Whatever Gets You Through The Day (or night)

Let's see. It's Wednesday night--nope, make that early Thursday morning. I arrived on this rig on Sunday afternoon, which makes this my 5th day on the rig. My first night shift was rather busy. I loaded and unloaded multiple sets of batteries, programmed various tools, and did all sorts of other pre-drilling run tasks required of me.

Monday night was slightly less busy. I had a to-do list of about 9 items that I shared with another engineer, and most of them were not very time-intensive.

Tuesday night left me with barely anything to do but sit around and watch the crane operators move our tools back and forth across the deck for a few hours.

Tonight: nothing. Just wait.

We were expecting to put our tools in the hole on Monday night and to start drilling on Tuesday morning. I would have thought that such a large-scale operation as they have going on out here would run more efficiently than what I am used to. That is definitely not the case. The crews out here move slower than the slowest land-rig crews I've worked with, and that is saying a lot. On the slow land rigs, if the company man told me it would take them 2 hours before they would be ready to pick up my tools, I would multiply that by a factor of 3 to get a more realistic estimate of 6 hours. Here the reality-factor seems to be more like 5. Considering the size of this operation and the number of people out here (~300), I don't even want to imagine how much this rig costs per day. As a reference point, my previous deepwater rig had a population of about 150 people and a daily cost of about $900,000/day (It should be noted that the daily operating costs are not directly proportional to number of personnel on board. This is just a benchmark).

Thus, I have had a lot of downtime. Now I'm more or less obligated to remain all shift in my logging unit out of peer pressure (there are 4 other engineers on shift with me, and they all stay in the unit) and a on-call atmosphere (must answer phone if/when it rings!). Most of the downtime is therefore spent on the internet. Despite the fact that everyone knows that everyone is goofing off constantly online, it looks a lot more productive than if I were, say, crocheting.

Here is what I do with my time:

My standard "keep up to date with the world" websites are CNN.com and facebook.com. I consider the content of each about equal in their quality, so I don't spend very much time on either. A few months ago I actually went on a facebook-hiatus as I realized that I had developed a slightly unhealthy habit of investigating my high school friends' lives without actually making any kind of contact. Now I just browse the social media benignly.

The vast majority of my news reading comes from Slate.com. It is an "internet magazine", whatever that means, founded by the Washington Post. I enjoy it for it's more-balanced-than-average reporting, and it's commentaries and opinions that leave me thinking "That is just what I think!". Alas, on days like these, it cannot post enough articles to keep me satisfied.

My next favorite thing to do is the crossword. I am a true amateur crossword-er, and the Yahoo! Games version is at a perfect level for me; I can almost finish a couple of puzzles per week. This version also wins top praises from me due to the fact that they leave the last 2 weeks of puzzles posted online, enabling massive binges of crossword-ing when it strikes my mood.

If you've got a friend (or if you're interested in playing a stranger), try this online multiplayer Scrabble game. Alas, my former night-shift scrabble partner quit and went back to school.

Then there are the webcomics xkcd and phd, both very familiar to any MIT alum. If you like nerd humor, they're aces. Unfortunately they both post new strips only a few times a week, and their relative time-killing power is low. That also goes for postsecret.com, which nonetheless keeps me enraptured for a few minutes every week.

When I worked alone on the night shift I would practice memorizing monologues from Shakespeare or learn the lyrics to "La Vie en Rose" by Edith Piaf. This, alas, has been set aside for the benefit of my coworkers (I currently work in a roughly 8 feet x 20 feet box filled with 5 engineers, twice that many computers, desks & cabinets). Proprieties of behavior must be observed for sanity's sake.

Does anybody have any suggestions for additions to my repertoire? Unfortunately the limited bandwidth (and occasionally the client's regulations) disallow any use of video or audio streaming, so I cannot surf Youtube or any radio station. Suggestions would be appreciated!