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Okie State

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Okie State

  1. Maybe not trivial, but I go to change my brake rotors yesterday.  Costco overtorqued one lug nut so much that I couldn't get it off with a 4-way and a three foot cheater pipe.  Bent the fuck out of my wrench.
    Next time take it to Discount Tire where they just break the lugs clean off.
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  2. Accountants are riding the gravy train at the E&P company I work at in Houston. It is basically common knowledge that they don’t do much for relatively good pay. 8:30-4 hours with very little responsibilities or expectations.
     
    Then again, I’m a geologist, so...I’m a bit biased against the non-technical personnel in O&G.
     
    I’d say go for it. Great work if you can get it.


    The longer I work, the more I realize that everyone thinks everyone else just sits around and does nothing all day. It's amazing any work gets done at all. The engineers in my family would probably say the same about geologists.

    As for the OP, I think you'd be fine either way. O&G companies love to hire people with Big 4 experience, but plenty go straight into the industry and still do well for themselves. Big 4 will likely open a lot of doors, but you'll still need to prove yourself once you get in. The hours will most definitely be better in O&G.
  3. We had a pretty good post this past week about some creep at the local HEB getting off watching women load groceries into their cars.

     

    I've had limited success selling things on there, but people are exceptionally cheap. List a chair for $20 and not even a nibble. Update to Free and every person within five miles wants it.

     

     

  4. Don't you live in a Houston suburb?  I just can't do that.  I live in a great part of Tulsa, near downtown and surrounded by upper, middle, and lower class neighborhoods.  School funding for me is not about quality of education.  My daughter goes to the local elementary school which has great teachers, and a very active pta and fundraising foundation.  I don't need the suburbs for quality.  My beef is the overall ridiculousness and unfairness of the entire system being underfunded because of Grover Norquist's fucking pledge from the goddamn 90s.  And the great teachers who we love are treated like royalty from the pta and foundation, but like absolute garbage from the state which provides the majority of the funding.
    As I mentioned, the biggest quandary I'm facing is, if not here, where?  I was raised partly in Corpus Christi and have no real desire to move back.  I was raised the other half in a Tulsa suburb, which partly accounts for my disdain for suburbs.  I went to graduate school in Dallas and loved it living in my area, near Northpark Mall.  I recently looked up housing there and JFC, the cost of regular houses is absurd and have tripled since I left.  I make good money and might can pull it off, but man what a beating.  Dallas, like Houston, is becoming dominated by the suburbs in affordablity, and that just does not appeal to me.  And for the price of the house, the Dallas schools don't exactly have a glowing reputation.  The quality here is the same or better despite the disparity in funding.  Dallas is still on my list of possibilities, mostly because I still have family there and familiarity with the area.  But while school funding is better, the state legislature in Texas does a lot of the same shit as Oklahoma on the cloak room side.
    I've considered a wholesale change.  I've worked a lot in D.C. in the last year and love that city.  But prices again are crazy, and I'm not sure I have a wholesale change like that in me.  The place I've strongly considered is Minneapolis.  It's top 5 in just about every good quality of life ranking, including schools, and I have at least a few friends up there.  The cold winters and distance from our families cuts against a wholesale change like that, but its still very high on my list.  
    I'm just really angry and depressed right now seeing how the state legislature is acting.  I really want to either burn the place down or say fuck it, I'm out.  It runs through my head every minute of every day, and I just can't decide what's best.  As long as there is uncertainty, the status quo wins.  So I'll probably stay here forever and just hope some sanity can make the state legislature in my lifetime.  I've considered running myself but my state representative is actually one of the handful doing the right thing so it wouldn't change anything, adding to my sense of helplessness.  I can't make the rural bumpkins and suburban snowflakes give a shit about schools and to stop messing with the gays and doing its other cloak room nonsense.  My vote is meaningless in federal elections too.  I'm just stuck, and it sucks.
    I am in a Houston suburb and it's far from ideal. The biggest downsides are obviously traffic, shitty suburb food, and just too many damn people everywhere making it almost impossible to go do anything. That said, the schools are good, my career is in a much better spot than it was in Oklahoma, and my kids get to spend a lot of time with their grandparents. If I could afford it, I'd live further in the city, but it's just not realistic at this point. The schools are also hit and miss once you get into the city.

    There are definitely things I miss about Oklahoma, but there are also a lot of things I don't. If I had my choice, I'd probably move to Colorado. I lived there for a few years as a kid and love visiting. That would require finding a new employer though so it's not likely to happen.
  5. So many poor decisions over the last 30 years by hillbilly idiots who don't give a single shit about prosperity, just their narrow world view.  Thus, 30 years after the bust, and after the major O&G headquarters left for Houston, we are still primarily an O&G economy. 
    We actually have a port, the Port of Catoosa near Tulsa.  Basically a trench dredged roughly along the Arkansas River, connected to the Mississippi River and thereby the Gulf of Mexico.  It does well, but not necessarily a boom.  Underutilized due to poor leadership.
    Our natural beauty is vastly underrated.  We're no Colorado or California, but we're not solely a "plains" state like Kansas.  OKC is the flattest part of the state, so that's the majority image.  Some of the best features of Arkansas Ozarks exist in the eastern part of the state.  The western part of the state has southwest landscape features akin to West Texas and New Mexico.  Tulsa is surrounded by rolling hills, lakes, and plenty of natural beauty.  The most popular is Grand Lake.  It's utilized mostly by local O&G richers.  The rest of the lakes are for the poors and their pontoons and bud light.  Again, poor leadership under utilizing natural beauty.  The City of Tulsa is getting much better at this.  It's my only hope.
    Aviation still has a pretty big presence here, but American Airlines is the largest, and there's always the threat of consolidation in DFW.  Healthcare has been strong, but that's not really unique with all the olds everywhere supporting expanded healthcare economies.  Nothing really separates us.
    This place could be thriving, or at least be doing significantly better than it is, but the leadership are a bunch of yokels with no vision.  They only really care about gays, guns, and fucking up public schools in the name of jesus, or something like that.  It's infuriating.  I'm still here because the City of Tulsa has some leadership that is really trying to make improvements, but the state will always hold us back.  I've considered moving for a long time.  This teacher strike and inaction and insults from the state legislature have me very much with a foot out the door.  Where to?  I don't know.  But this is becoming intolerable.  
    The education issue was a big sticking point with me knowing that I didn't want my kids to be any part of that mess. This really seems like a turning point for the state.
  6. I haven't used it for hail damage, but my Grandpa did once and you couldn't even tell there were ever dents. I've had multiple door dings taken out and the cost was anywhere from $75-$100/dent depending on the location and difficulty. I'm assuming it would be cheaper per dent on a large job.

    I've had good experiences with PDR, but like anything, it probably depends on the skill of the guy assigned to your car.

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