Made it to Frankfurt. I don’t remember stopping in Abu Dhabi, but there was someone next to me when I woke up so I guess that we did.

Seem to have s different set of rules in Business and first class. Like the ‘stow your table and get your seat in the upright position’ don’t always apply if the flight is a late night ‘Red Eye’ type.

There is also the ‘Passenger Manifest Information for U.S. citizens only’ to fill out. I wish I could scan this in and paste it here, but I took a pic with my camera. Maybe get it converted later. Maybe.

Found a little trinket in the gift shop. Something sparkly 🙂 My wife is truly a wonderful woman and I am extremely lucky to have her as my wife. She puts up with a lot of my shit, and keeps me centered.

Anyway, I’m going to relax for a few more hours and then board the plane.

Next stop, Houston!

It’s going home day. That’s right, I get to travel back home and see the wife and furkids. not sure who will be happier, but I know I am.

This job is really not bad, and the only complaint that I really have is being away from the ones I love. It is difficult at times, when that place in your heart, that is reserved for those special people in your life, are missing. Yes, I know that I can talk to them online, on the phone (although that can get expensive), and see pictures of them, but it’s not the same as being able to hold someone in your arms, breath their scent into your nostrils, see the smiles that go along with the laugher.

I’ll have to catch up on my blogging when I get back to somewhere that has an internet connection. But for now, it’s off to hit the dusty trail! And wing my way back home!

Saturday night!

Its the same as most any other night of the week here in the desert, but there is a difference. At home, it’s Saturday morning and consequently, the weekend!

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but in the Arabic countries, Saturday is the beginning of the week. It would be our Monday, so to speak. It makes locations like ours in Mukhaizna, difficult to conduct business at times, as there are only about 3 days out of the week that you can actually do anything. Say you have this task to do, like programming something to work the way it needs to work. You contact the boss in the office on Wednesday afternoon. He really doesn’t know what to tell you and says he needs to contact the vendor in the states to consult with them. Maybe he calls, maybe he gets tied up. At any rate he doesn’t hear back from the vendor that day. Then it’s the weekend and he’s off for a little holiday in the mountains with the family. He comes back on Saturday, and has a message from the vendor. More questions raised by the response than answered. Has to get in contact with them for clearification. What day was it? Oh yeah, Saturday. No one at the vendors office till Monday. So from Monday to Wednesday is about the only time you can get answers to questions about anything.

Of course, this 4 days could be a blessing. Do what you need to do and don’t worry about checking with anyone. By the time they find out, you’ve finished and your on your way to the next task.

Besides, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.

I find that as time grows short in my rotation here in Oman, it becomes increasingly harder to focus on my job. It’s fairly important to stay focused on what you are doing, as it could be the difference between life and death.

It’s not that the job is hard or dangerous, but a simple little mistakes can be made and if your not careful, you could end up hurt, or worse. There are posters all around camp, stressing safety and being attentive to the job, which I totally agree with. I’ve made some of those little mistakes and fortunately not been severely hurt by them, but it does being you back to focus. Once while working in a panel, I reached in, and when I pulled my hand back out, my wedding ring snagged on something and I ended up getting my hand cut. Not bad, but needed to get it cleaned up and bandaged. It was a reportable incident as well, which most major companies keep track of incidents in order to learn from mistakes.

Some safety rules are pretty obvious. Some, not quite as much. But they are there for a reason. Someone had it happen to them. It might not have resulted in a serious injury, but it happened.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Welcome to post number 60. You would think that for as long as I’ve had this blog, that I would be way, way past 60 posts. Think again. I stated posting late in life, maybe I just didn’t know what to post about, or something. Never really had a direction for this thing, and still don’t. One day, I may figure it out, but I know for sure, I’m not making any money with this blog.

We had BBQ last night. Not like you get in the states, but that’s what they call it. They do cook on a pit outside though, so I guess in a way it is BBQ. Just without the sauce.

I’ve been working on a steam project for the day. Trying to come up with a steam flow calculation. I’ve gotten all but the Density calculation and it looks pretty good at this point. Sent out some emails to pick some peoples brains and got two responses. I’ve got a few more to contact and see if I can get this resolved fairly quickly.

The entire project is very interesting as it’s replacing the existing steam monitoring equipment with wireless transmitters and a gateway device to communicate to the master PLC. The PLC will do the calculations for Steam Flow and totalize daily and monthly (maybe YTD as well) for access in the automation system.

For those of you who are sitting there and thinking, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’ Well, sorry… It’s work.

Now for something a little more interesting (maybe). The camp celebrated Eid yesterday. At all the locations where work was supposed to be going on, there wasn’t any work going on. It looked like the Amen pew at a Sunday morning revival session. No body there. Well, maybe not the revival sessions you’ve been to, but certainly the ones I’ve been to. It seems the entire work force had taken the day off. Oh they started showing back up around 4 pm, all smiles and happy. Had a few come by and wish me a happy Eid. That was nice.

We are supposed to have an Eid Feast tonight consisting of BBQ, among other delights. I’ll let you know tomorrow…