese man coming towards me with his finger pointed sounding like a broken cuu-coo clock. There is million little other stories, but all are very similar. I've been able to talk to lots of different people, and it's been really interesting talking to the "Russian Mafia" (as we call the two Russians in our class who *always* get their food served first wherever we go to eat for some strange reason) about The Brother's Karamazov, which I'm still reading and enjoying thoroughly. One last thing, from talking to people who are stationed in different oil fields all over America and the world, I have come to understand that my location is probably one of the easiest in the world. Our jobs, which if nothing goes wrong, lasts between 4 and 20 hours (depending on the depth of the well, 2000-10000 feet), and only lasts 30+ hours if something goes wrong. Most of the other locations, many of which I would like to go to one day, *always* last 3 days, *if* nothing goes wrong. And it's common for the engineer will do 2 such jobs in a 7 day period. That's only 2 full nights rest! But so far, so good! Go UF over LSU tonight!!! (had to explain "football" vs. soccer today at lunch:) Dos Vodanya!
This is probably a bad time to update my website for a couple of different reasons: 1. I have a very difficult test tomorrow that covers a 10 hour lecture I on Telemetry from 2 days ago, and I should be studying. 2. I'm about to have my first day off in Scotland Saturday! We're going to Edinburgh and I'm sure that I'll update after that trip because of the pics I plan on taking. So though it may be absurd, to quote Ivan Karamazov, "The world is based on absurdities." I was able to go to a gym tonight as well. You do things like update your web page and workout when you get off early at 4:30 pm to have extra "study" time. This week has been fun, and I've been learning a lot, but the days are extremely long. I leave my apt by 7:00 am, and often don't return till after 7:00, and have about an hour of studying to do at home, on top of find/cook dinner which takes time itself. Even with this busy schedule, I stand in awe of the Canadians and Russians. They go out almost every night, often involving Beer or Vodka for the respective nationalities. They've only been getting 4 hours of sleep a night, and then imagine going to college lectures for 10 hours a day, with tests intermingled during work.... I've continued to become better friends with people from all over the world, and am still interested in their cultures. One thing that I have noticed is that almost everyone, with all but one of the Americans, is wealthier and more traveled than I. You always imagine the American being the one with money when there's a small group with Europeans, Arabs, and Asians, but it's not the case here. But everyone is still very friendly, and even political discussions are extremely civil. If only the rest of the world could act like this...Which is a strange contrast as we see the local Scottish Newspapers display the genocide in the Sudan daily. I've also had some trouble calling America. It hasn't worked so far, and I haven't had the time besides that. But hopefully I'll either call some friends or email them this Saturday, after I go to the Edinburgh Castle! p.s. on a different note, anyone who has liked Five Iron Frenzy, ska music, or Christian music, should buy their last double pressed album: The End is Near and The End is Here. It's awesome (a word that I explained to the Iranian today :). p.p.s. I just took the telemetry test -- 88%
Wow...what a weekend. This was our first "job" here. We simulate a real job, where we meet a client, introduce ourselves, then go log a well that's around 700 feet deep. We get the data, come back to the office, and "finalize" the data -- making the exact product that we would give in a real job (mainly consisting of plots that look like Richter scales of an earthquake). Well, after I logged the well, I transferred the data from the computer to my USB drive -- or thought I did. I actually transferred data from my USB drive onto the computer, writing over the job data. We are timed, and losing the data would give me a score of 0 on this job, and I'd be flying over the Atlantic tomorrow. I made an extra realtime backup on the computer -- backups, you know the things that you never do because you never need them? Well I couldn't even find the data on the hard drive and came in to talk to an instructor just assuming that I copied over that data as well, and to start packing my bags for home. He came out and looked at the computer, and found the data, and saved my butt! I never cuss, but after he found the data I felt like letting out a litany of expletives...it's a weird feeling that I don't recall getting before. I believe others call it relief. Anyway, I do have pictures of Edinburgh's castle, which was amazing. The city is extremely old, still built around the castle, and has large granite stones as the main structure for streets, walls, and shops. The castle is on this large cliff, and is what comes to your mind when you think of Dracula's castle that is overlooking an impenetrable cliff. I have a day off tomorrow, and plan on going back to Edinburgh to just walk around downtown and get a better feel for the city. In other news I've become closer to Phu, a guy from Vietnam who is working in China, who ironically has never heard of a Phu Man Chu. He is slow to warm up, but has a great sense of humor. One of the funny things about him is the expressions that come from his mouth. You know how us Americans say "aaahhhhh" when we're disappointed, or "yaaahh!" if we're excited and things like that? Well he has his own Vietnamese versions. He sounds like a cuu-coo clock, "uuu uuu uuu!" or "ae ae ae" when he's scared or excited and jumps frantically. It's very hard to describe but is so random and funny. In other news, Tim McClary got an awesome job with Northup Gruman as a systems engineer, congrats Tim! I'm also slowly learning common phrases in Russina, Spainish, Farsee, Arabic, and Canadian. I've just given up with Vietnamese and Chinese. You all need to go buy the newest yellowcard cd! I almost forgot!!! BO SOX beat those darn yankees! That is freak'n awesome! but go cards in the series.
