BTW

I have some XMET ... I'm sad to have missed the TSNP train though, that's what I get for not logging in at all last week. I hope I also get an invite to the yacht party.

Apparently a lot of people like that $.10 number ... it's parked at .0975 at the moment.

Bad monkey ... needs a spanking

I know we've already discussed this, but with it officially announced, I'm really interested to see what the trickle-down effects are here in Midland and across the shale players in general: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2020/10/19/conocophillips-doubles-down-on-the-permian-basin-and-fracking-with-concho-acquisition/#2199744328e8

Outstanding! Many thanks.

My search of previous threads about excel brought a bunch of results about specific issues. I also have a specific issue, but perhaps we need a thread for all things Excel so we don't have new ones for every issue? If this is a bad idea, delete/ban etc ... Spreadsheet A has thousands of lines of data. Spreadsheet B has hundreds of lines of data. If a line from spreadsheet B exists in Spreadsheet A, it needs to be deleted, hidden or removed from spreadsheet A. I consider myself fairly savvy in Excel, but I've got no idea how to do this. TIA

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not commenting on him as a human, just his role in the company.

I was secretly hoping that his move to Houston was indicative of the fact that he was on the way out. He was a terrible choice for COO in the first place, and hugely unpopular with the employees. Just check out this fake Twitter account that is clearly run by a disgruntled employee, or someone with inside knowledge of the goings-on. He was an attorney at V&E who was hired to Midland as general council. He then worked his way up the chain to where the only promotion was into the C-suite, and the only open position was COO (Engineer and Co-founder Joe Wright having recently retired, and Jack Harper having firm grip on president while co-founder Tim Leach would remain CEO). tldr; I hoped it meant they were going to give his job to someone more qualified

I was just coming to post this. It explains a lot. Like why Will, the COO of Concho enrolled his kids in school in Houston at the beginning of this school year. Typical that I finally unloaded my deeply underwater CXO stock about two weeks ago. [emoji849]

The scuttlebutt around midland is that with the decrease in materials, drilling and completion costs the profitability of drilling for decently efficient operators continues to rise. Meaning drilling projects are becoming economic and lower and lower oil prices. So we can expect this to drag out the draw down on storage/oversupply well into 2022.

Oh, don't get me wrong, if the budget allowed, I would be looking at a Meridian or TBM for this mission. But at this point the only way I'm getting there is under piston power, the question is rather there's a GMC logo on the front or a propeller. I intend to set some personal minimums to make this a safer endeavor. Like having a maximum density altitude and keeping a safety cushion below what the math says is safe W&B calculation. I have friends that fly regularly into TEX under piston power and they report no issues to date with doing so, I know that my MMV, but its a perspective. I do welcome everyone's input, so please keep the opinions coming (I know Surly knows no other way)

Thanks for passing that along. I’m definitely liking that set up. Especially since that story about the UA pilot driving his V-tail bonanza into the side of a mountain 15 mins after launching from TEX.

Only 90 hours. Building time as fast as I can. But I prefer to build time and instrument train in my own plane if possible. I’m definitely looking at TN options as well as straight Turbos. I’m drawn to the bonanzas with the io550 and I hear some people are putting them in 210s as well which is intriguing.

Thanks for the input. Didn’t know the 36 came in an all forward facing config, I’ll research that. Gunnison/Telliride/Eagle-Vail are the main CO destinations with some Denver mixed in. I’m a low time guy and after talking to a lot of my more experienced pilot friends, consensus seems to be that I might want to build some hours before moving up to a light twin. I have about 6 hours right seat in a 340A and I definitely get the appeal. IA twin is definitely in the long range plan (unless I land in a TBM). But as it stands I plan to be commercial rated before moving to multi. I welcome yours and anyone else’s thoughts on the topic though.

Just finished Dune. Was inspired to finally pick it up by the forthcoming movie ... I was not disappointed. I've resisted picking up the Foundation because I was worried it would feel dated. After enjoying Dune though, I think I'm gonna dive in.

