We are usually in way too much of a hurry to stop at Multnomah Falls on our trips down the Columbia River Gorge from Oregon to Alberta.
Thursday was no exception–but we stopped anyway…long enough to get the selfies to prove we were there and get our feet cooled in the creek.
This summer we underwent the adventure of buying a home in Houston. By our realtor’s count, we looked at a total of 54 homes (starting back in April if I remember correctly). The following are some of the pictures from the har.com website, so if you’ve looked at the house there these will be familiar to you. We closed on the house purchase in late July and get possession in mid August (less than a week’s time). Please bear in mind that these pictures were taken prior to the sale, so the possessions shown are not ours.
Newberg, Oregon has a couple of really fun playgrounds. Following is a sequence of pictures that Lori took at one of them.
First off, here are some pictures that Lori took in Oregon (most of them at the beach). Lori and the kids left the beach after a week today (Sunday, August 3rd) and headed back inland to Newberg. They have three or four days there before embarking for Calgary.
Along with the pictures, I wanted to recount an interesting talk that I had with one of my co-employees on the field trip covered in the last post. I was talking to a young Oriental gal who had just started work at Seitel within the past couple of years. She grew up as the only child in her family. When she found out that we had six kids (sorry Danaya, you’ve probably outgrown that moniker), she paused for a few seconds and then said something to the effect of “Wow, in your house every day is a party”.
Ben’s note: This has been reposted from my blog at work, so it might not make loads of sense, but gives an idea of the industry that I work in.
Ferguson Shoot field trip, 30-July-2014
This is a quick blog entry about the visit of the “Yellow team” to the Ferguson survey shoot on 30-July-2014. Our driver, tour guide and fount of all seismic-related wisdom was Doug Reagle, who did an excellent job of showing and explaining.
Here’s 4 of the 8 team members
Inside the data shed, Dawson Geophysical demonstrated how they managed data coming off the GSRs, how data copies were handled and what measures were in place to ensure data collection was happening correctly.
In this case we are being shown the line testing tool, which line testing technicians (12 in total) use in the field to test the GSRs in location to make sure that they are functioning properly. There is no direct connection to the recording devices (as there is in a cable system), so doing QC checking on the devices (which each can hold up to a months worth of data) is absolutely critical.
In the base camp area, there was another trailer dedicated to safety, where a team checked in with all of the individuals in the field every 30 (or 60) minutes. No pictures of that one, but it was pretty boring (computer, radio gear IIRC).
Then it was off to the next site (I’m calling it “Shooting Central” where all of the seismic shooting activity was coordinated. This is moved periodically to keep within optimal range of the field units creating the seismic data. The trailer on the right with the antenna was quite amazingly tall.
The next trailer to tour was the one where the current shooting is going on. I probably didn’t understand all that was going on (as it sounded like it was in Spanish), but the amount of information that the tech was keeping track of was fairly impressive. I am aware that there were at least 5 teams out in the field (dynamite, the mini-vibes, and three teams of the large vibe units).
After a tramp through the woods, we saw (or rather felt) three dynamite shot points being set off. No pictures, because we had to have cellphones off at that point, and secondly we were at least 100 feet away through the woods so there wasn’t a whole lot to see.
Doug took us by a site where they were doing some experimental testing with a new possible energy source. Things weren’t moving quickly (nor apparently had they the day before) so after hanging around for a while in the heat, we headed for lunch.
After lunch we managed to capture the set of mini-vibes (I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right terminology) going through town (and creating data on the way) with a police escort. These look like stuff that I used to build out of Lego.
Following that it was on to see the big vibrator units working out in the fields around town.
There were a few things that I found interesting. One, that they worked in sets of three. Secondly, although you cannot see it, under the cab on these units were hung a lot of weights. I’m guessing that the front and back need to be similar in weight to provide proper downward pressure on the ground while vibrating. Thirdly, the vibration starts at a low frequency (8 Hz) and works up to 96 Hz. This makes it easier for the processors to filter out noise at different levels. Here are the units heading through a field to their next set of shot points.
After that it was back into the van and back to Houston. An informative and adventurous day was had by all.
Oh, and here’s my picture (at the gas station on the way home).