Well, today was a rough day. We're in the midst of a stretch of 18 days with no days off, but because I had a "double shift" yesterday -- that is I was the first operator on the well and the 2nd engineer -- I had no responsibilities today and went to Edinburgh (updated pics). Normally this would be a good thing, but I went to the office for about an hour to finish up some things and found out that I did very poorly on this well site practical. So let me explain: You need a total score of 70% to pass this school, or your fired. The score is 1/3 theory -- the written tests on tool theory comprise the majority of this score, and 2/3 practicals -- 6 well site jobs comprise the majority of this score. So far I've done extremely well in the tool theory, around 88%, one of the highest in the class, but I have now failed my first 3 well site jobs. Right now my total average is in the high 60s. I have 3 well site jobs left, the 3 most valuable ones, but I haven't passed a single practical yet. This is really frustrating to me...I'm not worried about not passing the school, I'm more concerned with being a good engineer. I don't want to be a "just barely didn't get fired" employee. One of the most frustrating things about all of this is that I'm losing points on turning in my "log" -- the richter scale paper that has the print out from the tool data. In other words, I'm getting good data, I understand the tools better than all but a few in the class, I'm one of the fastest in the class in collecting and processing the data, but I'm turning in a crappy looking log. How does a log look crappy? By misspelling the client's name, switching longitude and latitude, turning in a print with the wrong scales (e.g. using meters for the depth of the well rather than feet), etc. etc. While this may at first look like it's not a big deal, "hey, you can fix that stuff", it *is* a big deal because I thought that I did fix it before I turned in my logs. I checked over everything, blindly missing all these mistakes, and turned in the log thinking, "This is a nice looking log". But I'm completely wrong, it's an awful looking log, and I can't see it till it's pointed out to me. Anywho, enough depressing talk. In some great news, Bethany Sedik got a cool sounding job with a Resort in Kissimmee as a coordinator of activities for all the guests. It sounds like exactly what she wanted, so that's great news. It seems like everyone that I'm up to date with now has gotten a pretty good job from the MSM program. Go Glynda! Today in Edinburgh I saw a girl wearing a Messiah College t-shirt. It's a small Christian school in Penn that most people in Penn haven't heard of, much less random strangers in Scotland. But I've actually been there. So I surprised this girl and her 2 friends by recognizing their school. They're on a foreign-semester learning program spending a few months in Scotland. That was cool. I was unable to book a "literary-pub tour" because I signed up too late. I'll still do this tour, probably with my friend Medhi from Iran. You visit 4 of the most famous pubs in Edinburgh where Scotland's famous authors went to get a drink. While there two actors act out characters/scenes from various works that these authors wrote about. Sir Walter Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edmund Burns, William Wordsworth, Myriam Spark and others are the authors. Scenes from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robinson Crusoe, and the love poetry of Burns are some of the scenes. It sounds really fun, and I can't wait to go. Side note -- anyone who hasn't read Robinson Crusoe should. It is *very* slow for the first 100-130 pages, but then picks up and is a hard book to put down after that. It also is considered to be the first English Novel. Think about that for a second. The first novel *ever* in English, that alone is worth reading it. I also heard a joke today: "What's the difference between a bagpipe and an onion? No one cries when you cut up a bagpipe." Feel free to use for your own... Oh, here's a short, funny story: So about Oct 12 or so, I'm working late at the office, a day when the lunch was particularly good. I go past the cafeteria and notice that there's about 20 plates of lunch still out there (it's around 6:00 pm now). Normally they clean up right after lunch. Well, I grabbed a potato and chicken and start to eat. A group of my classmates sees me, and asked where I got the food from, I told them. Then they told me that it is the start of Ramadan -- the holy month of Muslims where they fast till sunset -- and I was eating their food that the lunch ladies kindly left out for them. All the feelings that you would expect a person -- who while eating a good meal, found out that it is holy food, reserved for people who have not had a drop of food and/or liquid all day -- to have, I had. I felt like Cartman from Southpark in the "Starvin Marvin" episode where he finishes off some chicken wings while a group of mal-nourished Ethiopians silently watch. But I failed to see how throwing away my remnants would help the situation any, so I finished off my plate. I also quickly apologized to the fasting students, and politely asked that they not commit jihad on me, and they were very forgiving. My class mates instantly gave me a hard time, but now every sunset the Muslim students invite me to the cafeteria to eat with them :)
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This site was last updated 01/18/05