Mission is to get me, wife and daughters (~250 lbs total) plus some gear to all points Texas and Colorado with home base being West Texas. So the F33 seems like a fit. Remove the fifth "seat" to make more room for baggage, and we have four forward facing seats that can be accessed from up front. This is vs the 36, with the club-style seating. If we went that route, we'll either have to stack luggage/gear on one set of seats or remove one set, making our kids either face backward right behind us, or face forward, but have all the gear between us and them. I also think I can go with a normally asperated 550 and still get plenty of power for those high altitude climb-outs leaving CO without having to deal with the added mechanical complexity of a Turbo. The V-tail just doesn't seem like enough plane for what I'm wanting. Plus, I've heard they fly kinda wonky. (Full disclosure, I've flown a A36, but never a 33 nor a V)

Did my first bi-annual flight review last week. Hadn't been in the cockpit in over a year. I was shocked that the skills hadn't completely left me. In fact, I was expecting to do a couple of flights with my instructor before the actual flight review, but when we landed (for the last time) he said he thinks I might have actually improved on stick and rudder skills since the last time I flew with him. Now I'm plane shopping, thinking about a beech F33A with the 550 upgrade.

Yeah, the comment was just made in passing. He was just saying they were two of the most high maintenance employees with some of the least output.

Had a conversation with a buddy who works at Concho over the weekend, he said they put out a job posting for a landman position. This is one job was replacing two people who were unsuccessful in making the transition to their current WFH 75% in office 25% model. (Read: they were watching netflix instead of working and constantly finding excuses for why they couldn't get their work done). Anyway, he had 140 resumes for this job and interviewed 10 before making the hire. The things that stand out to me on this story are A) the complacency of the people that got fired, how could you believe you could put forth half-ass effort and keep your job in this environment? and B) holy shit that's a lot of applications for a single position, I figured every open position has a lot of interest, but ... damn

Thanks for this recommendation, I recently finished the series. I'm not usually one for the magic/fantasy portion of the sci-fi genre, but I very much enjoyed this.

I have a theory regarding the photo of the lake rally posted on the last page and the discussion about all these college kids returning to campus(es) together: These are very likely the same people have been congregating/partying all summer long with no masks and minimal social distancing, I've been told about it and I've seen it on FB, instagram, etc. Based on their behavior throughout the summer, they have been exposed, period. Either they are immune, they have contracted it and were asymptomatic, they got a light version of it, or they are just incredibly lucky. There just doesn't seem to be a logical explanation otherwise. Using the example of the people watching on that deck at the lake, does anyone really believe that it is the first (or even the 10th) time that those people are in a public gathering without masks/social distancing? I guess we'll know if there's another spike in cases in the next week or two and in hospitalizations in the next few weeks. Assuming those would correlate to the return to college campuses and the public events associated with Labor Day.

Been buying chainlink (LINK) hard for the last 3 weeks. watched it go from ~$6 to ~$19 in that time frame ... feels stonky to me. I'm sure I'll ride it back to $3 to make it a true stonk.

I can. Who wants to place bets that the last Robert E. Lee HS in Texas is the one in Midland (pretty good odds, I guess, since the only other one remaining is in Baytown). Midland's Lee High Rebels (Who's fight song was 'dixie' until a scant 2 years ago) opened it's doors in 1961. You read that right. At a time when the rest of the country was desegregating, Midland chose to name a new high school that way. Not terribly surprising, I suppose, since Midland vehemently refused to desegregate it's schools until US Federal Court Forced Them To in 1971. (17 years after Brown V. Board of Education) I'm not nearly as eloquent about it as Eric Winston, Midland Lee graduate and former president of the NFL Player's union: When the current school board president was recently asked about re-naming the school, he simply said (emphasis added)

I live in Midland so this hits, literally, close to home. I don’t know this guy, but he’s definitely been making the rounds talking about ‘his’ treatment. In other interviews he’s given, (As you can imagine there’s a lot of buzz about him in these parts) he mentioned treating dozens of patients with the nebulizer and steroid cocktail. If I understand correctly, his claim is none of his patients have died or gone on a ventilator.

Yeah, I guess it didn't paste correctly: