The REAL Work Part.

I suppose I shouldn't have complained about having so little to do, for now it looks like I'm going to get a lot busier (for at least a couple of days). This afternoon, the rate of penetration dropped to less than half of what it had been before, and to one fifth of what they would prefer to be drilling at, so they have decided to pull the drilling assembly out of the hole and go back in with a new bit and new tools.

This is where I get really busy. When my tools come out of the hole after drilling, I have to stand on the rig floor and watch the rig crew take them apart to make sure they don't un-torque them at the wrong spot and thus expose the sensitive electronics to the elements. Then I have to plug into the tools and download their recorded memory, and process the data. I always have to make sure to keep my fingers crossed that the downloading goes well, and that the data is intact and accurate. Millions of things can go wrong with our tools while we're drilling, and we don't know any of it for sure until we see what they recorded.

Then I process the data, which if its problem free, only takes a couple of hours of clicking buttons on the computer screen. If there are problems, it can take up to a number of days and involve many calls to the office to troubleshoot.

Then, of course, since we're probably going to be running a new drilling assembly back in the hole, I have to have our fresh tools already prepared. I have to load the batteries (which requires multiple pieces of 50 lb+ equipment to do), program them, wait for the rig to be ready to pick them up, and then program them again. This, of course, has to happen *before* the old tools are even out of the hole, because they will want to take our new tools and go right back in as soon as the old drilling assembly is all the way out.

There's only one problem with that right now: the drilling company doesn't know what kind of tools they want to run yet. And until they do, I can't call my office to ask them to send tools, which means the technicians can't start preparing the next set of tools we're going to need, which means I don't even know if the tools we're going to need are available, which means....

It's a delicate dance. I am waltzing along with the music, but I can't quite seem to find the beat.